All you hungry campers...

"Today is Wednesday, Today is Wednesday, Wednesday SOU-OUP..."  according to the old campfire song, anyway.  No actual soup on the menu at Tether's End today.

An undecided sort of day -- brilliant sunshine very early, then heavy, racing, threatening clouds, now some of both.  Do I go out for a walk!??  Do I seize shovel and get all seriously gardinacious before my poor bedding plants die of sheer boredom??? Do I go out to the kitchen and cook and eat accordingly?  Do I burrow into this impressive heap of library books?  Do I go back to my desk and attend to the now-definitely-due thank-you letters I need to be writing?

Retirement is challenging (Platitude of the Day). On Sunday at noon I wrapped up the most recent interim appointment after three months of half-time duty in a small parish in a small town ninety kilometers from home (exactly ninety kilometers, and exactly fifty-seven minutes, every single trip).  At this point, beyond a single Sunday-supply appointment on Pentecost in another small parish, in a small town, rather more than ninety kilometers from home, there is no word of a further interim assignment.

So the cassock has gone to the dry cleaner, and the surplice is in the laundry "whites" pile downstairs, and the stoles are up on a hanger in the spare-room closet, and the prayer books and the communion kit are tucked away on a shelf, not too high. 

And I contemplate the possibility that I may now, in the fifth year after retirement from full-time parish ministry, really be, really and truly, RETIRED.  Which gives a bit of perspective on the exercise of ministry, perhaps even some of that 20/20 hindsight stuff.

I was a curate, part-time, for about four years; ten years in full-time ministry as Rector, Head of Staff, Senior Pastor~~whatever your nomenclature~~and I've been an interim parson since February 2010.  Since then I've served six parishes, part-time: three in the city, three in the hinterland.  And the difference from full-time ministry has been staggering.  I've been relaxed; I've been comfortable and unanxious; I've been -- happy! (I KNEW there had to be a word for it).

And there has also been a difference in the climate, the ethos, of the parishes I've served.  The folks have been warm, and friendly, and appreciative.  Now have I been happy because the people have been different?  Or, as I very much suspect, have the people been different because I've been giving off a very different vibe?  And if that's the case, where the heck was that vibe during the previous ten years!?!?

When I took leave of St. Thaddeus, on Sunday, we had a potluck lunch of ESCHATOLOGICAL splendour--you know, where everyone finds what s/he most enjoys--and there were PRESENTS -- a photograph of the church, and a bushel of flowers, and a beautiful hand-crafted pen -- it looks like byzantine jewelry, but it's decorated with tiny little electronic components I couldn't even name -- and a little trousseau of hand-knitted things, hot pads and dishcloths and a SCRUBBY which I can use on my saucepans or my heels, whichever needs it more. 

There were also speeches, on the general theme of "We've tried to figure out how we could JUST KEEP YOU ALWAYS" and there were very elderly retired farmers saying very quietly, "You know -- we JUST LOVE you" and the wives of elderly retired farmers telling me how much they and their husbands have enjoyed and been moved by the sermons ("You reduce him to tears, every time, Crimson").  And finally one Mother-in-Zion who leaned in close and said, "I probably shouldn't even say this, BUT -- your HAIR looks WONDERFUL."

Somehow I could not dredge up any impulse to re-assert my Personal Boundaries under those conditions.  I just sat down and mentally rolled around in the ambient goodwill and affection and praise.  Perhaps that means I really am somehow "too far gone" to exercise ordained ministry with appropriate professionalism.

But I don't really think so.  Now I will go and write some more thank-yous.

Friday Five: I Ask for Help

Thanks to Martha Spong over at RevGalBlog Pals, our instructions: 

So, for this Friday Five, please list four ways you have been helped when you didn't want to ask for it and one way you had a chance to help that meant a lot to you.


This one comes awfully close to the bone, for me.


1.  A little past midway in my seminary years (the MDiv was a three-year course but it took me seven years to complete, part-time), one of my faculty advisors gave me the task of setting my Learning Goals for the year ahead.  "EH?" I said.  "Learning Goals?  What means 'Learning Goals'?  Not understanding.  Passing courses, yes.  But YOU set Learning Goals, I meet them."  She wouldn't have it.  Finally she set one for me.  "I want you to LEARN how to ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT."  Further resistance on my part.  "But it's WRONG to ask for help.  I'm supposed to do MY OWN WORK. (Besides, who'd help me?  Ha.  Nobody, is who)..."  So I was helped in the first instance by being TOLD to learn to ask for help.


2.  In the meantime, I was struggling with my tax return.  Actually, staring paralyzed at it.  I had always filled out my own tax return.  But in that particular year, I had to report a Capital Gain, and I had NO idea how to do it...I knew I was owed a rebate, so there was no problem about late payment.  But the weeks rolled by...and about October, one night, lying awake fretting, I remembered that one of my seminary classmates was a Chartered Accountant.  "ah"  I said, "I'll bet HE knows what to do with a Capital Gain.  I shall ASK for HELP."  So expecting to be yelled at for Not Knowing How, I asked.  "Yes,"  he said.  "MMM-hmmm," he said.  "Give me your papers," he said.  And that was the end of the problem, right there.  No yelling.  No scorn.  Just "MMM-hmmmm" and a nice welcome rebate cheque in due course.  Amazing.


3.  Casting a lot farther back -- I remember the summer before I started university, at the lake with a group of other young folks, splashing around in the water just off the end of the dock, I -- non-swimmer -- stepped into a deep spot and couldn't find my footing again.  (I recall it now, vividly, when I see those information features about "Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning.")  I was struggling but not saying anything, when one of the girls about six feet away asked quietly, "Are you in trouble?"  I managed to nod my head, and without any fuss she had me into the shallow water in an instant...  "No problem," she said.


4.  This last week I was confronting a funeral in the parish where I'm doing interim ministry.  At one point it looked to me as though I was responsible not just for officiating and preaching and pastoral care but also for organizing (and possibly preparing!!!) the post-funeral lunch (70 people), and the funeral leaflet, which was complex (with reluctant, unfamiliar computers and unreliable internet)...and then all in one day the parish lunch-committee reported in (returned from vacation): "We're on it" -- and the funeral family announced, "We're making the leaflet, tell us what should be in it."  And there I was, free and clear to do what I DID know how to do.  The most wonderful feeling, when somebody else just comes and cheerfully TAKES AWAY a task you don't know how to tackle.


Times when I have been helpful.  Hmm---well, I was visiting an older parishioner whose divorce settlement had not been particularly generous although her (ex)husband was very affluent...she was expressing her worry about making ends meet on what she was allowed; and I enquired about a detail of the allocation of pension benefits...and encouraged her to consult her lawyer again -- it turned out he had missed a provision that was a matter of law, NOT negotiation; her income was substantially improved and she was also paid a big chunk of "back pay" -- she seemed to think that was pretty helpful!!!

Just a Bowl of...

Monday, and nominal Day Off – Vestry/Parish Council meeting tonight, however.  We have begun the transition process at St. Curious Too – the Rambler departing, fading gently out of sight like the Cheshire Cat, Fab New Rector arriving, all this happening in just about a month from now.

And then the Rambler has stipulated for a couple of weeks OFF.  A little awkward to negotiate vacation time from part-time appointment, but we’ve done it.

Time Off will probably coincide with … RENOS to Tether’s End.  The eventual response to the basement dampness;  it is just boring to be in such a panic every time it rains.  In the process there will be construction of two new “approaches” to the abode—an elevated deck on the east/kitchen side (at present I can if necessary exit the back door, but the first step is a doozie) …and a replacement to the original concrete front stoop.

This prospect all makes me very happy.

In the meantime I am spending the day in the kitchen.  Made a fine batch of cheesy baking-powder/sourdough biscuits…In lieu of buttermilk, I used a generous dollop of my new batch of yogurt, which is extremely tasty too.

And I’ve just pitted a generous four cups of local sour cherries (Nanking, possibly?), gift of a fruit-picking friend, with a PIE in view – double-crust type, for the freezer.

I have this relationship with cherries, and cherry pie, dating back to the winter 60+ years ago when my mother had included ONE CAN of cherry pie filling in her list of provisions for the winter.  It was all duly delivered, and midwinter she baked the cherry pie I had been drooling for for months.  She set it on a high shelf in the back entry to cool.  And the local red squirrel came and had a complete hey-day right in the middle of it, before she brought it in again.  Mom was not open to my suggestion that we eat all around the edges.  So we had no pie after all.  Oh, the bitterness.

Then after taking up residence here in Prairie Metropolis, I rejoiced in the availability of big black sweet cherries, in season, from Neighbouring Super, Natural Province.  I bought a cherry pitter -- the type where you push with your thumb, like a syringe.  And I pitted so many cherries for canning, that I pinched a nerve and numbed my hand and wrist (not to mention dying the whole appendage deep purple with cherry juice).

Onto this scene of Domestic Martyrdom (temporary) arrived one of the Spousal Cousins, with Wife.  Wife sympathized: "Oh, I had exactly the same problem from working the slot machines when we went to Tahoe last winter."

Never did manage to find points of commonality with that woman.   But I did go and buy a heavy-duty pitter, and have avoided further injury.

Trying to get space re-organized in the fridge to accommodate the provender I have acquired with a view to PICKLES.  It's time to go downstairs and inventory JARS, lids, etc.

There are two kinds of people in this world -- this is the polarity that cuts across generations, ethnicities, language, class -- there are those who know what a Mason jar is, and those who don't.

ARRRR

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...