the groove...

The unsmiling Tsarevna

(Not actually the Rambler!)


What with one thing and another or three, the acedia has receded, and a fair amount of work has been accomplished this week. I think this is because of renewed zest for the year to come and for some new, that is, additional, ways of being church in this place which are being happily explored with a congenial colleague--ways of being church that have found quick, happy echoes in the consciousness at MH & U. We are looking at expanding our ministry in terms of the creative arts, and of the community, the folks whose lives are centred on and in the arts.

So there is some excitement in the ministry again...and some conviviality, even some renewed cyber-conviviality.

I am happy that the new energy has overflowed into Least Favourite Tasks such as making phone contact with people, sending out mass emails, setting agendas, vetting minutes, and so forth.

Tuesday and Wednesday were days of serious meetings...that went well and with good energy, on into the evening...Thursday was blessed with a series of no-shows and cancellations which freed time to rush about in the city attending to banking, post office... Otherwise Thursday was pretty flat -- some days I can generate streams of prose, conversation, decisions, communications; other days, nothing but facial hair and methane. (Go ahead and laugh, you young'uns -- you'll find out!)

Today has been all yee-haw again. Just about two serious tasks left and then home I go, with sermon notes and lectionary in hand. "We can do this" is our cry, again; thanks be to God.

I see England, I see France...

(not actually the Rambler)
...and where the HANOVER do they get off, charging ten dollars retail for a pair of ordinary underpants?

Just askin'.

November Eleventh

When I got home last night the Rowan Williams book on Dostoevsky was in the mailbox. I've only got to the back-cover blurbs and the title-page, but I notice it is part of a series out of Baylor UP, "The Making of the Christian Imagination."

This morning at our 11/11 service, in lieu of a sermon, and in support of the Christian imagination, I'm going to read the passage near the end of Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks, that includes these words. (Stephen is an English soldier, a sapper, who has been buried by his own explosion; he is being dug out by Levi and Lamm, who are -- not -- English soldiers. It is eleven in the morning of November 11th, 1918.)

"It was Levi's work, not Lamm's, that had loosened the earth sufficiently at the end of Stephen's coffin for him to be able to drawl out of it, over the fallen body of Jack Firebrace.
On hands and knees he moved back among the debris his own explosion had made. About a yard further along he could see where the tunnel was still intact. It was here that Lamm had broken through. Levi pushed Lamm back and climbed into the British tunnel himself. Tricked by the echo of Stephen's tapping, he turned the wrong way, and began to walk away from him.
Gurgling and spitting earth from his mouth, Stephen clawed his way forward, shouting as he went. He could see light from some lantern swaying in the tunnel ahead of him. There was air. He could breathe.
Levi heard him. He turned and walked back.
As the tunnel roof lifted, Stephen moved up into a crouch and called out again. The lantern was on him.
He looked up and saw the legs of his rescuer. They were clothed in the German feldgrau, the colour of his darkest dream.
He staggered to his feet and his hand went to pull out his revolver, but there was nothing there, only the torn, drenched rags of his trousers.
He looked into the face of the man who stood in front of him and his fists went up from his sides lilke those of a farm boy about to fight.
At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed shingle of a beach. The sound of his life calling to him on a distant road; the faces of the men who had been slaughtered, the closed eyes of Michael Weir in his coffin; his scalding hatred of the enemy, of Max and all the men who had brought him to this moment; the flesh and love of Isabelle, and the eyes of her sister.
Far beyond thought, the resolution came to him and he found his arms, still raised, begin to spread and open.
Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother's killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other's shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives."

Friday ponderings

The cartoon is from Dave Walker's Guide to the Church.


who let this man into my office?

There was a curate at MH & U, back in the day, who was under the impression that "ponderous" meant "thoughtful" or "reflective" (given that "ponder" means "think," right?); he came perilously close to getting himself thumped from time to time, suggesting to the Rambler that she "looked particularly ponderous" at certain moments. Eventually his bride enlightened him. Hilarity ensued.

Time for a mall-walk this morning with a good friend...time to push a bit of paper to and fro on the desk ... time for lunch with another good friend: and now as there is no actual precipitation falling, but there's a significant thickening of the atmosphere on the horizon that whispers "...snow....snow....snow...."

So I am headed back to Tether's End to begin dealing with eight-full-sized-poplars' worth of fallen leaves. Because we are living on borrowed time as regards yard work, in these parts.

Returning later in the evening for the opening session of Marriage Prep. And tomorrow morning again, I make soup for the participants.

And somewhere in here I put together some homiletical thoughts about Joshua and the Thessalonians and the wise and foolish bridesmaids and Remembrance Day ...

I have beeeeeen to the mountaintop. Or something.

Well, wow. I have to admit, I did not feel perfectly confident that the American voter, en masse, had the degree of gumption that was exhibited in the results of the presidential election yesterday. I had an awful mental image of goodhearted folks going into the voting booth, and reaching for whatever technology was offered them, and then thinking..."a black man? well.... maybe not...this time..."

Then last night I stayed in the office in case anyone showed up for Bible study (they did, both of them, bless their hearts), and in the meantime I got into watching the live feed (AP via the CBC), all those mesmerizing little red and blue blotches, oh dear. Also in the meantime one of my far-flung nephews bobbed up on "meebo," as he was watching results on Fox TV, back in the Mysterious East. So after Bible study was over I resumed computer watching, and he and I burbled at each other instantaneously for a couple of hours -- we were getting different info at different speeds, of course.

So it was very late when I finally got home, with soup yet to make for the Clericus (regional clergy meeting) here at MH & U today. A double batch of Curried Pumpkin from allrecipes.com -- starting with 8 Macintosh apples. I could peel and core them in a bowl on my lap while I watched TV news. That was OK.

But one of my colleagues notified me he can't handle peppers, tomatoes, or onions. I don't understand how a person can survive "no onions." I mean, heavenly days, an onion is what you chop up and cook gently while you're deciding what it IS that you're going to cook, right? Right?

Eventually I found a recipe for home-made cream-of-celery soup, no onion. By now it was just ridiculously late. I got the celery chopped and simmering and while I waited for the liquid in the pot to "reduce"...fell asleep...and did not wake up until I had, candidly, burned the ass off the whole project. I set the pot to soak and went to bed.

Up at 5:30, choppity-chop, got the second try completed successfully and toted soup to church and met with parishioners who are devising Christmas Eve pageant and picked up sandwiches and dessert from the deli counter and got everything to the table, mostly, by noon. I had RSVP's from only about 6 or 7 colleagues and we were, finally, 14. Even with good soup you can only add so much water before Remarks Are Made, heavens.

Got it done, had our lunch and a bit of Bible study for next Sunday and some in-house info around the table and then I had a crew kindly stay behind to load the dishwasher and deal with the pots etc.

Away to the auxiliary hospital for a communion service, plus communion for another patient too ill to come to the meeting place.

And now I am going out for supper.

And that's all.

election frenzy

Hard to think about anything much this morning except what the next 36 hours will bring on the other side of the World's Longest Undefended Border (pause to snicker). One of my Facebook Friends has posted a status line that she is away to one of those states with a vowel on both ends, to assist with her favored candidate's campaign in these final days and hours. I didn't quite know what I thought about the propriety of that; and then I reflected I'd have no trouble at all making up my mind about an "equal and reciprocal action": i.e., an incursion of visitors from the U.S. A. to "assist" a Canadian political campaign. Love y'all, you know that, but that manoeuvre just ain't on, 'kay?

And amid my cogitations I came, via several other blogs, upon this Voting Prayer. I think this is lovely...and practical...and I plan to adapt it freely to our uses in this, the True North Strong and Free.

Baptism yesterday was wonderful, two baby girls in the under-six-months category and therefore unable to show much in the way of fight. They slept blissfully through the proceedings. Thank you to the Sanctuary Guild who remembered that the baptismal ewer should be filled with WARM WATER, thank you!!!

And then over coffee we had an impromptu Corporation meeting and sol-ved the problem of the complete suite of new-ish overstuffed furniture heaped in the narthex (ever since Rummage, despite protestations that the purchaser was coming to get it, any day now). We simply appropriated it, some strong backs were recruited from among the saints present, and the furniture is now installed in our Upper Hall, thereby increasing its chic by several orders of magnitude.

life is good

...or at least, it has very good moments.

A baptismal interview this morning, and then rehearsal for the two families with little people to be baptized tomorrow morning...

While I was waiting for them to arrive (one of the moms was actually conducting a stamping and card-making workshop downstairs)(that's stamping as in "rubber stamping" not "rubber boot stamping" you understand)...a parishioner dropped by with a poem.

We likes poems, my precious.

All Souls' Morning

Rain splatting wet leaves; citrine light; the cat
Scratching the sofa; the house dead quiet but for
The furnace thumping in the cellar; that man, my
Neighbor, out on Locust Road as he is each morning
No matter the weather, walking his dog--bent shoulders
And heavy head, cherry-red leash dangling from a
Pale hand, his dog the dark tan of oak leaves when
They turn and hang and enter the depths of winter. I see
A huge patience in his stoop, in the ghostly cigarette
Limp between his lips, in the stiff tilt of his head,
The treadle action of his passage, the orange surprise
Of a golf umbrella blossoming from his fist, the loll
Of the dog by his side as they return up Locust, both
Eater to be in again out of the cold wet day that's
Breaking round them. I'm thinking how, bound to
One another, they've been at this for years,
When my father comes leaning, as he always did,
Up Clareville Road, not far from where he's buried,
Bent against the bitter wind that always tunnelled it
In winter, his black umbrella furled, our small
Black mongrel, Brandy, straining the leash toward home
Where my mother fusses the tea together. Five o'clock
And Dublin's dark already, it being winter, fat raindrops
Scudding the wind and mixing with his lost thoughts
As he hastens after his dog, home to the wife who, when he
Leaves her behind him, will run aground with grief
At being no one in the world. This is the bottom line,
I guess: we button our habits to the chin and set out
Walking very fast with death. A bluejay's screech
Rattles the skeleton of our locust tree; the road
Outside my window is empty again, and rain gives way
To sky-bright weather, gray aquarium light making
Luminous the air, coating the dark tar with mirror-pools
Of periwinkle blue. A rising wind tides among the
Surviving leaves, and a swallow flock of dead ones
Joyrides down Locust Road, cold no more, borne off. All
Night, you said, when we wakened warm by one another,
I was seeing shapes widen round the room, hearing them
Whisper in the wall. This minute my hungry children are
Clattering to the kitchen for breakfast. The house quickens.

--Eamon Grennan.