It has been a relaxed sort of day ... recuperating from yesterday's hefty drive (240 km), chatting with friends...then off to the noon hour seminar for a further reading and discussion of St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana; we're into Book Four, batting to and fro Augustine's theories about rhetoric, his rhetorical analyses of Scripture, his "helpful hints" to preachers. One of the other attendees is a retired English teacher -- and a former parishioner of mine -- we consider ourselves to be members of the same union as St. Augustine and we have a great time with our "shared interests." There is just one more meeting in this session, next Monday, and we were in no hurry to rush away at the end of the hour, so wound up just sitting in the empty classroom and trading stories and perceptions about the art of teaching...and students we are glad to remember. And others.
The question had been raised earlier as to whether preaching is primarily paedagogical or hortatory. Are we informing? or are we SWAYING people to take action? (Or are we just being as entertaining as possible so that they don't start meditating on tar and/or feathers?) I don't know. I think when I preach it is always paedagogical...in fact I think the paedagogical exchange is my primary model for human connection. Teach me something, and I'll love you forever. If you have nothing to teach, sit down and I'll teach you something. If that isn't on the cards either -- "get off my porch."
When we finally gathered up our stuff and took off-- I had papers to pick up, background stuff for a national meeting next week, and then looked for some lunch, wound up eating half and getting half packed up for supper, and off for coffee with a friend and instructions for dog-sitting tomorrow. And so home.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Sunday, June 8, 2014
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.
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.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Winding up, one more time...
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.
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.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Evening sunshine, again...
Well -- we got through a whole day, today, without rain -- the first for a while -- so it seemed like a day to be outdoors as much as possible.
I got the last of the current list of thank-you letters written just as a robo-call came in from the Public Library reminding me that there were on-hold items to be picked up.
So with pedometer strapped to ankle (I've tried the waistband, but unable to keep pedometer in place owing to lack of...a waist) -- and bookbag in hand (water bottle, Tilley hat, sunglasses, etc.) off I went on foot to the closest branch of the library. Picked up my four books, checked FB (the library computers are faster than my old laptop) and then on the way home popped into Second Cup for coffee, grilled sandwich, muffin, and a peaceful read of Frances Fyfield's Let's Dance -- P. D. James recommends FF's fiction (they're friends as well as colleagues) -- I think this title, a suspense novel, comes into the sub-genre of "dementia fiction." A little of which goes a long way!
Eventually, home by way of a mailbox where I dropped off eleven letters -- keeping the tradition alive, folks! Stamps on these: an artful combination of The Queen (63 cents) and Useful Insects (10 cents and 2 cents) to come up to the current price per letter of 85 cents (robbery).
Then unlimbered the big long extension cord, and the less SCREAMY of the two weed-whackers (how did I wind up with two weed-whackers? a mystery), and cut a swathe down one side of the back yard, grass and weeds and poplar suckers there being all about a foot or 18" tall. It's a start. My arms got shaky, so I stopped at that point.
And now supper -- a little stuffed veal "thing" from the supermarket -- a tomato -- some carrot and pepper strips and guacamole -- and a vegetable combination, chiefly zucchini.
Sermon is ready for my guest stint on Sunday -- so after supper -- read, and read, and read, and read. And maybe push the laundry, just a bit.
I got the last of the current list of thank-you letters written just as a robo-call came in from the Public Library reminding me that there were on-hold items to be picked up.
So with pedometer strapped to ankle (I've tried the waistband, but unable to keep pedometer in place owing to lack of...a waist) -- and bookbag in hand (water bottle, Tilley hat, sunglasses, etc.) off I went on foot to the closest branch of the library. Picked up my four books, checked FB (the library computers are faster than my old laptop) and then on the way home popped into Second Cup for coffee, grilled sandwich, muffin, and a peaceful read of Frances Fyfield's Let's Dance -- P. D. James recommends FF's fiction (they're friends as well as colleagues) -- I think this title, a suspense novel, comes into the sub-genre of "dementia fiction." A little of which goes a long way!
Eventually, home by way of a mailbox where I dropped off eleven letters -- keeping the tradition alive, folks! Stamps on these: an artful combination of The Queen (63 cents) and Useful Insects (10 cents and 2 cents) to come up to the current price per letter of 85 cents (robbery).
Then unlimbered the big long extension cord, and the less SCREAMY of the two weed-whackers (how did I wind up with two weed-whackers? a mystery), and cut a swathe down one side of the back yard, grass and weeds and poplar suckers there being all about a foot or 18" tall. It's a start. My arms got shaky, so I stopped at that point.
And now supper -- a little stuffed veal "thing" from the supermarket -- a tomato -- some carrot and pepper strips and guacamole -- and a vegetable combination, chiefly zucchini.
Sermon is ready for my guest stint on Sunday -- so after supper -- read, and read, and read, and read. And maybe push the laundry, just a bit.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Reading as an avocation...
I am sitting in the slant rays of the evening sun -- it won't go down yet for about another two hours, at this season, so it's both very pleasant and very inconvenient for reading or--indeed--looking at screens, computer or television.
So I have given up on reading for the moment, tired of squinting but unwilling to draw the curtains against this lovely light after a cold, wet, windy, miserable day -- and am glaring instead at a solid double armload of library books. I've just confirmed that four of my "HOLDS" are ready for pick up at the local branch; and I've put a hold on yet another volume.
It was an epoch-marking day when I learned how to manage my library book account on line. The collaboration between GREED and TECHNOLOGY produces awesome results. So far, alas, it hasn't produced PHYSICAL FITNESS, although the closest branch library is a feasible, if long, walk. But there has been such a disproportionate amount of foul miserable weather that even since the snow and ice disappeared there have been few days when hiking out with a book bag has appealed.
Before I gave up, temporarily, just now, I was reading P. D. James's diary/memoir, Time to Be in Earnest, written over the year that she was 77. It's a bookshelf companion to May Sarton, Turning Seventy. I'm trying not to consider either of them an instruction manual, but... The quality of these women's prose is an antidote to Twitter -- and even to Facebook; I don't think I need any more practice in 140-character snark, as a genre, if that's what it is. Although there was an interesting Tweeting exchange earlier with Alan Jacobs over the status of YA fiction vis-a-vis "literary fiction."
Still mulling over that question, muttering under my breath just a bit.
I know that in my lifetime the reading of "literary fiction," if that label has any meaning at all, has had a lot to do with my formation. (I was going to say "maturation," but let us not kid each other, here.) And in P. D. James this afternoon, I found this from Henry James--no relation, of course!--writing about Anthony Trollope: "We trust to novels to maintain us in the practice of great indignations and great generosities." And that catches it, just about exactly, I think -- by contrast with social media, which maintain us in the practice of our Daily Snits and Hourly LOLs. I can't remember who said that we check FB in the morning to verify who it is we're supposed to despise, today. Not enough, to keep the mind, or the heart, or the soul, alive. Not alone, anyhow.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
All you hungry campers...
"Today is Wednesday, Today is Wednesday, Wednesday SOU-OUP..." according to the old campfire song, anyway. No actual soup on the menu at Tether's End today.
An undecided sort of day -- brilliant sunshine very early, then heavy, racing, threatening clouds, now some of both. Do I go out for a walk!?? Do I seize shovel and get all seriously gardinacious before my poor bedding plants die of sheer boredom??? Do I go out to the kitchen and cook and eat accordingly? Do I burrow into this impressive heap of library books? Do I go back to my desk and attend to the now-definitely-due thank-you letters I need to be writing?
Retirement is challenging (Platitude of the Day). On Sunday at noon I wrapped up the most recent interim appointment after three months of half-time duty in a small parish in a small town ninety kilometers from home (exactly ninety kilometers, and exactly fifty-seven minutes, every single trip). At this point, beyond a single Sunday-supply appointment on Pentecost in another small parish, in a small town, rather more than ninety kilometers from home, there is no word of a further interim assignment.
So the cassock has gone to the dry cleaner, and the surplice is in the laundry "whites" pile downstairs, and the stoles are up on a hanger in the spare-room closet, and the prayer books and the communion kit are tucked away on a shelf, not too high.
And I contemplate the possibility that I may now, in the fifth year after retirement from full-time parish ministry, really be, really and truly, RETIRED. Which gives a bit of perspective on the exercise of ministry, perhaps even some of that 20/20 hindsight stuff.
I was a curate, part-time, for about four years; ten years in full-time ministry as Rector, Head of Staff, Senior Pastor~~whatever your nomenclature~~and I've been an interim parson since February 2010. Since then I've served six parishes, part-time: three in the city, three in the hinterland. And the difference from full-time ministry has been staggering. I've been relaxed; I've been comfortable and unanxious; I've been -- happy! (I KNEW there had to be a word for it).
And there has also been a difference in the climate, the ethos, of the parishes I've served. The folks have been warm, and friendly, and appreciative. Now have I been happy because the people have been different? Or, as I very much suspect, have the people been different because I've been giving off a very different vibe? And if that's the case, where the heck was that vibe during the previous ten years!?!?
When I took leave of St. Thaddeus, on Sunday, we had a potluck lunch of ESCHATOLOGICAL splendour--you know, where everyone finds what s/he most enjoys--and there were PRESENTS -- a photograph of the church, and a bushel of flowers, and a beautiful hand-crafted pen -- it looks like byzantine jewelry, but it's decorated with tiny little electronic components I couldn't even name -- and a little trousseau of hand-knitted things, hot pads and dishcloths and a SCRUBBY which I can use on my saucepans or my heels, whichever needs it more.
There were also speeches, on the general theme of "We've tried to figure out how we could JUST KEEP YOU ALWAYS" and there were very elderly retired farmers saying very quietly, "You know -- we JUST LOVE you" and the wives of elderly retired farmers telling me how much they and their husbands have enjoyed and been moved by the sermons ("You reduce him to tears, every time, Crimson"). And finally one Mother-in-Zion who leaned in close and said, "I probably shouldn't even say this, BUT -- your HAIR looks WONDERFUL."
Somehow I could not dredge up any impulse to re-assert my Personal Boundaries under those conditions. I just sat down and mentally rolled around in the ambient goodwill and affection and praise. Perhaps that means I really am somehow "too far gone" to exercise ordained ministry with appropriate professionalism.
But I don't really think so. Now I will go and write some more thank-yous.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Back to the Beginning
I've been thinking for some time that I should revisit the amount of time and energy that I spend online, the groups to which I've linked, and so forth. Dropped some groups -- and I think for the time being I'll focus on blogging rather than Facebook chat -- and try to find a register other than X-Snark, which was beginning to prevail.
I found a thing in a long-since-purchased, not-read, book -- or rather "yet another book of which I read the first nineteen pages" -- so maybe I'll start (over) with this. Because it seems apt and helpful -- it's from Jane Redmont's When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, and it's by Dorothee Soelle, whose writing I've enjoyed. I don't go her whole journey with her, but this piece resonated. It's about the difficulty of faith and the unpalatability of unfaith, I guess.
I don't as they put it believe in god
but to him I cannot say no hard as I try
take a look at him in the garden
when his friends ran out on him
his face wet with fear
and with the spit of his enemies
him I have to believe
Him I can't bear to abandon
to the great disregard for life
to the monotonous passing of millions of years
to the moronic rhythm of work leisure and work
to the boredom we fail to dispel
in cars in beds in stores
That's how it is they say what do you want
uncertain and not uncritically
I subscribe to the other hypothesis
which is his story
that's not how it is he said for god is
and he staked his life on this claim
Thinking about it I find
one can't let him pay alone
for his hypothesis
so I believe him about
god
The way one believes another's laughter
his tears
or marriage or no for an answer
that's how you'll learn
to believe him about life
promised to all. --Dorothee Soelle
So there you have it. That's enough for today, or any today when you wake up wondering whether there is any remaining shred of plausibility in what we think we were called, trained, commissioned -- and paid -- to proclaim.
I found a thing in a long-since-purchased, not-read, book -- or rather "yet another book of which I read the first nineteen pages" -- so maybe I'll start (over) with this. Because it seems apt and helpful -- it's from Jane Redmont's When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, and it's by Dorothee Soelle, whose writing I've enjoyed. I don't go her whole journey with her, but this piece resonated. It's about the difficulty of faith and the unpalatability of unfaith, I guess.
I don't as they put it believe in god
but to him I cannot say no hard as I try
take a look at him in the garden
when his friends ran out on him
his face wet with fear
and with the spit of his enemies
him I have to believe
Him I can't bear to abandon
to the great disregard for life
to the monotonous passing of millions of years
to the moronic rhythm of work leisure and work
to the boredom we fail to dispel
in cars in beds in stores
That's how it is they say what do you want
uncertain and not uncritically
I subscribe to the other hypothesis
which is his story
that's not how it is he said for god is
and he staked his life on this claim
Thinking about it I find
one can't let him pay alone
for his hypothesis
so I believe him about
god
The way one believes another's laughter
his tears
or marriage or no for an answer
that's how you'll learn
to believe him about life
promised to all. --Dorothee Soelle
So there you have it. That's enough for today, or any today when you wake up wondering whether there is any remaining shred of plausibility in what we think we were called, trained, commissioned -- and paid -- to proclaim.
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