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Back at the Library. I love it, also the Librarians...and home-time is a lot more productive WITHOUT access to the Internet, go figure out THAT little phenomenon if you will.
Had a fine morning at in-town parish, contributing to our collective ministry as a distribution depot for the city Food Bank. My role (barring emergencies) is to encourage the volunteers (who are brilliant) and do a little outreach by firing up ecclesiastical charcoal and sage (wild picked, I believe) to offer "smudge" to our visitors, come to pick up their groceries.
That was particularly joyful this morning as we had a large number of clients for whom "smudge" was part of their culture'n'customs. Nobody seems to mind that a European-settler-type-person is fanning the smoke with a feather. And we have mutually affirming conversations, if only about our aches and pains (or our grandchildren).
Having a very interesting time with grandchildren this winter. In the fall I embarked upon the "extended play" version of the Ignatian spiritual exercises -- some days it's toilsome, but I'm glad I did, finding it all very stimulating.
In the meantime I continue to visit The Granddaughters on two evenings of each week, putting the elder GD units to bed in their respective households. One particular evening the eldest of all, "Thing #1," had had an especially trying end-of-day, and without any premeditation on my part we got into a conversation about "TIRED," how we both were, in fact, and how CRANKY that made us...and I heard myself saying, "Why don't we take all your cranky, and all Grandma's cranky, and mash them together in a ball" (suiting the action to the word)"and on the way home tonight I'll roll down my car window and throw them out to bounce away into the dark???" and Thing #1 entered into the spirit of the thing immediately, and said, "And a HUGE TRUCK will come along and SQUSH them away."
So we did that....
And at our next session, I just asked, "Is there anything you'd like Grandma to throw away for you tonight?" "Yes, all my Whining, and my Not Good Listening, and my Fighting..."
And halfway home I thought, "great suffering cats...I think that was the Ignatian Examen...almost-four-year-old version..."
So it's become a ritual, and a happy one. We've expanded it, to include recollection of the happy parts of the day, also rolled up and left under the pillow for recall in the morning...
And here is a reference... http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/reviews/view/15997
After a fair-ish night's sleep, up in good time and did a complete patrol of the house. Part of the new daily discipline will be to go into every room of the house, every day -- and when weather allows, to walk the perimeter of the front and back yards, every day.
I am more and more aware that if I do not continue to push -- physically as well as mentally -- into the corners, the corners will draw in and the world will grow steadily smaller and smaller. As I said to my Helping Neighbour last week -- "I have to cut my own grass just often enough to keep me from thinking 'Oh, I can't'. Because if I start to believe that, I can't continue to live in the house." He agreed that that made sense. Same goes for snow-shoveling, and a degree of house repairs. Same goes for digging in garden-space. Push the edges, all the time.
Besides...if I don't look at the rooms, I forget what is in them. I have too much stuff (I know I'm not alone) but the corollary to that is that one doesn't OWN what one can't FIND. So, working on that.
Went out midday and had a long catching-up visit over coffee with a good-friend. We were in a mall coffee shop a long way from home-base -- and still, two or three other people who knew one or both of us came by and joined in the conversation -- it's delightful.
Just before I went out, made a verbal arrangement for six weeks' pastoral and liturgical supply in the wonderful parish I served as interim last summer...will try for 6 - 8 weeks' tenure there starting in September, before the weather and travel conditions become too daunting (it's 200+ km., one way). Looking forward to this -- looking forward to seeing the dear folks again and the lovely terrain between here and there.
Let us be candid, the "re-MEW-neration" is not unwelcome either!
Then stopped at the library on the way home and handed in TWO books and picked up Roz Chast's memoir of her parents' decline (Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?) -- and just for frivolity, a volume of Carrie Fisher's memoirs. So there is a lovely varied little stack of "stuff to read," here.
Had a bite of early supper and went off to ride herd on Thing Two, my junior granddaughter, while her parents did chores around the house and in the yard. We had a fine playtime with snacks and about five books, and then I helped her Mom with bathtime. Thing Two's sibling is due in about six weeks or two months, so it is timely and appropriate if Grandma hoists the little girl in and out of the tub... Much enjoyment. Son Unit and DIL Unit and I accounted for a box of Haagen-Das ice-cream bars -- so home to put the garbage out for early-morning pickup. Chasing Shackleton on the TV. What a story. (What a MAN! Whoo!)
Tomorrow, I think, at home all day and -- I hope -- working productively. Library reading -- and I have Slow Church on the reading pile (this morning I bookmarked the videos of Stanley Hauerwas talking about SC -- looking forward to hearing his perspective also).
A good day with lovely affectionate moments to look back on -- helps with the recurrent feeling of being at odds with the ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD, which burbles up from time to time.
As of today -- I have turned the corner into a new decade -- this is my seventieth birthday, and I have very little vision of what that means -- sixty-ish, yes; eighty-ish, yes; but SEVENTY???
Partly I want to ask, "HOW did this happen?" but I know the answer to that one well enough.
I have enjoyed a day of almost entirely untrammeled self-indulgence (well, it's a start....) -- up and a long phone conversation, very affable, with the Father of My Children -- then rushed off to get my haircut -- home and met my neighbour between our two houses and heard him apologize that he hadn't got my lawn cut for me before I cut it myself, earlier this week (it looks a bit like a kindergartener's self-hair-cut, but hey)...then I chased down my weedkiller/fertilizer technician and made him sort out the invoices that he had put in the wrong mailboxes...then I repelled the earnest efforts of the Jehovah's Witnesses (ah, Saturdays in the summer)...then I went to the Library and played on their computers and handed in one book and took out four more, all slender and non-challenging... then I did a little reconnaissance on the dinner-venue for this evening...then stopped at a cafe for a mid-afternoon treat, came home, and in due course got myself out of the house again for supper with 2/3 of my children and 2/2 of my grandchildren, one DIL, one SIL, and the co-grandparents of one of the little granddaughters.
Dinner was Italian, in a right-sized private dining-room where the granddaughters could hoot and holler and play tag around the table when they were tired of eating (Italian food which they both like, and watching the 20-month-old smack the table and demand more OLIVES was a highlight of the evening)...so after wonderful charcuterie and wine and pizzas and pastas and -- for me -- praline gelato in a bowl about as big as the average washbasin... and lovely cards and presents ... "and so home," like Samuel Pepys...
Tomorrow I'm preaching and presiding again for the first time in a couple of months; must look out a clean black shirt etc. and make sure my vestments are packed and in the car.
Time to take one more look over the sermon notes...I feel very very "guest-preacher-ish" this evening and the sermon is perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic also... But I don't think I'll do them any harm.
"Grandma played with me all morning, and now I am just 'zosted."
(Grandma could use a bit of a nap also!)
It's very late -- it's actually Sunday -- but I slept earlier in the evening, and I have a few things to put together for tomorrow morning, a one-shot assignment to a parish 120 km from home, more or less, whose interim priest just can't make it work,tomorrow, on top of what else he is responsible for in his own parish.
So we'll have good word on what the Holy Spirit is up to -- the spectacular vs. the totally unnoticed -- and let that suffice (it generally DOES, is the message, more or less. Suffice, that is).
Today felt very Saturday-ish...hairdo, bank, gas in the vee-hicle ("Harriet the Chariot"), dropped off a prescription for refill, and then went to the Library to pick up a heap of "holds" -- and of course found a couple of other things just crying out to be borrowed.
Then the cumulo-nimbus helpfully rolled in, preventing me from doing any more yard work -- Friday what with the yard and to and from the Library I walked 7,500 steps, and today every time I stand up I feel like an old ironing board that had been left out in the rain -- so I came home and contemplated this heap of library books and put DUE DATE sticky-notes on them all. Picture me launching into #1: Lords of Finance, which is due on the 12th. I'm going to know a whole lot more about the gold standard, and the IMF, and Bretton Woods, and central banks -- and, inevitably, the four Great Bankers the author says he has chosen to focus on. I was amused but NOT surprised to see that there is as much about John Maynard Keynes in the book as about any of the four. Now there WAS a man.
Also eying two recent arrivals from Amazon minions -- Glyn Maxwell, On Poetry; and The University: An Owner's Manual, by Henry Rosovsky. Having a mild and entirely unrequited passion for both topics.
And then I had to rush out before they got to the actual horse-race, and go sit upon the beautiful #1 granddaughter. We had a fine evening with a quick trip to the park, a leisurely bath, great story-time...she went into her bed perfectly contented and then told herself stories quietly for about another half-hour, as I could hear from the monitor.
The language development is a continuing delight...not just vocabulary but SYNTAX, hot damn and hallelujah.
Good Pentecost, everybody. She's got your back, remember.
In my most recent post I mentioned the Granddaughters (Thing One and Thing Two) and then thought, GOOD HEAVENS, it's time for up to date pictures. So here they are: Annie at 19 months (nearly), and Lena at 10 months (just barely)... What's that zinger about "the lines have fallen unto me in very pleasant places?" Yes. And among very lovely creatures, too.
3dogmom has given us this prompt,
for this week's Friday Five:
I’ve just returned from an extended road trip, a portion of which
included travel through ancestral homelands. While I was gone our son’s
first child, Hunter, was born, making me mindful of the gift that our
roots can offer to us as we venture through life. That juxtaposition
inspires today’s Friday Five.
At a baby shower honoring Hunter guests filled out a card full of
hopes and wishes for his life. Thinking about whatever new life may be
touching yours (the birth of a child, a marriage, a new call…), choose
five wishes from the following and do the same. (For instance, I wrote
for Hunter, “I hope you laugh at your grandfather’s jokes.)
I hope you: learn, grow, remember, laugh, get, follow, aren’t afraid, love, respect, try to, never forget, become, experience.
Bonus: what hopes did someone in your life offer to you that have stayed with and inspired you?
Let us know in the comments if you play. You can leave a link old school if you want to be fancy, or you can simply cut and paste the URL, because that works on WordPress.
My wishes and hopes are for Thing One and Thing Two (the 2012 vintage granddaughters) -- but how do I keep it down to five? All right, here goes.
I hope you learn and go on learning as long as you live.
I hope you laugh whenever you can (and only cry when you must).
I hope you respect yourselves, and each other (and if there's any left over for Grandma that would be all right too).
I hope you never forget that you are tremendously loved, and tremendously loveable (because your RevGalBlogAunties can tell you, those are SUPERPOWERS).
I hope you aren't afraid of the world or the people in it.
There. That's about it!
And I love you very much.
