The Crimson Rambler

movin' on...

2012-01-22T23:13:00.000-08:00

It doesn't happen very often, but every now and then I get a useful and salutary -- I hope -- reminder of the kind of Total Desolation that used to envelop every experience of worship, a grim mixture of grief and rage. Didja ever have one of those Sundays when you just want to put your head down and BAWL? (too cold still, despite much moderation of temperature today, to go out and dig WORMS, you understand)

It's been an extra - ecclesiological sort of a day, wrapping up with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service this evening (anybody else HATE Sunday evening obligations?) at which a number of persons spoke. Some of them knew how, and some of them told truth. So that was restorative.

And then I indulged myself in at stop at the supermarket for Favourite Things for a very late supper here at home.

Re-thinking the local and current assumptions about ecumenism, however; and the (I'm sorry) prevailing cant about "unity," and "diversity" and so forth.

More and more, I think that we speak -- in the patterns of our habitual and "received" discourse -- perhaps not with forked tongue, but rather out of both sides of our mouths at once. And the left side knoweth not what the right side uttereth, worse luck.

More and more -- at least part of the time -- what is bandied about as churchspeak sounds to me like a rough draft of 1984; we have a list of nouns that are "double plus good" and a list of nouns that are "double plus un good"; and we fling them at each other like rocks; and everybody goes "YAY" and "BOO" right on Pavlovian cue, without ever examining what is actually being said.

Three more sleeps, however, TBTG, and I am within hailing distance of the end of the PRE-DO list. I can see that nice little bit of after-deck in my mind's eye, believe me.

My only worry is how they will ever be able to get the POINTY END of the boat sufficiently down into the water so they can cast off...what with all the Rev Gals falling on each other's necks back at the BROAD END.

Never doubt that you make a difference, y'all (or is it "all y'all"?).

whew

2012-01-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

trying to put together the reading (I Corinthians 15, natch) for tomorrow's funeral with the reflection upon it -- I can do this, and have done it, with a small (very small!) group of hearers, but this is likely to be a big (monster big) funeral. And I'm feeling a bit...spooked by the prospect. Prayers would be welcome!

language, and text, and liturgy, and like that there.

2012-01-10T16:48:00.000-08:00

I am trying to establish a habit of blogging at the end of the day, but there is a little pause right here, and "the kids" or some of them are coming for supper in about three-quarters of an hour, so before I get the chicken going, I think I'll just make this post and let it stand. I really, really, really, wanted to get this up -- it's from a recent review in the Times Literary Supplement, of Harold Bloom's latest book on the Bible, and Cummings' work on the Book of Common Prayer. It -- and other insights in the review -- dovetail so well with Mary Beard's essay on the "future" of the classics, in the most recent New York Review of Books all about how reading and studying these texts is a matter of entering into dialogue with those who wrote them and with everyone who has ever read them since. Here we go:

"Liturgy is like a vast cognitive tapestry, in which text reaches within and around to meet other texts; in which one human experience is grafted onto another. The words of Morning Prayer or of Baptism in the seventeenth century, or for that matter in the twenty-first, contain the words of all previous centuries back to the time of the Roman Empire, and in some cases hundreds of years earlier, back to the rituals of Jewish communities at the beginning of recorded meaning."
--Brian Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer: the texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662.

Mary Brown at work again...

2012-01-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

A quiet day at home with some useful tidying and re-organizing, and some overdue writing projects out of the way, a book review, and a letter.

Slept a bit later than usual, which felt good; said Morning Prayer, read for recreation for a bit, then got up to a porridge breakfast and some kitchen work. Listened to the Gabrieli Consort, singing the Praetorius Christmettein the background.

So, not everything accomplished that I hoped for, but eliminated some clutter and consolidated some resources, and passed the time pleasantly.

Interested in the PBS series on Martin Luther, some new perspectives on that history.

Picked up a link to a NY Timescolumn by Sam Anderson: "What I really Want is Someone Rolling Around in the Text." Anderson is chiefly concerned with the technological possibility that e-readers of various sorts will soon allow us to make marginal notes, underline, and scribble, and comment on "the text" in a way comparable to our practise with the printed word on paper in bound codices. More, that we shall be able to share our "marginalia" instantaneously...

But what intrigues me is the overlap, kind of a Venn diagram arrangement, between what Anderson says over his shoulder about reading as a dialogue both with other readers and with the text, and with what Mary Beard wrote very recently in the same publication about the "future of the Classics" -- she goes so far as to suggest that classical study has always been, essentially, the conversation among those who read the texts -- including those who WROTE the texts.

And that makes me think again about my "personal hermeneutic". I am most at east with a kind of reader-response approach to the text: "what is happening in and to us as we read and hear these words in this order?" but my recent reading suggests more ramifications to this process.

and that redounds to preaching as well, of course. No end to it.

a pastoral/liturgical conundrum...

2012-01-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

All right, fellow sufferers, here is the Question of the Day.

St. Curious parish church: Sunday morning: two services, eight a.m., ten a.m. Both, except in truly exceptional situations, services of the Eucharist. Attendance at 10 a.m., between forty and sixty most normal Sundays. Attendance at 8 a.m., anywhere between two and twelve, ENTIRELY unpredictably, although severe weather naturally lowers that number. Not always the same folks, either.

So last night we have a forecast of serious freezing rain through the whole area. A regular eight-o'clock person phones me to say he won't try to attend (he has mobility issues). Nor will he be bringing the lady who usually comes with him. A third regular attender entered into rest on Wednesday last. So I have reason to expect FEW.

But. Freezing rain does not materialize, TBTG. I arrive at church without incident. I set up the chapel space for the Eucharist, and I get the vestments on.

Now if NOBODY shows up, I have two, or perhaps three, options: to do nothing, or to perform the Liturgy of the Word and stop there, or to say Morning Prayer. These I can do all by myself, and put "1" in the appropriate columns in the Vestry Book.

But. At 7:55, the front door creaks open, and Ms. X appears. Ms. X comes quite often. She is East Asian. She almost never speaks. She absolutely never makes eye contact, with anyone. When the other usual folks are present, she allows them to shake her hand at the Peace, and gruffly mutters, "You too. You too." in response to their greeting. And she absolutely never receives communion.

Now a side-comment for non-Anglicans. The denomination is somewhat OCD about the celebration of the Eucharist...CANNOT take place if the priest is ALONE -- but the wording is: "There shall be no Celebration of the Lord's Supper, except there be at least one person present to communicate with the Priest."

OK! So what does A do in these circumstances? Cancel the service? Didn't seem right. Curtail the service to just readings and prayers? Seemed unkind and impolite.

I applied some sort of home-made clawhammer casuistry, in the sacristy, and decided I couldn't PRESUME that she wouldn't suddenly decide, this Sunday of all Sundays, to take communion. Nor could I presume that nobody would come in after the service began (not unheard of).

So I took a deep breath, and we launched into it. I did read just the Gospel, I abbreviated the prayers. In the parts where all the people are to respond together, I did hear just the ghost of a shadow of a whisper of an echo accompanying my own voice. And I was, eventually, the sole communicant.

Any thoughts?

Epiphany and epiphanies

2012-01-07T22:10:00.000-08:00

This is just posted because I thought it was funnier than many recent cartoons.

Good long full day -- went to an open house, and had a nice time, home for a nourishing supper I had spent the day cooking...a fine bowl of soup, all pulses (aka legumes) and barley and a vegetable stock.

While it simmered all day long, had a splendid running forum on FB on the qualities of a bay leaf as a seasoning (Feel free to chime in, here). It's noticeable that any posting about food gets instant and copious response!

And while the soup was giving off splendid aromas (some of them attributable to the bay leaf, no doubt), had a go at modifying a sourdough bread recipe, adding a couple of eggs and about 1/3 cup of canola oil to a recipe that was basically flour, water, and leavening. It was highly successful, I think, giving a much more tender and elastic "crumb." So the smell of fresh bread was added to the domestic bouquet.

And I was able to wrap up one of the two nice round warm fragrant loaves to take as a hostess gift to a parish Open House, a warm welcome and pleasant conversation.

In the meantime, "with my other hand" I put together a kind of brief Epiphany sermon, not so much an exposition of any one of tomorrow morning's readings but a simple explanation of very basic doctrine--that God wishes to be known and loved, wishes to be IN TOUCH with his creation, and takes all sorts of initiatives to make that happen, not just then, but now, for each of us.

I'll be referring heavily to a wonderful Epiphany sermon from Robertson Davies' novel Mixture of Frailties in which he describes how the shepherds needed a full-colour four-part mass choir production of the heavenly host with brass accompaniments, just to get their attention; the wise men, pouring all their energy into meticulous attention to the skies, were alerted by a tiny anomaly, a little 'blip' in the sky; and Simeon and Anna, watching with their own kind of devotion, needed only a whisper in their alert hearts: "Here he is."

On which happy note, to bed. Freezing rain is forecast; tomorrow morning could be complicated.

Five A-ha moments on a Friday....or maybe only three...

2012-01-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

kathrynzj over at RevGalBlogPals has given us a different kind of Friday Five today:

In the midst of the holiday season I had one of those moments where a path suddenly was made clear - A-ha! This experience has prompted me to wonder what some of your A-ha moments may be.

They can be mundane - a realization that you like/don't like a certain food or that you really look good in that color you never had the guts to try. They can be sacred - a way to better pace your day clicks into place or finally a devotion or meditation practice that really works for you. They can be profound - the moment you realized he/she was the one (or wasn't)or the moment you realized where your deepest passion could meet the world's greatest need.

Please tell us - what are five (more or less) of your 'A-ha' moments. Where have you had a moment of clarity?

Well, here's hoping "clarity" includes Primal Panic...

1. The moment I knew I could read, I guess -- I remember it...I was five, and my mother had taught me my alphabet. Sitting at the breakfast table I asked her what "C" said; she told me, "C says KUH" (approximately), and I said, "then this says ... CORN FLAKES." It was a distinct physical sensation in my head--something like the feeling of a run in a stocking. Same thing happened over and over, the year I studied Hebrew.

2. The moment I first realized I was pregnant -- had been travelling and lost track of the calendar, and felt Less Than Great for a few days before I suddenly counted on my fingers, and "well, well, well."

3. Probably the first time I ever consciously wondered, "Maybe I could do SOMETHING, in the church?" The thought was so terrifying I thought I had better pay attention and pursue it. (So here I am, 22 years later, still wondering whether "I could do something in the church"...)

...there are a couple more, but they're in the "unbloggable" category, I think. Interesting to reflect that most, not all, are under the heading of desperately extreme stress experiences.

Work...

2012-01-05T21:56:00.000-08:00

I am coming to see that the price of being at ease in my house is Unremitting Toil, which seems contradictory. But the daily necessities were neglected for so long that now just cleaning up after a meal, or tidying up after reading the paper, or running the vacuum cleaner, or completing the ironing, feels like Vast Accomplishment.

The problem of course is that it Doesn't Last...it's all to be done again next day, or at most a week later. Energy flags before I get to the Major Unpleasaunces in the house -- not to mention the yard (please).

However, today and this evening, I DEALT with one of them. In one corner of my kitchen cabinets I have a deep cupboard with a two-tiered lazy-susan arrangement. It's been a catch-all for almost 40 years... things get pushed to the back, and forgotten, and packaging deteriorates, and squalor ensues.

Most acutely, most recently, when I discovered that a can of evaporated milk had blown its bottom. ICK. Ick involving a lot of other items, too, of course.

So this afternoon I unloaded everything in the cupboard into a couple of stout cardboard boxes; disassembled and removed the lazy-susan mechanism (with some profanity); scrubbed its components, which involved some serious soaking and strong chemicals; scrubbed the cabinet shelves that surround the turntable space; and actually managed to get all the pieces and so forth back into the space and securely re-assembled (a little more profanity).

And then I scrutinized what I had removed, and some of it, including the Froot Loops that expired in 2006, went straight into the garbage. Some of the rest will go downstairs to the big pantry.

Most happily, I know, now, what's in that cupboard; and oh, there is going to be SUCH a cooking, and a baking.

For the foreseeable future, opening that cupboard door will be a minor, but real, pleasure. And that's clear gain.

the real edge.

2012-01-04T22:35:00.000-08:00

further adventures of the Rambler being priest-in-charge, pro tem...

Went into the office at St. Curious this morning, did some paperwork, sorted out all the alternative first-readings for Wednesday eucharists from now until mid-March. Secretary very pleased to have that squared away.

Made a couple of phone calls, caught a bite of lunch, and made a communion visit to one of our indomitable mothers-in-Zion who has been recuperating brilliantly from hip surgery, but now has A Pain that impedes her mobility rather a lot. Went on from there to visit her sister in palliative care at a not-too-distant auxiliary hospital. Another communion, and a lot of good conversation.

Back to church to tidy up and put stats in The Book. Altar Guild will have a fit when they see the number of little purificators soaking...

Home, some desultory supper, puddling about accomplishing not much of anything. And the phone rang. You ever have the phone ring, and you don't even have to pick it up? Yes. Lovely wife of a retired surgeon, he being a pillar of the "early service" -- and terminally ill -- and housebound after a fall on the ice before Christmas. I visited on Sunday and took them communion. He went to his rest earlier this evening. Now to help her plan the memorial next week. May he rest in peace and rise in glory -- a most engaging personality, a brilliant surgeon, and just perceptibly something of a rascal. Good to remember the insight of one of my favourite four-year-olds, that the Jacob Saga proves to us how much God loves rascals.

working it

2012-01-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

all right, on we go.

up early and got a few things done, like ordering a prescription refill, and organizing my grocery list (first Tuesday is 10% discount day)...Went to three different banks, went to the post office to send a parcel to Number One Son.
Went to two different supermarkets and laid in STAPLES. I have plenty of meat and the ilk; I will get my produce as it's needed from my beloved local market, cheap-cheap; but I bought flour, and sugar, and oil, and cat food (two kinds, dry and squshy), cat litter, cans of fruit juice and tomato juice. Next month I'll hit cleaning supplies.

As it was I spent about $200 with good discounts and some additional bargains. So then I took myself out for a late lunch -- pasta shells with a ricotta spinach filling and a rose sauce.

Home again and a bit of correspondence and some pastoral phone calls and emails. And a little quiet nap in my rocking chair, with COL (Cat On Lap).

Then I spent a fair while cudgelling my brains to remember the name, "Louis Weil" -- and to find his article on the sacrament of baptism (ATR, Spring 2010).

The laundry is in its last load, I've done a bit of mending, time for evening prayer and so to bed.

Tomorrow, VISITS. Some serious contemplation on Epiphany.

Productive Tuesday!

2012-01-02T18:01:00.001-08:00

and the evening and the morning were the SECOND day.

Arranged to meet a good friend for breakfast this morning and after pursuing breakfast around Prairie Metropolis for an hour we gave up and came back to Tether's End and made do with what was on hand here...and conversed for the rest of the morning, which was delightful.

Lots of chores yet to do this evening, the couch ate me this afternoon while my attention was diverted. It's in cahoots with the cat. She got up and sat on me, most unfairly, and gave off sleep-waves all afternoon.

I have embarked on a Daring New Project -- I am reading the Bible. According to the tiny-print tables and charts in the front of the Canadian Book of Common Prayer, 1959 edition. Fortunately, I have a couple of those nice little bookmark magnifiers as supplied by the Canadian Bible Society. Timing the Evening Prayer stint is trickier than timing Morning Prayer (of course). So I have at hand my white leatherette zippered-up KJV that my aunt and uncle gave me for my 15th birthday (about the time of my confirmation -- first time around!), and the white leather BCP with hymn book that my soon-to-be in-laws gave me for my confirmation (SECOND time around!) when I was 21... and I think I am going to enjoy this. Just reading it for nourishment, not for study, not for sermonizing, just reading, laying one piece alongside another and watching for sparks to fly.

Because I am thinking it is about time for my personal theology to undergo spring cleaning and/or extensive renovations. Along with my abode and my own somewhat road-weary personal chassis!

This evening: laundry; and correspondence; kitchen-tidying; journal-time; and perhaps one other small, discrete, do-able tidying project somewhere in the house. Supper's over; time to get at it.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon, all.

Here we are in a new year -- and I am brooding over schedules and priorities and calling and resources and eternity (and wonderin' where the lions are), and like that.

New Year's Resolutions in other words. I've been making them for about 60 years. Not keeping them -- also about 60 years. Could be discouraging.

But, but. We start over. I've had two years now, since retirement began; I've had two years to work off some of the Total Fatigue accumulated in the preceding fifteen; I'm feeling more energy and more gusto and more "desire to Do Something" instead of "desire to prove I don't have to Do Anything."

And I'm also conscious of diminutions rolling down upon me (just watching, or listening to, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Foolishness, and, yes, seeing Big Stone Rollers in my path too), so, let us see, maybe this year.

I've started off with a new regime for morning devotions -- the whole-Psalter-in-a-month, every month schedule from the old Book of Common Prayer , and the morning and evening prayer readings from Scripture. Started off this morning briskly with circumcision according to Torah and circumcision according to Paul (Romans 2). I think this will be doable.

What else? Kitchen clean, every night by bedtime. Bedroom tidy every morning before I launch upon the day. Bathroom clean, every day. Laundry done up and finished, every Monday, for the week. Little cat, and house-plants, attended to every morning before I have my own breakfast. Grocery shopping organized, once a week and once a month for "big stuff" on the 10% discount day. And I rather think I'll have a go at making my own bread, again. I don't seem to use very much, I think I can stay ahead of it, and I like to do it.

I'm investigating how long my "staples" last me -- a jug of dishwasher detergent, a big jug of laundry detergent, a three-pound box of margarine, a big bottle of shampoo. (A tank of gasoline, for that matter.)

Some time every day for journal, and letters, and this blessed blog. Some discipline about responding to emails and letters and phone calls.

Exercise. Sigh.

I have dreams of a great grandiose LIST of everything that needs doing, organized in one place, so that I can ration it out and come to an understanding of what constitutes a day's work, so I know when I can feel entitled to quit and rest, or quit and play.

Because at 67 I don't think it's morbid to reflect that most LIKELY I have already lived more of my life than I have left before me, and it behooveth me not to waste any of the latter?

Fabrector, my boss, is away from the parish for a bit, so this morning's liturgy was in my hands. We had a happy time with the Naming of Jesus. Then after the second service I went and made a pastoral bedside call. I still struggle with the pastoral etiquette...do I ask whether I MAY come, do I announce that I AM COMING, how do I hear what it is, that the person on the phone is hoping I will say next? and utter it? The man I went to see is in the process of dying, at home. But not quite as imminently today, perhaps, as his wife thought he was, last night.

And so home, and a Beautiful Breakfast -- a couple of eggs omelette'd up with onion and celery and jalapeno and pre-baked potato cut up, and a piece of ham dolled up with some cranberry juice and a few raisins.

And then sleep, naturally. But I did not, I WILL not, lie down on the couch. I may doze off in my chair (and I did), but otherwise, sleeping is done IN BED. NOT, on the couch with the lights on and the TV roaring.

And, gulp, no more computer games. Except Sporcle quizzes. I mean, after all.

what's left, this evening? a salad supper; kitchen tidying; thank you letters; a couple of pastoral phone calls; and to bed, betimes.

looking both ways!

2011-12-30T07:14:00.000-08:00

A simple Friday Five for a busy part of the year; indulge me by sharing two fives:

As you look back over 2011 share 5 blessings, they can be as grand or as simple as you like,if you year has been like mine they are probably a mixture!

As you look towards 2012 share 5 hopes- again, anything goes!

Five blessings, in no particular order:

1. Second Son's wedding, giving us the right to claim kin with a marvelous family, hitherto just friends.

2. Daughter Unit's return from her summer vacation, in an Expectant Condition.

3. First Son's launching into another scene of life -- and his father's practical and kindly and right-minded assistance with the process.

4. Ongoing ministry in a venue where everybody including me wants me to be;

5. AND...BE 4.0, and all that that entailed, starting with WARM, when I had forgotten what WARM felt like.

Five hopes/anticipations for 2012:

1. GRANDBABY!!!!!

2. A proper garden, come spring.

3. Some long overdue house improvements, including doors and windows and flooring.

4. Better management of the available resources of time, energy, etc.

5. AND ... BE 5.0!!! (how many sleeps, now?)

buoyancy

2011-12-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

A little while back, FabRector, my excellent boss, gave me a beautiful bottle of port -- a couple of evenings ago I opened it, removing the cork (no screw-tops for us, friends) -- and discovered in the package a special replacement cork-stopper, with attached instructions for use (well, some of us find Tab A, Slot B, quite baffling).

The instructions included "The stopper cork should be soaked in warm water for at least one hour and wiped dry before use."

Fair enough. But then -- HOW? Have you ever tried to SOAK a CORK? I get a small dish, I fill it with warm water, I add cork, and "ploop" -- cork floats. No soaking happening here today. I suppose I could have found an empty bottle, filled it with warm water, inserted the cork, turned the bottle upside down...or some such device...but after 15 minutes of trying to persuade the cork to, well, SUBMERGE...I finally found a small narrow shot-glass, added water, and cork, and jammed a big avocado pit down on top of the works. Cork duly soaked.

And I was reminded of a recent FB post from a local politico whom I somehow contrived to "friend" in the last year. Even after nearly twenty years embedded in Freshman English, I have seldom encountered anyone so inadequate to the challenges of the English sentence, or English idiom (and as far as I know, it's the poor soul's ONLY language). Most memorable was his comment on a Member of Parliament whose most recent manoeuvre, he said, "had really sunk her goose."

So I offer that to you in case of Moments of Bleak and Drear in the next week or so -- feel free to picture a Member of Parliament, or even a non-legislator, attempting to sink a goose. The honking, the splashing, the flapping...

the whole thing about... breakfast.

2011-12-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

or maybe that should be "breakfaft," this season.

Interesting times, exploring the ins and outs of catering-for-ONE (plus, of course, Nefertiti the Wonder Cat) these days. And something of a revelation to realize I probably won't have to buy twenty pounds of any edible thing, all at one time, ever again.

I have been having some fun with breakfast, for sure. One of my semi-sordid Thrifty Tricks is to hit the Clearance Meat Bin at the local kind-of-wholesale place. (This is where I also regularly buy a kilo of fresh spinach!) Sometimes the Clearance Meat is bologna, or pepperoni, or otherwise only quasi-edible. But sometimes it is ham -- usually ham that has been unevenly or crookedly sliced. About two dollars the pound. It's vacuum-packed, in sturdy packaging, and freezes well.

The latest batch, upon opening, turned out to be what I call "McDonald's ham" -- ie the small slices just right to fit in an English Muffin. So I've been frying up 3 - 4 of these little slices at a time, teasing them around in the iron frying pan just until they caramelize a bit. This morning I thought they needed something more. So I nuked about a tablespoonful of big black raisins in a half-cup of orange juice, and de-glazed the pan with that, letting it cook down a bit. Ham with raisin sauce, hoo boy, some good.

My other recent purchase -- initially for specific recipes -- has been fresh jalapenos. Is there anything quite so cute and alluring as a fresh jalapeno, especially in a great big bin with a whole lot of others? "Here I am, and I am so plump, and sleek, and shiny, and green, and cheerful..."

This morning I thought I had better do something with the current jalapeno-in-residence before it got all wrinkly and reproachful. So I minced up about 1/3 of it, very carefully washing hands etc. afterward -- and I minced up about 1/3 of a small yellow onion, and most of a stalk of celery, and sizzled it all around in the omelet pan for a bit, and then made a 2 egg omelet (with a slug of coffee cream, 11%, in it)...dumped the mixed veggies into the midst of the eggs, folded it up, over and out alongside the orange-raisin ham (on a nice piece of brown toast to soak up the sauce).

And a glass of orange juice, and a big homemade skim milk latte.

I wouldn't say that the jalapeno made the omelet "hot" exactly -- more just kind of gently "incandescent."

I'm thinking if I can (and I do) chop up sweet bell peppers of various colours and freeze them as is, without blanching etc., I could probably do the same with jalapenos?

It was a great breakfast. But I don't think it constituted "fafting," exactly, by any definition I can retrieve. Sigh.

And on we go.

Fafting and Prayer -- Advent Approaches

2011-11-29T22:59:00.000-08:00

It's late, I've been napping since supper, now going to watch a re-run of NCIS: LA because I get such a kick out of Linda Hunt-- both her as an actress and her character -- and then turn in.

While I was back east for the Big Palaver mid-month I spent the night with friends. Going to these meetings is a conundrum for me -- our actual gathering starts early afternoon, which means that I either go down on "the red-eye", which I just cannot do any more, sorry, folks; or I go down a day early. That entails an extra night in a hotel. It bothers me to put that expense on the national church, even though I'm the only delegate on our side of the table from west of the Great Lakes.

Fortunately, close to the airport: a young couple, whose wedding I officiated, and their two little boys. So we had a fine visit, and I came away with a treasure -- a single volume of a set published in 1796 entitled A History of the Bible which my friends' church had decided to dispense with, in clearing the parish bookshelves. And it is hugely, unexpectedly, entertaining-- very scholarly, of its era, with very lucid explanatory notes and all sorts of lengthy citations from the Fathers and non-Christian ancient sources like Josephus, Suetonius, Diodorus Siculus, et al. I note, too, that although it's battered and somewhat "foxed," the binding holds together and the paper must be "rag," not the high-acid pulp product of a hundred years later -- still nice and flexible, however discoloured.

This volume begins with the "morning after" the Transfiguration -- which, says the author, took place AT NIGHT. Stands to reason, why would anybody schedule such a spectacular light show in the middle of the day? come on! At any rate, Jesus and his friends come down the mountain to confront the father with the lunatic/epileptic son, and the whole ministry of deliverance, including those nuisances which can "only be driven out by [drum roll here] fafting and prayer."

I know I'm getting old when I realize how much amusement I am getting out of something as simple as the "long S" in typography!!! And I'm led to think a little about what kind of a "Faft" would be truly appropriate to Advent practise. What shall I, must I, "abftain" from, to make room for hope, peace, joy, and even love?

Second day...

2011-11-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

Awake a little before five this morning. The People's FM Radio plays interesting music until six a.m., after which Teh Stoopid takes over. So I lay and listened; got up a bit after six a.m. when the news was over and made a bit of a list for the day. It looked reasonable...and some of it even got done -- two loads of laundry, a run to the bank, and the Post Office, and two grocery stores. After which, it being payday and all, I treated myself to a (not very good) lunch "out."

Home, and got the groceries put away -- and that's ALL she wrote. Made a good breakfast and a light supper, and I'm finished for the day. Will watch the rest of Monday Night Football, and crawl off to bed.

Much intrigued by the discussion on what our theology says or fails to say about the animal part of creation -- the nonhuman animals, that is -- led me to reflect on some of the background reading I did "back when", preparing lectures on Black Beauty. I knew, I knew, that there were theologians in the background of Anna Sewell's work, and I was please to be able to trace the thread back to Horace Bushnell, q.v. In the process read some interesting notes on Calvin's theological references to animals (not to the impoverished references of CALVINISTS, to animals).

Recalling, in conversation with other RevGals, the doctrinaire objections to the Blessing of Animals in church -- summarized as "Animals don't go to heaven, because they don't have souls." Two thoughts, well, two utterable thoughts, always rose up in response to that: first that it's the Resurrection of the BODY we say we believe in, NOT the immortality of the soul, fine pagan notion though that is. And second -- that if a discernible soul is the criterion, a whole bunch of folks I encounter day by day had better look to their qualifications (grump, grump).

More and more I think that the secret to pragmatic success in parish life is the willingness to condone, flatter, echo, and cheerlead people's envy, contempt, and spite toward other folks. I am so weary of it. Hence, in part, the "Monday face."

New

2011-11-27T22:15:00.000-08:00

Advent One -- new church year, new season, new week -- old blogger!

Went gadding this morning -- celebrated an 11 a.m. Eucharist in a different parish -- saw a number of old friends and met some new ones. A personal treat, to celebrate according to the Book of Common Prayer, and to hear one of the city's premier organists at work.

Home with every intention of watching the National Classic this afternoon (The Grey Cup -- think Superbowl, think FA Championship, if you're in a different jurisdiction), but after a very good lunch indeed, napped all afternoon on the couch. Much appreciated by Nefertiti the Wonder Cat. Feel asleep right after the national anthem, woke up just in time for the Victory Interviews.

Already late in the evening, relatively, and not having done much to work off my lunch, I've had a bowl of jack-o'lantern soup, with various adornments -- a diced avocado, a slosh of cream, bacon bits, Thai sweet chili sauce -- and a small baked apple, and finished the latte I made before I fell asleep. Bedtime approaches rapidly.

Lots of unbloggables, of late. Too many people know who writes this blog. I was away from home to a Major Eastern Metropolis earlier this month for the semi-annual Big Palaver, and at a reception following our Major Anniversary Celebration, a complete and utter stranger walked up to me and asked, "Are you Crimson Rambler?" Signal for cookie crumbs to "go down the wrong way."

But perhaps attending to the blog daily is a useful part of the structure I am beginning to try to impose upon, or infuse into, my existence. Yes -- I know, I know -- at least every few months for the last thirty-plus years, I have determined to find/create/retrieve/obey some kind of structure, system, order, rationale ... but this is different (also a perpetual whine).

So all the domestic minutiae are coming under scrutiny...with some modest success.

And so is my theology...under the influence of old pressures removed and new pressures recognized.

Time to dismantle my "nest" on the couch, run the dishwasher, set out tomorrow's STRICTLY LIMITED task-list, and so to bed.

Catch y'all again tomorrow if we're spared.
And a happy and blessed Advent to all.

the Friday Five

2011-11-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

kathrynzj asks us, this morning:

For today's Friday Five please tell us 5 things you like to do with friends. Are they local - do you hit a favorite coffee shop or nail salon? What about the friends who come in from out of town? Do you have a restaurant or museum you like to show off?

Well, this is a pretty easy five -- I think!

1. EAT. Almost anything, anywhere: here at home, there at their home, or OUT. (Not so much, DRINK, although there is a special asterisked category for "things with little umbrellas in them" while "seated in the shade at the wide end of a Big White Boat")

2. WALK. Even when much of the walk is more of a Determined Sequential Lurch, than a relaxed stroll.

3. TALK. IRL or in any of the variety of media that offer themselves (often combined with 1 or 2, above).

4. TRAVEL. On the road through favourite landscapes (viz. Pointy Bits of this and adjacent provinces, and elsewhere) -- or by other modes, see previous remarks about Big White Boats.

5. WORK (if all else fails and resistance proves useless)...this includes subcategories "COOK" and "KNIT" and a miscellany of other tasks.

most of these are stackable, one way or another, either sequentially or simultaneously.

And there you have it!

CSI: Exodus, and Philippians, and Matthew...

2011-10-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

Here is approximately what the good folks at St. Coffee are going to be in a position to hear tomorrow morning. It is notes only. But anybody who is stuck, FEEL FREE.

This morning’s readings, in the customary order in which we read them, struck me as being like one of the notorious television crime dramas in a way, where the story is introduced to us at a moment of crisis somewhere in the middle of the plot – then we have a flashback to carry us back to a previous situation, and finally we move through what we saw first, and all the action and the loose ends are neatly tied up just in time for the final commercial.

This morning, we need to start perhaps not with the Hebrew scripture, the Exodus reading, but with the opening of the Gospel story. One of my friends says, “it all starts the way a love-song might start: a man planted a vineyard” – we hear about an idyllic, perfect setting – then the music breaks, there is violence, accelerating and increasing, things go wrong and the wrong gets “wronger still” and at the very climax there is even a murder, with a corpse – we have everything here except sirens and flashing red lights.

But it all began with a love song, a song about a vineyard, a song anticipating and promising a feast – lots to eat, and lots of lovely stuff to drink, too. In some ways – I think – there is nothing quite as marvelous as making a feast for people you love, knowing that they will be delighted and gratified by what you have prepared, and will be happy. The act of doing that – like the act of putting in a garden, or planting a vineyard – means more than it is – it expresses a sense of connection, a relationship – let’s just keep it simple, here, and say that it expresses LOVE. But what happens when it goes wrong?

The story of God and his people, God in a relationship with people, does not start with the handing down of the house-rules. It doesn’t start with regulations – it starts with a love song, a setting that is not only a place but a promise of provisions – and that idyllic beginning is picked up in the Psalm, in the confident, glorious chorus of the opening verses (hard not to sing them) – “The heavens are telling the glory of God” – try not to lose your place, because we’re not quite finished with the Psalm.

I am hopping about among the readings because more and more as I untangle and reflect on Scripture it seems to me that the readings work TOGETHER – not just by simple repetition, or by simple verbal echoes, but because what is presented in each reading helps us see more deeply into the others. Kind of like ultrasound…it shows you more than you thought was there!

So things start to go wrong, in the love-song, and now we look at the reading from Exodus //the 10 commandments// now even here what we have is not just a handing down of rules: “here they are, memorize and obey these or you are in big trouble”…

The rules come second, as logical conclusions to something else – to what precedes them: “I am the Lord your God” – that’s not just God clearing his throat, you know – that’s God reminding them (and us) of what has already been discovered. “I am the Lord your God” which means that you’re my people, and I have done all these things FOR you, I have planted you a vineyard, I have brought you out of Egypt SO THAT NOW you are ABLE, CAPABLE of living like THIS – now if you don’t, of course, there are logical consequences (some of them sketched in), but the first thing you have to understand is that I have loved you and liberated you, and now you can live this way, you are FREE to live in this way, like truly free people: not having to steal, or lie, or cheat, or murder. BECAUSE I have done all these great things for you.

But we fail to get it. Over and over and over, we go back to slave-thinking, to a slave-perspective – the utmost ambition is to “get away with something,” to exercise the irresponsible power of oppressors, to BE oppressors; conniving, like the wicked tenants, in a way that inevitably means murder eventually.

So where are you and I, in this artfully told story? In the Gospel story, I think, we see ourselves in two lights. We may be the tenants; and we may be the outcasts.

We have to take the story seriously, altho’ Jesus was talking to the Jewish religious leaders, the “good church people” of HIS time. But we have to take it seriously for ourselves too – get ready for this kind of seriousness, because I think all the rest of Matthew between now and Advent 1 is exceptionally tough and gritty going//fire and brimstone//. So we must take it seriously, and not be smug or complacent about our “tenancy,” our “already” relationship with our God.

But then on the other hand, neither are we to be sunk into despair because we are not faithful tenants, or because we don’t feel like insiders, or because, just maybe, we think we deserve to be cast out. Now this is where Paul comes in//very artful// If we were watching a crime drama, Paul would be the guy in the lab, the geek who is fascinated by the theoretical aspect of what is going on, who gives us the schematic understanding of what we’ve just been told, he’s like the person who takes the back off the watch, and says, See? These are the works, the "innards" -- look at this story from THIS angle, from how we understand righteousness by LAW and righteousness by FAITH.. . and he’s excited by what this means, by what it has meant for him//and he's excited enough to use words a lot less dignified than ‘rubbish’//.

Someone has called this parable of the vineyard the most depressing parable in the whole Gospel. But Paul is here to keep us from agreeing with that assessment. Paul is here to say, “Keep going! The story may be over, but YOUR story is NOT over… Press on, and be hopeful and rejoice” //whether full of joy or bent double under disaster, a text for each of us.

So we conclude with rejoicing, because what we have been told about the patience and generosity of God IS wonderful.

We rejoice—maybe with just a little tremor in the voice, as we try so hard to remember that this is not just a story about avoiding a bad outcome; that the commandments we have heard are not just about what do we have to do to go to heaven – the creation, and the law, and the prophets, and the sending of God’s own son are about what we must hold in mind: our lives are about recognizing, and knowing, and loving the Lord our God, the owner of the vineyard. About knowing and recognizing and loving his beloved son.

And the consequence is that we remember to ask for power to do what all of creation does, what all of creation is for – and was for, and will be for // end of Psalm//The HEAVENS are telling the glory of God …may the words of OUR mouths and the thoughts of OUR hearts…

all day with Mary B...

2011-09-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on the right mix of chores and dissipations for the days I have committed to spend with Mary Brown -- I did a lot of unappealing paper work last night, with the benefit of cleared flat surfaces to contemplate today... I have a mess of cookery to attend to -- a batch of yogurt, some fridge-cleaning-out, defrosting my freezer while stocks are low, IRONING.

And then perhaps I can spend some time sorting out my pantry shelves... and gathering up all the fountain and/or cartridge pens in the place and reaming them out and getting them running again... and writing a very tall stack of notes and letters to folks.

Somewhere in here there needs to be a sermon also! I am guest-preaching away from St. Curious on Sunday morning, among people I don't know at all -- so the approach to the text will take some pondering.

It is a busy and "fraught" time in Ramblerland...some of it unbloggable, and some of it not-bloggable-before-a-given-date. That date is now past, and so "now it can be told" that along about Easter, all being well in the meantime, the Rambler is going to enter into grandmotherhood..."with all that that entails." Marvelous birthday-present news that took me completely, but COMPLETELY, by surprise.

And in the meantime, the Rambler is now the sole occupant of Tether's End (barring Nefertiti the Wonder Cat). And THAT is all unimaginably new: from here on, NOTHING goes into that fridge that isn't in the Personal Meal Plan. It's a little hard to grasp that I probably won't ever have to buy twenty pounds of ANYTHING, ever again -- no matter how alluring the price! Also new: the sense that nothing, NOTHING in this abode has to be where it is, if I don't want it there. Startling, it is.

I'll come back later to do the Friday Five. But on the schedule now is some personal clenn-up (and "spackling"), some shopping, some bureaucracy, in the meantime contemplating a recipe for non-alcoholic-punch-for-250. My HOS, Fabrector, is getting married a week tomorrow. And I am in charge of PUNCH...this is an area of cookery where neither Julia Child nor Emma Rombauer has been any help at all, but I think I have found a recipe, and now I just have to think about container-for-transport: jam kettle, perhaps.

I also have to give some thought to roasting a turkey, preparing a Giant Pan (or two) of Delectable Stuffing, concocting a Hugeous Leafy Salad...and confecting an 8-cup Tomato Aspic (with shrimp). Others are providing the Brussels sprouts, the sweet potatoes, the pies (and more turkeys and stuffing and mashed spuds etc). Because next weekend is not only WEDDING, but Canadian THANKSGIVING (we like to get these things tidied away early, you see).

Meet Mary Brown...

2011-09-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

Marking, perhaps, I hope, I hope, a new stage in the ongoing battle with TIME.
Way way back, oh, ten years, maybe, a very savvy senior laywoman (with whom I served on a volunteer board) gave me advice about the creative and caring use of the daytimer, daily planner, write-on calendar, whatever YOU use to keep track of appointments and so forth.
I knew all about the 2/3 rule: “Don’t fill your schedule more than 2/3 full, you have to allow for the unforeseen that will come plucking at the hem of your garments while you are on your way to do something else.”
But my friend Phyllis taught me something else. “You take that daytimer,” she said, “and you look ahead a week or so to the first day when nothing is scheduled, and you draw diagonal pencil strokes all across it. Then at the top you write ‘Mary Brown.’ And Mary Brown is YOU. That is YOUR day. And don’t you dare encroach upon it when you’re getting calls and requests and invitations and so forth. And if anybody looks over your shoulder, and says ‘But what about Thursday?’ you can just say, ‘Oh no, that day is completely booked for Mary Brown, see?’”
Well, the Rambler knows good advice when she hears it, but she usually has to ADMIRE it for a while before putting it into effect. So yesterday was the first of what I hope will be a long happy series of Mary Brown Days.
The weekend was a full one. Exhilarating, and happy, and gratifying. But FULL. So it was good to take Monday as a day to follow my own behests, at my own pace.
What did I do? Well. I did everything in twenty-minute bursts, carrying my little twist-timer around with me. Everything, that is, INCLUDING looking at the computer (that’s part of the secret).
After her morning prayers, Mary Brown likes a high-protein breakfast – bacon’n’eggs, yup. Contemplated the ‘heel’ of my last pound of bacon and decided the two thin slices would be breakfast, the thick off-kilter last piece would go into spaghetti carbonara one night this week. So THAT is all accounted for, no waste.
Then Mary got all the laundry done, all but a set of sheets and pillow-cases that will need some extended soaking. Mary fetched indoors the super-giant empty vinyl paint-bucket (from last summer’s house-painting job) and has commenced scouring it clean for service as a washtub/soaking tub. Laundry all finished, another twenty minutes accounted for all the ironing.
Mary likes a nice tidy restful looking bedroom too, with no books and/or magazines among the sheets; that took another couple of twenty-minute blitzes.
We answered the e-mails that had been hanging out there. We responded to our phone messages. We went to the bank. We went to the dry cleaner. We went to the bakery outlet and bought ten loaves assorted, and scored on our frequent-buyer card.
Then we got all tidy and decently dressed and went to the university women’s club first dinner meeting of the season, and caught up with old friends and met some nice new ones. Watched a fascinating presentation on late 19th century, early 20th century, Tea Gowns from the University Collection. Worth and Poiret, oh my, oh my.
We came home at half-time; Mary doesn’t do late nights. So we wrapped up the day with a mug of tea and a little reading: the first lecture in Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Vindication of Tradition.
Mary is dropping by again on Friday. Stay tuned.

The day after...

2011-08-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Home and having a Sunday "off"... unpacking, laundering, washing, throwing out, putting away... about to embark on the baking of a CAKE for family dinner tonight.

It was a great holiday. The return drive went smoothly; I took more breaks than I have usually done, and stayed reasonably alert, but omigosh, ruler-straight four-lane divided highway is NOT a stimulating way to end a long day's drive. Going the other way is much more entertaining as the highway climbs through a series of increasingly thrilling mountain passes.

The car went well -- there wasn't an annoying amount of traffic despite the season -- only a couple of stops to accommodate road construction. Gasoline in the mountains is up to $5 a gallon. Gulp.

I have some ambitions for the next time I make that trip -- some walks/hikes I want to be able to take, so there's some fitness preparation to be done over the winter.

And I think next time I will book the all-day Kootenay River raft trip too.

Meantime I need to do some map-work...and maybe invest in some of the large-scale topographical maps.

Pictures, soon.

ramblin'

2011-08-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Back again in the internet oasis and about to go back to the Falls and walk a little bit more ambitiously than the last time.

Another brilliant, brilliant day -- not hot, but the sun is v. assertive at these altitudes.

As always on holiday I make plans to revise the day-to-day when I get back to ordinary-level: purchase topographical maps, choose and fit the permanent car-picnic box, keep better records, REALLY find out how this camera works best...maybe this time?

Opened the curtains on the west-side of my motel room this morning to see the first light on the mountains across the valley. And what walked by, close enough to touch, but a very nice young white-tail buck...probably full of apple-sauce, bless him, there are a couple of derelict old trees in the next block. I admired him until he disappeared, then began getting day-ready, and there was a great uproar out that window, sounded something between a 'quack' and a 'mew' -- maybe most of all like a really annoying child with a new kazoo. Looked out again. Mrs. Whitetail went by, vociferating.

Got my opening-time dunk in the hot pool (102 F) this morning and then UP the delectable valley very briskly.

Lunch has been purchased, and I'm on my way again. Home tomorrow. Full of RESOLUTION.

whoo-ee

2011-08-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is a quick update, I am having the first of the driving-breaks of today, having decided I will NOT drive longer than 90 minutes without taking a 15-minute stomp-around break.

I am stomping around, or rather, sitting in an internet coffee house, in the sparkling metropolis of Golden, BC. I am on my way to the Yoho Valley, and what is very nearly my favourite waterfall of all time.

Arrived at the Hot Springs last night after a 550 km drive (350 miles, ok?) which I stretched out to 7 hours, by taking 5, count'em, breaks en route. It was great. Weather was good, traffic was light, there was only a reasonable amount of construction and Offical Stupid on the road.

I saw a deer en route, and a young grizzly bear. He was ambling through an old "burn" area, minding his own beeswax as befits an Apex Predator. Looked glossy and well-fed.

This morning I left Favourite Motel Ever, and there was a mule deer right THERE at the end of the driveway eating leaves all as Mary-Oliver-ish as one could wish.

Farther up the road, kingfishers doing the Hopkins stunt, and even an encouraging show of ospreys, and lots of osprey nests. (I am very attached to ospreys.)

Nobody understands why I want to holiday in the Columbia Trench. But I was a little girl here, and I remember again that that was...sixty years ago. Sixty. How did that happen?

There is land for sale everywhere in the valley, and my mouth waters. My cheque-book, not so much.

I shall now pay this lovely young woman for a good cup of coffee, and the internet minutes, and go find a nice supermarket sandwich and some munchy vegetables for my lunch when I get to the falls.

I am having a TV fast, and reading, and reading...some Paintner, some Parker Palmer, some Rowan Williams...and P. G. Wodehouse, a great big omnibus edition of all his "clergy" stories. "Pills to Purge Melancholy" as Oscar Brand used to say.

Y'all be good. L8R.

Oooooooonnn the road ag'in...

2011-08-22T22:46:00.001-07:00

So all inspired and fortified by an expenses-cheque in today's mail, I phoned the well-beloved Motel of Heavenly Comfort in the Place of Abundant Hot Water, and made reservations for four nights, and am away to the pointy bits of the province tomorrow morning, betimes.

I am taking a sack of books, (none of that there newfangled e-book stuff) and two swimsuits and a big flooffy towel. And my medium binoculars, but not the great big Field Marshal Rommel Special ones, and my camera, and maps, and various guides to flora and fauna, and like that.

And I am going to revel in my Old Coot's discounted admission to everything. and sit and soak my miz'ry along with all the other OCs.

I really am all but altogether packed, so maybe I really shall get out of the driveway before 8 am tomorrow. It is a good long day's drive, but the roads are good.

Looking forward to it all very much.

resolution...

2011-08-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

As I've been recuperating, intermittently and spasmodically, from a variety of orthopedic nuisances, I find I have developed something between a mantra and a war-cry: "All it takes is a little RESOLUTION," I say, grinding my teeth and endeavouring to Step. Out. without limping or hanging onto things. Or falling down, for that matter.

And as I think about my blogging practice... I think that what I have to blog about, these days, mostly, is a nosegay of RESOLUTION, thus: to attain a more enjoyable level of health and fitness; to improve the comfort and beauty of a. the house and b. the yard; to become a confident dog owner; to do such ministry as I am called to do and capable of performing.

And that is the stuff of this blog, for the time being.

Today: some time in the church office, some minor correspondence, preparation for a service of house blessing for an old friend (this evening); a couple of restrained meals -- I am eating up savoury left-overs from the student supper on Sunday evening -- and the beginning of a total blitz attack on the clutter and grime of the kitchen. "All the way to the back of every cupboard and drawer" is our cry.

I was amused, in passing, to note how very very "Standard Supermarket Fare" my so-called "Mexican" cookbook (of 40 years ago) really is. Fpr example, no cumin, no cilantro -- but salt, pepper, Tabasco, Campbell's soup. Tentatively, I think it might have been more accurately called "Gringo-mergent." tasty, though, my goodness. Excellent left-overs.

Re: 29c coffee drippers...

2011-08-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

...cuz enquiring minds want to know.

We are familiar, right, with the big 6-cup drip cones that rest atop coffee pots?

We are perhaps also familiar with the small 1 or 2-cup drip cones that rest atop coffee mugs?

And their form is that of a modified, slightly flattened, cone with a small aperture in the bottom, arising out of a kind of plate that is broader than the opening of the pot or mug, right?

and into the cone portion, you put a paper filter in the appropriate size, or perhaps a so-called "permanent" filter made of very very fine metal screening?

OK! Now imagine the mug-sized filter in a modified shape. Out of the base plate rises a narrow cylinder, oh maybe an inch in diameter and an inch and a half tall, open at the bottom. The top of the cylinder flares into a cone. Inside, where cylinder and cone meet, there is a fine plastic grating of very narrow parallel slots (it doesn't remove).
And there is a second piece to the whole apparatus -- a removable cylinder just slightly smaller than the one mentioned above; it too has a fine grating at one end.

The coffee grounds go into this smaller cylinder. It is then inserted into the base cylinder and twisted so as to "latch" (a Tab A, Slot B arrangement).

Water goes in the top of the cone. It drips through the grating in the cone, permeates the coffee grounds, and drips out -- quite slowly -- through the grating at the bottom of the cylinder.

Coffee is slower than with a disposable filter, and, depending upon calibre of grind, can be a bit muddy. But nothing is thrown away, except the coffee grounds (and they go in the compost).

OK OK, I'll take a picture. But not right away. And now, back to the sermon.

the Friday Five

2011-08-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Over at the RevGals' place, Terri posted the following, and asked us to list five gratitudes we recognize in our life.

The Place I Want To Get Back To

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

(Mary Oliver, "Thirst", Beacon Press, 2006)

so here goes (only five?)

1. my possessions, privileges.luxuries -- as someone else said already, a house, a yard, a vehicle, clothing, books to read, food to eat.

2. the inheritance -- good genes, good health, good teaching, good models and examples.

3. today: sunshine, moderate temperatures, trees leafy in the backyard, geraniums blazing on the front stoop.

4. all the weird little bits of half-worn-out tin and/or plastic cr*p that make housekeeping so easy, that I reach for instinctively ...the cheese grater, the pastry scraper, the strainers, the dumb little 29c plastic coffee 'dripper' that doesn't need a filter insert...

5. more and more, the presence and witness and company of the RevGals.

Nefertiti the Wondercat says, "speaking of gratitude, how's the cat's breakfast coming along? Also the pothos is beginning to look a bit dry and weary. Just sayin'."

just for now...

2011-08-11T08:28:00.001-07:00

On Having Misidentified A Wild Flower
By Richard Wilbur

A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.

back later, I hope.

and here I am, after another good day. I made a pastoral call this morning -- getting mileage out of my new white blazer, and very happy with the effect of the white jacket over black clerical shirt and slacks...

Mrs. B and I had a mutually satisfactory time talking about the poetry we remember and how different it sounds to us in our "old age"...and how grateful we are to have been made to learn so much by heart when we were younger.

This led on to reflections on the pastoral and homiletic utility of English poetry in ministry to seniors...how much they recognize, how much they remember -- I'm talking about things like Tennyson (In Memoriam and "Crossing the Bar") and Kipling and Browning and Leigh Hunt ("Abou ben Adhem").

It has been a very pastoral-visit kind of week -- this was the third -- and I have been writing thank-you notes, and I have a phone-call to make tomorrow -- then wallop the lections into submission for Sunday's sermon, and do the shopping and pre-prep for our students' supper on Sunday evening.

The sermon "series" is going well. I am working in part from Chrysostom's principles e.g. that Jesus ALWAYS knows EXACTLY what he is doing -- and that he is manoeuvring his auditory (sometimes a doubled one, disciples and crowd, or disciples and Syro-Phoenician woman) into seeing for themselves what they would resist if it were simply offered to them didactically. If there is a theme, it would be "Jesus is the Lord of Improv." (I have theatre-folks of great age and eminence in the congregation, and they leap about gleefully, within their limits, whenever I talk about the theatricality of the gospel stories. It is FUN!)

At the end of the day I had a good supper at home: a nice modest-sized piece of steak, a baked potato with a sliver of blue cheese, and a great wad of fresh spinach cooked helpless and anointed with balsamic vinegar. Introduced by a large bowl of salad -- as Peg Bracken said, it fills the stomach and tires the jaws, and that's all good.

Oh yes! a beautiful lunch with The Lady Father today, by way of celebrating BIRTHDAY!

evening

2011-08-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

There’s a beautiful red streak in the western sky, fading fast – but bodes well, perhaps, for tomorrow’s weather. We had tremendous heaped up clouds by suppertime, and a few rumbles of thunder, but no rain to speak of. A convection weather phenomenon: Parkman talks about it in The Oregon Trail, and it was a feature of the first summer I spent in Prairie Metropolis. Cool brilliant morning, increasing dry heat all day, huge heaped cumulonimbus clouds in the west but dusk, a corn-cracking thunderstorm after dark, and “all is forgiven” sunshine again in the morning. What we get now seems much more erratic and extreme, but memory is deceptive, I know.

Today was sufficiently busy—a 15 mile drive to meet a parishioner for coffee while the home-care worker helped her husband get his shower – and we discussed the challenges and general awfulness of dementia…there isn’t much one can actually DO, but to say, we’re here, we love you, keep us posted, don’t lose heart.
Then back to St. Curious, a fast check-in with our secretary before she wrapped up her morning’s work – then took the summer intern out for lunch and we planned the supper for the student group next Sunday evening. It’s TACO TIME, folks. I wouldn’t for a moment pretend this is authentic Mexican cuisine – ahhhhh, fond recollections of Senor Frosty – but my recipes are all highly doable. They’re from a little coil-bound collection a friend sent after she moved to Mesa, AZ. I believe it was published by Arizona Highways…illustrations are charming little paintings of Ibero-Americans, doing domestic things.
So the student group will get tacos, chicken enchiladas, “Spanish” rice, multiple-bean salad (why stop at three?), a jelled lime-yogurt-cottage cheese salad, and ice cream and “Mexican wedding cookies” (a particularly airy kind of shortbread) for their dinner. We decided that starting with gazpacho would be over the top.
Before summer is over, I’d like to give them a “corn feed”… maybe we could include corn at the concluding BBQ. I’ll have to think about it some more. We grow very nice corn in Prairie Province – especially the peaches’n’cream bi-coloured kind.
And I wrapped up the engaged part of the day with a conversation with one of the Saints of the Lord whose ministry has been refugees, immigrants, the unjustly imprisoned (she’s a pillar of Amnesty International). Trying to find sponsorship for an Afghani family now in hiding in a neighbouring jurisdiction…
Came home and had a large salad; #1 Son dropped by to do some chores, and I drove him back to the house he is “sitting” this week – then made my own supper and am eating it in a leisurely way.
Another pastoral visit tomorrow, and then some serious nouns + verbs work on Sunday’s sermon.

birthdays, and so forth

2011-08-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

Back at the blog...after a long hiatus.

I'm not sure why -- although I suspect I may have run out of "interesting" some time ago.

Today was a good day. Awake early -- between 3 and 4 a.m. -- and whirled around like Rambler-on-the-rotisserie for some time before I could get back to sleep.

Things to read were at hand -- a couple of New Yorkers and a TLS and a recent copy or Canadian Living -- also within reach I had the mug of tea I had taken to bed with me.

So eventually I managed what amounted to a night's sleep. And the morning was beautiful. Not a cloud, brilliant sunshine -- not too hot -- a lovely clean-rinsed feeling in the air. "Genu-wine, prairie-fine."

Up -- treated myself to a mug of coffee, and The Meds, and a cherry Danish (setting the tone of Untrammeled Self-Indulgence for the remainder of the day). Fed the cat, who was appreciative. Folded some laundry, and put it away.

Made myself tidy with a decent-ish dress and the New White Blazer, which seems more and more like an intelligent and timely purchase.

Went off and made a happy pastoral visit, returning a very handsome enamelled-cast-iron dutch oven to the kind lady who made chicken stew and rice for the gang who assemble on Sunday nights at St. Curious. She and her husband don't live all that far away. We had coffee and muffins and a couple of hours of good conversation all over the map -- family and work and ailments -- doggone, that tinnitus is a nasty plague...

Lunch had been on the schedule with a good friend from the last 35 years -- but good friend is down with a cold and a barking cough -- so I revamped the plan, and in sequence came home, checked mail and messages, off to the pharmacy and the clinic for the third and last of the Twin-Rix inoculations (keeping BE 5.0 in view!!!), scooted away downtown with a treat in view but the restaurant I had targeted closes in the afternoons ("is this any way to run a railroad?"), so instead of restaurant A + walk around at the fancy conservatory, I had restaurant B + brisk walk from car to meal and back again.

Off to St. Curious to check mail and messages; home; a nice home-made hamburger and a little potato-onion fry and about a bale of spinach salad.

And before dinner...a kind of a martini slushie.

All day long, delightful messages on email, facebook, and answering machine.

And that was birthday #67.

Good night, all. And thank you. Your friendship means more than I can say.

Love after Love -- Derek Walcott

2011-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Not preaching this week, folks, and I have nothing to bring to the breakfast table at the moment except a poem which has been thrust at me this week from a number of sources. I hope you find it as up-building as I do!

Love After Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

sermon draft for Trinity Sunday.

2011-06-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

This morning we are invited to move, imaginatively, from Creation to Commission.
Given the content of our readings this morning – and the official designation of ‘Trinity Sunday,’ we might be pardoned for inferring that the Great Commission, with which the Gospel reading culminates, is a commission to go and carry out indoctrination—heaven knows, it has been understood and implemented in that way, so we have to HOPE it is pardonable! In the light of the reading from Genesis, then we might think that this morning we’re hearing, “Here is a highly unlikely and indefensible tale about the beginning of all things, now your job is to get out there and make people [say they] believe it—or it will be the worse for them – and for you.” “Oh and while you’re at it, make them believe in the doctrine of the Trinity – did you see it zip past, there in the Epistle?”
So it’s tempting to linger on the doctrine of the Trinity, especially if we have a taste for confusing, contradictory, beautiful insoluble riddles—in traditional language: The Father is God (and all the God there is), the Son is God (and all the God there is), the Holy Spirit is God (a.a.t.G.t.i.), BUT – the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father…Lovely numerical formulas that will NOT be reduced to arithmetic…and a hearer may say: “But that makes NO SENSE” and the theologian sighs happily and says, “I know, but isn’t it WONDERFUL?”
And along about then, if we’re lucky, we hear a voice from the back pew or thereabouts; it goes something like this—“Reverend, what does this have to do with weighing trucks? Because weighing trucks is what I do, all day, every day…” – weighing trucks, or slinging burgers, or changing diapers, or processing applications, or marking assignments, -- you name it – and I’d like to know what this doctrine has to do with me.
The obvious answer is, “apparently nothing” – but the real answer is “everything.” It helps if we can grasp that the teaching about the Trinity, which sounds like a word game, is rooted in a charismatic experience of God, an encounter with God. Did you see the letter Canterbury wrote to the little girl in Scotland, who asked him who invented God? He explained that people didn’t ‘make up’ God – they met God, found God, experienced the presence of God…and then when they wanted to share that, to talk about what they had discovered, they had to think about it and put it into words, and—as RW said – they made up some ideas ABOUT God (some of them sensible, some not so sensible)…and these statements about ideas, ideas of an experience, were refined and defined and defended over a very long time in no-holds-barred debate.
The fallout from this process was that the things Christians agreed could be TAUGHT about God tended to become supreme in their own right, instead of being endorsed as just workably trustworthy sorts of things that could be said. They were, and are, subjected to tests though. One test of a doctrine goes like this: what kind of person, and what kind of community, will this idea produce if it is made an official teaching? That is one very useful test of the wholesomeness of church teaching /Gospel of Judas/. One of the ways of sorting the sensible ideas from the not so sensible ideas.
A second kind of ‘control’ over the ideas that we compose – the recollection of the inadequacy of ALL our words to capture and convey the essence of God completely (it has a name – it’s called APOPHASIS). You know how in our blessing we always specify that the peace of God passes our understanding? Well, EVERYTHING about God passes our understanding. Not just ours, but the understanding of the greatest saints, and the angels, and the archangels. What we CAN think will not do justice to what we have experienced, or to what we have inherited from the experience of others; and what we CAN say will not do justice to what we are able to think.
Now the result of this experience of inadequacy should be (too seldom is) a decent modesty and forbearance and grateful joy that God has generously allowed his truth and his glory to be approached, to be embraced, and to be communicated to any degree at all in human language (Levinas)…much less in a way that is trustworthy, that allows us to share it with each other…
And what have we to share, this morning? That at the very heart of God what we find is a relationship, a relatedness – a dynamic, creating, faithful connectedness that we have to call LOVE.
I heard two lovely provocative questions – conversation starters, I suppose – this week: the first one was “what would you do for love?” and when we roll that question around, we are invited to see that everything done by the triune God is done “for love” – creation, redemption, resurrection…everything, done for love – love holds the Trinity together – it’s sort of a centripetal force – but it’s centrifugal as well – it moves the persons of the Trinity outward toward the created world including us, and then, in a rhythm like rhythm of breathing, like the rhythm of the heart, draws us in also. (Are we beginning to get a clue about what our mission is?)
And the second question was this: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” The second question is like unto the first one if we remember that perfect love takes fear right off the board…and that this relatedness at the heart of what God is makes no room for fear at all, …but invites everything that is to come and share in the unending dance of loving and being loved.
Are we beginning to see what our commission to make disciples might look like? I think so… and we’re also invited to see that our commission is not about indoctrination, but about invitation; not about some kind of dedicated commando raid on the cosmos, but about the way we live our everyday working lives, the way we do every single thing we do… Even weighing trucks. With love. And without fear.

Monday, Monday, Monday...

2011-06-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sun is apparent this morning, and has been since about 4:30.
,
I am continuing work on my personal recipe collection -- a bigger binder, proper (well, home-made proper) page lifter/category markers (I KNEW that those sheets of cardboard in panty-hose packages would be useful for SOMETHING), a heap of "off-size" things that have to be filed otherwise; and a smaller heap of pages that have to be restored and reinforced before they can go back into the binder.

Now I need you to imagine the three-hole punch... and its inevitable "confetti" ... and the Nefer-titi Cat ... as adjuncts to this whole process.

In the meantime I broke off and had some breakfast. Time for PARFAIT ("cuz nobody..." etc.). There is fresh yogurt (really really nice this time too. Trying to remember that genetics is important here, and to note what brand of commercial yogurt I used to start the process.); there are slightly senior fresh strawberries; there is some homemade granola in the bottom of the jar (augmented with 1/4 cup of biscotti crumbs, and about the same amount of home-made poppycock from a Christmas package). Oh ok, and about 2 Tbsp. of dark-amber maple syrup.

This blog is sounding awfully foodie lately. But I'm coming to suspect that most of my really important life-changing moments hit while I'm in the kitchen. And I'm going on a maxim from one of my brothers: "The more ya cook, the better ya look."

Later -- listening to Dog, the Bounty Hunter in the background, and worrying... somehow I omitted to name my children properly or choose the proper profession; so that they have never enjoyed the experience of hearing me holler, "GET'ER, Youngblood! GET'ER! Whoo-ee!!" I only hope they can forgive me.

Oh, and I found another whole stash of recipes, some of which I thought were GONE. So it's all good.

peaceful Sunday

2011-06-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Rambler is currently in charge of things -- in the Pickwickian or ecclesiastical sense -- at St. Curious, in the absence of FabRector on vacation (and attending a conference).
Interesting challenge this morning, though, in addition to the usual liturgical hurdles, homiletic tasks, pastoral demands.
Message from FabRector night before last, by way of Social Utility, that she has "received an offer of marriage." And said yes.
Now this comes as a surprise to exactly no-one. Including the Wise Wednesday Women of St. Curious. Who have been 'pumping' the Rambler mercilessly for details about FabRector's "beau." Mainly, about whether the Rambler APPROVES of this arrangement. Reassured on that count, they promised, "All right then, we'll get to work to WARM UP to him."
FabRector's "beau" managed to keep the good news to himself for a very brief period of time before making it public on Social Utility.
So now -- does the Rambler make an announcement this morning? or play dumb? and what if somebody says, "Hey! I hear..." What will be the tactful response?
Working on the principle that people need to be given the opportunity to Tell Their Own News, I opted for silence. So far, so good. We have Social Utilitarians among the parishioners, but not many.
If we can maintain this "lull" through the Wednesday morning get-together, we will be home free.
And then the wedding planning, shrieking with excitement etc., can begin in earnest.

Never dull, never.

Saturday preachateria

2011-06-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

I think today i'll make a post out of what is going on in my day hour by hour, and publish it when I finally give up!

9 a.m. thinking about sermon. doing my kitchen counter scrub-down routine. starting a new sourdough, using some senescent yeast (I hope). (THAT'LL PREACH) my neighbour is jack-hammering--he's replacing his garage, and has gotten down to removing the concrete pad, poor soul. furnace has come on, and we are glad. it's a grey and clammy sort of day. thinking thoughts about "NOW will you restore the kingdom to Israel???" and some contemporary versions of anti-imperium and/or Liberation Theology. I'm hearing an echo; is it just me?

10 a.m. playing on computer. conducting FB conversations with two out of town friends simultaneously. all very exciting. thinking about hymns for Pentecost on the 12th. hockey history on TV behind me, here in the living room. watched by #1 Son and hockey-fan cat. the Toronto Maple Leafs in their glory days, staffed by thugs from the mining communities -- some very familiar images from the Rambler's childhood.

11 a.m., television has moved on to British soccer, and thence to darts. neighbour continues to run the jackhammer. I have washed and applied polish to a large double handful of miscellaneous silver teaspoons and coffee spoons. have cooked and eaten 9 big mushrooms, fried, on toast (2 pieces). glass of o.j. also. elderly yeast has stepped up, sourdough is bubbling hopefully. still cuddling my original cup of coffee from this morning, now cold of course...if the Glycemic-Index diet-book says I can't have ANY coffee, and I'd ordinarily have three or four cups at least during the day...maybe just one and that one BLACK will represent good faith on my part? thinking about sermon some more, thinking about the "last sentence" -- thanks, friend -- I think it has to be the last sentence of the gospel, a good platform for an ecumenical pitch, a strong one. The oikumene as over against the imperium. Aha.

12 noon and we're on, at last, to tennis. enough, I think, of the professional sports. will now find something more stimulating, or turn the TV off altogether. neighbour is taking a break from the jackhammer. I need to assemble a baking dish of manicotti, and cook the filling for a prospective tourtiere. televisually, the choice seems to be John Wayne or Gregory Peck... either way, the Myth of Retributive Violence seems to be in good repair.

1 p.m. ok, have set a big bowl of yogurt in the oven-- time to find some soup for lunch...tremendous engine noises from my neighbour's yard, which might mean "Vehicle Stuck" but may only mean they are lifting the broken pieces of concrete into a truck.
something in the sermon about changing the direction of our gaze to be a witness to something -- what does that mean? doesn't it mean looking in a different direction? looking in a hard, confusing direction, carrying the lens of what we have witnessed...a persisting image on the inner retina. There. I think that will do it.

Almost 3 p.m. I have made a little spinach frittata for my (late) lunch. I am cooking up the filling for my tourtiere, and I have the ingredients out of the fridge to make the manicotti. In the meantime I hard-cooked a couple of eggs, which let me dispose of the carton (it will go to the food bank). Watching Cahill: U.S. Marshal -- well, no, treating it more like a radio drama... and will shortly get back to reading Katherine Paterson, The Spying Heart...and that will do for today...clean clothes ready for tomorrow, house in reasonable order, working on this week's grocery list.

the Friday Five

2011-06-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year when the only new things on television are music/dance competitions (the 21st century answer to variety shows?). Yes, it's the season of reruns.

This week the clock turned back to last fall and the Glee kids went back to school and still got "slushied," and Michael hired his nephew on The Office, which was not something even he would be likely to repeat.

In honor of this annual Time Warp, please share five things worth a repeat. These could be books, movies, CDs, recipes, vacations, or even TV shows.

1. Television shows: How can any list not start with The West Wing? Great characters, great situations, and enough throw-away lines per episode to stock a whole season of any standard TV dramatic series. (Remember: "My God, King Lear is a good play..." -- "A verb would be good, sometime soon"...)

2. Books: Well -- I wish I could find a copy of Eric Mascall's Via Media; -- it can be downloaded from Google but only in the US of A, apparently.

3. Movies: A whole long list -- Song of the South--I missed one Very Anticipated showing of it the summer I turned six, because I woke up that morning with chicken pox...nearly broke my heart -- I should explain we were living in far northern British Columbia and a movie was a darn seldom thing, involving a projector and giant cans of film arriving by float plane from Juneau, very big deal indeed. But another great movie in that list was Carnegie Hall...and Kes, which is now available on DVD, worth seeing again.

4. Recipes: I wish I could recapture what one of my grandmothers used to do to a fried potato. And I wish I could recapture what the other grandmother could do with a chocolate cake, peppermint boiled frosting, and bitter chocolate topping...

5. Vacations: I would love to be going on a family driving vacation this summer... or taking a three-week trip to Italy with my children ... or planning to get on a big boat with a whole bunch of RevGals. Oh wait -- I am.

a quiet Thursday.

2011-06-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

At the end of the day, not displeased with what is now DONE...but boy, a lifetime habit of procrastination is hard to break.

But.... some bills got paid, some things got cleaned, some food and drink were prepared, some finances were put in order, some paper was abolished...some text was read, including some blogs...some phone calls, some internet chats, some television.

What's left? well -- run the dishwasher, iron a small heap of "flats", set a batch of yogurt, clear off my bed (I sleep in some of it, I pile books and periodicals on the rest); some notes to write -- and blog to post.

Happiness of the day was getting my registration form in for the BE 5.0. In the morning...will arrange to get the initial payment made via Western Union.

We here in the True North (Strong and Free) are threatened with rotating postal strikes, beginning at midnight tonight... I believe in organized labour, I believe in collective bargaining, I believe in the right to strike--I just wish they wouldn't exercise it when I have things to mail and time is of the essence. On the other hand, ordinary folks now make so little use of the postal service, I wonder what effectiveness a strike will have...or whether this may not be a case of "cutting their nose off to spite their face."

so...breakfast with a friend in the morning, and then Western Union, lunch with another friend, a session with my Siggy -- and some sermon work.

This may be the Sunday to make the pitch for ecumenism, taking advantage of John 17. Not sure yet.

I made a big batch of cold-brew coffee this morning...anticipating, perhaps, some warm weather.

Two or three issues of TLS await attention. In fact we scored TLS, the New Yorker, and Canadian Living all in one day's mail this week. Two parts ideas, one part recipes. Onward and upward toward the Perfectly Balanced Existence.

Reading Katherine Paterson's The Spying Heart, on writing for children.

Wednesday again...

2011-06-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

A pleasant sort of a day, mainly at home -- after going in to celebrate the eucharist, and then lead the book study with the Wednesday ladies, and then bolting across town to an ecumenical executive meeting...emails let us down and we had not-quite-a-quorum, but enough to make a practicable plan for our next steps. And good coffee of a Netherlandish intensity, and sugar cookies alongside.

Home and some reading -- made some purchases for St. Curious, bought insect repellent, made some financial plans (short-term), completed the laundry, with just a small basketful of flat ironing to do in the morning.

And then my ambition kind of petered out. But somewhere in there I finished Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, which I've found a delight for its depiction of the collisions between the heroines and the particular personalities of the clergy. I infer that Charlotte Bronte was not impressed when her father's curates "dissed" Yorkshire customs and manners.

I have a bundle of periodical reading here also -- and a little chapbook from Ursula Le Guin, The Wild Girls, with an essay on reading and an essay on modesty, both of which are eminently quotable.

Fred McMurray and Joan Crawford on the TCM channel in Above Suspicion, which was a great book; and they're always fun to watch, but I think I am just too sleepy tonight.

a poem I couldn't resist sharing, an echo from my previous life

2011-05-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

Did I Miss Anything?

Tom Wayman
From: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

___________________________

Tom Wayman's works copyright © to the author.

the Friday Five

2011-05-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mary Beth who started us off on this Friday Five:

So, thinking about allergies:

1. Do you experience any seasonal allergies? Are you allergic to anything else?

I'm vaguely snuffly in certain environments and am not sure specifically why... probably, reacting to DUST (certain amount of DUST in the atmosphere here much of the time). But my almost total freedom from allergies is a blessing -- I suspect it forms part of a continuum including my Systemic Unawareness and Oblivion of a lot of what is going on around me.

2. What kinds of symptoms do you experience during your allergic reactions?

I do have one "contact" allergy with annoying symptoms. Walnuts -- unless they're perfectly fresh, and without an actual tree on the property, when are they EVER perfectly fresh??? -- make my tongue sore. Pecans, thankfully, do not.

3. How do you manage your allergies? (ie: medication, avoidance, alternative therapies, etc)

It's largely a matter of avoidance. I was married for quite a long time to a man with multiple allergies, particularly hay fever; he lived on a little blue pill called "Pyribenzamine" which kept him from sneezing his head off but also left him totally non-reactive to insect bites, stings -- and intolerant of people (guess who) who DID react to mosquitoes, black flies, etc. I took one of his pyribenzamines, once. It made my ears ring for 24 hours.

4. What is the strangest allergy you've ever heard of?

Members of my family have produced allergic reactions (hives and swelling of face etc.) to the presence of a viral infection, such as a cold ... it's called Quincke's Oedema (aka Giant Hives)...(you could look it up). And some folks have urticaria -- hives -- in reaction to extreme cold. One of my children is allergic to mandarin oranges -- satsumas -- and related citrus -- so citrus blends like Five-Alive are right OUT.

5. How do you feel about school and social policies that ban peanuts and other allergens?

I'm not sure. A college classmate died at a banquet where the chicken had been fried in peanut oil (this is almost 50 years ago)... an episode that pretty much framed my thinking ever after. But it distresses me when children are implicitly encouraged to identify themselves with their allergic reactions...and beyond that, my thinking is pretty much unformed.

a highly-caffeinated Wednesday...

2011-05-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday is a regular 1/2 day at St. Curious, but yesterday ran above and beyond. Normally we have a midweek Eucharist followed by a Bible study, or book study, or wide-ranging conversation, with the Wise Wednesday Women. Fab Boss and I usually take it in turn to celebrate at the Eucharist -- yesterday we changed horses in midstream because she wasn't feeling well.

Spent a happy hour or so with the ladies catching up on how we all were, and then looking at some variations on praying with rosaries, prayer beads, prayer ropes, and so forth. Some discussion of the Marian mysteries. It was all smooth until we got to the last two Glorious Mysteries: the Assumption, and the Coronation. Stern beady-eyed confrontation with WWW: "Are those two IN THE BIBLE?????" And much laughter thereat.

Then a very brisk five block walk to Campus Watering-Hole to meet #1 Son and celebrate his birthday over a tasty lunch. Not just any birthday, but a Big Round Number birthday. Oog. Some serious conversation about future plans -- concrete ones. We'll continue celebrating tomorrow night with sibs'n'spouses, dinner in the Family Abode, here, aka Tether's End.

What to cook, what to cook. I had a brief fantasy of replicating the menu that Her Majesty gave the Obamas, but I ran aground, mentally, on the Sauce Nantua. Mine would have to be a cheap-o knock-off made with mere shrimp butter, I think. Better just to give it up altogether then? But still thinking about the possibility of multiple courses -- maybe a cold soup, a salad, and a roast or chops or something. Still brooding on that one.

However! back to Wednesday. Brisk walk back to St. Curious to collect Harriet-the-Echo, and hurl myself across the city (including across the RIVER) to Monastic Establishment for a session of local Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue. The hospitable Monastic Persons entertained the group to dinner following our dialogue session. Sometime, somehow, I'd like to get a detailed look at them-there vows of poverty, I must say. It was a faint-dead-away menu. The Queen should be so lucky. We had roast lamb in profusion with more doo-dahs on it than I can remember or even identify but prominent among them were PINE NUTS...and all sorts of vegetable accoutrements variously roasted and caramelized and uniformly delicious. And for dessert -- does the term "frangipane" ring any bells out there? If not, just think "marzipan pie".

Some days it is good to be an ecumenist.

And then hurled myself back across the city for a meeting of Interested Church Persons to talk about the state-of-the-church, and the Covenant (p'too), and how the Rambler "got the call," and one thing and another.

Somehow I had had enough coffee by then that the needle was up in the MOTOR-MOUTH red zone.

Home at eleven p.m., and slept, after a fashion, and woke up still caffeinated to the gills...

a peaceable Tuesday

2011-05-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a statutory holiday in the True North Strong and Free -- no, not a case of us jumping in and getting Memorial Day out of the way early -- Victoria Day, commemorating the Queen Empress, whose birthday was May 24th. So now it's the Monday-before, and makes a long weekend holiday in May, everybody happy. The signal in some places to "open the cottage" for the summer, or to "put the garden in" -- although hereabouts it's safer to wait until the first of June (for fear of late frosts).

Yesterday here, in this year of grace, however, was teeming rain nearly all day, not suitable for either of the classic activities, so the Rambler COOKED. All day long. I have been having a kind of crisis about food this week. Or an epiphany. Or one of those hey-wait-a-minute things.

Last week I spent a day -- Friday -- grocery shopping. I started with a warm-up run to the dry-cleaner to pick up a couple of garments, and then went, in turn, to a semi-wholesale outlet for one of the major supermarket chains; then to the bakery outlet; finally to a produce market of great repute.

The produce market is a joy -- good quality fruit and vegetables (if quality is not good, or price is exorbitant, they don't stock whatever-it-is) at spectacularly low prices, clean premises, knowledgeable staff. The bakery outlet is no problem -- I pick up a 'flat' of 10 loaves of bread, some sesame-white, some 'brown' of one sort or another, sometimes some English muffins or bagels; staff are friendly and conversable, prices make the trip worth it, especially on Wednesdays when Old Coots get a 10% discount.

But the Wholesale Club got to me, this time around, aisles and aisles of super-sizes of "fodder" -- I can't call it food. Candy, candy, candy, candy; chips, chips, chips, and soda-pop... but I think it was the four-liter jars of salad dressing that set off my gag reflex. Granted, this outlet supplies a lot of small restaurants. These aren't for "home consumption." But it oppressed me -- having just read the article on Pepsico in the New Yorker -- I couldn't help but think, "THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL US"... they do have fine big 3 lb. bags of baby spinach...but the proportion of real food to GLOP is way too low.

And when my shopping was done, I looked for a restaurant lunch for a treat...wound up in one of those buffet-carvery places, and alas everything on the hot table and most of what was on the cold table looked as if it had come straight from the wholesalers. GLOP predominated. Grease and sugar and salt. I wound up with a plate of undressed salad and a spoonful of cottage cheese! As I ate it, I looked at the clientele. And every single soul who came in, EVERY ONE, was morbidly obese.

Not only are they TRYING TO KILL US...I think they're succeeding... "Why," I ask, "will you spend your money for that which is not bread?" And answer comes there none.

So all this cooking, I think, was some kind of Protective Ritual. Momma don't 'low no GLOP around here. Not this week.

Royal Wedding Edition

2011-04-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

With kathrynzj's help, here is a Royal Wedding Friday Five:

1) Will you be watching? If so, is this your first royal wedding?

Watching, oh my yes. I woke up at 1 a.m., but realized that the next three hours (Mountain Daylight Saving Time) would consist entirely of variations on "OH ITZHAK this is SEWWWW exciting" ~~ a family-cherished line from the Three Tenors' concert in L.A., years ago ~~ so went back to bed with the alarm set for 4, and was up in front of the TV with Nefertiti the Loyal Cat in time to see Catherine enter the Abbey. Watched, on the CBC, until they closed the doors to the balcony.

NOT my first royal wedding but maybe the first one I watched right through? We had a cassette tape of Charles and Diana's wedding, including the encouraging whispers of the Archbishop to the couple, which I found very touching.

I do remember watching the Coronation on television in '53, and for me, also it was almost the first television I saw. Also in the Abbey.

I paid attention to Charles and Diana's wedding out of identification with the couple -- this time around, it's all about the officiating, the preaching, and the music.

2) The bride has chosen as her wedding cake a fruitcake. Where do you stand on this pastry?

I am really sorry that so few of my contemporaries apparently have ever encountered GOOD fruitcake. (The criteria are: don't stint on the candied fruit and don't stint on the BOOZE.) From where I sit -- nothing else IS a wedding cake. Ideally, it should have been baked and set to "ripen" before Advent 2010 and even so it would be a bit "new" at this point. It's a confection more than a "cake" -- and it's concocted so as to last virtually forever without spoiling or going stale. I like other kinds of cake just fine thank you, qua cake, but not for Christmas and not for weddings. Too....flimsy.

3) The dress code for royal weddings has not seen the same sad decline as that for most other weddings. If you could design your own royal wedding hat, what color would it be and what special decoration would it feature?

I guess at this season of my life the hat would have to be red! With maybe a nice silk rose. But I have very poor luck trying to find a ready-made hat to fit the size 8 head I came equipped with.

4) Any chance the Archbishop of Canterbury is using a Sustainable Sermon (tip of the mitre to the Vicar of Hogsmeade)? What would you tell the couple were you offering the homily?

I was sorry not to hear +++Rowan preach, but it was interesting to hear +Richard. I thought he could have preached better with the material that he had -- which I liked, both the quotation from Catherine of Siena and the quotation from Chaucer, which was gently mischievous.

Probably, though, until all memory of The Princess Bride has evaporated, glittering prelates should not begin their sentences with the word "Marriage," even without a lisp.

I think I would have been more likely than his lordship was, to have drawn helpful analogies from baseball.

And I am fond of the theology and the language of the Book of Common Prayer...which repays mulling over in memory. I like the idea of children "Christianly and virtuously brought up." I like the idea of "amiable" wives. I like "troth" -- "either to other".

5) Believe it or not, kathrynzj is getting up early mostly to see the wedding dress. By the time this post is up, the world will have seen it. Did you like it?

Very much -- it FIT, hurray; and otherwise, I'm with Martha on this one, SLEEVES, oh thanks be to God. If it starts a trend AWAY from the strapless...it will be a great favour to one and all especially clergy who often have to stand one step above the couple, confronting more decolletage than is healthy (20 pounds of custard in a 10 pound basket...ewwww) And I liked the understated veil, understated bouquet, relatively abbreviated train, discreet tiara.

the Friday Five

2011-04-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

Dorcas has given us this introduction to the Friday Five, over at RevGalBlogPals:

"Though I am from a non-liturgical denomination, I find myself longing for some of the expressions others of you may experience at this time of year. The same thing happens to me during Advent. At both times I am drawn to the symbolism of darkness becoming light, of longing turning to joy. One of my favorite things at this time of year used to be draping the wooden cross at the rear of our sanctuary with a dark purple velvet cloth and adding a crown of (ouch!) thorns--and what a lovely thing it was to see that same cross on Easter Sunday morning, draped in glowing white with a golden, jewel-studded crown added. Not being a pastor this year, I am missing some of the symbolism I always tried to employ. I may find a nearby Episcopalian or Lutheran congregation to visit at some point, actually.

Meanwhile, today I am asking for your thoughts on that movement from darkness to light. Tell us five ways in which you are anticipating, or your life is moving towards light, joy, hope--new things: new ideas, new hobbies, new people...and so on."

And here are mine

1. LIGHT -- just plan flat out candle-power. More light in the evenings, now at last more light in the mornings. A dawn worth waking up to see.

2. BIRDS -- There is a chickadee in my yard who has found two notes that please him, and bellows them early and late. I haven't seen robins yet, but their whooping and bragging is unmistakable. And the geese, bless them. They remind me of a long ago April a long way from where I am now (in every dimension)...stepping out into a lovely soft New England evening, I heard a tiny repeated sound...and there was a "VEE" labouring northward, so high in the sky they were at the limit of what I could see. [Pause while you picture the Rambler running up and down the sidewalk in short homesick bursts, crying ank-ank, ank-ank, ank-ank, don't leave me...well, no, not quite, but the impulse was there!]

3. GROWING GREEN The church garden at St. Curious is under the windows against the south wall. A lovely sun-trap. And there are all manner of bulb-things showing green -- and indomitable leaves from the hollyhocks, already as big as the palm of my hand. Poignant when we remember we can still have a killing frost any time in the next six weeks... And in the meantime I am confident that my tulips are reaching for the sky, and light, and air, against the south wall of Tether's End, here...in their "igloo greenhouse" where the neighbour has piled the snow from his driveway all winter. It is melting away from underneath.

4. and so here and elsewhere, WATER -- running water, everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the streets, in the lanes, in the ravines, in the creeks. The best sound ever.

5. SPRING CLEANING accelerating the thinning and purging of bookshelves, closets, file cabinets, sordid little caches of this, that, and the other, all over the house. In honour of spring, and in anticipation of ...

5A. DOG and a very new and different engagement with time, place, energy, activity. S/He's not even a pup yet, just a notion...but this year, for sure, for sure.

a desultory sort of a day

2011-03-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

Trying to put some kind of order into wht has gone on in my life since BE 4.0...let's see...

We came home on the Friday in good order, and then in a flurry of packing/unpacking I managed to fit in a piece of theatre -- Son Unit #2 in a local production, semi-concert style, of Jekyll & Hyde. There was really only one night I could go at all -- and that was Saturday. Other family were there so we had a chance to say "Hey" to each other before tottering off into the snow.

Up early on Sunday, that was last-before-Lent, or Quinquagesima, or T-Fig 1.0 -- was excused from the early celebration to convey Son Unit #2 and fiancee to the airport for an expedition to Germany and Austria. Caught up with the congregation in order to assist, a little, with a baptism...

Then back to the laundry big time and homework for the next jaunt which began Ash Wednesday morning early. Flew across the country into blizzard conditions and the contrasts with the week before were ACUTE. I had just got used to "Hola" and there I was back in the land of "Bonjour"...meditating on the beach at Tulum in view of "les gars" ice-fishing on the Lac des Deux Montagnes...just getting used to wallowing in luxury with 2100 other people and there I was with 11 others rattling around in a huge no-longer-in-use, eerily untouched and well-kept, Roman Catholic convent. A complete dearth of towel animals. Or mealtime flourishes with napkins.

Although I must admit when I went to lunch the first day without slippers, Sister Lucie pursued me with small nunny shrieks and a shopping bag full of hand-knit "pantoufles"...she didn't QUITE knock me to the floor, but definitely stood over me uncompromisingly until she had fitted me with a suitable pair.

I was in Montreal, for so it was, for a session of the national Anglican/Roman Catholic dialogue. Two other women -- both RC laywomen theologians, and very good ones too. The rest, clergy. Three bishops altogether; the other clergy (male) are for the most part teachers of theology, working actively in ecumenism. I think I'm the only "pure parish" clergyperson. I love these folks -- this is the second time I've met with them -- and our discussions are meat and drink to me. But oh good grief where are the points of contact between THIS koinonia and the one we enjoyed on the boat and continue to enjoy on-line?

One lovely lovely moment when, in discussions of communication and publicity for the great 40th anniversary celebration next November in Montreal, the Rambler brightly suggested that we should set up a Facebook page. "And they all moved away from me, there, on the Group W bench..." and looked deeply, deeply puzzled.

This anniversary celebration will be a service in Montreal in the "Oratoire de St. Joseph" atop Mount Royal, a kind of epitome-point for French-Canadian Roman Catholicism, with much architectural and liturgical splendor. And cardinals'n'them. I can hardly wait.

Oh and I had a wonderful conversation at the lunch table on our final day at the convent. A very large group of women, belonging to a local choir, were also at the convent for the day. The Rambler was in "her blacks" i.e. clericals, as one about to travel. There was whispered discussion and covert glances.

Finally the boldest of the group approached our table. You will have to imagine this all in the most elegant French (I can follow it, but I am slow to find the words to respond).

"Madame? My associates and I could not fail to notice that you, although a woman, are wearing a Roman collar? If it is not offensive to you, might one enquire why?"
"Certainly, it is because I am a priest in the Anglican church."
"AAAAahhh" (with noddings over her shoulder -- I thought, right, somebody in your group just won 25c on that one) "and are there many women in the priesthood, in your church?"
"Well, in our own diocese, at present, about half and half. And of course we rejoice in the minsitry of our SECOND feminine bishop."
"AAAAahhh. And would it be appropriate for one to felicitate you?"
"For the most part, certainly, thank you. On certain days, expressions of sympathy, perhaps?"
-- merry laughter on both sides. (And much mirth for the Catholic bishop sitting with me.)

an enquiry

2011-03-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

I am wondering whether there are any plans or proto-plans just yet for a RGBP meet-up at the Festival of Homies?

No, alas, the Rambler is not going to make it to Minneapolis...in fact if I mention travel at all, FabRector looks menacingly at me. I have visions of her nailing my shoes to the floor. Or one of them, so I can only go 'round in circles. A liturgical innovation...

But one of our gals in this neck of the woods, not yet a RevGal, is planning to go, and it would be nice if she found some RevGal hospitality there, I think, upon arrival.

Let me know, if you don't mind, what if anything is up with this.

Mon pays c'est l'hiver...

2011-03-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

[tapity tap] OK, all together now, tous en choeur, mais pas trop fort...

with love to all the Lutheran pals

2011-03-19T08:50:00.001-07:00

This went by on another medium a few minutes ago and I couldn't resist it... a blessed Saturday, y'all!

Thinking about the BE 4.0, all the whole time

2011-03-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

Blest Be the Tie that Binds

and this is the best I could find...will never sing it again without seeing all your faces.

Corny as all get out, but doesn't it just get it said?

just a quick catching up this morning

2011-03-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

The view from here, more or less, all day. I have four -- I think -- bits of writing to do. Starting with a 100-word bio of the auto kind. A hundred words? I can't clear my throat in a hundred words!!!

Then a re-work of my most recent Friday Five on "good things about Lent" for parish newsletter.

The real scary one is a summary of points made and refuted on "an ecclesiology of COMMUNITY" at a conference I attended three years ago -- this is for presentation at the semi-annual National Chat With Them Other Folks, starting Thursday.

And... oh yes, an order for Morning Prayer for that same Chat. OK, where's my BCP. "O Lord open thou our lips" and away we go.

SIGH...loved Morning Prayer at the BE. Despite the somewhat OVERWROUGHT decor in the initial meeting space.

I'll write the bio, I'll do the reading for #3, taper off with #2, back at #3 until it's done.

WE CAN DO THIS. Fierce'n'Fabulous! Right!

the Friday Five (it's Friday somewhere, I'm sure)

2011-03-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

Kathrynzj has invited us to play this Friday Five this week.

What are some things you appreciate about the season of Lent? Perhaps you would share 5 of them with us. And for your bonus question feel free to share one thing you could do without.

1. I like the discipline (yes, that word) of Lent but think it should include more than just "the bridle" -- on the pattern of Dante's Purgatorio I need the whip (OK, OK, the quirt, then!) to push me forward as well as the bit to pull me back. So this year I'll be thinking about what phrases would work best in both functions.

2. Purple. I feel blessed that I have a custom made purple stole -- real violet purple, not the "grape-a-lade" red-purple...

3. And the season -- the lengthening daylight, especially in this seemingly interminable winter.

4. Holy Week done as high'n'solemn as they'll let me get away with...ideally, daily Eucharist, Maundy done with a meal and the Pedilavium and the stripping of the altar, Friday with solemn devotions, and the Great Vigil with as many readings as possible and as much darkness as possible, but this year, see point #3 above!!!

5. The opportunities in teaching the children in this solemn season without either trivializing everything or scaring them into nightmares. I like "serious explorations" with children, even quite little ones.

And what can I do without? rushing the season (chocolate easter eggs on Good Friday, for example), and jamming the season, multiplying extra-parochial services and observances like the re-affirmation of vows, for Pete's sake.

2011-03-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

This picture was not taken in any part of the Rambler's home-an'-native-land, alas.

HOME this afternoon just before 5 pm, from BE 4.0. Traveling Mercy and I arrived in the OTHER Prairie Metropolis last night later than I like to remember--delays multiplied by other delays. It had warmed up tremendously since our last report on the inter-webs. And was now merely STINKING COLD.

Sad to report that the anonymous chain motel fell somewhat short of the standard to which we instantly became accustomed last week. No towel animals, no chocolate mints. Not a clue, I am sure, of what to do with a napkin...

But tra la, Friend who custoded Harriet-the-chariot during our absence arrived this morning bearing our abandoned COATSES and BOOTSES and we went away and had a mildly riotous and plenteous breakfast in a funky neighbourhood diner. Enjoyed a modest serving of "Ay Ay Ay" on my so-called southwestern omelet (tapering off).

And we hit the trail home. Despite cold, and evidence of plentiful snowfall during our absence, highway was BARE AND DRY all the way to Prairie Metropolis, and traffic manageable.

Now catching up with y'all as you report in... and keeping you in mind during "re-entry," always challenging.

What a happy time, what a blessing, what revelations, what "inspirations" (yes!); I am SO GLAD to have been there.

And now, the LAUNDRY.

Blessings. Love y'all.

ahoy

2011-02-28T19:29:00.000-08:00

...from the Spanish Main -- just to say all is well and the BE-ing RevGals are having a very, very fine time and wonderful talk and LAUGHTER...
SOOOOO glad I came.
That is all!

anticipation!

2011-02-20T19:05:00.001-08:00

Unfortunately, I'm NOT packed, although the suitcase is out of the cupboard and preliminary internal partial lists have been made.

Once again I have complicated my life with a second obligatory trip, cross-continent, beginning within a week of our return from BE 4.0.

And there is homework for the second trip -- not just reading (I'm really enjoying Reframing Hope, but writing -- for a group who know a lot more about my subject than I do. ULP!

Sorting airline tickets, hotel reservations, INSURANCES, confirmation numbers, -- never mind, this is all going to be SO worth it.

ARRRR

2011-02-18T13:13:00.001-08:00

And this, up until 1970, was the Rambler's experience of Great Big Boats, the CPR steamship "Princess Louise." My mother and I went from Vancouver to Alaska -- I think it was always Juneau -- and back again, three times--two of those round trips were on the Louise. Strictly business, although this is now quite a favoured holiday cruise.

We were going "in" to join my father at whatever mining property was to be our new home; and in due course, we came "out," and stayed-with-grandma until there was a new mining property and a new home.

On our first trip, in the fall of 1948, Canadian Pacific steamship had just had a very damaging strike, and were anxious to rebuild their passenger business. As you can see, this is not a huge liner, but the service, the food, and the amenities were a la Cunard all the way. I was proudly just turned four, and I had never seen so much silverware on a table in my short life. It seemed to me a fine and tactful arrangement for a young woman who tended to drop her fork from time to time. There was always another one at hand. I remember too that there were "appetizers" while we made up our minds about dinner. Appetizers in 1948 were celery and green olives. Period. But I had never seen such big olives in all my born days, either.

More anon...

in the middle of the week, the middle of the wood...

2011-02-16T05:29:00.000-08:00

increasingly excited about the BE 4.0 -- maybe because the picture above is of the biggest boat I've been on to date--formerly the SS Empress of Canada, now--inevitably -- the Carnival Mardi Gras. The father of my children and I came back from England on the Empress in August of 1970. You do the math!!! I am not fully attuned to the idea of a boat as high-rise hotel lying on its side in the water. You may need to blindfold me and back me onto it. Just sayin.

...up early, after a pretty good night's sleep, to print off a bunch of paperwork for Big Committee Meeting this evening -- which looks like a long, weary way from here.

I did promise to keep everybody posted on the DOG situation, and meant to do so MUCH earlier.

Just after the most recent post I finally got to see the Ultimate Dog (Gordon Setter, for anybody who Hasn't Kept Up) in the flesh. Daughter Unit and I arranged to meet at a Dog Facility (daycare, exercise, training), in the unlit, unplowed, God-forgotten SE industrial zone of Prairie Metropolis.

I had an address, friends, and I found it, a door in a business strip-mall, no sign, no lights, no dogs. I considered the possibility of reversed digits in the address, and prospected further. Nothing. Back to the original address. Nada.

Now the next move, regularly, in situations of this kind (there have been others), is for the Rambler to stop the car, sit in the snowbank, and wail aloud. "Can't have a dog, NEVER going to have a dog, Can't even find the DOG PLACE, too stupid to be let to live," etc.

But before we got to that point (just), headlights appeared, heralding Daughter Unit, collaboration, strategies, and ultimately success. We approached the only illuminated facility in sight. We found a door unlocked. We halloo'ed for help. After minimal delay a cheerful youth in greasy coveralls responded: "Oh. Yah. They moved, eh? About four months ago? And Esmertilda didn't leave any kind of an address. But it's like, you go back up that way to the casino, and turn left, eh, and it's in there. Somewhere."

Daughter Unit's Blackberry, and the Rambler's old-school dog-eared hard-copy atlas of the streets of Prairie Metropolis, gave us more precise new coordinates.

And we spent a happy evening watching various dogs work an agility course, including three (count'em) Gordon Setters. We had happy conversation with the breeder. We shook hands.

I came home to start work to make Tether's End dog-fit. Daughter Unit went away to MUSTER her siblings (a direct descendant of Queen Boadicea, this one, I think) to ensure their now-motivated Ma doesn't give up, as is her wont.

The problem, as simply stated as possible, is that in the last ten years I have deposited two entire professional careers' worth of books* into a 4 bedroom bilevel house which was already over-full of books. *and notes, and files, and PAPER. PLUS a serious consignment of Ancestral Books (and paper and linens and china and paintings and bric a brac) from my parents' home.

We have begun. Pray for us.

AAAAAAHHHHH

2011-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

In case you're not aware, that header represents "screaming like a little girl."

I've been growing increasingly impatient with DITHER as a Life Principle, also its close relative, Shilly-Shally, and everything came to a head yesterday morning...soooo...I emailed the proprietrix of the kennel whence come the Gordon Setters.
Actually it was--I think--the recklessness of a fellow RevGal in posting up a pic of a Bernese Mountain pup. With bed-head. TOO MUCH TO BEAR, friends.

So after months of drooling over the kennel website, and boring all my acquaintances pallid with switherings and ditherings about Gordon Setters, I emailed the Kennel Goddess.

And she answered me. (Reprise on the screaming, above)

And this very evening, I am going to a hitherto unknown place to observe agility classes. With Gordon Setters. Being agile, presumably.

Thing is: I've never had a dog, not ever, not even a little negligible penwiper dog. I've always wanted a dog. Always. A big dog. Preferably a setter. And Irishes, although lovely beyond words, are, well, differently clued, right?

Hence, the Gordons. Big ol' black'n'tan dog. Yup. With a gentle expression in its eyes, says so, right here in the book. Kind of a dog-a-logue book, it is.

My boss, Fabrector, has lent me the Monks of New Skete book on puppy raising. Fabrector has a big ol' dog of her own, and he is trained to a HAIR and is all "Ma'am yes ma'am"...a great encouragement to dog ownership for the timid. Yesterday morning he went out of is way to demonstrate to me what a Good Thing it would be, for me to have one of my own. There was affectionate leaning on, there was affectionate cuddling, there were dog kisses, there was chin-on-your-knee with upturned-adoring-gaze. I would think he had hacked into my email...

I'll keep you posted. (for "psoted," read "bored...")

the Friday Five

2011-01-22T04:26:00.001-08:00

...I think it's still Friday, briefly perhaps, somewhere in the Pacific just this side of the International Date Line!

Jan, over at RevGalBlogPals, has posted this:

I hope some of you received books for Christmas presents; I did and have been reading ever since. Then I discovered a new author from those recommendations that pop up on Amazon.com. Instead of buying those books, I've been checking them out at the library, which will not help Amazon's future recommendations for me at all.

So tell us what you're reading, what you would and would not recommend--five books or authors! And if you don't want to do that freestyle, here are some questions:

1. What books have you recently read? Tell us your opinion of them.
Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple, essays from the late 90's by an English psychiatrist practising in a slum hospital and a prison. He identifies and illustrates the pervasive self-deceptions and self-delusions that, in his view, have created and are sustaining a permanent under-class. The mindset he talks about is not just a local phenomenon. His comments on interactions between immigrant communities and the native underclass are stimulating. A bit of a rant, this one--but I'm in sympathy with it, or much of it. Also re-read, with great enjoyment, Metaphor and Memory by Cynthia Ozick. (She could have a fine howdy-do with Doc Dalrymple, come to think of it!) And P. D. James, Original Sin; great evocation of place, as always, and -- I thought -- a sharp recognition of the emotional climate of the post-religious society.

2. What books are awaiting your available time to be read? Peter Brown's big bio of St. Augustine. Essays by Emanuel Levinas. Buber's I and Thou --finally! Chittister and Williams, Uncommon Gratitudes. Williams, again -- Tokens of Trust.

3. Have any books been recently recommended? I have a great yen to read Paul Halliday's new book, Habeas Corpus, after the laudatory review in TLS. There has been so much reference to Saul Bellow in reviews I've seen recently, I think I might give him another try, after 40 years.

4. What genre of books are your favorite, along with some titles and/or authors you like best? I read mysteries for relaxation: Allingham, Burke (James Lee), P. D. James, Ngaio Marsh, Sayers, Dell Shannon, Josephine Tey. And biography. And literary criticism. And classic novels. (Austen rules!)

5. What have you read lately that you have a strong urge to recommend? (or to condemn?) If I read something that I have an urge to condemn, I don't finish it! Life grows short, too short for literary disappointment. But I will recommend one additional book that I'm in the midst of re-reading (after about 20 years): A Cry of Absence by Martin Marty. I read it originally, huddled in a corner on the floor of the university library...it spoke to me in the midst of marriage collapse (which is all I'm going to say about THAT)...it introduced me to Karl Rahner, and may have had something to do with flinging me into seminary studies; it identified my own spirituality to me, or so I thought. What is astonishing to me in the re-reading is how much of my very positive memory of the book is really memory of the construction I put upon it at the time. Anybody else have that experience? Of remembering a text you actually "made up out of your head"? Weird!

PS looked at other people's lists and was reminded that I am also re-reading cookbooks I've had for a while: most recently, the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special. I don't know how long this has been on the shelf. I do know I've never before cooked anything from it. I must have bought it back when most suppers began with a great sullen lump of ground beef. Frozen. And everything else was an afterthought! But I've made 2 kinds of vegetable stock and converted the Roasted Vegetable one into cream-of-spinach and creamy carrot-sweet potato soups. Tastes change, I guess. They are good.

waking up routines.

2010-12-07T22:39:00.001-08:00

another ten minute writing exercise.

Most mornings I wake up repeatedly from about four a.m. on. The house is chilly at night -- the thermostat is set for 65 F, so I don't stir usually until the programme kicks in and the furnace comes on. What happens next -- if I'm not getting up right away, I fumble about and find whatever I was reading when i gave up the night before. It's usually a magazine -- the New Yorker or the Atlantic; weekly, the TLS. In the morning, if I'm feeling alert, I take a look at the TLS crossword and see if anything shakes loose. Two or three times I've been able to find all the answers...but I don't usually get my entry copied and mailed in before the deadline. Delivery of the magazine is sometimes a bit erratic.

Among the reviews I enjoy especially reviews on memoirs, biographies, and works of theology. Since I retired I don't leap up and negotiate with Amazon.ca quite as readily when a book looks appetizing, but now and then I'll look for a title in local bookstores.

If I don't take on a magazine crossword, I'll look at one of the puzzles in my New York Times puzzle-a-day calendar. The easy ones are Monday and Tuesday, they get harder as the week goes on. But there are conventions and protocols even in the difficult ones. They help steer us toward solutions.

Before I get out of bed, usually, I take the morning meds with whatever is left in the bottom of the mug I took to bed with me the night before. Sometimes a couple of big fierce acetaminophen, depending on how much my hands ache.

Then it's time to check the windows...ice at the bottom of the panes means COLD; and time to listen to the household thumps and rustlings, is the shower free?

And somewhere in there, briefly, a little Morning Prayer.

Feet on the floor, shuffle into the moccasins, and head for the kitchen.

for the time being...

2010-12-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

I've come to a kind of temporary decision about this blog; until further notice, I will try to blog daily but I will do so under the rubric of a "free write" exercise. I used to assign these when I was a sessional instructor (lowest form of vertebrate life) at Colourful U. Teaching English to "students with no known native language".

From time to time, though, I would teach a senior-level course in writing non-fiction prose, with a great gamut of students from the already-published, to the "barely passed first year survey, needs to learn more English".

This was NOT an English as a Second Language course, just to be clear about that.

And the best timetable of all was the intersession or summer session one -- 2.5 hours a day, every day, for six weeks. If you do ANYTHING for 2.5 hours per day for six weeks, you are going to get better at it. You flat out cannot help yourself. It's nature.

Used to start those sessions with a "free write" -- I would set an aphorism or a limerick or a definition or a contentious remark of some sort as a starter and say, "GO, just as hard as you can go, for ten minutes. Do not lift pen from paper. If you don't know what to write, write 'I don't know what to write' and repeat until something occurs to you."

There was some resistance to this gambit. Especially from young ladies of East Asian extraction, "No, no, Dr. Rambler, this is not correct, must first make careful outline of thoughts, then organize, then write..." Much minor-key moaning, or maybe keening, when I forbade them to write outlines in advance.

It's not a bad way to start to write a sermon either, I have found, since then. Stream of semi-consciousness, perhaps. At least, it gets the throat cleared. Or the mind snaked.

And this was a 10 minute free-write. I'll find a pic to head it up, and then sign off. See you tomorrow. Keep the faith. Try to behave yourselves.

2010-12-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

Just sitting down with Mr. Ballantine and some nice supper only slightly charred, in time to enjoy the final scenes of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the 1935 version. They showed it to us when I was in high school...I remember it being quite the SPARKLIEST thing I had ever seen. And I was a bit bemused at Hollywood figures doing Shakespeare, especially Mickey Rooney and Jimmy Cagney. (the other similar experience was the film of Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony... But now I have a little more appreciation of professional actors having a very good time with roles far from their usual range...

A pleasant day today, a stimulating meeting in the morning, lunch with Daughter Unit, and cheerful non-productivity from then on.

to and fro

2010-12-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

...across the city today.
Midweek Eucharist, with half a dozen women; then our Advent study; we are reading John Terpstra's "Two Couples, Four Voices." Last week, Joseph; this week, Mary. Next week, Elizabeth. Good strong coffee and nice apricot-date bread. Socializing from the Rectorial Dog, who is convivial by nature, but polite. He sits warmly on one's feet and rolls his eyes.

Then Fab-Rector and the Rambler tottered away for lunch. Italian, very splendid. We treated ourselves to extras thanks to a very generous soul who gave us a nice little Lunch Fund some time ago. The proprietor understands the art of making much of his clientele. We can stand quite a lot of this!

Home again...lots of work to do here in the house...did a little writing; and now time to chase some laundry, make a little supper, probably a large, crunchy, time-consuming SALAD after our big lunch.

Meetings tomorrow and lunch with the Daughter Unit.

Preaching Sunday. "Snakes," I say.

surprise...

2010-11-30T19:38:00.000-08:00

Good news! or gnus! (see above)

I am still alive...and meditating a return to bloggery. I have been many many many miles since the last post on this blog, and the effect of the cross-country to and fro reminds me of a jest of my youth.

For years my mother employed a wonderful Finnish woman as housekeeper. We learned that English as spoken by Finnish people has certain neat features...one was the tendency to drop an initial consonant (especially "T") preceding a liquid ("L" or "R"). Hence for our Aili, people who were moving about geographically were " 'ravelling"...

And I have been much 'ravelled in the last two months.

Isn't it odd that "ravel" and "unravel" mean exactly the same thing... Huh.

So to give you the gist -- in the last eight weeks I've flown to the west coast and back; I've driven into the heart of Central Canada, and back (8,000 kilometres roughly = 5,000 miles), and I've flown into Central Canada and back...

And thought, and thought, and thought...

More, anon.

It's good to be home.

by the shining big-sea-water

2010-10-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

After another good day's drive, PEACHY weather, really like summer...and despite having to move the clock ahead another hour, to Eastern Daylight...arrived before the sun went down. Since Tuesday I have traveled through Mountain Daylight, Central Standard (Rectilinear Province is funny that way), Central Daylight, Eastern Daylight...
Started out this morning with quite a good hotel-lobby breakfast (one of the options was waffles, no, real ones, batter in a dispenser and a big fancy waffle iron)...fruit and yogurt and coffee...briskly eastward with a mid-morning break for gas and a sandwich and a refill on the coffee; ate part of my sandwich in one stop and the rest late in the day by a very satisfactory kind of waterfall.
I also took heed of symptoms and stopped for a power-nap in the parking lot of a staggeringly ersatz "trading post", first making a tactful small purchase over the kind protests of the proprietor: "You don't have to buy anything! Honest! You can have a nap for free! Hey! We don't mind!"
And stopped at the excellent roadside sheep-farm and purveyor of all things woolly...always a feature of these cross-Canada drives.
Long theological Facebook chats with various friends.
Pleasant salad supper at a very old-fashioned diner just behind my motel.
It's philosophically interesting, travelling in this direction at this season, to be driving "into the dark" at the end of each day's stage. It's always been my fate, apparently, to live to the west of my work place -- sun in my eyes at both ends of the day, rising in the morning and setting in the evening. So in the evenings I've always been chasing the sun, chasing the light...but now I'm driving eastward, and the dark comes to meet me and my long shadow. A faint sensation of the end game, in all this.
It's a situation that makes the chain motel a very desirable destination. One thing you can say about the "Super Eight" -- it ain't shy. Unlike "Aunt Grannie's Lavender Hideaway Bide-a-wee B and B," it doesn't hide back among the big trees and the caragana hedges. No-sir-ee. Great big illuminated sign in primary colours, 25 feet high, "Come unto me all ye that are weary." And after dark in an unfamiliar town...that's a blessing too.

Progress!

2010-10-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

Back in the ever-lovin' pre-Cambrian Shield country.

A shorter drive today, an earlier start, and more stops to move around, stretch, assist circulation and digestion and so forth. Stopped partway along for a consultation with hostelry chain...and accomplished an internet reservation for tonight, in the upper left corner of Far Too Extensive Province...and lo! a nice room was all ready for me.
Feeling quite relaxed with a reservation in hand, I stopped for a proper good lunch, and then went to a major supermarket and bought nice fruit things for my cooler. The little 'bar' fridge seems to be standard hotel equipment these days...so I take advantage.
Excellent weather again. A simple route. Good road -- I made the choice to shift to the REALLY Big Road first thing this morning, or as soon as I could, thereby gaining the advantage of a divided highway.
Lots and lots of migratory geese, hundreds flying and thousands feeding in the stubble. Great happiness. And some little quail by the road down in Scenic Prairie River Valley.
Tomorrow, a shorter drive down to the Gitchi-goomi -- and a meet-up with Inner Dorothy, w00t!~!

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

2010-10-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hello possums,

In brief, made it all the way through the Neatly Rectilinear Province Next Door yesterday, or almost, despite failure to plan ahead, failure to get out of bed on time, etc., resulting in hitting the Big Road East at the crack of noon.

I should have stopped three hours before I did (obstinacy). Wound up in Former Bootleggers' Shangri-La, fully provided with chain hostelries but unfortunately overrun with JUNIOR HOCKEY PLAYERS, and the Rambler was so played out she was glad to get the VERY LAST HOTEL ROOM in town, smokers' room though it was.

Nothing in hotel worked. But bed was clean and firm, bathroom was clean, water was hot (despite air in pipes from plumbing work going on, meaning all taps spat at users when turned on, AAAAAHHHH.)

I drove too far and for too long. Mem to self: quit before dark. I knew the highway was changing direction from time to time, the old Evening Star kept swinging back and forth across the windshield, but celestial navigation was never my strong point, so when I arose this morning and opened the curtains my first thought was, 'WHAT THE HELL IS THE SUN DOING OVER THERE????' Embarrassing. I was 180 degrees turned around.

Rural prairie province not as pitch-dark as you might imagine. Lots of powerful lights. But a curious desolation attached to them; a light at night should indicate, "Here be folk" and these lights mostly said, "Here be nowt -- folk all gone home"...industrial and agri-industrial facilities under blazing security lamps.

And the prelude to darkness was wonderful. All day as I drove -- not one cloud, not so much as the bigness of a man's hand, from horizon to horizon. But the "middle air" was accumulating a great stock of chaff-dust -- YES! There's corn in Egypt yet! and they are a-combining of it! -- so when the sun went down these masses of dust went all pink against the blue and the whole thing was quite NACREOUS if that's the word I want, and I think it is.

And just after sundown, passed through an 80 km stretch of major migratory flyway with huge briny lakes about six inches deep, full of tastiness for ducks and geese. Saw a lot of happy duck-butts along the way. And lots of geese. Snow geese in great clouds. And this morning in the Qu-Appelle Valley, quail by the side of the road also.

Am now in the Very Flattest Province of Them All, still pressing eastward. Expect to enter the rocks'n'trees zone before bedtime tonight.

a quick update

2010-09-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

up early this morning for a tryst with the ironing board...getting clothes suitcase-ready and ME-ready, trying to scry the weather in two cities, two provinces over three days, with about four different occasions at four different levels of formality (including one that needs the big ol' vestment bag, sigh).

Life somewhat intensified by the prospect of a second session of travel starting very soon after the return to Tether's End...what can I get accomplished in the interval, what HAS to be done before I go away (the second time, by car). For example, schedule exchange of all-weather tires for snow tires; I'd rather listen to them whine unnecessarily than find myself in the midst of the Great Flatness wishing I had them.

On the inter-tubes this morning to find out about Advance Polls for the municipal election...one more thing to schedule in for next weekend.

Taking the national Road Atlas with me on the plane this morning for some more detailed planning of when, where, how far, how many days. Also Bible (preaching next Sunday), also book (for review, due day after return).

Deciding NOT to take excellent dog book by Monks of New Skete (property of public library). I distrust my capacity to travel with a book that is someone else's property, and get it home again safely.

Much taken with the dog-training ethos of the New Skete community. Trying not to list the human beings I know who would be all the better for a "quick leash pop" from time to time.

Feeling a bit daunted by all that I DO NOT KNOW about the dogly realm, as I contemplate becoming a dog-person. I get the two basic principles, that most dogs who distress their owners a) haven't figured out who the boss is and b) haven't had enough exercise. I think I can do the "boss" part (snickering offstage from offspring etc). But two walks a day -- AND PLAY? Dogs need PLAY? They're not talking about cribbage, either, are they? Backgammon? Beggar-my-neighbour? Nah, didn't think so.

...it feels really, really, foolish, but I'm not at all sure I know how to play with a dog...

Back to the ironing board.

respite

2010-09-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

We are getting another wee interval of sunshine and warmth today, after a severe frost last night -- ice on the windshield, ice on the grass and on the puddles at dawn this morning.

I had a cup of green tea last night at bedtime. Later I had some astonishing vivid although not unpleasant dreams. Temptation to assign cause and effect to that sequence, but I don't know.

As it was, got sufficient sleep, with one wakeful interval in which I sat up and read some more of the most recent TLS including a not-altogether-glowing review of Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind. "Pshaw," I say -- I like what she's saying and I enjoy the way she says it.

There is also a lengthy profile on Benedict XVI by Rupert Shortt, another writer I enjoy. I don't think it's altogether glowing either. But I'm saving if for later...thought I might doze off again midway through and I want to read it through at a sitting.

Interesting article on Jan Sibelius (review of a new biography) and the public status of the creative arts in Finland a hundred years ago.

What with one thing and another did not rise up with any exceptional alacrity this morning and getting out of the house became one of those "what can I safely omit doing" processes...finally decided that I must either eat my oatmeal a) in the bathtub (unwise) or b) in the car (doomed) or c) at my midmorning meeting. So I opted for c).

Then by way of the gas station and a fill-up, to the day's second meeting, good coffee and gingersnaps and good fraternization. Away again past the bank machine to check balances, to the discount bakery outlet, and home again in time to greet the piano tuner, who arrived shortly after the house-painter. They are friends but were not aware they were both engaged today in the upgrading of Tether's End. Joviality ensued.

Earlier in the week booked my brief trip to the Left Coast...trying to juggle family and friends and travel times...decided that I could take an awful lot of taxis for the cost of renting a car--so that's one less thing to worry about.

And the high energy moment of the week so far has been bundling registration material away to RevGalBlogPals Inc. for BE-4!!! Exhilarating!!!

Meantime there is earnest thumping and scraping outdoors, and earnest plinking and plunking indoors...happy sigh!

AAAAAHHHHHHHH

2010-09-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the Little-Girl Scream, there, but the Rambler is en route to the post office to send off her registration for BE 4!!!!!!!

You may now resume your normal activities.

commentary on the statu in quo...

2010-09-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

Found this, this week, in TLS in Hugo Williams' "Freelance" column.

The first half of your life you spend assembling loved objects for some imagined "This is it", but the "it" never arrives, because when you get there you feel more like getting rid of it. Is it because the old travel faster and have transferred their objects to memory, to lighten the load? Is it streamlining and simplification for a simpler age? Or could it be that we have started, in the gentlest way imaginable, to forget what these things were and what they once meant to us?

Books are the hardest things to get rid of because of their closedness and changeability. It isn't enough to hate a book for you to get rid of it: you might need it some time for that very reason.

That pretty well sums it up, I think...

An interesting weekend -- wisdom tooth got rowdy with me Saturday night, sleeplessness NOT a good foundation for preaching but church went well and the rush of preaching sidelined the face-ache and optical migraine and other petits maux pretty effectively.

M-the-Paint is here altering the colour--or rather, colours--of Tether's End, a happy end-of-summer project.

There will be SPORTS presently on television...ironing...and the book group meets this evening, we defy calendars.

Happy Labour Day all -- may you have the weather you need to do the things you want!

ahhhhh.

2010-08-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks have been a good time for the Rambler...it's a cliche, maybe, to talk about "healing," but I certainly do feel more able to function and with more energy than for quite some time.

The trip south of the Longest Undefended Border in the World (!) was a great source of joy.

I should backtrack here a little bit, perhaps. When I was first able to read, we spent a lot of time with my grandparents, who subscribed to a lot of American magazines (because that's what there WAS, children, is why). They were ideal reading for a curious child: "Life" with wonderful photographs, "Look," "Collier's," and of course "The Saturday Evening Post," with plenty of fiction in every issue, terrific cartoons, Norman Rockwell covers, and all.

I was aware that we lived in Canada, and that south of us there was another country called the United States -- we were close to the border, and now and then visited a great-aunt near Seattle. But most of my awareness came from American magazines. And over time I came to the deep conviction that although the bits around the edge might be a bit dodgy, if you got into the very middle part of the United States, you would find that THAT was where the "Good People" lived. It was a pretty untested assumption, but comforting nonetheless.

And then I grew up, or at least got older, and became more worldly-wise, and dismissed that youthful impression with derision.

But every now and then I get to travel into the "very middle part of the United States," and am forced to admit, every time, "By damn, I was right in the first place."

Setting aside for the moment the stellar hospitality of my hosts in the Cheesy Bit of the Very Middle Part -- folks, they even let me cut up the lefse for the ordination dinner, I was so honoured -- just the experience of travel ... from the efforts of all at Teeny Municipal Airport, ticket agents, security crew, jet-bridge attendants, flight attendants, who all but threw me bodily onto a flight for which I turned up so late it was embarrassing...to the total strangers I encountered on the people-movers in Enormous Hub of Air Travel...I was flabbergasted, people looked me in the eye and smiled and said "hello there!" Friends, it's downright Uncanadian Behaviour. But I think I like it.

More, another time.

HOME, HOME ON THE RANGE.....

2010-08-24T16:41:00.000-07:00

where the buffalo roam

Life in Prairie Province isn't hardly EVER dull.

Friday don't tell me what number

2010-08-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

aka, "A woman is gotta DREAM."

Please note total absence of rainfall in this photograph.

Awoke to the gentle trickling sound of rain this morning at 5:45...shortly seguing into gentle roaring sound of wet-dry vac in the basement. This is very boring, I am not going to blog about it any more.

Much to be done today before take-off tomorrow.

I spend too much time trying to sort out the task-chains...every thing that needs doing comes with a great PROBOSCIS of prerequisites aka "But FIRST, I oughta..." until the whole living project begins to look a lot like gridlock, and "teh urgent" once again drives out "teh important" not to mention "teh fun," and so forth and so on.

The weather forecast is "light rain." Light rain, my Left Behind. The sky to the west is the unappetizing colour of a wet wool work sock.

Back downstairs to the levees.

what, Thursday already???

2010-08-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

Oops, missed a day there somehow.

The heat of the last few days has abated. Heavy solid cloud cover this morning with rain in the offing. Suspense...waiting to see whether the minor stopgap measures I've taken will keep rainwater out of my basement.

What's on the board for today? (yogurt yogued, overnight, as hoped for, and has been "jarred up" -- I suppose an intelligent woman would set it in the oven IN the jar it's to be stored in, right? Ok, next time) (cold coffee concentrate is ready to be filtered off).

Unload dishwasher and re-load, I think there is enough lying about to fill it already (blitzed the Science Fair projects on the lower shelves of the fridge in time to get the whole sorry lot out to the curb -- garbage day)...

The laundry's all done and the ironing also...I could pack my bag for the weekend...

Some surface clearing in the kitchen wouldn't hurt, and maybe a bit of baking, as "heating up the house" isn't going to be a problem today.

I've begun sorting OUT my clothes...after years of "shove it in the closet and snatch it out again"...and have discovered a latent luxury that I'm now going to enjoy...I have enough nighties to enjoy a fresh clean one every single night. Wow.

In the sorting process, beginning to fill a bag with stuff I'll not wear again. I should probably tackle my bureau drawers too...I could do that on my lap while I watch television in the evenings.

Meantime I am reading through the two most recent issues of TLS, and the new Anglican Theological Review; there are limericks in the poetry section, and I approve. Interesting article on potential convergence between Episcopalian systematics and the "Emergent" phenomenon. Haven't gotten into the review section yet in any thorough way.

Also floundering about among the bedclothes are Levinas, Beyond the Verse, very tough reading, it would probably be more,um, LIMPID in the original French; and Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven.

Trying to coordinate some travel plans for what remains of the summer -- and I'd like SOME time on the road before I have to have snow tires restored to Harriet-the-Echo!

a quiet Tuesday

2010-08-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

Not a very accomplishing day. I think if I can put my laundry in order and commence my packing, and get the kitchen tidy enough before bedtime, I'll have done all I needed to do. Tomorrow is also a day.

I'm away next weekend -- a foray to Wisconsin for an ordination...from Prairie Metropolis such excursions ideally begin with the hop to Minneapolis. There WAS an alternate route this time...Seattle, Denver, Chicago...I don't think so!!

Soon after I was ordained I found an extra-long garment bag, which I've used ever since for vestments: first my alb, and after I'd worn it threadbare, cassock, surplice, etc. For about the last five years it has been "non-zippered" and held sketchily closed with an array of safety pins. I want to take my vestments as carry-on baggage on this run, and the safety-pin expedient just doesn't cut it, I think.

So the other night I dug out a nail file and a pair of pliers and went to work on the zipper and managed (fingers crossed) to get the slider first opened up and then closed up again, so as to control MOST of the zipper (the remainder I have sewn together solidly). Happy sigh of accomplishment.

Oh yes! also riding in the vestment bag this trip will be a lighweight washable chasuble; it was a handed-down ordination gift from a Clergy Widow who had originally made it for her husband. Among the happy memories of my first year of ordination are a number of attempts by Clergy Widows to get "THAT cupboard" empty at last--as a result I was very well outfitted, far better than I could have afforded on my own. And now the chasuble is going to another new ordinand...and in HER baggage, to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. A comfortable thought.

And I have emptied three bags of books. Perhaps one more, this evening, in the intervals of laundry, ironing, and dish-washing?

As inspiration, I have printed the Puppy-Face seen above and posted it on the fridge...to remind myself of WHY I need to put the house in fit condition to harbour a big ol'dog.

Hoping upon my return to open up lines of communication with the nearest breeders of Gordon Setters. Most of the kennels I've looked up specify that they don't even arrange a breeding until they know they have takers for the hypothetical pups. I'm willing to wait, I think the breed is the better for this scrupulosity. It seems a bit odd, I guess, to set my heart on a dog I've never actually seen in the flesh...all I know is what I've read, and what I've been told about the Gordon my grandfather owned long before I was born! I don't want a dog to breed, or to show -- or to hunt!!! -- just a companion... and I love the setter shape and size...not sure I have the strength of character to tolerate the ditziness of an Irish.

I have friends with very well-behaved dogs who are a perfect joy, and friends with dogs which are Hysterical Monsters, so I'm approaching this project with some trepidation...must find my book about the monks of Skete and plumb its depths I guess!

and away we go, again.

2010-08-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

{explanation of this image a bit later; bear with me, 'kay?)

I am now embarked upon my sixty-seventh year.

And perhaps I shall try to blog daily, for a while at least, as a discipline (which I sorely need).

Yesterday was a most marvellous birthday...in an introverted control-freak sort of style: a quiet morning at home with some computer time, a beautiful lunch out with the Daughter Unit, good conversation and a beautiful salad; some quiet contemplation of the backs of my eyelids during the afternoon; a light half-supper; a delightful gathering with the Wise Women of St. Curious to begin reading Ann & Barry Ulanov's Primary Speech together.

Home again, and a second half-supper (left over chicken and rice and Miscellaneous Sauce from Sunday evening)...some television, a snooze on the sofa, a few more hours' sleep properly in my bed -- and from 3 a.m. on, AWAKE. So: tea, and perhaps presently a little toast.

I am carrying about the recollection of several score birthday greetings on my favourite 'social utility' also -- and phone calls, and cards, and wonderful encouraging prezzies (including chocolate cake!!!)

And I am having a bit of a daydream. I like dogs -- well-behaved dogs. I haven't ever had a dog. I am now thinking a dog-shaped thought (assisted by Google). I am thinking about a Gordon Setter...(see pic above).

And now I am going to take my tea, and return to bed, and read some more Harvey Cox on Pentecostalism.

all right then...

2010-07-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

Trying here to rebuild a sensible life.

And how many hundred times have I begun this in 65 years? (almost 66)

Never mind. Now is now.

So: I have managed to say Morning Prayer (BCP) every morning (except Sunday) for 10 days. Second Samuel and First Corinthians. My word. That David was a piece of work, wasn't he? This morning, the fate of Ahitophel. Reminding me to go back and read Dryden again. If I can find him in the tohu-bohu downstairs.

Then a list for the day. Any old list, in any order.

And then, JUST DO THE THINGS ON THE LIST.

So far... I have had some breakfast and some home-latte, and cleaned out the vegetable bins of the fridge (OOG) and emptied the results into the compost bin, and then cleaned the fridge under where the bins sit (double OOG), and then it was no trouble to pry the kick plate off the bottom of the fridge and give it a good scrubbing, and so it goes;

Then I rescued a couple of peaches and put the kettle on and blanched them (and dealt with a brief mutiny on the part of the microwave, which doesn't always "answer the helm" as I'd like it to)...and managed to wrestle the skins off them and cut them off the pits....thumbs very uncooperative with this task despite extra-strength Tylenol. But now I have nice peach pieces in the fridge for the yogurt-granola parfait which will be either tonight's supper or tomorrow's breakfast.

Weather threatens to be stinking hot again today, so I retrieved three nice chicken breasts from the big box of frozen ones in the downstairs freezer...re-bagged the remaining contents and got that miserable awkward cardboard box out of the freezer. Gave the chicken pieces a preliminary thawing in the microwave (now docile again), and have them baking in the toaster oven -- being all green and energy efficient here folks!!! So then I'll have cold chicken "in hand" for the weekend.

Somewhere in there I made a bit of a meal plan for the next few days.

And fed the cat. Who has decided that she can eat Friskies Turkey'n'Giblets after all, just to please me.

And set out a jar of sun tea to brew. In the sun.

And looking at the not-improving yield of the vegetable bins, I decided I need to learn to make caponata. Thank you, Giada! so that's on the list for later today.

Oh yes, I cut up two large and incredibly convoluted red peppers into medium dice and put it all in the freezer...to bag later, will add colour and flavour to my dinner next winter!

Also on that list -- answer a couple of emails and then SHUT DOWN the laptop for the day; spend an hour on Sunday morning's sermon (leaning hard on Walter Brueggemann); strip and remake my bed and start the laundry for next week; clean the litter box; phone two friends; move an additional box of fabric and craft materials upstairs; start a cold-brew-coffee process (trying to complete it without getting coffee grounds in my ears!!!). Find a rational place for the new wet-dry vacuum and all its "giblets" too. Find a rational place for a bag of nice clean dusters/rags. Apply water and Miracle-Gro copiously to the exterior of Tether's End.

And possibly bike decorously up to the Public Library and read for a bit, in the A/C there...

And tomorrow is also, God willing, a day.

a bulletin...

2010-07-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

This will be brief, but I am easing back into regular blogging, I hope.

So this is a horticultural report. I DID go and invest in rose bushes...a "Cuthbert Grant," a "Hope for Humanity," an "Adelaide Hoodless," and a "Morden Fireglow" -- all of them RED. They are getting acclimatized and have made some lovely blooms but there is much about them I don't know...

Also flourishing -- a new rhubarb planting, next spring, OH BOY, I tell myself.

And I planted a small clematis, which sat perfectly immobile and unchanging for a month? six weeks? but is suddenly now putting out some new green shoots.

In the meantime the potentilla (pink!) has begun to bloom, somewhat diffidently (it is in a droughty corner of the yard).

And insdoors...a pothos and an oakleaf ivy hung up in the front window, doing well; four African violets, two finished blooming, one in bloom, one just coming on; a very small orphaned spider plant which just now seems to be really taking hold. But it won't require me to go and hunt out yet another macrame hanger for some time yet!

Also two ridiculously leggy geraniums...today may be the day I take a deep breath and pinch out all their tops and "start" them in water.

And the elderly amaryllis has come struggling up into view again (does this make it an EMERGENT amaryllis? no doubt)

And on the kitchen windowsill, a whole lot of basil that needs to be gently put into a more capacious planter -- I'm going to try to keep it over the winter as a houseplant.

Thistles and crabgrass all thriving too, alas. This yard still needs an awful lot of work. Some of which I hope to give it today.

Now I am going to go and roast a little beef chunk while the day is still cool and then I can have cold roast beef for sandwiches for a while. And I have sweet peppers to chop up for the freezer...and four nice really truly ripe avocadoes to make some guacamole.

And I've taken my meds and said morning prayer. Time for the 1/2 hour walk...

apologetically...

2010-07-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

...AND...I'm back. Not that I've been away, but just in a personally unbloggable place for too long.

We live in a weird world, as you have probably noticed. The Rambler had to go out in search of a Wet-Dry Vacuum Cleaner this afternoon (declaring a temporary truce with Major Dept. Store for the purpose)... and charging out of the store with the very large box in her arms ("it isn't heavy, it's just AWKWARD") was momentarily stopped in her tracks by a tasteful display of the very latest thing in small appliances...an electric Martini Maker. Yes. Sheesh. And where is this taking our society, other than -- as Peg Bracken said, to "Fat Wrists for all"?

It struck me particularly as not that long ago I had visited the same local Retail Apotheosis (known to some as "Le Grand Mal[l]") in search of passport photos (YES! The Rambler is about to tackle the Longest Undefended Border in the World, pause for laugh)...

And in the afterglow of passport photos and a splendid conversation with the charming elderly gentleman who took them, it seemed appropriate to do a bit of a mall-crawl for the first time in years.

A new kitchen-outlet called Benix, having an intriguing sale, and browsing about the shelves I found some truly excellent martini glasses -- NOT acrylic -- very plain except for a tasteful gold something on the stem -- a bead? a bump? a lump? Aha, "knop" is the word -- and generously sized. So we bought two, not knowing when we might want to share a nice medicinal martini with a fellow martinist (thank you, Garrison Keillor).

Brought them home...and confronted the complete lack of cocktail shaker. Hmmmm. Soooo... put four big ice cubes in a Ziploc bag and beat the snot out of them with the old steak hammer, rejoicing in being a tool-using hominid -- the opposable thumbs are mostly downright hostile but by golly the frontal lobes are still snapping and crackling....

Tipped the fragments into a lovely clean glass jar, formerly containing pasta sauce, added 3 oz. premium single-estate vodka and 1/4 oz. dry vermouth (Martini's very own), put the lid on, and shook the bejeepers out of the mixture--tipped it all into one of the nice new glasses, added three olives, AAAAhhhhhh.

Must now go downstairs and play some more with the new wet-dry vac. The saleslady was most helpful: "I could put this on a dolly for you if you like?"
"No, I'll be fine, it's not that far to my car."
"Oh good, and if you walk fast and look mad, people will get out of your way, right?"

And I have some major eavestrough-tending on the Immediate Agenda...at present all the water on the west half of the roof is funneled directly onto the front porch (of course), whence it cascades under the concrete front stoop where the soil has subsided, and hence down the foundation to the spot where it comes in, into the storage space under the stairs (house is a bi-level)...so one mops and mops in a crouching posture. And for a change, one can stand up and concuss oneself on the floor joists.

Never a dull moment.

a beautiful morning

2010-06-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

...and much too long since I've blogged.

Wrestling with a lot of stuff...changing roles, changing health, changing resources both internal and external.

Yesterday tho' was a good and active day; lively conversation over fruit/granola/yogurt breakfast with a senior colleague in ministry -- inspired to come home and find a granola recipe, I've got the yogurt on hand heaven knows.

Then an hour's leisurely stroll through the "Gallery district" peering through windows at paintings. I think it is time for me to buy a painting. A great big look-at-me painting for my livingroom. Possibly two of them.

Back in my car just as all the galleries and other retail outlets opened for the day's business, making it a very cheap outing!

Then home to check messages. E-conversation with Daughter Unit. Lunch appointment. Drive over and park behind St. Curious and then walk VERY BRISKLY for fifteen minutes to rendez-vous with DU for delicious lunch and more good conversation.

Back to St. Curious and check-in with Fab Rector...and then drive purposefully to appointment with Siggy. Good unpacking of the month's doings. It's a place to celebrate things like feeling at home, feeling recognized, feeling welcome, feeling valuable.

Out of my appointment and the brave decision to trek out to Major Nursery and Greenhouse in search of the Hardy Canadian Rose.

Not sure what word fits here...hejira? long march? death march? Every single route between point A and point B is confounded with major road construction...and it's 4 p.m. Friday afternoon so everybody in the greater metropolitan area wants to be somewhere other than where they are. Whee!

Arrived. Parked. Walked the displays of annuals, perennials, indoors plants. Found a map, got re-oriented, and found the roses. Oh. My.

Bought a fine specimen of "Hope for Humanity" with the assistance of a salesperson who was heart and soul into the project. I am going back with $$$ in hand to buy a SWACK of these sub-zero roses for my own yard, you betcha.

Dodged about like a snipe to avoid the worst of the fouled-up roads; home; put rose bush in a sheltered place.

Made a ham and avocado sandwich and a very long vodka/tonic and spiked the latter with homemade limoncello -- inhaled the whole menu and collapsed on the couch and slept like a dead thing.

And today is also a day! Beautiful sunshine and cloudless sky and just a little breeze. A genu-wine prairie-fine day.

Meantime the inner reflections go on -- gifts for ministry, leadership issues, the missional nature of the church, the authority of the text, the words, the language--languages--of Scripture, the transmissibility of faith. Or not.

2010-06-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

http://shearim.blogspot.com/2010/05/avivah-gottlieb-zornberg-on-megillath.html

with thanks to W who recommended this scholar as a favourite of mutual friend N (to whom thanks also) -- and thanks be to God for all concerned!

still here!

2010-06-04T08:54:00.001-07:00

One Pink Tulip!

No time -- but this appeared in my tulip bed this spring! more anon!!!

a poem

2010-05-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

This came to me in email from inward/outward: A project of the Church of the Saviour:

At Fifty-Seven
I feel like I stumbled
down a hill of years, only
to land in a pile of my books.

Along the way, I cracked
like a Russian doll; finding
something smaller and more
essential inside every version
I've known as me.

And now, when all I know
bursts into flame each time
I try to give it away, I'm asked
what matters.

There's something perfect
in how we're worn; like sculptures
left for Spirit and wind to finish, the
film taken from our eye just as
our heart is exposed, one
crumbling into the other.

--Mark Nepo.

And that's all I know about it -- although "At Sixty-Five" would also fit, as a title, from where I sit!

the Amnesty ad that the Financial times wouldn't publish.

2010-05-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

Please share this as widely as possible -- and a thank you to Good in Parts for the link!

Beyond Belief dep't.

2010-05-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

A lengthy Saturday. And the end of a lengthy week with more than its share of aggravations. But they came alongside great compensations, and we're all still here and kicking.

Prairie Metropolis had its early-May blizzard in Tuesday. Monday--rain, v. welcome in itself, but Monday night it turned chilly with strong NW winds and then a screaming snowstorm: heavy when I woke up, and got steadily more IGNORANT through the morning.

Fortunately Harriet-the-Echo was still wearing her snow tires...got out of my driveway all right after I cancelled the cross-town meeting scheduled for early morning, off to St. Curious to work on preparations for Big Deal Fundraising Banquet on Thursday.

Meantime, Distrait Neighbour still lurking in ancient family van in the backyard as mentioned in previous post.

But when I came home Tuesday late afternoon, there was a surplus of tire tracks in the deep driveway snow, and I thought, "Ah! he has taken his van and gone away, excellent."

Alas, too many tire tracks. He had taken van out, brought van back, and instead of returning it to its previous nice dry nesting place aligned with the driveway...he had driven it into the deep snow in the middle of the yard and gotten it most well and truly stuck...and in its stuck state, he was attempting to change one or more tires.

Over Wednesday and Thursday , to my increasing distress and dismay, he continued to try to extricate it. And of course, when you're stuck, the Preferred Method is just to tramp mindlessly on the gas, right? And go on flinging grass and mud from under your wheels until you've gotten right down into the root systems of the Nine Poplars (major feature of the backyard at Tether's End, aka "The Unpleasaunce"). And until you've run out of gas.

But in the meantime -- an unexpected visit to Prairie Metropolis by Brother #3...nice meals together and lots of good talk.

And in the meantime, increasingly happy preparations with Fab Rector for the fundraising banquet, much assisted by Amazin' Secketry who clustered and organized masses of Unbelievable Donated Tat into Exquisite Gift packages for the silent auction. Joyful grace note: disposal of six, count'em, six superfluous baskets out of the Rambler pantry as containers for Exquisite Gift packs.

And the dinner itself was delightful. Every aspect was exceptional, and early in the proceedings there was a kind of corporate "click," a "tipping moment," where you could just feel the whole group deciding "RIGHT! This is now officially a Good Time, let'er rip!!!" Great food, great company, great MC, super-great guest speaker.

And the pre-prandial martini didn't hurt either, yum. The Excellent Elderly Ladies of St. Curious rejoiced that their very favourite expert martinist was on duty at the bar that night. "There is something about a martini," as Ogden Nash wrote, "...and to tell you the truth, it's not the vermouth. I think that perhaps it's the gin."

So that it was not too troubling, coming home on Thursday night, to find large clots of loose mud in the driveway (snow had meantime pretty much melted)...and the van gone...and the fence stove in, the picnic table shattered, and one of the garbage cans flattened and its contents strewn far and wide.

Friday evening and this morning, was back at St. Curious working on the Compost Project. Much much joy -- a big group working, Excellent Elderly Ladies sitting in a row of lawn chairs unfolding and opening black plastic bags; all and sundry shovelling compost from the giant heap into the measuring bins and bagging the contents and wheelbarrowing the bags to and fro. There was coffee, there was baking, there were dogs, all the jokes were funny and the weather was fine...we even had customers!!!

Excellent Son Units and Wondrous Grandson came together this afternoon and did a good deal of raking and shovelling and power-washing flung mud off the fences and the back of the house. Grass-seed is #1 on Monday's list of to-do's.

And I've dug the first dig-up of my front flower bed, preparatory, eventually, to a massive sowing of poppy seeds.

And the Rambler's tulips are in glorious bloom...

And tomorrow is also a day.

updates

2010-05-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

far, far too long since I've blogged...

I'd feel worse i.e. guiltier if I weren't aware of a general slackening in blog-energy among many posting folks.

At the moment -- Monday again -- second load of laundry on the go, one more in the queue, big basket of clean things, some of them requiring ironing, to get through before bedtime.

I am awaiting a phone-back from a housing agency...I'm researching potential beneficiaries of next year's homelessness campaign by the Council of Churches here in Prairie Metropolis. As the committee meets in about 4 hours...well, my info will be FRESH at least.

I have taken all my pills for the day ("And behold, there was a rattling")...I have unloaded the dishwasher from last night and begun the re-load process.

I have given my sourdough starter a shot of sugar, may get something baked a little later...

I have put together a big bowlful of yogurt-ingredients and set them in a warm oven to get acquainted with each other; will check on them about dinner time to see if they've "yogued" as desired.

Meantime took the remainder of my store-boughten yogurt and made a Tupperware container of Wiggly Pink Dessert.

Emptied the carton of Oldest Eggs and hard-cooked them for further developments.

In preparation for the yogurt-making, went downstairs to the pantry and was ruthless with the top two foodshelves--in the process found canned milk and thereby avoided an unnecessary jaunt to the supermarket. Brought upstairs, also, cans of cut green and wax beans, kidney beans, chick peas, toward an eventual four-bean salad after the manner of Peg Bracken, UWBP.

Read the Daily Howl...gnashing teeth in an encouraged sort of way over picture-story of clerical colleague and his 45 lb. weight loss ("We hates him, my precious, we hates him").

Eliminated about 50 emails from the inbox, and twiddled about on Facebook to no great effect. Greeted a couple of REAL friends, electronically, on their birthdays.

Yesterday was full...preached and presided at St. Curious in the morning, both services, the Rector being on R & R in the Pointier Bits of the province; home by way of grocery store, made substantial lunch for self and #1 Son with open faced hamburger sandwiches and vegetable accompaniments.

Napped...awakened by loud and prolonged ringing of doorbell...Near Neighbour on the doorstep begging permission to sleep overnight in his family's (old, somewhat rusty) van, parked for convenience' sake in the backyard here at Tether's End. Near Neighbour's indulgences in recreational chemicals have broken off all relations with every member of his family including wife and grown daughters across the street. Befuddled with sleep and surprise, gave permission. Regretting it.

Away in the early evening in considerable perturbation of spirit, see above, for ordination of Promising Young Person whom I took on pre-ord retreat Wednesday-Friday...a pleasant, restful, candid, conversational time. Nice service, REAL hymns (as opposed to Vapid Mooings), a sufficient turnout (in some respects -- certain constituencies need a collective head-slapping, but what else is new?)...excellent sermon by the Brand-New Dean, to everyone's enjoyment...and pleasant conversations following, until the Cathedral Verger turned the lights out on us in a marked manner at 10 p.m. As he was amply entitled to do.

Enjoyed watching --and hearing-- Daughter Unit and Wonder SIL and their accomplices augmenting the cathedral choir during the service, and relished the opportunity to admire DU's New Frock afterward -- said garment registering about 73.5 Hepburns on the Classic Fashion Scale. (Audrey, i.e.)

Slept fitfully ... woke early and piled up pillows and completed the crossword of the day in my NY Times Crossword Calendar (Mondays are easiest)...and then, feeling encouraged, finished off the TLS Shakespeare Acrostic. I had forgotten how much fun they are to do.

Time to go bash upon the laundry some more, turn on the shredder, generally fill-in the phone-call-expecting time as productively as possible!

here we go

2010-04-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

I seemed to recall at some point this weekend that in the civilized i.e. pre-ordination world, Monday = Laundry. So I am prepared to implement that ancient ritual today and see what comes of it. Still chilly out...but sunny for a change.

Consulted the Social Utility this morning and was instantly contacted by young lady whose Mom has been co-ordinator of the Marriage Preparation programme at MH & U for 5+ years (and elsewhere for longer than that). Mom is a social worker who spends part of each year on contract work in the Arctic, where she is now. Yesterday she went skiing. She fell. She broke her hip. Marriage Prep is scheduled for this coming weekend...and the coordinator is trapped in...somewhere...in the former Northwest Territories... don't ask me whether it's "Nunavut" or "The-rest-avut" for I have never known which was which. Anyhow, she is one hell of a long way UP on your map of North America.

Actually she is to be medevac'ed to Our Nation's Capital today for surgery tonight...but in the meantime she is frantic through a fog of pain meds about this weekend's programme and the arrangements that remained to be made. Cuz she ain't gonna be there, friends.

Her daughter, TBTG, is in nursing studies in eastern Canada a short air-hop from her Mom's destination and can be there today to advise, comfort, and advocate.

So I have phoned Former Fab Curate (still Fab, but no longer my curate), and disrupted his day off, and named myself available to help next weekend IF and as needed...and now I am leaving him to it. Wonder Secketry at MH & U is the world's genuine expert on how these weekend deals run, so when she comes back to the office tomorrow I have every confidence in their combined ability to make it all happen.

Wonderful, wonderful ecumenical gathering on Saturday evening to hear Fr. Tom Ryan talk about the special gifts/charisms of four streams of Christian experience: Protestant, Anglican, Eastern, and Roman Catholic. I realized that few things -- still -- can make me happier than taking pages and pages of notes while somebody else talks good sense. I was tempted, a bit, to go home and completely re-cast the Thomas sermon, but instead I came home and went to bed...

And yesterday, I think, rocked. And then I came home and had a solid proper 2 hour nap in my bed, and got up and cooked a most excellent supper for self and #1 son, diminishing a number of the bulkier vegetable items in the fridge...and was even fired up enough to complete the kitchen clean-up before heading for bed!

Another ecumenical committee meeting this afternoon...and meantime the washer and the ironing board are "calling me..."

Thomas et al.

2010-04-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

(who's this "Al" character, anyhow?)

Ok this is the GIST of tomorrow's sermon. Or maybe the PITH. Preaching seems to consist mainly of GISTS and PITHS...some of mine are pithier than others. Sometimes they are so pithy, I could jutht thpit (OK, that's not original).

Here is Misnamed Thomas again, waiting for us to notice that he IS named in Scripture, and he isn't called Doubting, he's called Didymus -- Twin Thomas. And coyly, Sceripture doesn't tell us who his twin was/is. We hear all about Simon Cyrene's kinfolks, but not Thomas's double. And you thought this was an accident?

Thomas is not in the group when the group is visited by Jesus; why not? He was too sad? he was too distraught? his kid had hockey practice? No. Thomas was not there because the group needed him to encounter Jesus in their midst in a different way which would enrich, deepen, validate, GROUND their encounter with the Risen One. The story requires somebody to be out of step with the rest.
This isn't the first time Thomas has been wrong-footed -- not to forget he was the one of the whole bunch that got on board with the outrage of Jesus' explanation of what was going to happen at Passover. "OK, then, if he's going to get killed, let's all go get killed while we're at it." Not the words of a doubter. Not a skeptic.

Because Thomas is not a skeptic -- he's like Umberto Eco, who in dialogue with Carlo Cardinal Martini, douce man that he was, defended himself: "I am NOT a skeptic, Your Eminence -- I am merely NOT CREDULOUS." (cuz credulity ain't faith, right?)

I could digress here about 15 minutes' worth on how Thomas just keeps his screen door hooked, and then I would quote THIS in its entirety...

Easter Morning
William Stafford

Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
"Repent," and you say, "Come on in," and it's
Jesus. That's when all you ever did, or said,
or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
sings out, "I'm still here," and you know it's true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing
there suddenly brought to account: saved.

Except, maybe that someone says, "I've got a deal
for you." And you listen, because that's how
you're trained---they told you, "Always hear both sides."
So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
Hell, which is what you're getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I'd say always go to
the door, yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
and say carefully, "Jesus?"

But I probably won't.

The point is that the group needs the challenge of that wonderful moment when out-of-step Thomas says, "My Lord and my God" -- they still had the initial clutch-and-grab oh-good-he's-back reaction -- they weren't going to move off that place of comfort without Thomas's near-blasphemous blurt.

But then there's another piece of the story -- and I don't for one minute think that Jesus was "dissing" Thomas. The story is told to reassure people who were not part of the Old Original Galilean Veteran Marching and Chowder Society, and could never have been. Because we plant our foot as a faithful people on the reality, the factuality, of an event in time, but we have to avoid getting ourselves boxed into "back in the day," "you had to be there" thinking. So Jesus speaks reassurance to those who will not see and yet will believe. That would be US, my dear brothers and sisters. We haven't missed anything essential, by being "born out of time."

That's our comfort. But there's never comfort without challenge; and the challenge comes in asking "HOW" those who have not seen are blessed? They must be blessed by the witness of those who have encountered the Risen One. And this is where the rest of the disciples are, by implication, smacked on the head. Because their witness is not effective -- they don't say, "Jesus is Risen!" No, they say, "WE have seen the Lord!" and no wonder Thomas says, in effect, "Well, big whoop for you." Their witness has not yet made room for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which they received so casually on Jesus' first visit (reference here to the explanation by Peter in the Acts passage, that the Spirit herself is witness to the resurrection in and through those who are proclaiming it -- even the original generation who "saw it with their own eyes."

And that is our challenge -- so to receive the power of the Holy Spirit that our own witness will be effectual blessing to our neighbours.

I think that's all. Obviously I've got to peel it back a good deal.

I love Thomas, can you tell? He's right up there with Jonah among My Favourite Gnarly Friends of God.

Oh yes -- the "other" twin? I have a strong suspicion that Thomas is twin to each of us...

Friday, again

2010-04-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

My question now is whether anything got done today...I have at least filled the waste-basket to overflowing and that has to mean progress. I can see the top of my desk, and the top tray of my in-basket. I have eaten a quantity of raw veggies by way of lunch, or whatever it was. And I have put together a great big pot of chili con carne, and eaten a bowl of it for my supper (and it was good).

There is a small stack of envelopes here to go to the post office tonight or tomorrow... and another stack of letters to answer and envelopes to address before I turn in. I've written a cheque for the insurance on the house.

The snow has just about disappeared again, but the wind hasn't much abated -- it's still buffeting the house and the trees in the back yard. We were supposed to have a sunny day but that didn't materialize, and the temperature isn't much above freezing even yet; I don't think the snow melted, I think it just sublimated for the most part.

I have to finish cleaning up in the kitchen, and empty the laundry basket... and there are some things I should be bagging up for garbage collection on Monday.

and preaching Thomas on Sunday...the comfort and challenge for us in that story.

I think I'll have a look at the Friday Five in the morning, perhaps.

latenight bulletin

2010-04-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

At present... we are having quite a violent snowstorm, very squally with winds up to 90 kph out of the west and northwest. The snow is coming in just about horizontal, although it's "almost rain." Major highways south of Prairie Metropolis have been closed by the police for the time being. The moisture will be welcome...especially for the "urban forest" -- our municipal trees are facing a critical summer after a series of very dry ones. I am thinking about getting some plastic buckets (I know! I should eat more ice cream!) to ease the transfer of household "grey water" outside to the trees and other parts of the Unpleasaunce here at Tether's End. But that is not going to need doing today or tomorrow either.

I had a long conversation this afternoon with a young theologian...gratifying in the first instance because we managed between us to carry out the tacit negotiations necessary to arrive at the same coffee shop at the same hour...after a minor "failure to communicate." And in the meantime as I was waiting for him, I had the pleasure of a conversation with Daughter Unit's Fave Fab professor-couple from her university days.

What else got accomplished today? Not very much. Tomorrow, tomorrow. There is a sermon in the offing...and paperwork to do...and before I go to bed, I must remember to write a cheque and put it in the mailbox for the milkman. Yes! I may have the last remaining door-delivery milkaman in the world.

Number 1 Son Unit has come in, found something to eat, and gone off to bed. I should finish loading the dishwasher and start it when I turn in... There should be some laundry done tomorrow...and perhaps it's time to warm up the shredder again...and tackle the paper mountain.

Time to take my Tylenol and do these last few pre-bedtime chores. Good night all.

miduum of the triduum...

2010-04-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

Taking a short break this afternoon for a nice grilled cheese sandwich with bread and butter pickles (internal to the sandwich, mmmm) ... a homemade latte ... a little desultory television...and then time to get changed and saddle up and go do a communion visit. Back to St. Curious in time for the Vigil tonight at 8...assisted by three other parishes, so the Rambler gets to ride the bench unless one of the visiting clergy sprains something vital.
It's been a good Holy Week at St. Curious -- Palm Sunday went beautifully including some slightly impromptu processing by children and choir, happy distribution of home-made palm branches (hooray for newsprint): then daily Eucharists Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; a students' supper Maundy Thursday followed by a mighty footwashing (on a scale hitherto unknown in those parts); children doing a fine and happy activity on Good Friday during the Good Friday devotions -- with a very good turn-out, mightily cheering to one and all.
A lovely interlude on Friday evening -- local small chorus has established the tradition of a "sacred concert" on Good Friday in the Fancy Schmancy Downtown Concert Hall; and this year their choice was the Brahms Deutsches Requiem; 30 some select voices and piano accompaniment. There was a good crowd including a significant number of local clergy--it is such a treat late on Good Friday to participate in something beautiful and reverent without having to DRIVE it!
And this morning an innovation, an Easter Egg hunt on the church grounds for children of the community, and thanks be to God there was no snow to contend with...contrary to ALL expectations (head-shaking, tooth-sucking expectations), there were at least 20 children in attendance and a whooping good time was had by all.
Just to ensure that the laughter never stops... Fab Rector at St. Curious was up early this morning and let out her Faithful Dog, who went out like the valiant creature he is and promptly found a skunk. They did not part friends. So on her schedule today also is the de-stinking of her mephitic hound (also self, house, clothing, etc. etc.).

Nobody has as much fun as we do, nobody.

And there were swans this morning, flying over the river...
Happy Easter, alleluia.

Tuesday again

2010-03-30T06:23:00.001-07:00

The Rambler spent a good part of yesterday and most of an SOS pad cleaning the rings'n'pans on the top of her stove. They tell me there are such things out there as smooth-top electric ranges, but we don't put no trust in setch notions in these parts.

And then, this morning, inspired by the wonderfulness of it all, got up early and commenced upon Sourdough Buttermilk Biscuits. Yes, I started a new 'starter' last week. Yeast had been in the fridge -- date on jar of yeast, "Jan 2008" but nonetheless it came up out of the flour and water just roaring and bubbling so ON WE GO. Out of buttermilk, but have the 'heel' of the last making of plain yogurt in the fridge, which substitutes just fine.

I can tell you it has been a long time since flour was the predominant note in the chaos that is the Rambler's kitchen.

First crisis -- WHERE is my pastry cutter??? Irony here is that kitchen clean-up since retirement disclosed that there were TWO pastry cutters floating about in the batterie de cuisine. Two. Now I ask you, expecting no answer, WHO in her right mind would have TWO pastry cutters? Disposed of one to Daughter Unit. And WHERE did I put the other one???

But it turned up after only minimal excavation and we moved right along to...

Second crisis -- the removal of about 25 pounds of mixed foodstuffs from the Sacred Place on the kitchen counter devoted to Rolling Stuff Out.

The previous inhabitants of Tether's End, here, had a series of nannies/au pairs, one of whom set a hot saucepan down on the countertop and burnt a big hole in the Arborite. So they replaced the damaged section with a Corningware SLAB...not only is it heat proof, but being non-porous and perpetually cool it is like a pastry marble that doesn't have to be moved, put away, hauled about, etc.

The rolling pin was not as hard to find as the pastry cutter had been.

And there are not-quite-a-dozen nice biscuits cooling on a rack. There were a dozen. Soon after they came out of the oven, #1 Son Unit came wafting up the stairs from his bedroom...

I have heated milk in my Enormous Black cup, and spiked it with freshmade stove-top espresso, and am about ready to contemplate the day.

Celebrated at St. Curious last night with one young lady and one elderly lady and great happiness. Shared with them Prudentius' Hymnus ad Galli Cantum. And now I'll share it with you.

Awake! the shining day is born!
The herald cock proclaims the morn:
And Christ, the soul's Awakener, cries,
Bidding us back to life arise.

Away the sluggard's bed! away
The slumber of the soul's decay!
Ye chaste and just and temperate,
Watch! I am standing at the gate.

After the sun hath risen red
'Tis late for men to scorn their bed,
Unless a portion of the night
They seize for labours of the light.

Mark ye, what time the dawn draws nigh,
How 'neath the eaves the swallows cry?
Know that by true similitude
Their notes our Judge's voice prelude.

When hid by shades of dark malign
On beds of softness we recline,
They call us forth with music clear
Warning us that the day is near.

When breezes bright of orient morn
With rosy hues the heavens adorn,
They cheer with hope of gladdening light
The hearts that spend in toil their might.

Though sleep be but a passing guest
'Tis type of death's perpetual rest:
Our sins are as a ghastly night,
And seal with slumbers deep our sight.

But from the wide roof of the sky
Christ's voice peals forth with urgent cry,
Calling our sleep-bound hearts to rise
And greet the dawn with wakeful eyes.

He bids us fear lest sensual ease
Unto life's end the spirit seize
And in the tomb of shame us bind,
Till we are to the true light blind.

'Tis said that baleful spirits roam
Abroad beneath the dark's vast dome;
But, when the cock crows, take their flight
Sudden dispersed in sore affright.

For the foul votaries of the night
Abhor the coming of the light,
And shamed before salvation's grace
The hosts of darkness hide their face.

They know the cock doth prophesy
Of Hope's long-promised morning sky,
When comes the Majesty Divine
Upon awakened worlds to shine.

The Lord to Peter once foretold
What meaning that shrill strain should hold,
How he before cock-crow would lie
And thrice his Master dear deny.

For 'tis a law that sin is done
Before the herald of the sun
To humankind the dawn proclaims
And with his cry the sinner shames.

Then wept he bitter tears aghast
That from his lips the words had passed,
Though guileless he his soul possessed
And faith still reigned within his breast.

Nor ever reckless word he said
Thereafter, by his tongue betrayed,
But at the cock's familiar cry
Humbled he turned from vanity.

Therefore it is we hold to-day
That, as the world in stillness lay,
What hour the cock doth greet the skies,
Christ from deep Hades did arise.

Lo! then the bands of death were burst,
Shattered the sway of hell accurst:
Then did the Day's superior might
Swiftly dispel the hosts of Night.

Now let base deeds to silence fall,
Black thoughts be stilled beyond recall:
Now let sin's opiate spell retire
To that deep sleep it doth inspire.

For all the hours that still remain
Until the dark his goal attain,
Alert for duty's stern command
Let every soul a sentry stand.

With sober prayer on Jesus call;
Let tears with our strong crying fall;
Sleep cannot on the pure soul steal
That supplicates with fervent zeal.

Too long did dull oblivion cloud
Our motions and our senses shroud:
Lulled by her numbing touch, we stray
In dreamland's ineffectual way.

Bound by the dazzling world's soft chain
'Tis false and fleeting gauds we gain,
Like those who in deep slumbers lie:--
Let us awake! the truth is nigh.

Gold, honours, pleasure, wealth and ease,
And all the joys that mortals please,
Joys with a fatal glamour fraught--
When morning comes, lo! all are nought.

But thou, O Christ, put sleep to flight
And break the iron bands of night,
Free us from burden of past sin
And shed Thy morning rays within.

In re: Ann Coulter, et al.

2010-03-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.

About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

-- W. H. Auden, "August, 1968" City Without Walls

MONDAY

2010-03-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

What have I done today so far?

I got up, I got my bath, I got dressed, I had a homemade latte and two pieces of toast, I took all my meds, I emptied and rationalized the contents of the messy plastic shopping bag full of miscellaneous plastic containers and lids, also recycled plastic bags (all good) -- moved some stuff into the box that will go to the foodbank later this week.
Unloaded the dishwasher and began to reload it.
Fed the cat. Watered and fertilized all the houseplants. (Moving steadily down the great chain of being here!). Worked a couple of crosswords in my calendar pad, and the sudoku in the newspaper. Read or skimmed most of the newspaper.
I assembled a sourdough starter to share with a friend (periodically I go out to the kitchen and beat it back into submission...)
I eliminated 40 emails in the inbox and emptied the deleted messages file.
Went out to the car and retrieved my bookbag, containing daytimer, just to verify I really didn't need to get out of bed in the first place today! Seemed a bit... circular!
I cooked some zucchini in olive oil and warmed up some of last night's chicken Veronique and couscous, for my lunch...nice!

What's yet on schedule...finish reading Take this Bread, which I'm REALLY enjoying, and reflect on it for a bit.
Re-read Christ on Trial and make some notes for the last class meeting tomorrow night.
Take Barchester Towers back to the library.
Drop by Superstore or some other emporium and purchase some towels for the Pedilavium next week.
All small stuff -- in order to avoid the Great Horrible Task of sorting out books, papers, files...

Reflecting a bit on the post-clergy role. Listening to colleagues at a clergy gathering last week... we were given -- yet again -- the Five Marks of Mission, and invited to list the ways we embodied them not just in our parish, but in our "life." I know that at least two of the clergy tables, the overpowering conclusion was that we HAVE NO LIFE apart from our parishes..."Life? Who he?" And that's not right. Not at all.
I'm enjoying LIVING in my house, for a start...not just treating it as the culvert I crawl into between bouts of work...

another day.

2010-03-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

Nothing accelerates housecleaning like the imminent prospect of house-guests, I think.

Brother Unit arrives tomorrow evening, and all, but ALL, tomorrow morning is taken up with a para-academic meeting--a bit difficult at this point to believe it will be worth the time it will take, but there it is.

So it's going to be an intense weekend...as I'm preaching and presiding at St. Curious on Sunday, with a parish lunch group scheduled for the noon time -- and have already arranged with Offspring to blitz the remaining belongings still back at MH & U on Sunday afternoon, with their help and temporary use of a suitable TRUCK. I hope that a couple of hours will allow us to vanish permanently into the middle distance, leaving not a wrack behind or at least, if we do leave a wrack behind, it will be a wrack belonging to MH & U, not belonging to me. I also have -- hurray -- a nice little cache of gift cards for Adjacent Steakhouse so am prepared to feed the office movers sumptuously Saturday evening...

Today is cleaning day and sermon day. Last load of laundry is in the washer. Have moved nearly all the bags and boxes of books off the entrance landing and stairs.

Part of the housework project at this point is dealing with the semi-perpetual Miserable Nuisances that have never been just quite nuisance enough to be dealt with yet. So this morning I found a tube of appropriately Savage Glue, and re-attached the magnet latch to the medicine cabinet door, clamped it with a clothespin until the glue dried, and voila, the medicine cabinet door now actually CLOSES. Civilization! wonderful!

Still on the list, serious application of vacuum cleaner to the premises and some mopping of hard floors. Bathroom and kitchen need intense cleaning too... and there should be a trip to the recycle depot.

I have added three elderly bowlfuls of pot-pourri to the compost bin, and am washing the bowls. (Pause to lie down and have the vapours...) It's been a considerable time since there was any "sniff" in any of them. (Note that the Rambler is now open to receive new consignments of roses for the concoction of new pot-pourri, sigh).

Got the bills paid and the car washed earlier in the week...led the third section of the evening course I'm doing on the Passion Gospels. Buoyed by a re-reading of Isaiah 55 from Sunday's lectionary, the group seemed a little more persuaded by the analogy between lectio divina and the eating of rich things like chocolate.

And for my bedtime reading I am midway through Finding Beauty in a Broken World, by Terry Tempest Williams...the making of mosaics, prairie dogs in Bryce Canyon, and now, ossuaries in Rwanda...

Back to finding a little beauty in my excessively messy world!

Saturday all day!!!

2010-03-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

Another brilliant day and mild enough that it may be safe, later on, to run Harriet-the-Echo through some lucky carwash somewhere... she is filthy all the way to the roof.

I am making a running start on the cleaning bee scheduled for this afternoon by gutting my kitchen drawers. So far, done the two little ones. The principle here is to remove the artefacts which are merely ARCHIVAL...as well as the long since completely useless.

For example -- do I NEED to store my bulky, awkward, used-annually-if-that jar-lifting tongs in the small drawer with the spoons, ladles, etc. that I grope for when I'm actually working at the stove? Answer comes, not at all.
On the other hand I have not relinquished the thought of doing something more in the pickles'n'jam department, one of these summers.
Hence~! tongs go downstairs and are stored out of harm's way in the big canning kettle, with the appropriate jar racks, spare lids'n'rings, etc.

By the way -- here's a linguistic question for you -- what do YOU call the flat-bladed tools that you use to lift and turn food that you are frying -- eggs, pancakes, hamburgers? (see picture above) Are they "lifters"? "turners"? "spatulas"? (I think there are geographic markers in the vocabulary here but I'm not sure!)

Part of the clean-up energy is also the fruit of purchasing a FOOD PROCESSOR yesterday (at an advantageous price, about 1/3 off)...and re-thinking pantry storage for appliances and serving pieces...still somewhat traumatized by the New Year's Eve stand-off with the elderly blender, doing its Danny Glover imitation, "I AM TOO OLD for CHICKPEAS"...it is silly to think I paid $90 for a tool to make hummus with...but every time I watch a cooking show, it seems that at some critically interesting and inspiring juncture, whirr whirr, a food processor is totally necessary.

Meantime Nefertiti-the-cat is having a heyday with the shopping bag I'm hoping to use to deposit relegated kitchen tools on the doorstep of Nameless Parish That Has Rummage Sales. Also having a heyday with the nice fat sparkling-wine corks I am removing from storage. Her mega-fun of the morning was trying to pursue a thrown cork without emerging from her shopping-bag cave...better than the circus, this one.

While I am in this Tomb Raider mood, I'll try to tackle the (shudder) drawer under the stove as well...

and presently I shall have a lovely read of Monk Habits for Everyday People in preparation for a session with university students tomorrow evening, on the virtue of STABILITY. "Stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you all you need to know. And while you're waiting, clean out a few drawers, eh?"

closing ceremonies

2010-02-28T18:32:00.000-08:00

Watching -- entranced -- the Russian presentation, some of it in Vancouver and much of it in many other places, all brought into one experience for the audience by technical means I can't even guess at.

Despite my inherent and ineradicable non-sportiveness... I have loved watching these Olympics... I have enjoyed the "human interest" stories, the courage of the Canadian figure skater whose mother died suddenly the day before her daughter performed; the courage of the Slovenian cross-country skier who slid off the piste into a 10-foot ditch, broke four ribs, collapsed a lung, and still won bronze (as did the figure skater). I have revelled shamelessly in the Canadian victories. I want to holler and blow horns, make loud vulgar triumphant noises in celebration.

I have taken great joy in watching the Canadian athletes and artists with their gold medals, singing the National Anthem. Not well, perhaps, not loudly, but by the Lord Harry when the national anthem is played, WE SING.

I loved watching the Mounties tromping to and fro in their iconic uniforms -- I love the women officers' little regulation hair-dos...

We had a minimum of truly annoying commentators on the Canadian Olympic broadcasts.

And we even saw some brilliant, amusing, touching, durable commercials...the Tim Horton's ad with the immigrant family arriving at the airport in winter; the Superstore ad about nourishing the athletes; the Chevrolet ads with the vehicles talking over their perspective on the games; the Royal Bank ads with the little bowler-hatted banker participating in all sorts of unlikely sports, in the great tradition of the deadpan clown.

Regrets? probably only that Canada 2 did not medal in the four-man bobsled. And perhaps that we have to be subjected to speeches in French by people who don't speak the language.

A very long day for the Rambler -- preached on the hen-and-chickens gospel at St. Curious at both services this morning, with Fab Bishop visiting and former Rector departing, potentially a very fraught occasion; then a reception, and then mid-afternoon a splendid 19th century Romantic piano concert, a parish fundraiser, in complete conflict with the men's hockey final...the turn-out was encouraging despite the external distractions... Some pretty swift updates via PDA at the Intermission, mind you!

I don't think bedtime will be long delayed tonight.

Friday Five, Winter Olympics Edition

2010-02-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

1) Which of the Winter Olympic sports is your favorite to watch?

I enjoy watching almost anything in which I don't have an emotional stake in who wins...until after it is over...because I'm convinced I jinx figure skaters, hockey teams, etc. I like watching curling, see below, because at least in curling nobody is likely to sustain a life-threatening injury, unless of course Rink Rage takes over and the curlers start lobbing the curling rocks at each other overhand... It does seem though that most of the winter sports have as a prerequisite the desire to fling oneself headfirst into the abyss... that said, I get a huge kick out of ski jumping, where at least, mostly, they stay right way up...or intend to. I have a personal though small stake in four-man bobsled this time around as I actually taught one of the team drivers, everything he knows. About Jane Austen. It wasn't a great deal; even then he was booking weeks off to hurtle downhill in various exotic venues...

2) Some of the uniforms have attracted attention this year, such as the US Snowboarders' pseudo-flannel shirts and the Norwegian Curling team's -- ahem -- pants.

Who do you think had the best-looking uniforms?

I liked both those uniforms actually...but there were some that were truly quite beautiful -- was it the Koreans that had the beautiful snowflakes on their jackets in the opening ceremonies? Not too impressed about the "Bermuda" shorts, I must admit. And those toques generally are kind of disfiguring...the various devices for lessening drag were interesting especially in speed-skating. Then there are the figure-skating costumes, and that's "a-whole-nother story" as we say.

3) And Curling. Really? What's up with that?

TAKE NOTE RIGHT NOW, I will take no guff from anybody about the sport of curling. NONE. Especially not from any citizens whose national butts are about to be kicked by the Canucks. I mean really... this is lawn-bowling/boccie/petanque on ice. What could be more reasonable? And how can you not enjoy a sport in which respectable middle-aged ladies, on all fours, on ice, scream, HARDER HARDER HARDER YES YES YES???

4) Define Nordic Combined. Don't look it up. Take a guess if you must.

Ok, it's skiing. My guess is downhill and slalom; I don't know whether cross-country is included. Maybe jumping as well. What the heck.

(There will be a prize for the best answer, but be aware, this is a judged sport.)

5) If you could be a Winter Olympics Champion just by wishing for it, which sport would you choose for winning your Gold Medal?

oh heavens...not crazy about snow, ice, cold, or leaping into the void in any sense... but probably one of the forms of skiing.