"Goin' on a TRIP"

The #1 granddaughter is getting equipped for her new status as a Conscious Traveller later this summer.  You see her above, getting into the skin of the role.  I hope travel is as much fun for her as it has been for her Grandma.

Just home yesterday in the small hours from a cross-country jaunt to a major ecumenical conversation.  A new venue that I hadn't visited before, a style of hospitality I already knew very well.  And we had a very fine time altogether.

I have a suspicion that when the time finally comes for Shady Pines, I am going to have a very fine time there also.  Ecclesial gatherings often mean we are assigned rather small, spartan, sparsely-furnished rooms for our sleeping and ablutions -- and invariably I am as happy as a clam therein.  Maybe because a dorm-room was the first space I  thought of as MINE?  who knows.  But it's quite funny, I think.

This was an especially challenging jaunt in some ways because of various symptoms that appeared about 24 hours before departure...despite the lapse of 64 years since the chicken-pox, and the Zoster vaccine a couple of years ago -- SHINGLES.  So the day of departure along with a haircut and a midday church meeting I found myself speed-dating both my own physician and an optometrist (shingles being particularly bothersome around one EYE, where complications can be serious).  

And then picked up a prescription for formidable big blue pills, finished packing, hired the little boy next door as cat-feeder,and off down the highway to the airport. 

The plane was full and I had a centre-seat, between two genial types returning home to Newfoundland, so conversation was very brisk until they worked out "who they were" with reference to each other, and just exactly how crazy HE had been over HER youngest aunt, and like that.  Then they went to sleep, and I tried to, and by about 2 a.m. I was thinking if someone would just open a door maybe I would try walking home--but the cabin attendant brought me some water and I got my little air-blower turned on cool, and managed a little bit of shuteye with some comfort...

Then a limo to the conference centre, and a rendez-vous with a friend of fifty years' standing, and breakfast, and a bit of a nap, and we were into our ecumenical deliberations.  Part of the work at this session was making videos of each of us reading our essays on very basic questions.  Challenging!  I hadn't worked with a teleprompter before -- and of course this was scheduled on the day that the shingles were most conspicuously LEPROUS.  But I had a little sit-down with myself on the topic of Vanity~~and the lovely young woman directing our videos was equipped with face powder and a big brush~~so that went off all right too.

A very special group of people -- theology nerds, to start with, but there are also aspects of "book club," and "writing group" and heaps of benevolentia mutua animorum as the poet Petrarch called it.

The shingles are (is?) improving.  Feeling quite pleased with myself that I thought of taking my good old-fashioned icebag with me--our hosts showed me where the big icemaker stood in their back kitchen, and on the way home a kindly bartender filled the icebag one final time,so that I could keep everything happily numb throughout the four-hour flight.  I had a row to myself this time, so could stretch my legs and wriggle about as I pleased.

Now emptying bags and working at re-organizing the permanent "go kit" in each of them, and then it's time for the post-trip paperwork...and, in due course, back to the rhubarb fields!

 

peaceful Sunday

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.

Wednesday again...

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 highly-caffeinated Wednesday...

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...

from the other side...

...still alive, and exploring the byways of non-wmeployment i.e. retirement...

I can't pretend that I've accomplished anything very spectacular. Even the office is not yet completely emptied; but I'm afraid if I blitz it and bring everything home at once, I'll just settle down among the cardboard boxes and become completely torpid. So I've been trying to pause and integrate what I've brought home more or less into the pre-existing clutter here, before I bring in more.

And keeping in mind that I'm not gaining on the too-much-ness of it all except by filling garbage and recycle bags. I was taking great delight in emptying book-boxes...and then realized that I had emptied two boxes and replaced them with six piles on the floor. So now I unpack with disposal bag at hand.

Exploring also the ramifications of budgeting on retirement income...rehabilitating the Very Small slow-cooker...and scanning the grocery flyers for the weekly loss-leaders. As I said to a friend -- re-learning how to be "pore" -- and rejoicing very much that I haven't forgotten how...buying in appropriate bulk, catching the discount-days...

Ideally I would do a monthly blitz on meat and staples and then just scoop up fruit and salad makings and so forth week by week. Milk comes to the door (I think I may have the last living milkman in creation); and I buy my bread in bulk quantities from the bakery-outlet as needed (if I catch their discount day, that's a bonus).

Thinking about gardening, come "the season." Growing things I might even like to eat...

Much to think about...and I'm going back to work! But only 1/4 time, which feels just about right.

Tuesday again

...and potentially the Productive Day of the Week.

Marathon Vestry meeting last night -- 3 hours and 45 minutes -- which is a brutal absurdity, but the good news is that nobody shouted or pounded on the table or got up and went home mad. Or wept, or insulted anybody else. Just a LOT of stuff to get through, including a conundrum about supplementary funding for our African family which seemed to become ever more convoluted as we went on.

Also the budget in draft form for 2010, which had to do, in part, with lines for stipends for Wonder Curate, and Theoretical Interim Person, and New Rector. When we got to the budget, therefore, Wonder Curate and I rose up and adjourned (or maybe prorogued) into my office, out of earshot. And drank sherry in an impeccably Anglican manner.

After while they called us back. And we ground on towards adjournment.

Slept soundly, after finally getting home; up this morning and to a meeting for WOP4CU ("Week of Prayer for Christian Unity")with barely a quorum of other ecumaniacs ("Let's ask the Society of Friends representative to lead us in silence"); then flew past the diocesan office and dropped off my Official "I'm so outa here" Letter. But did not escape before being accosted by Diocesan Treasurer with the glad cry, "It'll be all right." There are few things I would rather hear from the Diocesan Treasurer, than "It'll be all right" -- even if I have no idea what "it" is. The "it" in this case is a project to do a bit of ecumenical and international travel in January, and to listen to Notable Persons at the destination point. Very exciting: details anon.

Back to MH & U for a meeting with the newly selected editor of the Parish Clarion (newsletter) and to review his ideas for the initial issue under his leadership, NOT a Christmas issue but a New Year and New Beginnings issue. Sounds very exciting.

On the phone...with this one and that one.

We did Lessons and Carols on Sunday night with our High and Smoky friends from downtown. It was sumptuous, as was the potluck supper that ensued. Although for anybody with a phobia about meatballs, the supper would have been a bit of a shock. I think there were eight varieties of meatballs on the buffet. (Little Old Lady: "I think I'll just have one of each...").

It has cooled off here, temperature oscillating back and forth across the frost line which keeps the streets and sidewalks INTERESTING.

back to filling out baptismal information forms. I think we may have at least another half-dozen candidates on the 13th. Happiness is.

Instructed Eucharist on the 6th, so no sermon...

Endless paperwork...

oh the difference...

Yesterday was intense.

Fifteen hours from arrival at MH & U in the morning to pulling out of the parking lot en route home in the evening...

Saturday was spent MOSTLY at the church as well, on the periphery of madly energetic cleaning-up going on indoors and outdoors. Most of it pretty good work, but some of it pretty mindless. "Let's clean up the chancel, and let's start by unplugging everything and leaving it that way." "Let's clean up the narthex, and let's start by gathering up all the little church-front portable easel signs, and HIDING THEM SOMEWHERE." Somewhere remote from the front door, which of course is where they're deployed.

I didn't sleep very well Saturday night, and arriving at church to find these...anomalies...produced something close to a clerical meltdown, I am embarrassed to say. Running about of churchwardens, "It's OK, Rambler. It'll be all right. We'll just ask the congregation at announcement time, where the signs went. Just be calm. You're OK."

The assistant preached in exemplary fashion... it is such a blessing to have the stimulus of another preacher on the premises...especially when his work evokes the "yes-indeed-but-on-the-other-hand" Anglican response. Leading me to reflect on the difference between statements of fact and statements of truth. (not wanting to think about statements of cornmeal mush, which constitute most of the preaching one hears.)

Got through the second service. (Signs were duly produced at announcement time, expressions of injured innocence all 'round.)

Lined up to get invitation/ticket from Ticket Maven. Accosted in line-up by Exemplary Laywoman reminding me that the "youth" were awaiting me for their confirmation class. Came "this close" to biting said laywoman right in the goozle for asking me to be in two places at once...she retreated, prudently.

Got ticket, had confirmation class, worked through prayer of consecration with little children while big children looked on. We have NINE, count'em, NINE confirmands for the service in October, and at least a couple of baptizands, it's all delightful.

Co-ordinated perceptions with Ticket Maven Lady and sent her off to phone Chronic Stayers-Away lest they show up the Sunday AFTER the royal hoo-hah, and then the screaming begins, again.

Worked on paperwork all afternoon barring quick dash out for a lunch/supper pizza.

Back to computer at 6:35 and wrote sermon for Evensong (Choral) which happened at 7 pm, attended by members of Prairie Metropolis and Hinterland Council of Churches, and a few parishioners, and, God bless and reward them, a solid phalanx of choir.

There was chanting, Anglican chanting, big time.

Preached on Jeremiah 31:1-13, Ephesians 5, and ecumenism with reflections from John 17 (from the morning services).

Sang lovely Anglican evening hymns too..."O Gracious Light, Lord Jesus Christ" (Tallis), "Light of the World, in Grace and Beauty" (Rendez a Dieu), and "Day is Done, But Love Unfailing" (Ar Hyd Y Nos). MOST satisfying to one and all.

Then convened and chaired AGM of Council of Churches, which went well despite no-shows and no-replies (and no minutes -- my fault)...and wrapped up evening with "whining and cheesiness" supplied by the Very Forgiving Laywoman who had narrowly escaped being Rambler-bitten earlier in the day.

And so, as they say, to bed.

All in all, a good day.

And, I'm happy to say, a good night's sleep, which made all the difference today!

let it snow...

... and it is! My mother used to say that was the first song I ever sang.

A day anchored by an ecumenical lunch meeting today. Difference of opinion with High End Local Supermarket over whether the Rambler specified a 12 inch sandwich platter (suitable for 6 people) or an 18 inch one (oh come ON!!!). Needless to say they had put together the larger one. A reasonable "retail assistant" adjusted the price. We are content (and very well supplied with sandwiches).

Wonder Secketry is still off work for medical reasons, and I am not at all quiet in my mind about her wellbeing.

A small gathering last night to plan a Christian Education project between now and Holy Week, on the Seven Deadlies and some monastic-origin tools to combat them -- using Mary Margaret Funk, Thoughts Matter and Dante's Purgatorio and some ancillary texts like Kathleen Norris on Acedia and Ann Ulanov on Envy (Cinderella and her Sisters).

Now I have to make a kick-a** little flyer for this series.

Wednesday, as ever was

Back at the old lemonade stand doing all those things we learned about in seminary like proofreading vestry minutes, ordering in cases of "bathroom tissue" (the first one to say, "expecting big things at MH&U" will be sent to time out), shifting tables and chairs, measuring out coffee, drinking my own, nibbling my cinnamon bun, and wondering what in heaven's name local retailers mean by not opening for business until TEN A.M. For pity's sake, the day's half over, you guys!

I have to do intensive telephone patrol here in a minute...

Bi-monthly meeting of Prairie Metropolis's Council of Churches here at 11:45, and no agenda written yet.

Lovely interlude last night engaged with the "social utility" (is that the term?) that rhymes with "space-hook," chatting with one of our ordinands in another city far far away. We went from our shared appreciation of pumpkin beer through mutual disclosure of where we were born and grew up and how we spent our summers and the wit and wisdom of the Archbishop of Canterbury, thence to what she's doing at present and what her plans are and what her husband's doing (he's also a theolog), and I wound up with an email of the paper he's co-presenting today in a seminar on ecumenical dialogue...it's a proposal to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (acronymed around here to WOP4CU or "wop-for-cue") with an ecumenical eucharistic fast, in our own churches. Various liturgical suggestions of what this might look like, in the various traditions. On the rationale, approximately, of "Until we authentically CAN do this altogether, we will from time to time symbolically abstain in mourning for our scandalous divisions" -- cf. Holy Saturday practice.

This young man, whom I really don't know well at all, is much involved with the Anglican-Orthodox dialogues that have gone on. I plainly have to dig out my notes from NAAE in St. Louis and get them to him in some readable form.

It did not feel like a wasted evening! Even though I went home and fell asleep under the spell of the idiot box and didn't rouse up properly until nearly 5 a.m.

Okay. Agenda, here I come.

the groove...

The unsmiling Tsarevna

(Not actually the Rambler!)


What with one thing and another or three, the acedia has receded, and a fair amount of work has been accomplished this week. I think this is because of renewed zest for the year to come and for some new, that is, additional, ways of being church in this place which are being happily explored with a congenial colleague--ways of being church that have found quick, happy echoes in the consciousness at MH & U. We are looking at expanding our ministry in terms of the creative arts, and of the community, the folks whose lives are centred on and in the arts.

So there is some excitement in the ministry again...and some conviviality, even some renewed cyber-conviviality.

I am happy that the new energy has overflowed into Least Favourite Tasks such as making phone contact with people, sending out mass emails, setting agendas, vetting minutes, and so forth.

Tuesday and Wednesday were days of serious meetings...that went well and with good energy, on into the evening...Thursday was blessed with a series of no-shows and cancellations which freed time to rush about in the city attending to banking, post office... Otherwise Thursday was pretty flat -- some days I can generate streams of prose, conversation, decisions, communications; other days, nothing but facial hair and methane. (Go ahead and laugh, you young'uns -- you'll find out!)

Today has been all yee-haw again. Just about two serious tasks left and then home I go, with sermon notes and lectionary in hand. "We can do this" is our cry, again; thanks be to God.

Wednesday, all day long

The Rambler has been stalking the corridors of power this morning...rather like Hamlet's father's ghost (or possibly Anne Boleyn)...

For 30 years in Prairie Metropolis, meetings of the City Council have begun with a prayer offered by a representative of one or another "faith group." In these "religion is a private matter" times, this is fairly remarkable; more remarkable is the comfortable assumption that the prayer-leaders will speak from their own conviction, understanding, tradition, while abstaining from gratuitous offence to others: Christians pray as Christians, Jews as Jews, Muslims as Muslims, and so on.

So this morning, under the combined guidance of the City Chaplain, and the Board of the Interfaith Centre for Education and Action, ten of us were assembled to open the City Council meeting with a ten-fold prayer.

Discipline was strict (but imperfectly obeyed -- hey, these are "hooman beans" after all): we were NOT to ad lib and NOT to identify ourselves and NOT to talk ABOUT our faith, just step up to the mike, pray, step out of the way.

As Prez of the City and District Council of Churches, the Rambler got to be "The Official Christian."

And this (thank goodness for the Book of Common Prayer, 1962) is what I said:

O Almighty and most merciful God, in your bountiful goodness, protect and defend us, we beseech you, from all things that may hurt us; so that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that you would have us do, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

All the prayers -- Eckankar, Hindu, Baha'i, Jewish, Sikh, Unitarian, Muslim, Jain, and Zoroastrian, were lovely, and thoughtful, and concise. And Hizzonner the Mayor, having given us a lovely nibbly breakfast buffet beforehand, thanked us nicely; and all the alderpersons looked gratified and as uplifted as their natures would allow.

A pleasant way to start a day!