Who ARE You?

I have taken this quiz a zillion times, and I always find myself labeled Emergent/Postmodern, which for the life of me I cannot figure out. I guess it's all pretty accurate, except for the (poorly punctuated) sentence that reads, "You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well."

The fact that it literally pains me to see that comma in the place of the semicolon in the above sentence -- an anguish-inducing problem on a par with the repeated misuse of "apostrophe s" on the internet -- should be a clue. I am hopelessly in love with older forms of church, and I think that we in the postmodern world would do well to educate ourselves on the their significance and timeless relevance before we lose something precious. I do not eschew contemporary innovations (except for some of what is, oddly enough, identified as music), but there seems to be a bad case of either-or going around today, no doubt fueled by a media that seems incapable of nuance and educates us accordingly.

Now that I think of it, the implications that spirituality is somehow a function and/or progenitor of the emergent/postmodern movement and that relationship and dialogue are more contemporary than crusades and altar calls are also rather baffling. Spirituality, relationship, dialogue -- all have been honed in the ancient practices of lectio divina and spiritual direction, practices which constitute major elements of my own religious life. The tent revival crusade and altar call, rather than the practices of dialogue and relationship, constitute modern developments; postmodern practices have leapfrogged back over them to recover rather than to create anew.

Hmmm. Maybe I am emergent/postmodern after all ~ in the third century sense.

********************

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern, You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 75% Neo orthodox 71% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 71% Roman Catholic 68% Classical Liberal 64% Charismatic/Pentecostal 39% Modern Liberal 32% Reformed Evangelical 21% Fundamentalist 0% Try this link. created with QuizFarm.com

Church Music

There's been some online discussion recently of church music; specifically, pipe organ music.

Having spent six years in religious (Catholic and then Protestant) schools where music permeated our lives and choral instruction was mandated, I am an unrepentant fan of the classical choral and organ repetoire, as well as of most other kinds of music. (We can delete from the list the twang of country and western -- although, hey, some of that is on my Brokeback Mountain soundtrack and it's fine -- and the contemporary praise music that is apparently seeping into our churches, but otherwise I'm good to go).

It seems that many churches feel compelled to go all out one way or the other insofar as the traditional/contemporary spectrum is concerned, and I am coming to understand how fortunate we are in our church to benefit from a music director who is a brilliant and well-trained organist full of enthusiasm for learning and teaching music representing all eras, cultures, and instruments (and a gifted educator of children and young people as well -- my daughter's years of participation in school, college, and Famous Orchestra children's choruses are entirely her doing).

Herewith, this morning's music, all selected with an eye toward its having been Confirmation Sunday for the eighth graders:

Uyai Mose/Come All You People -- a Zimbabwean/John Bell combination (I can't find a good link but here are some of the lyrics)(and here is a link which credits the arrangement to a Roger Wesby, so who knows?),

a traditional (perhaps pre-Christian?) Kyrie and a traditional (early early early Christian) Gloria,

The Summons ~ a 1987 John Bell/Iona song,

a traditional 16th and 17th century Doxology (with inclusive language printed in the bulletin but used by few in the congregation),

Lord of the Dance, written in 1963, sung to the 19th century Shaker Simple Gifts tune, and one of our favorites.

The accompaniment this morning was all pipe organ, with the exception of piano for The Summons.

And further, on the subject of music: this morning we wrapped up our year of Adult Education on the theme of Practices of Faith, in the context of which we devoted three Sunday mornings this spring to The Practice of Singing Our Lives. Our own music director presented a class on her (expansive) philosophy of church music, and we welcomed a speaker on African-American sprituals and another on Gregorian chant. Musical expression is so integral to our congregational life that we couldn't imagine a year-long series on religious practice without addressing its power and vitality and variety.

And this from someone who can't string two notes together!

Icy Feet

I am getting cold feet about going to seminary. Not just cold feet. Icy feet. Ice CUBE feet.

This past week I looked up some material about the stage of confirmation in the discernment process as articulated by Ignatius. Not surprisingly, what I read indicates that recognizing the obstacles and challenges ahead is a sign of balance and good health, and is probably a sign of confirmation in itself.

I am changing my Whole Life. I am going to live somewhere else a lot of the time, with people I haven't met yet. There will be Major Money Issues. There will be transportation issues. My children are grown, but I am always Their Mom. The gutter is still hanging dizzily from the front corner of the house.

As I watch people come into school to interview for my job, I know that I have lost my mind. All of these people want these hard-to-get teaching jobs, and I have resigned mine. My students, since I am leaving, are full of affection and warmth. And I feel irrationally protective of them. I watch some of the tryout teachers and I think, No. I did not bring them this far for that.

I am going to a Presbyterian seminary in the Reformed tradition and to a training program in spiritual direction in the Catholic tradition. My entire religious life has been like that, always balancing the tensions and promises of difference. I recognize it as one of God's greatest gifts to me, but it's not the easiest one to embrace. I imagine it's going to become more difficult for awhile.

And then it comes. There's always a metaphor lurking out there, if you wait long enough.

I spent the summer I turned twelve at a camp on Torch Lake in the northern reaches of Michigan, up by Traverse City and Charlevoix. Torch Lake is one of the coldest lakes EVER. It is probably about 33 degrees. (OK, so I exaggerate. But it's really cold.) And when you are a camper, you go swimming twice a day -- a lesson in the morning and a free swim in the afternoon.

One of our favorite things to do was to swim out to the raft, some ways out from the main dock, so that we could jump into the fourteen feet of water out there. Once you reached the raft and sat in the sun for awhile, you didn't really want to jump back into that icy water, but you did want to, too, because you could force yourself down to the sandy bottom of the lake and see that the water was absolutely clear. Even at fourteeen feet, it was like being in a chlorinated swimming pool -- blue and clear.

I haven't thought about those afternoons in Torch Lake for a long, long time. But there they are, just when I need to know that you have to withstand the cold to reach the clarity of vision. Cold feet are just what you need.

Valhalla! (Just for Fun)

I was wandering around the internet tonight and re-discovered this on Cynthia's blog. It was a hit last spring when I was studying Viking legends in a medieval history class, and I still love it.

It's the perfect blend for the history-obsessed cat lover who can be transported instantly back in time by Stairway to Heaven.

The hammer of the gods as wielded by helmeted kitties will get you.

You Never Know

Ten years ago this summer, our family and one other -- one of my best friends, her husband, and their son, who was best friends with one of our boys -- headed west for a joint trip to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. We had one of those Best Times Ever -- rafting and horseback riding and long hikes away from the summer crowds and fancy evenings in Old Faithful and Grand Teton Lodges and late nights walking the geyser boardwalks under a full moon. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed each other and every day that we had. Both families have been through some rough, rough times in the years since, and I think that we all hold fast to the memory of that trip.

One of our Very Best Discoveries was a little lake with a family of nesting trumpeter swans. I don't know how many times our family had listened to E.B. White read The Trumpet of the Swan as we made long distance drives, and to have found a lonely pond in Montana with swans and cygnets just as he describes it was a dream come true.

And then one of the Very Best Things happened: our friends' son asked about the birding guide jammed into the back of my jeans. I pulled it out and showed him how a bird guide works: how the birds are portrayed in evolutionary order so that closely related families appear together, and how the paintings are created to highlight identifying features, so that birds that look much alike can be distinguished from one another. He was immediately captivated, so much so that I bought him a bird book of his own and listed 20 birds on the inside front cover as a challenge for his future travels.

What did I know?

He turns 22 and graduates from Cornell University this month, no doubt with many honors and with more ornithological field work behind him than most graduate students experience in several years of further education. Earlier tonight he emailed me an article from the Ithaca paper about some of his latest exploits, an article which includes this paragraph:

"Many birders start young, BW said. He had his first birding experience at 12 on a vacation in Wyoming, when a family friend handed him a field guide and he identified a Clark's Nutcracker when it flew across the trail. He was hooked. He chose Cornell because it has one of the top ornithology programs in the world."

His email relays the following:

"...as for that list of birds you wrote in the front of the field guide, I have only one left to see--Greater Flamingo (although I've never seen Swallow-tailed Kite in the U.S.--"just" in Ecuador). I'll let you know when I spot a wild flamingo."

I am almost speechless with pride. Way to go and Happy Graduation, BW!

Things To Do, Small and Large

1. Buy new stamps.

2. Order Lovely Daughter's college transcript to prove that she is in fact insured for the removal of her wisdom teeth later this summer.

3. Teach senior (Orthodox Jewish) girls' class on Christianity tomorrow.

4. Help son find reputable training program so that he can teach English in Europe. Or somewhere.

5. Buy more Pedialite and Gatorade. (Husband got it. Daughter probably will. Guess it wasn't psychosomatic after all.)

6. Attack mound of paperwork piled between seminary and me: Never mind, you don't want to know.

7. Think about making a doctor's appointment.

8. Make an 8-day retreat here ~ yippee! ~ in August.

Mother's Day Prayer

I began a long and rambling entry early this morning about my inadequacies as a mother. And then I ran into a friend at church and we laughed and commiserated over our mutual and apparently profound deficiencies in that particular arena of our lives. And then I went into a class where I was verbally reminded of God as Mother. And then I went for my first walk as my restored and mostly healthy self and was visually reminded of God as Mother. And then words like "inadequate" and "deficient" no longer seemed appropriate at all.

It's called a Red Buckeye Tree.

Flattened Again

OK, I give in. I am going to have to go and see an actual real live doctor in person. Probably more than one of them, and none of them will be Christina or McDreamy. I am just emerging from another 36 hour bout of the let-me-die-soon-and-get-this-over-with intestinal scourges. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on, but this makes three times in the last eight months that my usually ridiculously energetic self has been completely flattened and limited in its travels to the fifteen feet or so between bed and toilet.

On the plus side, I learned that the intricacies of AP testing can be managed entirely without me (well, almost -- there were only four or five carefully timed phone calls: the answer sheets go there, the pink and green sheets go there, the sealed test booklets go there, the little white booklets go there, and NO THEY MAY NOT LEAVE THE ROOM), and that the Lovely Daughter is utterly calm and competent (Sweetie, I am reaching a stage of complete dehydration-induced loopiness and I think you'd better go get some Pedialite, and while you're at it, you need to find my insurance card because I might have to go to the ER again).

On the negative side, I watched part of the 20/20 show last night on The Power of Faith, which served to remind me why I watch such shows only when I am too sick for other options. Will someone tell me why Diane Sawyer, who seems like a perfectly intelligent person, becomes so breathlessly incredulous and utterly loopy herself when asking questions about life choices outside her own realm of experience? The only explanation I can come up with is that she, too, was suffering post-intestinal flu dehydration and, therefore, should not have attempted anything requiring normal brain function.

My plans for today involve something highly ambitious, like taking a shower. And staying away from the television.

Home

We picked her up at the airport at midnight, that girl we hadn't seen since she went back to college in January.

Today I ran home for lunch after FOUR POINT FIVE HOURS of AP exam proctoring and there she was, blonde hair and fluffy white skirt and bright pink t-shirt, here, home, in our house.

Made my day. My week. My life.

Spiritual Direction, Jesuit Style

There are some things, he said, some things that you need to start thinking about as you prepare to go to seminary.

And he set out a few of them, which is one of the very best things he does, providing a simple and yet sturdy scaffold for the endless meanderings of my cluttered and disorderly thought processes.

The last one is, What are you going to read? What are you going to take with you? In a year filled with church history and Biblical texts and an ancient language that will prove troublesome for you, what are you going to read for yourself?

*

*

*

Poetry, I have finally realized. Poetry is what I am going to need. Maybe I will read the entire English and American canon of poetry over the next three years and carry it all into the pulpit with me when the time comes.

I went to the bookstore and looked at the paltry few shelves dedicated to poetry. Old friends whom I have not considered in years and years, Auden and Yeats and Williams and centuries of others. Old friends, Berryman and Plath, with whom I feel no affinity at the moment, but who had something to say to that college girl I once was. New names, Mary Oliver from my daughter's English teacher and Wendell Berry from my father and Billy Collins from this Jesuit, who has pushed novel after play after poem at me over the past few years.

Poetry it is. George Herbert and Emily Dickinson and I are going to seminary.

Images of Spring

Neighbor's Tulip

Lakefront Ferns

On the Waterfront

It was lovely at sunrise and it's clear and sunny now that I have to clean house, but naturally it was cloudy, gray, windy, and COLD for the two-hour period I spent down on the Great Lakefront this morning. I decided on the spur of the moment to take part in an organized bird walk though an area usually closed to the public, an old landfill gradually being reclaimed for Mother Nature. A number of people showed up without binoculars; not sure why they were there. But, for those of us who could see, a May morning is a wonderful thing:

Palm and yellow and chestnut-sided warblers

White-throated and white-crowned and song and savannah sparrows

Veery and hermit thrush

Rose-breasted grosbeaks

Great egrets and red-breasted mergansers and cormorants and lesser scaup

And the guide said he could hear orchard and northern orioles -- not a skill I share.

The dogwood in our front yard is in bloom. There are a lot of sad-looking azaleas and magnolias around, victims of that Easter blizzard, but the survivors among the flowering trees are making themselves known.

Same Day, Another View

When I open my eyes in the middle of the night, which I do because restless wakefulness is the rule rather than the exception at this point in life, the full and silver moon beams through the bedroom window.

And when I go for a walk late in the day, the brilliance of the yellow warbler's feathers against the gray twigs of the still-barren woods brings the world to life.

Is anything else so yellow?

Coming Through!

\

The best two weeks of the year: the birds are heading north.

Last night it was pretty late by the time I got outside and the only sightings of note were a couple of hen blue-winged teal.

But one of the advantages of working where I do is an early Friday afternoon dismissal, which means that I was able to spend two hours at the Little Lakes as afternoon turned into evening.

Ruby-crowned kinglets and blue-gray gnatcatchers.

A green heron flew overhead. A great blue waded into the lake up to his neck, so that for a few moments he looked like a bizarrely awkward and strangely long-necked goose floating on the water.

Yellow and black and white and yellow-rumped and palm warblers.

Downy and red-bellied woodpeckers.

One remaining teal.

Song sparrows and chipping sparrows and a lone swamp sparrow busily feeding along the creek.

And the ubiquitous Canada geese and mallards and wood ducks. They're all here to stay. I haven't seen any ducklings yet, but several families of geese are wandering around -- includng one pair with four young parading around the mall near Wal-Mart yesterday.

They would probably be happier at the Little Lakes.

Just Saying

Today the 10th graders burst into American History and told me that, "Mrs. K (one of their Judaics teachers) says we should ask you about this because you love to answer these questions!"

"And what's this one?" I asked.

Oh, it turned out to be about the Trinity. An easy one. Not.

"What, exactly?"

Polytheism.

"We have had this discussion a million times. And Mrs. K knows that we are not polytheists. I know that sometimes you guys think we are, but we aren't."

Well, no, that wasn't it exactly. It was more, well, they had been discussing the rationale behind the refusal of many Jews to enter a Christian place of worship. I had always thought it was the crucifix, central to most Christian sanctuary design, that was such a problem. But no, they said, it's that Christian churches often have pictures or statues of Jesus and, since the Trinity smacks of polytheism and idol worship to them, and they can't worship idols, they can't step inside a place where idols might be found.

Please don't be offended, they said.

"I'm not offended. I keep telling you how important it is for us to discuss these things. How else will we understand each other?"

So, they persisted, what does it mean, three-in-one?

And we talked about the Trinity. And they told me about the Jewish concept of the 13 aspects of the Mercy of God. And I told them about the 99 names for God in Islam. And we agreed that maybe there are some similarities in the ways that the monotheistic religions try to understand God.

And having exhausted that topic for the time being, we moved on to the subject of women in ministry. And Catholicism and the sacraments and the Christian concept of redemption and the entire idea of forgiveness and what Christians really think about Israel.

We never did get to pre-World War I American imperialism.

There are some things I am really going to miss. I'm just saying.

The Trail

Our library, where the computer lives and breathes on an old Workbench dining table, is next to our bedroom. The library would be a wonderful room if it were picked up for a home decorating magazine photograph: original mahogany bookcases with glass doors surround the fireplace, the newer bookshelves installed by the previous owner are oak stained dark to match the mahogany, the windows overlook the front, and there is a pocket door between the library and our bedroom. However, as a well-used room, it is NOT suitable for a magazine photograph.

I am going to clean it up over the next couple of days, now that the dreaded paper on the Muslim hajj is complete. For posterity, however, a litany on the trail leading from computer to bedroom:

A stack of books on the hajj, a J Jill catalog, a camera, hand lotion, two colors of nail polish, an empty glass, a stack of papers and printouts from IslamiCity.com, the local paper's editorial page from April 7, and the same from last Sunday, which argues that Hip-hop feminism is not an oxymoron. I have only just noticed the presence of "moron" within the latter word.

A hugely thick notebook containing all the materials from the art history course I took on the Renaissance two years ago -- out because one of my students just did a PowerPoint on Michelangelo -- and one of the notebooks from one of my Ignatian spirituality classes -- out because there's always something.

Hairdryer, curling iron, scrapbook from family trip to Italy which we should have taken AFTER the Renaissance art history course. Guess I will have to go back.

Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga, which I am finally going to get to read; a magazine from the organization assisting with our church's sort of reverse-mission trip (learn together as opposed to impose religious faith) to Nicaragua this summer, on which my decidedly non-religious husband will be a participant due to his interest in fair trade issues (I got Iona last summer; he gets Nicaragua next month); Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation; and the ever-scintillating State Academic Content Standards for Social Studies.

A couple of other books on (generic) pilgrimmage, the Oprah magazine (how did THAT get here ?!), running shoes, clogs, Tevas, and the blanket lying in a heap on the floor because -- guess what ?! -- someone in this house can no longer sleep under a blanket.

We have made it all around the bed to: Time, Harper's, Qur'an, Bible, more novels, more Ignatian stuff, and an orange highlighter.

One of the more daunting aspects of the Gannet-Goes-to-Seminary Project involves the sale of this house and the downsizing we so desperately need. There is enough stuff in these two rooms alone to completely fill any of the condos and townhouses we looked at last week-end.

Well, I wasn't planning on a kitchen anyway.

Two Years

In a week, the Lovely Daughter will be home from college. I CAN'T WAIT.

Every once in awhile I look back at previous blog entries. Especially on mornings like this, when I am completely written out (that paper on the Muslim hajj? -- DONE! A day early!) Two years ago today, the Lovely Daughter was a senior in high school. Now she's almost halfway through college, hanging out in west coast airports and doing spring break service projects in San Francisco. Life can be so good at 19:

It Seems . . .

that perhaps Spring has arrived?

The Colors and The Music Are Returning

SUCH SINGING IN THE WILD BRANCHES
~ Mary Oliver

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves -
then I saw him clutching the limb in an island of shade
with his red-brown feather
sall trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness -
and that’s when it happened, when I seemed to float, to be,
myself, a wing or a tree -
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying, and the sands in the glass
stoppedfor a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward like rain, rising, and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing -
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed not a single thrush,

but himself,

and all his brothers, and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky -
all, all of them were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed, so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last
for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,
is that, once you’ve been there, you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning? Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then - open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Friday Five

You can play here.

1. Wearing?

The ubiquitous black skirt. White tank top. Long gray and white cardigan sweater. My Virginia Woolf look.

2. Pondering?

I managed to forget all about that fish on Gray's last night, but a friend emailed a post today that says it's for real. So now I am pondering that. Yeeecccchhh.

3. Reading?

On the floor next to the bed: Paula Huston's By Way of Grace. Diana Butler Bass's Christianity for the Rest of Us. Ivan Doig's The Whistling Season. The new issue of The New York Review of Books. A stack of printouts on Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Rahner.

4. Dreaming?

Of summer afternoons in Chartres.

5. Eating?

I'm about to have some pasta and cheese for lunch. And then go for a walk on yet another dreary gray day.

A Gift for the Preachers: Iona Sheep Sunday

Ten Best Things

Best thing you’ve seen in the past week:
A kinglet, though it was too far away and I didn't have binocs with me, so I can't tell you which kind. The spring kind.

Best thing you’ve heard in the past week:
My next door neighbor's story about the birth of twins to her daughter in Germany last month, the daughter who was five when we moved in 23 years ago and I was the one pregnant with twins. Her twins were much more cooperative about their arrival than mine were.

Best thing you’ve eaten (or not, for dieters) in the past week:
Chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips.

Best thing you’ve learned in the past week:
That there are some thought patterns I can change.

Best place you’ve been in the past week:
All the places (and there aren't many of them) where the daffodils and tulips surived the Easter blizzard.

Best thing you’ve accomplished in the past week:
The interview for a program in spiritual direction.

Best thing you’ve said (or not) in the past week:
"Yes, you may have until next week to turn that paper in."

Best thing you’ve read in the past week:

Encounters with Silence by Karl Rahner. I read it in bits and pieces all the time.

Most touching moment in the past week:
Hearing tonight that a friend's four-month old granddaughter, born with massive damage to many body systems that has precluded most normal physical functioning, slurped down her first bottle last night.

Biggest dragon you’ve slain in the past week:
The third draft of my paper on the Muslim hajj, emailed in this afternoon ON TIME.

Thanks to Lisa! for the template.

Self-Knowledge

Another women's week-end is coming up. A group of us went away together last fall as we do most years but, no sooner had all the plans been made than (1) the instigator, she-who-had-had-the-nerve-to-Move-Away, backed out and (2) another woman suddenly could no longer come. The latter has been trying hard for months to pull together a second week-end and it looks like this one's a go. I'm probably the only one who either can't go or can only go for one night.

But I find myself feeling reluctant to make the effort, because I feel like I was burned last time, and here's why:

My favorite things to do with friends are walking and talking, and I had looked forward to a couple of days of doing exactly that last fall. With one friend in particular. And on that particular week-end, that friend forgot to bring any shoes that would make long walks possible.

How could that be? I asked. What else, besides, contacts, and she doesn't wear contacts, could possibly have been more important to pack?

Well, what she did bring was food. Lots and lots of food. While I had been dreaming of long walks along the lake, she had been imagining long and cozy breakfasts of bacon and eggs and sausage and waffles and bagels and whatever. I would have been happy with a glass of juice on the way out the door.

So I was disappointed to find myself walking alone, and she was disappointed that no one else thought that a three-hour, three-course breakfast was the way to spend Saturday morning.

And so I have been thinking about how differently we all nurture others.

I don't cook. I'm a terrible cook, for a couple of reasons having to do with (1) no sense of smell and, therefore, little capacity for the appreciation of flavor and (2) Wicked Stepmother No. 1, and we won't go there. I'm a terrible cook and I have a terrible history related to meals and so I do not nurture with food.

Last week as I was preparing to preach and concluding that my sermon was pretty much a disaster, one of the things I wondered in some desperation to myself was, "Is there anything at all in here to nurture anyone?"

As it turned out there apparently was. Based on the response I got, there was plenty of nurturing going on.

In a similar context, that is to say, the context of church, I used to wonder why the sacrament of communion just did not move me. At all. Until last year, when it did, but that is another story entirely.

What has finally occurred to me is the obvious. I nurture with words, not food. When my children were little, the main events of the day revolved around reading stories. Hour upon hour of them. The most dazzling dinner specialty, on the other hand, was grilled cheese and tomato soup.

In church, the same thing. Words, not food, are my specialty. It's a good thing that Someone Else got the meal thing down, because it never would have occurred to me.

So maybe I will go on that week-end after all. I will offer my words and accept someone else's food. Just like in church.

Weird Blog Stuff

This has been going on for weeks.

When I check my stat counter, which I do with some obsessive frequency, now that I have discovered how many people read without commenting and have, indeed, turned into such a person myself, I find an increasingly number of hits originating from the urls of photographs I have used -- particularly photos from various landmarks in France and, oddly, of a Six Feet Under photo I used one day. It feels really weird, and I am tempted to delete all such images.

Anyone know what gives? Is this a consequence of the google purchase of blogger ~ are we now subject to innumerable searches by folks who aren't actually looking for blogs? Or is there just one person out there clicking on every St. Chappelle and Six Feet Under reference in the stratosphere of the internet? Should we care?

Continued

Responses from Orthodox Jewish high school students who have learned that their teacher is off to a Presbyterian seminary:

What do we call you?

How are you going to learn Hebrew when you haven't managed it in six years with us? (Good question.)

(Yelling down hall) Hey, Rabbi Reverend C!

You're going to be like Lucy in Seventh Heaven?

You're going to be a prime minister?

Ms. C is getting smicha?

Can we visit your church?

This is so cool.

Invitation

As we all learned from Miss Austen, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

It is also a truth universally acknowledged, in the estimation of one Gannet Girl, that a middle-aged woman in possession of a husband, adult children, mortgages, a gutter system on the verge of collapse, two broken toilets, a red Corolla, and A Call, must be in want of a sense of humor.

It's more or less settled. This particular such woman is going to drive that Corolla off to seminary next fall.

Luckily for all involved, she is also in possession of a stellar sense of humor.

*******

I told my employers on Monday, and then started telling my work friends. (Only a couple know, and they have kept my secret all year.) I teach in an Orthodox Jewish school. In the Orthodox community, women are not ordained and men do not touch women to whom they are not married (except when they shake hands with women like me, who are wont to forget that shaking hands is not is a sign of basic courtesy in all situations). Most excellent moments since I have begun to tell people:

A colleague, whose three sons have all been my students, says, "No, no, no. Do NOT tell me you are leaving." ~ And then, when she learns the reason, throws her arms around me and says, "How wonderful!"

A male colleague, the kindest and gentlest of men, he whose birthday was just celebrated by the entire student body producing a cake and a rendition of When I'm 64, whose face breaks into a smile as he reaches to grasp my hand before he gives in to a hug and says, "How wonderful!"

I am also in possession of a good fortune, in the form of friendships and generosity.

VT

I shared some good news of my own earlier, news that I written about some time ago and then had waited days to post due to some long delays at work. But I've put it aside; it can wait some more.

Pretty much every one of the families to whom we are close has at least one child in college. Nearly all of us have been through rocky times and we know that nothing is ever guaranteed. We worry about their grades and their activities and their social lives and their summers and their travel and their boyfriends and girlfriends and their plans and their futures, and we are full of hope for them and for much more for their lives than we ever hoped for ourselves.

To lose those children and to lose that hope . . .

No words.

Death and Life

Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church says that religion is our response to the reality that we live and then we die.

I have wondered recently whether perhaps I have been so drawn to religious exploration in part because of that reality. In one eighteen-month period of my childhood, my mother, brother, grandmother's mother, and grandfather's father all died. By the time I was in my early twenties, my first stepmother and an aunt had died, both of them before the age of fifty. I was very much acquainted with death long before I saw a baby born.

This morning as part of my school's Yom Hashoah observance, a student's father helped his mother describe her experiences in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. One of her jobs was to remove the bodies of those who died in their bunks or by intentionally electrocuting themselves on the barbed-wire fence. This is the second year in a row that I have listened to a student's grandparent describe her (last year, his) experience of watching Joseph Menegle standing at the train and pointing, "Right, Left, Right, Left." Life, Death, Life, Death.

And this afternoon we all stayed glued to our computers as the news from Virginia Tech trickled out, and thought about the terrible loss of life there, and about our own beloved students, whose families perished in Europe, and about our own beloved children off at school and college.

Sometimes, even just days after Easter, it seems that death takes over.

But this morning I listened and watched as a lady of great dignity showed us a photograph of her name and the date 1943 carved into a bunk at Auschwitz, and a photograph of the room in the bunkhouse where a Seder was clandestinely celebrated with stolen food and wine.

L'Chaim.

Saturday Morning

Sitting in bed, surrounded by books on the Muslim hajj, trying to make sense out of a paper that has to come together too soon.

At the computer, still in my pjs, editing the school yearbook online. The kids have done an incredible job. If only they had pulled all of this creativity out of a hat BEFORE the deadline instead of two weeks after.

Standing in the pulpit in jeans and an oversized and very long Ohio State sweatshirt, practicing my be-brave-in-the-face-of-doubt sermon for tomorrow. A couple of the guys who are at church for a spring (winter) workday saw me in the hall and threatened to come in and laugh and snicker, but fortunately they are completely absorbed by gutters or plumbing or something. Another guy friend is upstairs hanging an art exhibit. When I go up to visit with him later, he starts talking about the need to prepare something and then prepare to put all your preparation aside. I think he is talking about oil paintings but it turns out he is talking about sermons. I think he is trying to be supportive.

I have been looking for the foxes in the cemetery for weeks and I am about to go out again. It is cold and gray out there, and So Not Spring. The image is from the National Cathedral, where it WAS spring ten days ago. If you enlarge it, the reflection of the stained glass on the floor looks very cool.

So. . . this class I'm taking? We have to write a paper, which I figured would be due, as always, at the end of the exam period. Say about May 11.

Nope. A few weeks ago, the prof announced it would be due the last day of class, May 2. Now I did make A Life Plan when I signed up for the class and saw the syllabus, way back in January but, OK, I can pull off May 2.

Tonight he says he wants a draft a week earlier. That's in two weeks.

WT. . . ?

The yearbook for which I am the advisor is due next Monday. AP Exams are at the beginning of May and all the preparation has to be completed by the end of April. I'm preaching a sermon Sunday, preceded by one of those 8:15 meetings that so startled QG a few weeks ago. And my school is a Sunday ACT test site this week. Thankfully I don't have to proctor that one, but I do have to get everything set up Friday afternoon.

I don't have much of anything to do in May. But it seems I won't have to write this paper then either.

I don't think I'm even going to be reading blogs for the next two weeks, much less writing one.

Sigh.

Good thing I got that Assateague sunrise in.

Passover Vacation

I was invited to preach next Sunday and so I have spent a lot of time over the last two weeks with my friend Thomas, who was my favorite disciple until last year, when Mary Magdalene squeezed in ahead of him. I tried to write about them both, but I do not have the skill to incorporate all the ideas that bubbled up into one 17 or 18 minute piece. So Thomas it is.

I am working on a major paper for the graduate class I am taking, so I have also spent a lot of time with Muslims making the hajj. It turns out that there is a lot more to it than hopping a place to Mecca.

Yesterday I had two separate, but each of them very long, conversations with Christian colleagues, one of them deeply religious and one of them not at all, about the challenges of teaching in a Jewish day school.

And the best time of all has been the four days that I spent with Windy City son, in DC and on the eastern shore of Maryland. He is transforming himself from a student with a couple of pairs of jeans and a sublet room to a young man with an apartment, a car, and a wardrobe of "casual business" clothes. The best part of all is watching the quiet enthusiasm and balance with which he approaches the next adventure in life. No ~ the best part is watching him live out the promise of fourth grade, when his class was asked to discern from a lengthy list the most important of human qualities, and his choice was "kindness."

When I remember to think about it, I am so grateful for this life so overflowing with such a variety of people and ideas.

And also with birds. What kind of world would it be without snowy and great egrets decked out for spring?

We Have Another One!

Due to a certain malaise on the part of the young man in question and the bureaucratic overload endemic to gigantic state universities (don't ask), it took awhile, but yes! -- we have another college graduate. This one didn't want to attend his graduation and hasn't gotten around to picking up his diploma, but he has, in fact, put college behind him. So . . . go Buckeyes! and congratulations to our member of the Class of 2007.

May he and his twin brother now attain on their own the lifestyle to which they were at one time accustomed:

Happy Easter II !

Christmas . . . oops! Easter Morning: The Cemetery, The House, The Church

Fortunately, as a product of both the Celts AND the Scientific Revolution, I know that the sun did rise, in a manner of speaking, behind that cross this morning. Here it was last year.

Happy Easter I !

This morning in the midwest doesn't look anything at all like Washington National Cathedral did a week ago, with the trees about to burst into bloom and the sunlight through the stained glass casting color upon stone. My daffodils and tulips are completely ~ and I do mean completely ~ covered by snow which, when I let the dog out a few minutes ago, I discovered to be still falling in some strange form. I am off to the Sunrise Service, which I wouldn't miss on a day like this for anything, although I admit that since the cemetery is only a couple of blocks away, I am spared the dilemma of whether to clean off a car and risk getting stuck in the driveway to get there. I can just walk over, and hope that others find a way to make it, too. I'll post an image or two later. Thick socks, snow boots, and fleece everywhere ~ Happy Easter!

Holy Saturday

Space Window, Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Washington National Cathedral)

"Is the Christ of the Gospels, imagined and loved within the dimensions of a Mediterranean world, capable of still embracing and still forming the centre of our prodigiously expanded universe?"

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Trip Summary

Sun's Up Willet, Assateague National Seashore, April 2007

DC, Chincoteague and Assateague with Windy City Son. Quick trip before he vanishes into the corporate workforce.

Washington National Cathedral on an overpoweringly spring-like day. Organ concert around which we had planned arrival cancelled with no explanation. Lunched in the garden. Splurged in the bookstore.

Full moon rose a fiery red over western coast of eastern shore.

While we drove across the Delmarva Peninsula from Blackwater NWR to Assateague, the skies darkened and the temperature dropped thirty degrees. As we rode our bikes across the Chincoteague NWR the next morning, the skies opened up and within seconds we were drenched to the core. But by late that day, we were getting sunburned on the beach.

Birding count:

Numerous:
Eagles
Osprey
Gadwall
Shovelers
Sanderlings
Willet
Great Egrets
Snowy Egrets
Great Blue Herons

Some:
Cattle Egret
Marbled Godwit
Red-breasted Mergansers

Uno:
Tri-Colored Heron
Oystercatcher
Loon


Sunlit Sika, Chincoteague NWR, April 2007

As The Sun Rises

Willet, Assateague National Seashore, April 2007

Early Morning Observance

I started my Maundy Thursday by driving across the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge toward sunrise on the beach at Assateague, with Bach echoing in the car and birds beginning to awaken on the darkened marsh.

As the sun bubbled over the Atlantic, flocks of willet and sanderlings sparkled out along the edge of the foam, and the just-past-full moon hung above the inlet.

My drive back was marked by scores of shorebirds wheeling over the marsh, a posse of Sika deer stopping to stare, and a loon floating serenely in the early morning sunshine.

An awesome day on the calendar beginning with such fragile beauty on the coast.