The Kraken Wakes (or at least, turns over and groans)

A short post this evening, just to say I'm still alive; coming to the end of my third "time" with St. Curious, later this week, with no very concrete prospects for further work after June 30.  Actually, I prefer the term "employment" (old joke).

For some time now I've defined my status as "semi-retired, and the rest Just Plain Tired"... and it's fairly close to the truth.  So I've been divesting myself of activities -- including pleasant ones -- that take more energy than is at my disposal at present.

Ideally, I would just sit down in a quiet, well-lit, place, and read, and read, and read, and read.

Still trying to organize the life-support activities (cooking, washing, etc.) to make that a live possibility.

But I'm not there yet.

Oscar night...and books, and baptism, and biscuits...

Well that was interesting -- the FOMC called early-mid evening, as he often does of a Sunday, and I was able to report to him that I was a) watching the Oscars and b)discussing and commenting on them with folks all over North America. Fun, indeed. I missed a bunch of stuff in the middle, however, being on the phone at the time. Parenting apparently has no mandatory retirement date, sigh. And that is all I'm going to say about that.

It has been quite a good day despite very cold temperature -- zero Fahrenheit except right at midday, when it warmed up half a dozen degrees -- there has been a little additional snow atop the 10 inches yesterday. I have the best and kindest neighbours -- they "blew" my city-sidewalk TWICE yesterday, and when I got back from the church about 1 p.m. today, my neighbour was just finishing up blowing the snow off both the sidewalk and my ENTIRE driveway...so gracious.

The rhythm here is that the neighbours dig and shovel, I go into the kitchen and BAKE and then skip merrily over the snowdrifts with my frilly apron on, delivering little oven-warm goodies into their astonished expressions. It is all so Norman Rockwell, one can hardly stand it.

Yesterday I made sourdough buttermilk biscuits for this purpose. Only I put home made yogurt into them in place of the the buttermilk. Right out of the oven -- with a dab of butter and a little Lanark County wildflower honey? Mighty fine. And fast. And motivated me to re-energize the sourdough starter: all good.
My boss preached this morning very energetically on God's covenant initiatives in the lectionary. We're singing the Merbecke setting for the eucharist, for Lent (with the old words -- trying to jam the new translations into those notes just...doesn't work). I've sung Proulx and I've sung Addington and sometimes we sing sort-of Schubert and St. Curious has its own Mass setting written by a talented former Rector, and that's all dandy, but I'm sorry, to my ear Merbecke = church, and that's that.

My late-night and early-morning reading in bed this weekend has been the most recent New York Review of Books. So much there, so much to reflect on, speculate about, explore. Notable in this last issue a fine review by Peter Brown ("Who Ought To Know, After All") on three or four new books about Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine. At least two of them are by Garry Wills. There is one on Ambrose, Augustine, and baptism (Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism), that really does make my mouth water~~because I am very taken with Ambrose's baptismal sermon in which his text is 2 Kings 5 -- Naaman the leper and his disdain for the Jordan.

Listen to this, from Brown.

"In 387, ... this baptistery [i.e., in Milan] was not open to all. It was an arcane building, as closed against the uninitiated as was the cave of any pagan mystery cult. In it new things began. ... The ceremony began with an act of solemn exorcism. The culmination of the ritual involved a breaking of the boundaries between heaven and earth. ... It was a rite that 'broke open the incandescence of eternal life.' ... For Ambrose, baptism remained a baroque affair--a moment of rapture and unearthly light set against the darkness of a still-pagan world. Augustine ... came to a very different view of the same ritual. ... The baptized Christian could not expect to be buoyed up by the sense of having been transformed by a single dramatic rite. Human nature did not change so fast. Each believer remained like a leaky ship on the high seas, kept afloat by the constant creak of the bilge pump. The salt water of small, insidious sins dripped through its timbers. If not pumped out by constant acts of penance, prayer, and almsgiving, these small trickles of sin could sink the ship. In this, Augustine preached a doctrine for the long haul, suited to a gray world where almost everyone was a Christian and very few of them were good Christians...."

This makes me very happy.

Dust, and that.

And, Day Two of Lent. Ran a few errands of a desultory type this morning, came home for light lunch and then collected one of the Wednesday Wise Women to go and visit another of the WWW, now in palliative care.

The rest of the day has been fiddly and non-accomplishing. Read for a bit.

I am reading psalms according to the psalter-in-a-month schedule in the old Book of Common Prayer -- also the readings in the fine-print table near the beginning -- in the Prayer Book Psalter the headwords of each psalm are given in Latin. After a few weeks of this I managed to dig out my copy of the Vulgate (in about four-point print, MAGNIFICATION NEEDED), thinking I could spend a little more time with the psalms if I read them in Latin as well as English.

Found something MIGHTY interesting this morning -- reading Psalm 113 (or 112, depending on your numbering) -- God is praised for raising the needy from the ground and lifting the poor out of the dust. But in Latin, he lifts the "pauper ... de stercore", out of the stercus. And to paraphrase the beloved priest who taught me St. Paul's letters -- that doesn't exactly mean, dust. What it means, is shit. Shades of Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, and the mountain of "dust" and the "dustman" characters...

WHICH... evoked a certain reflection on just exactly what it was we said, so prayerfully and gently, to all the penitents yesterday.

And that led me back to Genesis 3, in Latin, where I was greatly comforted to find that in Latin, at least, that substance that we are and to which we return, is pulvis.

But I wonder what the word is, or words are, in Hebrew? h'm!

a pastoral/liturgical conundrum...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any thoughts?

Epiphany and epiphanies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the real edge.

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year!

Good afternoon, all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exercise. Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

all day with Mary B...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just for now...

On Having Misidentified A Wild Flower
By Richard Wilbur

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

back later, I hope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

anticipation!

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

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

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

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

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

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

a quick update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the ironing board.

commentary on the statu in quo...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a quiet Tuesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond Belief dep't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And tomorrow is also a day.

Thomas et al.

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

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

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

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

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

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


Easter Morning
William Stafford

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

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

But I probably won't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

miduum of the triduum...

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

Nobody has as much fun as we do, nobody.

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