A reflection on a non-preaching weekend....

seeing as HOW nobody at this house is preaching tomorrow, I am sympathetically offering a funny of some antiquity to all those of you toiling over three-points-and-a-poem today.  Here's how we do it in the True North Strong and Free: 

February 21, 2008

Canadian Sermon Types, eh?

And now for something completely different...

Neil Young, who pastors Erindale United Church in Mississauga, Ontario, sent us this inventory of sermon styles in the Great White North.

The Maple Syrup: Boils source material down to about 1/50th its starting volume.

The Mountie: When it's most dressed-up, it doesn't arrest anybody.

The Igloo: Goes 'round and 'round until a final capstone is dropped in.

The Curling: Kind of incomprehensible, but everybody seems to have a good time.

The Lacrosse: Fast, hard-hitting, and it's hard to see the points as they're made.

The Hockey Fight: Staggers unsteadily, swinging wildly, but lands a punch or two.

The Canadian: Overly apologetic.

The Snowmobile: Loud and a bit obnoxious, but takes you places you otherwise wouldn't go.

The Beaver: Dams everything in sight.

The Maple Leaf: Has 11 points; always ends up falling to the ground.

 

"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!

 

The day after...

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.

whoo-ee

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...

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.

back at it.

Back at the desk since yesterday morning...started both days, however, elsewhere, the dentist yesterday (Gold-Tooth Gertie, that's me) and this morning at the lab. Bloodwork accomplished promptly...but Dr. B was very thorough, BHH, in her requisition this time around, and I left FURNISHED with a specimen kit and elaborate instructions covering the next three days. Actually, the next six, since one can't take Vitamin C for three days beforehand or the three days during. (The diagnosis is "scurvy," you say?)

And that's ALL I want to say about that. Believe me.

Time away was lovely. Blazing hot weather, and mountains, and hot springs, and birds, and flowers, and a sufficiency of mammalia.

A great initial glee in the whole thing upon arrival at the portal of our National Mountain Wonderland. I asked for an annual pass (hang-tag, goes on the rear-view mirror).

"Yes, ma'am; tell me, are you a senior?"
"Well, in two weeks I'll be a senior."
"Thank you, ma'am, then you're a senior."

So on that splendidly logical basis I have a senior's park pass, which in turn entitled (!) me to all sorts of dizzying discounts, sometimes as much as fifty cents.

And I thought -- "I'm an OLD LADY!!! I have a government-issue hang-tag, that says so, in both official languages! Woot!!! Now let's see, what can I get away with, on this basis?"

The three "B's" suggest themselves -- Birding, Botanizing, and Badgering total strangers with pointless reminiscences...

The Birding was fun -- dozens and dozens of OSPREYS along the way. And I even watched one fishing (not catching, alas)... they jump into the water feet first like a little boy off a diving board, with a great splash, going completely out of sight. Then after emerging, on about the fourth wingbeat, they shake themselves dry in midair, like a wet dog only airborne. Just wonderful...

Also on the list a white-crowned sparrow, a hummingbird, and a three-toed woodpecker. I appreciate that to non-bird people this will not convey a great deal. But it was a kind of thrill even so.

Botanizing is made easier with a digital camera (new toy); just take a pic of that sucker and haul it back to the shelter of vehicle or motel and thumb through the flower guide until a match appears... I now feel confident I can identify Linnaea borealis as far away as I can see it. Which isn't far, it's about matchhead-sized.

When it comes to flowers'n'them, I realize -- I don't even know the language of description yet. "It has leaves, some, and a stem, and a flower, and it's red, and it's not a carnation..." but an axil? a carpal? a drupe? all terra incognita.

NEVER MIND. These things can be learned, that's the good news.

Off to photocopy the Life List from Peterson's Guide to Western Birds!

Au revoir...

The Rambler, for the next few days, will be...rambling. W/o phone, pager, or computer.
Catch y'all on the backswing.
Meantime, Beware Impostors: