frustrations...

the project this morning is to find a parishioner...not just any parishioner, you understand, but Mrs. N.
Mrs. N is a widow. She is all but completely blind. She has no siblings, and only one child who lives in another country.
On the weekend she suffered a fall in her assisted-living seniors' residence. She MAY have fallen as a result of a mild stroke.
Or, of course, vice versa.
Her two most attached friend-households were both out of province at the time. One of them was reached by phone and persuaded her to let herself be taken to hospital.
We know which one.
We are told that she was discharged from the hospital.
We are told that she has not returned to her apartment.
We have no idea whether she was transferred to an auxiliary facility (this is our fervent hope); or whether she was simply ushered out of the primary-care hospital without follow-up.
Getting this simple piece of information, "What have you done with Mrs. N?" is unbelievably obstructed by a piece of legislation, referred to unlovingly as FOIPP.
(which stands for "Freedom of Information and Personal Privacy")
The institutional cry becomes, "we can't tell you that because of FOIPP." One of the things that "they" can't tell is whether a patient has been transferred to another facility, and if so, which one. No, no. That would be a breach of FOIPP.
So this morning I shall commence calling all the auxiliary-care hospitals I can think of, enquiring, "do you have Mrs. N there, by chance?"
The rationale for FOIPP is personal protection. It doesn't work that way.

***Late Breaking News~ FOUND HER, FOUND HER, FOUND HER. TBTG. Still at the acute-care hospital where she was first taken.

Sometimes the problem is FOIPP.
And sometimes the problem is D.U.M.B.

routines

...struggling with creeping disorder in my life...

My sleep pattern is seriously out of whack, and I realize that I've carefully conditioned myself in some unhealthy ways: for example, getting home is the signal to collapse onto the couch and abandon useful activity for an indefinite period. Not good for energy levels, digestion, or mental health generally.

However I did attend to some overdue domestic details this week, getting caught up on laundry a little...it was high time ("high" in whatever sense you choose to take it).

I found a cache of damp items in the bathroom hamper which had developed a fine colony of mildew. Good news, folks, chlorine bleach still works. The tricky part was finding a "venue" for soaking that wouldn't be accessible to Nefertiti the Terror of the Plains. I didn't fancy coming home to a black-and-white cat...

Finally I found a sufficiently large plastic bucket, and filled it with dilute bleach and the blighted items of laundry, shut the whole project in the bathtub/shower enclosure with shower doors closed and bathroom door closed.

The cat didn't get into the bleach, the laundry came up white without just falling apart, and life rolls on.

Need to find some way to con myself into doing some yardwork, the abode looks like "a widda-woman's place" -- and you will have to imagine the infinite scorn my grandmother could put into THAT phrase!

since you asked me...

"was the Princess NICE?"

Yes, she was. The little girl she is greeting here has profound hearing challenges; she is one of an African family sponsored by Most Holy and Undivided.

and upon reflection...

Well, it was quite a Sunday. I'm not sure we've ever revved ourselves up to quite the same pitch of excitement in the time I have been here.

Sunday of course was preceded by Saturday -- and even Friday -- Friday was the wedding rehearsal, and Saturday the wedding...half an hour before "Dearly beloved" a wedding guest accosted me, "Excuse me, I don't know if you know, but the ladies' washroom is flooding..."

This would be the ladies' washroom renovated with infinite pains in the preceding weeks...and it had flooded in such good earnest as to flood the OTHER ladies' washroom on the floor just below, gravity being what it is, still.

And also considerable acreage of floor space on both levels.

Turn off little twiddly valve, and yell for help.

Parishioners rushed in from the garden, snatched off their shoes, rolled up their trousers like bit-players in "The Good Earth," and mopped, and mopped, and mopped, and LAUGHED...it was just aitch-too-oh, not sewage, thanks be to God. And nobody the wiser, come Sunday.

Sunday was epic. Vehicles parked where their owners had been told they mustn't. Told in written form, yet, on letterhead...and great was the grief and hand-wringing thereat, until a large military person observed the reaction and murmured, "We have five tow trucks on hand, Ma'am, this will not be a problem" and whisk! it was not a problem.

Arrivals of caterers, bearing smoked salmon in great quantity. Arrival of military band, with preliminary whompings of bass drum. Arrival of florist to deposit Princess's nosegay in a Safe Place ("I looked it up, she loves white roses, I've given her white roses and blue iris"). Arrival of volunteers, with ropes and stanchions and clipboards and lists and charts. Arrival of large solemn watchful gentlemen with curly wires in their ears, very imposing.

Assembling of choir (and friends). Deploying of volunteers to control access to building.

Military parade in the block in front of the church, causing murmurings: "she marched them up to the top of the hill and she marched them down again..."

And then it was 10:30, "Welcome, Your Royal Highness" and away. we. go.... "Holy, Holy, Holy," Children's focus time on the symbolism of the pronghorn on the regimental flag, three readings including "Nicodemus" which is substantial, the Venite, the Te Deum, the Jubilate and the Psalm, all to proper Anglican chants my dears, sung minor litany, sung collects (thank you, precenting SIL), "Bright the Vision that Delighted," Sermon, prayer for the Royal Family, General Thanksgiving, Prayer of St. Chrysostom, "God Save the Queen" and "How Shall I Sing that Majesty" (little editorializing there), and Walton's "Crown Imperial" for a postlude, and signing of the guest book and out the door to talk to our Sunday School children and have pictures taken, INSIDE THE HOUR...
And then downstairs to consume the sumptuous lunch and "process" everything we had seen and heard and thought and done...

in which the Rambler comes out of retreat and revs up for Royalty...

Hello all.

It froze overnight, here in Prairie Metropolis. In Other Prairie Metropolis, 300 km. south, it's snowing.
"Oh what is so rare as a day in June,
Then, if ever, come perfect days."

Ha~!

I've been away at a Roman Catholic retreat centre in the suburbs (in the posh suburb, as a matter of fact), with three young men, well, younger than me, who will be ordained DV on Sunday night, one as a deacon and the other two to the priesthood.

I don't know how effective a preparation this was for them but we came away in a state of considerable charity with each other and that has to be good, right?

We had a good time and ate a lot and talked almost incessantly -- so much for silence -- and covered many topics such as the poetry (and prose!) of George Herbert and the regulations governing clerical weaponry (agreed that we should confine ourselves to inflicting BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA only in the proper mediaeval decorum)... the potentially mixed blessing of the clerical "assistant"... selected bons mots of the late Ed Friedman, and the dreadful lacunae in seminary training in the "choreography and legerdemain" aspects of Practical Liturgy. NONE of these men has had a "dry run" through the Eucharist. NONE. And it's not that they have graduated from Punkin Corners Seminary and School of Mines, not by any means.

IT IS A SCANDAL.

And it would appear that the Rambler will be doing hands-on tutorials next week...

And apparently nobody ever, ever, learns to sing any more, in preparation for liturgical leadership.

This isn't right, either.

We also went to the pub nearby on our final evening...


MEANTIME, "princess is comin'" and the cleaning up has been done and we are all in a tall state of furbishment,and have coped with the announcement that the Child Most Likely to present a nosegay--and all the child's siblings--were diagnosed on Wednesday with pediculosis...

I have a wedding at 1 p.m. today as well...good rehearsal yesterday afternoon, with a STELLAR ringbearer of maybe 8 or 9. Boys at that age are WONDERFUL. No irony. Pre-pubescent towers of strength, one and all.

reflections on teaching, and "Can you spell VOCATION?"

We are rejoicing -- or maybe just exhibiting reprehensible smugness -- at MH & U these days over our NINE, count'em, confirmands. Each provided with a mentor, too; and none of the mentors likely to cause harm of any sort to their charges.

This is all good! The young people are mostly boys, just a couple of girls, ranging in age from a very mature 9 to 16.

This means lots of adult males involved in the mentoring, also good.

I also have a handful of wee ones interested in first-communion instruction and/or baptismal instruction.

The issue here is that we welcome whole families with a range of ages and a range of theological backgrounds including the Anabaptist, so there are anomalies in the ages at which our children do things for the first time.

I thought I might economize on effort and energy by teaching the whole mob (the little ones are 6 or 7 years old) through the most basic "Life in the Eucharist" work and then get stuck into William Willimon's material on "Making Disciples" for the balance of the confirmation instruction.

And so on Sunday I found myself in the nave of the church with about 8 of the confirmands, and mentors according, and two bright-eyed church-oriented little girls, and a small crowd of parents, various.

We had spent some time last Sunday on the ante-communion part of the liturgy.

So I moved a small table to the head of the aisle, set it with my travelling communion kit, including wafers, wine, and water, and called the little girls to me, because I thought that doing the teaching "fishbowl" style might be best -- two participants and the rest observers... this seemed to be OK for the group.

I borrowed the two long white brocade bookmarks from the altar-book and put them on the little girls like stoles...and then encouraged them to see what happens at communion time from where the priest sees it...we counted out wafers, poured water, poured wine, washed little hands with the lavabo bowl...we recalled the story of the Last Supper which we tell every Good Friday as part of the children's Way of the Cross.

and I asked them to wonder how many of the roughly-a-dozen of young people there might find themselves doing this work as their life's work. (Actually, I said, "I'll just bet that at least one of you, someday...")

I had NO IDEA how that thought would go over, at all. But it did seem to me that a way to pull them through their confirmation instruction might be by applying the superior magnetic effect of ordination...I still don't know with any confidence whether that's legitimate, or inspired, or unscrupulously manipulative, or what.

But they were MIGHTY thoughtful. The little girls meanwhile were INTO IT...surreptitiously stroking their stoles, and -- one of them -- extending a very small forefinger to touch the wafers in the paten.

So we wrapped up the lesson with some discussion of ways that communion is shared in different churches and in different situations, and they all went home.

But I had feedback...indirectly, from the parents of the little girl who isn't yet baptized. At home with her parents, she told them, "THAT WAS THE MOST MOST SPECIAL THING THAT I HAVE EVER DONE."

And I think that is, after all, what I wanted them to feel about the Eucharist.

oh the difference...

Yesterday was intense.

Fifteen hours from arrival at MH & U in the morning to pulling out of the parking lot en route home in the evening...

Saturday was spent MOSTLY at the church as well, on the periphery of madly energetic cleaning-up going on indoors and outdoors. Most of it pretty good work, but some of it pretty mindless. "Let's clean up the chancel, and let's start by unplugging everything and leaving it that way." "Let's clean up the narthex, and let's start by gathering up all the little church-front portable easel signs, and HIDING THEM SOMEWHERE." Somewhere remote from the front door, which of course is where they're deployed.

I didn't sleep very well Saturday night, and arriving at church to find these...anomalies...produced something close to a clerical meltdown, I am embarrassed to say. Running about of churchwardens, "It's OK, Rambler. It'll be all right. We'll just ask the congregation at announcement time, where the signs went. Just be calm. You're OK."

The assistant preached in exemplary fashion... it is such a blessing to have the stimulus of another preacher on the premises...especially when his work evokes the "yes-indeed-but-on-the-other-hand" Anglican response. Leading me to reflect on the difference between statements of fact and statements of truth. (not wanting to think about statements of cornmeal mush, which constitute most of the preaching one hears.)

Got through the second service. (Signs were duly produced at announcement time, expressions of injured innocence all 'round.)

Lined up to get invitation/ticket from Ticket Maven. Accosted in line-up by Exemplary Laywoman reminding me that the "youth" were awaiting me for their confirmation class. Came "this close" to biting said laywoman right in the goozle for asking me to be in two places at once...she retreated, prudently.

Got ticket, had confirmation class, worked through prayer of consecration with little children while big children looked on. We have NINE, count'em, NINE confirmands for the service in October, and at least a couple of baptizands, it's all delightful.

Co-ordinated perceptions with Ticket Maven Lady and sent her off to phone Chronic Stayers-Away lest they show up the Sunday AFTER the royal hoo-hah, and then the screaming begins, again.

Worked on paperwork all afternoon barring quick dash out for a lunch/supper pizza.

Back to computer at 6:35 and wrote sermon for Evensong (Choral) which happened at 7 pm, attended by members of Prairie Metropolis and Hinterland Council of Churches, and a few parishioners, and, God bless and reward them, a solid phalanx of choir.

There was chanting, Anglican chanting, big time.

Preached on Jeremiah 31:1-13, Ephesians 5, and ecumenism with reflections from John 17 (from the morning services).

Sang lovely Anglican evening hymns too..."O Gracious Light, Lord Jesus Christ" (Tallis), "Light of the World, in Grace and Beauty" (Rendez a Dieu), and "Day is Done, But Love Unfailing" (Ar Hyd Y Nos). MOST satisfying to one and all.

Then convened and chaired AGM of Council of Churches, which went well despite no-shows and no-replies (and no minutes -- my fault)...and wrapped up evening with "whining and cheesiness" supplied by the Very Forgiving Laywoman who had narrowly escaped being Rambler-bitten earlier in the day.

And so, as they say, to bed.

All in all, a good day.

And, I'm happy to say, a good night's sleep, which made all the difference today!