On the baptism of the Lord, and so forth

Had a good time this morning discussing the lectionary readings as reassurances for those "afraid of the water"... and talking about cultural images of "Jesus standing in line" and taking everybody by surprise.

A beautiful drive both ways.  Weather has warmed up spectacularly overnight but temperature was still below freezing on the way 'out' this morning.  So everything on both sides of the highway was delightfully frosted over.  I am accustomed to the lovely "apple-blossom" aspect of mountain-ash trees, leafless, with the berry clusters covered in snow.  But this morning was the first time I recall seeing willows with their vivid early-spring stems likewise veiled in white -- the resultant colours were like saltwater taffy...implausibly beautiful.

Some raptors to be seen, along the way -- a nice change from the all-prevalent corvids...only two bison quite a long way from the road as I was coming through the nat'l park...and a couple of ponies kicking up snow at each other in a paddock.

It has grown warm enough as the afternoon comes on to make the road surface mucky -- I need to refill my windshield washer before I quit work for the day.  And it would be prudent to clear my walks while it's nice and mild also.

Some cooking-projects await my arrival at home...and I'm down to about the last 100 pieces of the 1500-piece monster jigsaw I've been assembling this week.  A good, quiet, scaled-down kind of an evening.  Happy sigh.  "Savouring the graces," as they say.

Winter fauna

Do 'fauna' include birds?  I suppose they must.  In any event there was a fine vocal magpie in the backyard grove this morning declaiming in Anglo-Saxon: "Hwaet!  Hwaet!  Hwaet!"  I didn't have time to stop and explain "Hwaet" was going on, unfortunately.

We have had pictures and reports of a number of unusual birds in the area this winter -- a yellow-shafted flicker, and more spectacularly, a gyrfalcon... There is a Christmastide bird-census, but I've never yet taken part.  (They don't use the long form, I understand.)

Guest once more of the blessed library...and grateful for it.  Time to fly away and free up this terminal for some other happy soul.

Happy "Baptism of the Lord," tomorrow, everybody.  Remember, your cue is, "Jesus stands in line."  All else follows from that.  You have been told.

some gentle domesticity for a change...

 

 Well again.  I managed to accomplish two projects in my kitchen today -- first I stemmed, seeded, and halved about a half-dozen small jalapenos for the freezer.  Double rubber-gloves, with talcum, so it appears I got the gloves on and off without transferring any pepper juice to my skin.  Not sure whether it was aerosolized pepper juice or flying talcum that made me cough, though.  Never mind, that chore's out of the way.  I cut the peppers in half lengthways and then later on I can pull out a chunk and mince it up fiercely while it's still frozen and relatively helpless...

Second job was a bit more complex; all "free gratis," I had come by some lovely fresh local dark red beets, about golf ball sized or a wee bit larger, as pictured above.  So I Harvard'ed them, just now, in memory of a Great Treat of my childhood.  The recipe (from the ancient Purity Flour cookbook)(that's the Canadiana part) calls for a double-boiler, which I haven't had for years, but I do have a serviceable steel bowl which fits tightly in my largest Paderno steel saucepan, and that did just fine.  I had enough beets for a small "non-Harvard" serving as part of my supper...the rest went into the recipe which claims to create 6 or 8 servings.  I'll bag single servings in Ziploc bags and freeze them.  Along with the sugar, vinegar, and flour in the sauce, instant minced onion was called for.  I used onion powder instead -- and looking for it in the cupboard, I found my jar of granulated lime zest, so the beets got a shot of that as well.  Doesn't seem to have done any harm!

The noon meal was DINNER, today -- and supper will be a sequence of small veggie nibbles.  I find I sleep better that way...and I am going to bed very early and then waking up between 2 and 5...This morning I sat up and finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society before breakfast...having picked it up for practically nothing in a thrift shop some time back; a very satisfying read, indeed.

So I don't believe there is anything in the fridge at this point requiring urgent processing -- a comfortable feeling.  I'll assemble some salads-in-jars for the weekend; then perhaps I can turn my flagging attention to something else.

The sermon is done.  LOVE-love-love the RCL readings for this Sunday...so the sermon is a revision of one I preached -- at least six years ago, maybe nine!  I was content with it then, and I'm content with it now (and I have a 'new' congregation, praise be--"fresh ears! fresh ears!").  

Snow threatening...glad to have winter tires already installed.  The 'new' congregation is 120 km away -- 75 miles as near as makes no difference -- with the likelihood of "black ice" here and there, it behooves me to leave betimes, between 7:30 and 8 a.m. for the 10 am service.  Coffee in my big mug, a couple of muffins and some fruit for a rolling breakfast.  And I'll be driving into the sunrise; need to sit up Very Tall behind the visor for a few miles anyway. 

 

On matters military...

Well, there has been a good deal of jabber on the intar-webs and other media this week about the new Cabinet Ministers who were sworn in yesterday in Ottawa, and a lot of THAT has been swirling around something only semi-accurately labelled "diversity."  In practice, diversity appears to mean something like "different, but the kind of different we approve of, double-plus-good."

Case in point, the "diversity" of the new Minister of National Defense.  He is a Sikh -- a Lt.-Colonel in the Canadian Forces -- a decorated veteran of three separate tours of duty in Afghanistan, and a former detective officer in the Vancouver Police Department.  His photo in combat gear is posted above.

It isn't "diversity" that I applaud here.  Because he's not diverse, and neither am I.  What gives me great joy (other than just plain flat-out "purty," happy sigh) -- is "alterity."  Here is a person who is "other," not at all like me*.  And I think I am better off because that is so.

["not at all like me BUT ON MY SIDE" to be precise.]

Now I admit I am a foolish-fond old woman, and I can't help remembering that whenever "Punjab" showed up, in the funny papers, Little Orphan Annie's fortunes took a turn for the better.

One way and another, I feel more defended than I did last week.

Also, when he's not being a wild man in the Khyber Pass, he cleans up nicely.

 

 

All those souls...

Working on some new disciplines here.

Yesterday was a good'un -- two church services in two different communities with (highly different) potluck meals after each.  My oath, those ladies can COOK.  Wow.  Anglican baptism with Eucharist in the morning, and preached; Taize singing, with no sermon, in the evening.

On the way home, before I reached the Big Highway -- here came the SNOW out of the north-west.  It was an interesting 120-kilometer drive home, but NO difficulty, lots of traffic but nobody doing anything quixotic in my vicinity.

Meditating on saint-ness...and its misunderstandings.  Things never yet quite adequately explained to my satisfaction.  Not "holy celebrity."  Not "co-dependent martyrdom."  The term "personal holiness" gets bandied about more than is useful or comfortable, (or it used to) and I have never ever heard it defined or illustrated as anything other than -- basically -- inexperience, of a particularly sidling, bridling, eyes-rolled-upward sort.  

Who was it, now, who said that the saint we most admire -- instinctively -- may be the greatest threat to our spiritual/moral wellbeing?

Ah well.  We sang Sine Nomine at least once, yesterday, all verses, although we could have had a bit more "WHOMP" -- (this is the hymn known in my household as "WHOMP For All the Saints" you understand).

So here's to the saints with some WHOMP in their natures.

The coffee's made, speaking of WHOMP, and this to-do list isn't going to do itself.  Defend yourself, Monday!!!

Celebrating "all them saints," this morning with the Giotto Madonna from Ognissanti in Florence (I see there is a splendid new book about the Umiliati as patrons of painters...)

And here we go, trying this blogging bit, yet again.  A timed exercise, this morning.

I am still trying to find a schedule that will accomplish the things that MUST be done (and there are more than a few, even among "the retired") and leave as much time -- and energy -- and daylight! -- as possible for the WANT to be done...the reading and writing, the small creativities, the sociable moments.

I'm not there yet!  But partly in aid of that, and in reflection that I am now not just in the second half of my life but in the fourth quarter, in fact -- I've embarked upon the Ignatian Exercises ("in daily life" -- i.e., spread over 8 - 9 months instead of packed into a month).

It has been a long time since I undertook anything at even this modest level of discipline (an hour a day).  It's frustrating, but it seems to be helpful.  Good to be confronted again with the Principle and Foundation, for one thing.

Struggling with Ignatian "indifference" (easy come, easy go?).  There was a moment's insight yesterday when I realized that "greed for" (books, let us say, for example, yes) followed up by "neglect of" does NOT, arithmetically, amount to "indifference."  Or "detachment," if that word is more comfortable for you.

So at present I am doing some work "honorarily" at a parish in town, and doing Sunday duty, remunerated financially, at a parish out of town (with the same patron).  This assignment involves about 90 minutes driving each way.  It's eastward to work and westward home -- squinting into the sun, in other words.  But before long it will be dark both ways, as I know, which will solve that problem definitively.

Yesterday afternoon I began a big cooking binge, with the aim of having meals in the fridge or freezer needing only to be warmed up at mealtimes for the rest of the week.  We shall see.  Still trying to adjust my grocery purchasing to the reality of ONE two-legged occupant and ONE (very small) four-legged occupant in this abode.

Hallowe'en last night was not overwhelming.  I might have had a couple of dozen callers, most of them quite, quite young, and all of them very polite.  Trick'or'treaters in this area are heavily parent-accompanied...usually by shadowy figures out on the sidewalk, calling, "What did you SAY?" to cue the "thank you."  But one Mom appeared on my porch as the Seuss Cat, complete with goldfish in bowl, closely partnering her offspring as Thing Two, with a placard explaining that Thing One was felled by chicken-pox.  All this drama!  

It was mild enough for light jackets, fortunately. And then just before eight o'clock a very light rain began, and that was that -- turned off the porch light, blew out the pumpkin-candles, and firmly returned the left-over sweets to the freezer.  

And time's up.

pressing on...

We've been fairly busy with the Fete Nationale this week -- falling on a Wednesday, which makes it more difficult to "faire le pont" -- of all the days of the week, obviously, Wednesday is the most difficult to inveigle into a WEEKEND of some description.   Although the streets were pretty quiet at rush-time this morning; and school, of course, is out for the summer.  Great hootlings of young children next door with a combination of sprinkler and trampoline (and dog).

I managed to find the Actual Canajun Flag, eh, and its flagpole, and hang it on the front of the house in a truly Rural Illinois manner.  This is about the extent of my proactive patriotism at the moment.

I continue to "shop in the fridge" for the makings of my meals--too often in the past my practise has been to do a Monster Grocery-Shopping expedition, and then, exhausted, take myself out to eat.

But last night was a very special treat -- dinner with good friends -- I took some salad, and brought some (less!) back, which has now all been eaten.  And by way of an early supper, I converted some pollock-pretending-to-be-crab into a seafood salad suitable for sandwich filling.  I have eaten the sandwich...

Planning to tiptoe away and be faintly creative for a bit, later this evening...exercise a bit -- but I did walk today, a few blocks downtown; went down to buy a most excellent book (because just borrowing it from the Library, which I've now done twice, did NOT suffice) -- "The Social Life of Ink" by Ted Bishop (published last year).  And we have one, count it, ONE remaining independent bookstore (for new books) in the city, so rather than engage Amazon, I thought I'd go downtown.  FATAL...just inside the front door, a large table arrayed with soft-cover Canadian fiction, some of it classic.  And HALF PRICE.  Going to spend some time this next week with MiriamToews and Ethel Wilson.  None the worse for that.

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.

 

Happy Day...

A quick post here this morning; in fifteen minutes this apparatus is turned OFF for the day.  In words repeated oftener than anything else in my memory, "There's going to be a new regime around here!!!"

This is a "statuary" holiday hereabouts, as a friend likes to say.  The sun is shining, the winds are calm, there is nothing ominous in the forecast.  Festivity is imminent all around and about, culminating in "illuminations" on the Big Ol' Bridge tonight, and fireworks.  I intend to take it all on trust.  Standing in a crowd, in the dark, in a cloud of mosquitoes, is not really all that much fun.

But today is a new day.  I have started with a new morning routine.  And a modest frittata (green onions, jalapeno, spinach, cheese, and 2 farm eggs) and 2 pieces of toast (homemade bread).  There is a pot of half-caf coffee on the warmer.  The bed is made, the bathroom is tidy, I am showered and dressed (and medicated and "vitaminized") and insofar as such a thing is possible, READY FOR THE DAY.

A new schedule, a new way of managing time and space and chores.  I am about to sit down with bookbag, reading specs, reading journal and pen, and READ AND READ AND READ.  It may be what I'm all about, from here on.

After while, I intend to go outdoors for a time, with my hat on, and walk in an intentional way.

But not to do errands.  Tomorrow, errands -- library and pharmacy and grocery store and bank and post office. 

Today, I'm reading and walking.  And eating delicious leftovers; cold roast beef and cold potatoes and carrot/cabbage slaw and carrot sticks and hummus and Washington State black cherries.

Then I'm going to read some more.

Back atcha, anon.

"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!

 

CATCHING UP AT THE END OF THE WEEK...

Haven't had much energy the last couple of nights to catch up on the blog...

But it's been a nice week of new experiences.  Tuesday turned out to be the Ultimate Retreat Day.  Very simple recipe: alone in a friend's elegant house full of soothing eye-space, big windows; the world's most comfortably supportive chaise longue; a sturdy carry-bag full of fat library books; and a gracious, warm, drowsy schnauzer.  And NO ELECTRONICS.  No screens.  None.  The schnauzer and I read, and slept, and slept, and read, and had one hurried 8 block walk between rain squalls.  Finished the fat library books.  The dog may have been reading while I was asleep.  We took turns.  He was certainly sleeping while I was reading.  Absolute bliss and relaxation.  

Wednesday for a complete change of pace, the Rambler became a Rhubarb Rescuer, equipped with large plastic bags and a little note of two addresses where there was rhubarb that the owners didn't want or need.  The first address there was a small patch of rather scrawny but brilliant ruby rhubarb.  That didn't take long.  The second address there was a rhubarb patch the length of the garage, and anywhere between 20 and 50 years old.  Picked more rhubarb than I could comfortably carry, and that was ONE PLANT...so I conferred with the owner for follow-up visits.

Second part of the day was to take all 35 pounds of rhubarb to the processors, a quartet of women at work in a community-league kitchen, making exotic amazing jelly out of rhubarb juice.  The batch of the moment included juice, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, hot sauce--and I arrived just as they were about to add the GIN.

So I had some exercise outdoors and I engaged with six total strangers, including the grandmother of triplets (because Moms'n'Tots were playing in the hall next to the Rhubarb Kitchen) -- NINE if you count the triplets -- not counting the hard-hatted workmen from Prairie City Power who came down the lane by the rhubarb patch to clear brush from around the power lines.  We exchanged pleasantries and rhubarb recipes and they looked muscular at me and made their bucket-hoist go up and down, you know, the typical exchange between the sexes.  All very amiable.  Part of the campaign Not to Become a Recluse now that I've retired.

And I have several pounds of lovely prime rhubarb to process for myself.  But I think I'll just drink the gin on the side....

When you come to the end of a pretty good day...

It was a happy Pentecost -- up very early with lots and lots of time to get everything ready to go -- out of the house about 9 a.m. and arrived at The Church of Two Names an hour and a half later.  An easy drive, blazing sunshine, just one stretch of highway where paving is happening: an interlude of the stink of tar, and the rattle of "loose chips".
The route is not one I've taken very often, but it is a kind of thrill to swing northward toward a whole array of sonorous destinations, with "Alaska Highway" at the foot of the list ... and the thought that I just might could run away altogether, if I took the notion.
Arrived good and early for the service; the church is next door to a large Roman Catholic church: "Cage match -- Spiritual Ecumenism vs. PARKING SPACES".  I went around and around a couple of blocks, and, true to form, the minute I parked, turned off the key, and opened the door, that was The Signal ~~ Ite, missa est ~~ they all came out and drove merrily away.  It's actually kind of a municipal tradition in this community. 
Preached on the Holy Spirit as the Inconvenient Infrequent Conflagration AND the unquenched unnoticed essential pilot light, and how that manifests itself in language, in speech.  It seemed to go down well... Fluent instantaneous Pamphylian, vs. five words in a row that make sense.  I worked off a sustainable sermon-text from about five years back...
We were  a small group, about fifteen, service went smoothly around and over the inevitable idiosyncrasies.  Pleasantries were exchanged, and off down the road for home, stopping on the way for a good, healthy, late, lunch (in a restaurant, yet, conscious of the honorarium in my pocket).
I was full of yeasty ambition to continue working in the yard, but instead had the usual nap and am about a third of the way into The Lords of Finance.
Time now for a little snack, a little tidying in the kitchen perhaps, another kick at the laundry situation, and so to bed.

Thursday. Spring. One thing and/or another...

When I finished up my last parish interim assignment at the end of January -- it was actually February 2nd, and included an Annual General Meeting and a potluck lunch as well as the regular Sunday Eucharist -- I came home and resorted to the Couch of Sunday Nappage, as is my wont and certainly seemed to be my due, at that point.

"Aha, " I said, "I will catch a couple of hours here under my fleecy throw (and a strategically placed cat), and then I will Rise Up and see about supper and the week to come."

I got right up off that couch -- eighteen hours later.....

"Hark!" I said, "I must have been more tired than I realized... and perhaps probably I could be Coming Down With Something, judging by this here sore throat..."

And I was.  Not to dwell on misery, but sore throat, congested head, nose running like Alph the Sacred River, and presently a rattling heavy "productive" (as they say) cough.

"Yes!" I said, "the well-remembered end-of-assignment, adrenalin-shut-down, immune-system-vanished, COLD.  Well, we'll just ride this out, and not be pestering the medical profession for a trifle."

That was about February 3rd.  Yesterday, having grown very very tired of the infinite loop, see paragraph #5 above, that I have been apparently stuck in, I went to my doctor.  "Six WEEKS?" I said.  "I don't think so..."

Diagnosis: bronchitis, probably pneumonia, possibly reactive asthma.

A FISTFUL of requisitions and prescriptions and a half day of running about in response -- I have an antibiotic (2 big pills daily WITH FOOD) -- I have Puffer #1 (red) (once daily and be sure to rinse mouth afterward) -- I have Puffer #2 (blue) (four times a day if necessary on a "rescue" basis) -- I also have the continuing threesome of pills combatting the usual blood pressure and cholesterol -- and I have a new bone-density medication (one pill weekly with plenty of water on an empty stomach, NO FOOD for an hour, and remember to stay upright after taking lest it LODGE somewhere).

You will be able to hear me coming because with all these meds in me I shall rattle like the bones in Ezekiel.

But the SCHEDULING involved in all this medication !!!!!!!!  What happened to the Merry Spntaneity that was supposed to characterize my Golden Years????? Eh?????

Maybe this IS my Lenten practice.

Meantime it is officially SPRING, saluted in these parts by a fresh fall of snow, plunging temperatures, and high winds.  

In other news, I have a new parish assignment 90 km away, half-time...again, interim.  

In other news, I have a vegan cookbook (no, but I have dear vegan friends)...my last purchase before Lent. 

Well, the last purchase until I found R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study on the sale table in the theological library.  It was only 50 cents -- and signed by the author -- and dedicated to his son and his two stepdaughters -- and the stepdaughters are second cousins to the Rambler.  So how could one resist?  (Yes, it's a VERY long story -- some other time).

Time to pay some bills.  "Today we have Paying of Bills"... and some overdue correspondence... also LAUNDRY... and cookery toward the end of the week...
 

 

Back again...

Don't look now, but I'm blogging again.  Up at 5, blanched and peeled peaches (big BC freestone-type -- the stones may be "free" but oh boy, the peel wasn't) and put together a Dutch oven full of ingredients and made six pint jars of Peach and Raisin Chutney.  The jars all sealed.  There was a spoonful left over for me to enjoy with my lunch.  Jars are cooling on a rack in the kitchen.  Contentment.

I bought a half-case (allegedly, 10 pounds, but I think the fruit merchant was a bit generous in his measures) while I was at the downtown market in Prairie Metropolis on Saturday.  A full case was beyond me, I knew, in part because I was coming and going by bus.  As it was, I "blessed" the ones I had purchased before I finished wrastling them home.  I've eaten several "in the hand" -- and there's enough left still for at least a generous peach pie and something else, not sure what.

I'm in the "crack" between two ministerial assignments -- finished my happy summer stint with the parishioners in Intensely Orange -- Sundays only, one service, a 400 km round-trip drive through prime agricultural country as well as a small national park, so I had at least a glimpse of Bison bison athabascae  once a week -- and on the last Sunday at different points along the way I saw FIVE moose -- and at least three vast flocks of snow geese resting and fuelling up for migration among the stubble.  I'd seen snow geese before, back East on the St. Lawrence, but never on the western flyway. 

Pretty rich stubble this season too.  My summer congregation were, um, agriculturalists, and as we got on from August into September they began to smile very, very cautiously and mutter, "she...doesn't look too bad, this year..."  This unemphatic perspective translates into newspaper headlines about "Best Yields EVER"... wheat, barley, and canola...   I kept saying to myself, "There IS corn in Egypt yet..."  Must be irretrievably carnal-minded, I guess, but nothing improves a vista like the visible presence of (potential) GRUB spread over it.

So now it's time to get dug into St. Leroy's, here in town, half-time, while their Rector has parental leave.  The trick will be giving an honest half-time's worth of work AND NO MORE.  Still juggling that in my own head.  I'll see what the lay leadership thinks about priorities and necessities.

All this--and reading, and reading, and reading.  Working on understanding my OWN priorities and necessities.  I seem to have been doing that for a very very long time.

Family Day

It is "Family Day," soi-disant, in Prairie Province -- cynics see it as "we needed a Monday off in February" and/or "Previous political figures attempted to compensate for inadequate parenting they provided by proclaiming a holiday in honour of families."  Whatever.  It is nice to have a Monday off particularly when the weather is not outstandingly horrid.

As it is a provincial holiday, not a federal one, the Post Office works, and we GET REAL MAIL.  Including some reading matter -- Jen Hatmaker's 7, or is it SEVEN?, and various magazines.  Also donation receipts to attach to the tax return.

Cleaning house, focussing on small areas i.e. about 18" square.  As long as I can see results heading to the curb on garbage pick-up day, I'm happy.

And doing some cookery -- made bread this morning from the sourdough basic recipe, with many modifications; the usual yield is two medium loaves, but this morning I made one loaf and a speculative quantity of long rolls suitable for hot dogs etc.  Came up with 10, of varying sizes, and I think 12 would be feasible.  This is basically white bread but it is mightily enriched with veg. oil, skim milk powder, wheat germ, wheat bran, cracked wheat, and quick (small-flake) oatmeal.  Sometimes sesame seed on the bottom also.  I'm well pleased with the result.  Makes good sandwiches, makes good toast, makes good French toast, and eventually makes great croutons and/or crumbs too.

Yogurt (home made) and granola (home made) for breakfast, very tasty.  I'll take a large jar of yogurt to #1 Granddaughter tomorrow, she consumes it at a great rate which is good for Grandma's ego.

Still computing courtesy of the public library (also open, this afternoon, predictably full of young'uns)...

Did not preach or officiate or do anything liturgical this last Sunday except to garb up and adorn the chancel.  Having worn out my alb to the "borderline disgraceful" stage, I regularly wear cassock and surplice.  Turns out this suits the African constituency in the parish just fine.  A delegation informed my Excellent Boss recently that "THAT one" (i.e. me) "is PROPERLY dressed"...which he found very funny, fortunately.

Reading Umberto Eco, a slim collection of essays entitled five moral pieces.  I acquired it for the sake of the essay titled "Ur-Fascism"; in other translations it appears as "Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt," which is wittier.  But there is also a gorgeous little essay in the form of a letter to Cardinal Martini of Milan -- title approximately, "When the Other Makes an Appearance."  Wow, can this man THINK.  (So can Cardinal Martini -- not surprising that their public dialogues were a very "hot ticket" in Milan.)

I'd better make a break for home at this point, company coming for supper...

...mit Frolocken...

It's snowing here this afternoon -- fat fluffy flakes; earlier in the day, they were smaller, and there was just enough of a breeze to toss them about in Brownian motion between our house and the house next door.  But now they're just enough heavier that they're falling almost straight down.  I'll have to shovel out tonight before I go to bed.  But it's all right -- it's not what the friends-who-are-nurses call "cardiac snow."

Shortly, however, I'm on my way to spend the evening with Delightful Grandbaby.  She is 10 months old today (less the five weeks she missed in utero).  She can sit herself up; she can crawl, she makes wonderful games out of clapping and waving and uttering funny noises.  Last Monday  we had a game with hiccups.  I patted her back; she hicc'ed.  When she hicc'ed -- I hicc'ed, just to demonstrate solidarity.  She looked at me dubiously -- she seemed to detect a certain lack of depth and authenticity about my performance.  But after half a dozen or so, she solemnly reached up and patted me on the chest.  "You pat me, Grandma, I'll pat you, we'll get the upper hand of these darn hiccups somehow."

Spent yesterday afternoon in a special kind of study on Romans 8, guided by the old Fifth Evangelist, there, at the head of the post...in the motet "Jesu meine Freude".  Singers comprising friends of my children and children of my friends -- or both.  Conductor: the Poppa of Delightful Grandbaby.   We are a very BACH family.

Does anybody else listen to Bach for the WORDS?  My gain yesterday was Frolocken.  I know that in standard orthography it's Frohlocken.  But without the "h" somehow -- it's more FROLICSOME.  And I love it.  Frolocken forever.  And more of the style of devotion, of thinking and feeling, that invites that rejoicing.

Bach does me good.  Thanks be to God and thanks be to the old Kapellmeister -- and to the young one, and to all his Musikant friends, too.

And so we go on...

Here it is Thursday and there should be an Ask the Matriarch post up already -- and there isn't -- haven't found the exactly right kind of cyber-trowel to spoon it into the RGBP slot.  EVERYBODY BE PATIENT...especially me.

Still dark out -- in another hour we may begin to see some intimations of dawn, and the sun will skulk and scuttle around the Eastern-Southern-Western horizon until between 4 and 5 this afternoon.  Meantime, though, it is MILD -- -3 C for people who do metric, or about 26 F.  We can expect some thawing later on. 

So it might be a day to do an outdoor task -- given that one could, today, stand still for ten minutes or so without freezing solid.

I can shovel the snow off my new deck -- I can clear a bit of a path to the compost bin -- I can even ambitiously dig out access to the SHED.  And retrieve therefrom the emergency shovel, which I'm supposed to have in the trunk of the car (I know, I know, I know). 

And when I've done all those fun gross motor things -- I can figure out how to instal the outdoors component of my fancy tell-all thermometer.  Preferably, on one of the supporting posts in the shade of the new back deck.  Nothing like a little power-tool work to make a person feel competent.

And "competent" would be a good feeling about now.

Heading back into work mid-morning (for "work", read "employment" !!); continuing interim, part-time, on a day-to-day basis -- like a hockey-player on the injured list... (what, by the way, is a "groin-pull," and how exactly does one get... oh, never mind)

There is a noon Eucharist, for which we can anticipate a congregation of six at most.  Today, complicating matters, there is a BIG memorial service at two.  BIG as in Major Civic Philanthropist.  So it will behoove us to "euch" with brisk efficiency, minimizing the pauses for silent reflection, and scoot out from under the chariot wheels of the funeral director's staff.  Our HOS is on vacation.  The memorial service is in the hands of senior diocesan clergy, not including the Rambler, who can come righteously home and get on with the installation of thermometers, etc., before heading out for supper.

something attempted, something done

Well, it's been kind of a fun day in the Interim Ministry department.  A lovely long confab with Marvelous Deacon filled the late morning hour...then Lunch and Lectionary with M Deacon and Fab Traveling Companion over Solomon, and the Temple, and the power of incense to knock clergy on their backs, and the status of "furriners'" prayers, and the whole armour of God, and the ever-lovin' bread of life YET AGAIN, and "Who you gonna call?" and all like that, all interspersed with munching on our own Desperately Healthy lunches.

Oh and during lunch -- phone calls.  St. Curious Too has more dang-nab phones -- land lines -- on the premises than any church I've ever entered.  So far I haven't found any phones in the washrooms, but EVERYWHERE else.  In consequence I had a fine conversation with a Victim Services lady in Herring-Choker Province, where they are fixing to incarcerate a young man found in possession of items stolen from the premises of St. Curious Too, back when (before my time).  Would we like to fill out a VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT prior to his sentencing?  So that has come, by email.  And then a call from a young man in search of a baptismal certificate.

Fortunately, I was able to tell him that it was on my desk and will be in the mail within 24 hours.  He and I had had previous conversations about the Catch-22 situation he was facing, and we with him: "We can't issue you a certificate because we do not have the baptismal register under our eye.  Nor can you be re-baptized, because we know you were baptized.  But we do not know that in a form or to a degree which permits us to issue a certificate.  But you can't be re-baptized, because" and a-la-main left, and around we go again.  

About the fourth circuit of the problem I bethought me of the old Book of Common Prayer, with its wise and pragmatic and pastoral provision for when the circumstances of a prior baptism are not clear enough to satisfy the priest.  Not its only liturgical recognition that STUFF HAPPENS, and the stuff that HAS happened, is quite likely to happen again, so let us have a nifty little ceremony, here, just to cover that eventuality.

The Book of Alternative Services sounds pretty raw by comparison -- coming out of an era when I guess we were still somewhat convinced that "nothing could go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong"  because we were all so clever and right-minded...

As it turned out, the Archives of Prairie Province had the register in question, and produced us a splendid document attesting to what is in the record, so our young man should be able to stand up and godfather his Roman Catholic friend's baby, and all's well all around.

And then, finally, a home communion visit with healing prayer for the couple who are filling my life with vegetables, after the manner of retired Prairie farmers of Slavic heritage.

Tomorrow -- day off -- will be a perfect ORGY of sugar, salt, vinegar, and Mason jars.  About six kinds of pickles, and chili sauce.

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.

a peaceable Tuesday

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.