One Wild and Precious Life

You Never Expect the Call

This fell out of my head this morning shortly after I woke up.  I took it to my writer's group and read it.

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You never expect the call when it comes, in the middle of an ordinary workday:  on your supper break, for instance, or midmorning.  It always jars – or that’s how your memory retains it, at least.  Everything that has gone before the call tends to fade to ordinary in retrospect; the sound of the phone changes everything, makes everything so extraordinary.  They never say exactly what’s happened, never use plain language:  “There’s been an accident,” they say, “Come quickly; be careful.”  the location is often “Hospital,” they say, or maybe “Firehouse.”  “Be careful,” you remember, as you drive, most often alone.

Getting there, wherever it is: that’s the first step.  Then you’re given a place to sit and wait – sometimes in a small, private room, sometimes a plastic chair in a huge public waiting area.  You still don’t know much; they may not know all that much to tell you.  Usually someone will come and say something unmemorable to you, and then you’re left alone again.  The book you inevitably brought goes unread – your mind can’t focus.  Maybe you make some phone calls: a spouse, an ex-spouse, your mother, your best friend, your workplace.  And after a little more time sitting alone, people begin to come.  It’s what you see on their faces that activates your own emotions, that tells you what you’ve been feeling all along, but were too afraid to feel when you were alone.  Now you begin to feel frantic yourself, not knowing, not hearing, still in shock, still half-unbelieving.  But nobody comes to tell you anything.  Not soon enough, anyway.

Eventually, sooner or later (it always feels like later) someone does come.  Often it’s a doctor, face mask askew, inevitably clean but maybe a bit rumpled, eyes worried.  He tells you things aren’t looking good, not promising, probably fatal.  Or perhaps the denouement is slower: perhaps there’s a slow matching of parents and children, and at the end, like the one not picked for the school sports game, you stand alone, or nearly so.  As the Newtown school Superintendent said, “We realized we didn’t have enough children.”  Others have taken their children safely home, and you stand alone, still not knowing what to think, what to feel.  The truth is slow in coming, slow to sink in.  You won’t be taking her home.  No, not ever again.  She’s gone, they couldn’t save her, she didn’t suffer.  She’s gone.  Dead.  Only child, youngest child, oldest child: does it really matter?  Wife, mother, daughter, sister: does it really matter?  Isn’t it the surprise of the call, the suddenness of the absence, the last words you said the last time you saw the person?  Isn’t it that muffled, cotton-wool shock that envelops you?  Isn’t it that absence, that eternal, forever absence, that absence that suddenly strips you of what you are, what you know about yourself, what you do, what you’ve always done?  It’s that moment that comes to define you for a very long time – in the heart’s void that a new identity takes root: victim, bereaved one, brave survivor, one-who-is-left-to-go-on.

How do you get home?  How do you tell others?  Who goes to the airport to collect incoming beloveds?  If you’re very lucky, you’re surrounded with friends who hold you close, answer your phone and the ringing doorbell, pick up tranquilizers from the drug store, hold your hand as you walk through this unfamiliar territory of death.  If you’re lucky, you’re alone maybe only when you sleep.  If you’re lucky, the child who died comes to you in your dreams and tells you that she really is okay, really isn’t gone at all, that it’s what you’re walking through in those first few days – that’s the  illusion.  Given that worst luck in the world you’ve just experienced, it’s those little things, those vital things that you count important, that keep you alive.

What you don’t know then is that it all passes.  Almost passes.  It will be days and weeks that pass at first, and that inevitable journey of grief.  It will be worse after six weeks than it is after six days.  You will do what you need to do to get through; you will eventually go back to work.  For months, maybe years, the loss will be the first thing you tell people when you meet them.  “Hi, I’m Ann.  I have a daughter who died.”  After a time you will stop telling people this.  You will make friends who never knew that other person who died.  You may move away and live in a community that never knew them.  You will have crazy thoughts like, “If I move away, how will she find me?”  The first day comes that you don’t cry.  The first day comes that her death isn’t the first thing you remember in the morning and the last thing you remember at night.  The day even comes that you can function on the birth day, on the death day.  Some year you will not even remember what day it is when you wake up on that day.  But it takes a long time.  It takes a really, really long time.

And then someday something comes on the television.  You realize someone, maybe several someones, are getting that call you got so long ago.  It hits you suddenly and hits you hard, and it’s like you just got that call yesterday.  You fall down the rabbit hole and you stay there for quite some little time.

Monsters Among Us?

This is my sermon for today.  I finished it Saturday night, but this morning something wouldn't leave me alone - a conversation with a friend that I had last week.  You'll see if you read it.

Lectionary Readings for Christmas 1, Year C:  Psalm 147; Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; John 1:1-18

Well, I know I say this a lot, but these are definitely the best lectionary readings we get in the total three-year cycle of readings!  These readings are full of all the best – the love and promises in Isaiah and Galatians, the grandeur of the Gospel, the images from nature in the Psalm:  mountains and grass, birds, horses, snow and frost – and the Psalm’s beautiful promises, as well, of the gathering up, healing, and rebuilding of God’s people, with the refrain that Mary sang to us last week, of lifting up the lowly and casting down the wicked.  Beautiful.  Consoling.  Great cause for ongoing celebration in this ongoing festival season of Christmas (today is the 6^th day).

And yet….and yet.  Probably not many Episcopalians know what day we observed on Friday.  Anybody here?  And if you do know what day Friday was, did you know before you read your Episcopal Calendar?  On Friday, we Christians who observe such things marked the day that commemorates the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents.  It’s that day when Herod, in a paranoid rage about the birth of the “new king,” sent his troops in to slaughter “all the children in or around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.”  You can read about that in Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 16-18.  It’s when an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream (I love the way Matthew includes so many dreams) and told him to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt, to escape the slaughter.  I’m not sure why we celebrate it before Epiphany, before the coming of the Magi, since it was that occasion on which Herod learned of this “new king” and sent the Magi to find him.  The Magi, having also had a dream, “left for their own country by another road,” and that’s when Herod, in his paranoid rage, slaughtered the innocents.  Perhaps we celebrate it now for the very reason of seeing the shadows in the light of Christmas, and the light of the miracle amidst the horror.  Herod, from the distance of 2 millennia, seems pretty much like a monster.  Who would slaughter innocent children?  And this year when we commemorate Holy Innocents, many of us can’t help but think of Newtown Connecticut, two weeks ago.

 On Friday I had a conversation that I can’t get out of my head.  A friend of mine was insisting that Adam Lanza, the shooter of those children, is a monster – a mysteriously malformed, mutant human being who we can never understand.  And I kept insisting that he was a human being, not so terribly different than the rest of us human beings.  I guess I was too steeped in my thoughts of how God would see Adam Lanza – pretty much like God sees the rest of us – a terribly flawed sinner, for sure – but also a soul to be loved and saved, a lost sheep in need of being found, a poor, beaten soul in need of a Good Samaritan – a Samaritan helper that Adam Lanza never was able to find.  I argued that if we insist on classifying the perpetrators of these terrible crimes as “monsters,” and the solution as simply identifying and locking up or killing these monsters, then we never solve the problem.  We never ask the next question:  How has our culture helped for mis-shape and mal-form these monsters?  God’s creation is very good.  God didn’t create a monster.  If he is a monster, then I say that monsters are made, not born.  And we seem to be making more of them, because these crimes keep happening more and more often.  What can we do to stop ourselves from making monsters?  Those are questions worth asking.  And I believe that it takes some empathy, some compassion (some com-passion – some feeling with) in order to solve the problem.  I think if we as individuals and a culture can’t be aware of and in touch with our own darker, shadow side, we have little hope of solving the problem.  You know what I say about our shadow, our dark side – if we don’t face and admit it head-on, it will sneak up behind us and bite us when we least expect it.  I made a list for myself that night – ways in which I am like Adam Lanza, experiences I may have had that are similar to his. Of course I can't possibly know -- I never knew Adam Lanza.  But I can make some pretty good guesses; I’m going to share that list with you.

1.  I know what it’s like to feel like a weird misfit.  I've lived there.
2. I know what it’s like to be made fun of.
3. I know what it’s like to ask for help, to really need help, and not get it.  On the other hand, I also know how it feels when I need help and someone reaches out and helps me.  It's mostly emotional help I'm talking about here.
4. I know what it’s like to be so enraged that I want to hurt and/or kill people.
5. I know what it’s like to feel desperate to escape some crisis or life circumstance, even if it means dying.
6. I know what it feels like to want to fit in and be like everyone else, and not be able to figure out how to do it.
7. I know how it feels to be imprisoned in my own introversion and my own perceptions and misperceptions.

 I made that list in about 5 minutes.  I bet if I took some more time, I could double it.  Now, I don’t want you to worry about me.  I have the psychological strengths not to follow through on any of those shadowy, dark feelings.  And I’ve only felt or experienced most of them for moments at a time, or a few hours -- or even a period of a few bad days -- rather than as a way of life, the way Adam Lanza must have.  All I’m saying is that those dark feelings have all lived inside me – and by the grace of God, I’ve had the strength and sanity to resist them, to wait them out till they passed, to get help with them, to know that things get better.  Adam Lanza didn’t have the strength and wisdom that I do, by the grace of God, or by my upbringing, or good genes, or whatever gives me what he didn't have that lets me survive and thrive.  I do believe that it’s from a place of some understanding, even if it’s partial understanding, and a place of empathy and compassion, that we can begin to love our neighbor, and to help solve our neighbor’s problem – which often has a way of becoming our own problem, too – we’ve learned that, writ large, lately.

 And now, and yet, we’re still in the Christmas fetival.  Even remembering those Holy Innocents long ago, those Holy Innocents more recently, we’re called to rejoice and hear the good news.  We’re called to revel in Isaiah’s words, to hear them as though we are saying them ourselves – not as Isaiah’s words, but as our own – as God’s children, God’s heirs, as Galatians reminds us.  Isaiah says, “…I will rejoice…My whole being will exult…he has clothed me with garments of salvation, as a bridegroom decks himself… as a bride adorns herself….You shall be a crown of beauty…”  I shall be…we shall be, for Isaiah is addressing Israel.  A crown of beauty, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God.”  Wow.  This part of Isaiah that we read today was written when the exile was over, and the people felt that God’s promises to Israel were once again flowering to fulfillment.  It’s a big mistake if we read scripture only as an old, dusty, historical story.  Scripture is talking to us now – and not just in the waning hours of 2012, but in this Christmas season – this season of wonder and miracle and the time when God has come to live with us.  It’s the time when God’s promises are being fulfilled for us, too.  This is the time for us to look at our own lives and see how God’s promises are fulfilled for us.  This is our job as Christians.  This is not an abstract process – just like solving our contemporary societal problems cannot be done in the abstract.  We start, when we study scripture, from the assumption that the promises of scripture, that God’s word is true, and it’s our job to figure out how that takes shape in our lives.  We start from the assumption that it’s our perception that may be faulty or incomplete, and that our life task is to continue to hone and clarify our perception -- to get to see our life and our world through something a little more like God's eyes. It’s up to us to figure out how the promises have been fulfilled in our own life.  Some people can do it alone; most of us need help.  We need to study and read; we need to work in groups; we need a spiritual director.  All of these are tools that can help us see God in our life.

 Paul tells us (I love Galatians -- “foolish Galatians,” he says elsewhere in the letter.  “Who has bewitched you?”) that before Christ, we had the law to tell us how to live.  Now we have a model, a brother.  Now we have been adopted into God’s family.  We are no longer slaves to the law, obeying blindly.  Now we’re children, heirs.  We’re part of God’s family, and we learn by watching our big brother, Jesus, just like most kids learn.

 Then we have this Gospel.  Oh, you’ve gotta know I love this Gospel.  John is the most difficult of the four gospels to understand, but this passage, right at the beginning, is so beautiful.  And we know who the Word is, but do we know what that means?  “The Word” is the shorthand for God’s wisdom.  Jesus is the Wisdom of God.  Much more than that, of course, because God’s words were also things like “Let there be light.”  A Creative Force.  God spoke it, and it came into being.  So Jesus is God’s Creative Force, God’s Wisdom.  We also know that Jesus is a clear or pure reflection of God, the essence of who God is.  You know I tell you, if you want to know what God's like, look at Jesus.

 And here’s the promise – the good news in this Gospel – this is the family we’ve been adopted into!  This is the one with whom we are co-heirs of the kingdom, of all that is God’s!  That’s pretty amazing!  We’ll never figure out what all that means, for sure.  What might it mean to be adopted into the family of the Word?  To be co-heirs with the Word, the Wisdom, the Creative Force of God?  What might God have in mind for us?  What gifts might God just be waiting to give us?  And importantly, how are we called to share those gifts?  How can we use our knowledge and experience of God’s gifts to share good news and love our neighbor, to reach out with compassion and make the world a better place?  It’s part of what God wants us to know this Christmas, part of what God wants us to ponder and dream about.  Amen.

Holiday Despair - or Something

Well, just in case you've never known anybody who suffers at the holidays, here I am!  Now, this hasn't happened in a long time, so it's kind of new -- or very old, but not recent -- for me.  The first few Christmases after my daughter died really sucked; but for a lot of years now, I've been pretty fine, whether I spent holidays alone (I work on religious holidays, so I don't get away much for Christmas), or whether I've had friends or family close by -- I tend to be of pretty good cheer, and make my own party or join others for theirs on the holidays.

But this year has been a little different.  Coming back from sabbatical has been hard, I think.  Initially, it felt great to be back: I loved being back at church, loved being with the folks at church, loved preaching and celebrating the Eucharist.  I loved the sermons I preached, and all was well.  Then Advent came, and Christmas, Lessons & Carols, and reading for my book group.  It all kind of snuck up on me and whacked me from behind.  Suddenly I felt like I was dancing as fast as I could, and still not getting nearly enough done.  People were mad at me from every direction because I hadn't attended to their particular project or problem as soon as I got home.  My computer went on the blink, so I didn't do as much work at home, either.  I'm using my little notebook now, but it's not nearly as easy as the big desktop with a fine, flat-screen monitor.  I've also got a lot of documents and pictures on the big computer that I can't access just now.  I think I need a new video card in the desktop computer, but I just don't have the time and/or energy to get someone to check it out.  Tonight I've locked my keys in the church (left them and other people left), so I can't do some of the evening things I thought I might do over there.  I can get them tomorrow morning, but still -- and I'm left feeling really stupid and forgetful, on top of everything else.

Then, with sabbatical letdown and holiday planning and lots of other stuff, right in the middle of it all, Newtown came.  I was feeling rotten already, and then there was that great grief, that great yawning darkness coming at me from the eastern edge of the country (Connecticut, where I went to seminary).  There are the faces of those little angel children -- too young to hate (or, as someone else said, also too young to hate adults!).  Sometime Friday as I lay crying on my sofa, I was hit with the realization that I know that feeling those parents had -- the phone call, the rush to wherever (I went to the Hospital ER), the interminable, helpless wait for news, and the learning that your child wasn't coming home from school that night, or ever.  Oh, it has been nearly 30 years since my daughter died, and it feels like last week just now.  And twenty of those babies -- I can't imagine how that town must feel, not to mention those 20 families.  It breaks my heart.  It breaks everyone's heart, I know -- and it should.

I particularly liked this picture, which I also posted to my facebook page:

I don't know who made this amazing drawing -- so simple, so evocative -- I didn't.  Facebook might have that info.  All I know is that perhaps the red figure was supposed to be a Sandy Hook parent -- but it feels like me.  And I have this communion of saints, living and not living, that I can feel with their hands on my shoulders, and other hands on their shoulders, and on back, and back, and back, clear to God or infinity, or whatever.

This is more black madonna work, in case you were wondering.  Being in this darkness when the rest of the world is in light, or just going on with its own business -- that's dark work, shadow work, black madonna work.  It's not a scary place for me, and it's pretty familiar, but I can't say I like it much.  I've been standing in the light for a long time -- sabbatical, work going well, my big weight loss, everything pretty bright and sunny.  Being back in the shadows isn't much fun at all.

Here's a little madonna that consoles me, though.  I took her picture at the Louvre in September:

She's a lovely little nursing madonna -- I took lots of pictures of sculptures and paintings like this.  They're so human, so homely -- not in the sense of ugly -- but domestic, comforting, cozy, even.  This one will lose a child -- but not yet.  Still, she knows the dark: that unplanned pregnancy, that long trip to Bethlehem, that cold birthing-place, the mystery of the signs and strangers visiting.  She lives with mystery very well -- with great grace.

Several really good things have happened in the last couple of days, however.  My good friend and ex-husband Jack has sent me several wonderful links -- one a beautiful panorama of time-lapse photography on a mountain, another a very thoughtful piece about "the end of the world" and some thoughts by Dietrich Bonhoffer.  Maybe he'll have the links on his blog, which I've linked here.  The pieces themselves, as well as his thoughtfulness, have helped my mood.

I also got an email from a friend who scheduled an Advent Quiet Day about the black madonna in Knoxville for me, and she says people are asking if I have notes or written materials from that presentation, nearly 2 weeks ago.  No, I don't.  I had jotted a few words down on some index cards, which I forgot to take with me.  I did have my figures, photographs which I laminated, and this trusty little notebook computer on which I had selected some photos to show on a bigger screen.  I mostly stood around and talked to them about the black madonna and told stories and made associations to real life -- about darkness and waiting and carrying God's dreams for the world, and being pregnant with something that was about to be born, and living in mystery or darkness or grief or illness.  It was a wonderful day for me, and hearing that others want to see and read and hear more has inspired me again.  The last time I scheduled a time to talk to my parish about the black madonna, after my trip to Italy in 2009, not a single person showed up.  At this big church in Knoxville, over 40 women showed up (including a handful from my parish -- I'm very grateful to them).  It was so wonderful to know that others are interested in this odd thing that has become a passion for me.  I feel inspired to maybe put together a little self-published book or something.  That sounds like a fun winter project, once the holidays are past.

Today at the healing service I had a wonderful experience.  After I anoint and pray for everyone who comes forward, then my usual practice is kneel at the altar rail myself, and they all lay hands on me and say prayers for my requests.  Today I wept -- for Newtown, for myself, for all those that I know are hurting during this happy, shiny season.  And I felt the love and compassion that flowed from and through those people -- it lifted me up and made the load feel lighter.  I came home and had the energy to finish the service leaflet for Lessons & Carols on Sunday, and even design the cover, which has this woodblock on it:

If you're close to Crossville this Sunday at 4, be sure and come.  The choir has been working hard, and it's a beautiful program of Christmas Lessons and Music -- my musician's handbook said Christmas music was OK for 4th Advent, so we're going for it.

So feeling down as I do, I'm a little disappointed to realize that most folks don't really think the world is going to end in 2 days.  I guess I'll have to get those service leaflets and sermons done, gifts wrapped and mailed, bills paid after all, and continue to pay my student loans and taxes, too.  Oh, well.  I was kind of excited about the adventure of it all.

Watch this space.  I've got lots more to say.

Newtown, After a Long Absence

Sermon, Advent 3C, December 16, 2012

 Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6); Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

Well, we surely have evidence this weekend that, even though the kingdom may be at hand, may even be here among us, it’s also “not yet.”  The slaughter of those 28 people in Connecticut, 20 of them first-graders, on Friday surely reminds us that the kingdom, the reign of God, is most certainly “not yet.”  God has not yet removed pain and illness and evil from among us, has not dried every tear and removed grief from among us.  Those things – evil  and illness, pain and grief and death and pointless suffering – are still here, alive and well –not willed by God, by any means, but present, nevertheless.

 I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend lying on my sofa, covers pulled up to my chin, in tears.  Though my circumstances were certainly different than the parents in Newtown, Connecticut, I know that feeling of suddenly, without warning, knowing my daughter wouldn’t be coming home from that school, wouldn’t ever be coming home again.  Of all the feelings that the community of Newtown, Connecticut must be feeling, and those bereaved parents in particular, it’s this sudden sense of loss, of absence, of senseless, enormous pain that I can feel like it was yesterday, even though it was nearly 30 years ago.  And I know I’m not the only one – probably not even the only one in this church this morning, who has had these feelings of great grief stirred up.

 You know how many times I’ve told you how I think John the Baptist “got it wrong” about the nature of God, and of the Messiah he foretold.  I still do think he got it wrong.  But you know what?  For the first time, I understand John the Baptist’s anger.  I’m pretty sure that the human race made John the Baptist sick to his stomach.  And I get that this weekend.  When I see children senselessly slaughtered I think about Herod’s own paranoid rage 2,000 years ago, and I feel sick with anger and incomprehension and sadness.  And there is a numerical study that has been done that shows that the world was a much more violent place in biblical times, than it is now.  No wonder John the Baptist expected God to smite us all with an axe and with fire.  I watch the politicians and the 24-hour-a-day media machine that, lacking facts, just makes stuff up.  I see myself and those just like me, unable to take our eyes off that media machine.  Millions of us are hypnotized by the slaughter, hypnotized by the grief, stare for hours and days on end, as one would at a traffic accident outside our door.  We simply can’t avert our eyes – and that reflects the best of us, the part that feels the suffering so deeply, and also the worst of us – that part that wants to witness the open wounds of the suffering of those others.

 And yet… and yet…  John the Baptist did get it wrong.  God knows the worst of us.  As sickened as we are by one another sometimes, God looks unflinchingly at our badness, and loves us anyway.  God sees sheep without a shepherd, lost coins, flour without yeast, defenseless souls with evil lurking like a wolf outside the door.  God sees lovable souls in need of saving, sees the very best of us, rather than the worst of us.  And every time we look at evil with compassion and see the best, we see through God’s eyes.

 I’ve read a quote over and over on Facebook this weekend, a quote from Mr. Fred Rogers (remember “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”?) who says, “Look for the helpers.  When you find evil and suffering, then look for the helpers.”  That’s where God is.  And as I glued myself to the television this weekend, I saw lots of helpers.  I saw bloodsucking reporters, yes, but with tears in their eyes.  I saw doctors and clergy and police with tears in their eyes.  I heard the stories of heroic teachers who protected their children, teachers who ran toward the gunman, instead of away from him.  I saw our President also wipe tears from his eye as he spoke to us.  I heard compassion for the killer’s family from a bereaved parent.  God was with us, is with us, grieving as we grieve, looking at us with compassionate eyes, holding us in the palm of God’s hand.  Helpers everywhere.  Suffering everywhere.  Compassion everywhere.  God’s in all that.

 I hope you don’t believe that God willed the Newtown tragedy this weekend.  I do not want you to think this was in any way part of God’s plan.  I hope you aren’t struggling too much with the notion that God allowed it.  Certainly God did allow it – but we have a God who very seldom intervenes to prevent tragedy and evil – at least as far as we know, because plenty of tragedy and evil happens, for sure.  I remember my mentor priest, back in Buffalo, saying to me, “But don’t we pretty much have a God who ‘lets things be’?”  And yes, for better or for worse, we’ve got that kind of God.  Not one who wills evil, but who lets it be.  Who rains on the just and the unjust alike.  But also not a God who comes along with axes and fire and winnows us out.  No, we are blessed enough to have a God who sees our worst, the very worst we can do, and who still loves, whose judgment is always compassion and mercy.

 Finally, on this Rose Sunday, I’m reminded of Mary.  I know, we don’t get the “Mary readings” this week – we get them next Sunday: look for them!  But when it’s pink (our vestments and hangings) I still think of Mary, and I remember the great grief she bore, there at the end of Jesus’ life.  She knows what it’s like to lose a child.  She knows what it’s like to have a child who suffers agonizingly, and who is murdered senselessly, because he happened to get in the way of great evil.  Mary is my friend in this suffering, and her presence is a comfort.

 And this Rose Sunday in Advent is formally titled “Gaudete Sunday.”  Gaudete.  It means “rejoice.”  This is Rejoicing Sunday.  A call to rejoice is hard to face, hard to obey, in a time of great grief.  I remember feeling that way in the days after 9/11.  How can we rejoice?  But it was somehow comforting to me to realize that God is still God, still worthy of praise, and God’s grace is still a cause for rejoicing, even amid great loss and sadness.  We can rejoice in the God we see in the helpers, the suffering God we see in the faces of the families, and in the God who is so much greater and more compassionate and loving than anything or anyone we can possibly imagine.  So we must listen to Paul when he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”  God is with us, God is in Connecticut, God is suffering with us, watching us all with eyes of love and compassion, not with the anger of John the Baptist – not with my anger, even.  Rejoice, I say.  Yes, even in sadness, rejoice.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds….”  Amen.

Sabbatical!

Yes, I'm on sabbatical.  Last night I tried my first blog post of the trip, and got hung up by the length of time it took to post photos.  So maybe I'll try again, but not right now.  I need to work on reducing their size for blog posting, I think.

My first question is, how did I ever get so lucky to have work that gives me 3 months of paid leave for "true sabbath," that is, "rest," every 5-7 years?  I certainly didn't know about this when I was in discernment for the priesthood -- I didn't choose this vocation (well, I didn't really choose it anyway -- it kind of chose me) based on getting a sabbatical.  I think I first heard about this when I was graduating from seminary, but I never really dreamed it could happen for me! I tried to plan a sabbatical 3 years ago, and nothing seemed to work out right.  This time, after nearly 10 years at St. Raphael's, everything just seemed to fall into place in the most wonderful ways.

So now I have embarked on the adventure of a lifetime.  I don't think I've had three months off work since the summer after my freshman year of high school.

My plans are in three parts.  The first two weeks I spent with my family, staying with my sister-in-law in Illinois, and haunting Terre Haute, Indiana, where I grew up.  I took many sentimental journeys there, revisiting places and people that meant (and still mean) lots to me in my growing up years.  As I said, I hope to post pictures:  of the 2 houses where I spent my childhood, schools I attended, etc.  I also had the opportunity to spend time with 2 of my life's best friends -- women I've known since we all were 13 years old.  And I had a lovely visit with my one remaining brother, Paul, who was my childhood companion, and who is the only remaining person alive who has known me since I was born (well, except for my Uncle John, whom I haven't seen in decades).

Things aren't always working out as I'd planned (thanks, John Lennon, for saying that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans), but I feel like a sponge, soaking up every experience, every adventure, and learning from it all.  So far, it's wonderful.  Miraculous, even.  I'm eating well and abstinently (no flour, sugar, or alcohol, weighed and measured quantities, regular calls to my dear, long-suffering sponsor).  I'm feeling such gratitude.  I even heard God in church (where else?) last Sunday -- it's great not to have to be "in charge," and just go and sing and listen.  Life is amazing right now.

Now I'm in Buffalo, NY (well, near there, anyway), camping by the lake in my friend Cheryl's cozy, sweet little trailer, and using a mobile hot-spot that I purchased in order to have the internet while I'm here.  My plan is to be here by the lake during the week, when the campground is nearly empty, and then be in Buffalo on the weekends, doing city things.  I'm also hoping to get a lot of writing done.  I'll be here for the next 4 weeks with my faithful dogs -- and with Cheryl, too, beginning next week.  Today it was beautiful in the morning, and then it rained, which was also nice.  I've experimented with my camera's auto-timer, and taken pictures of myself outside, alone and with the dogs.  It's the kind of day when it's hard to know what to wear -- it's damp, so feels cool, but too warm for jeans and sweaters.  So I keep changing clothes.

I've had time for reading (Cynthia Bourgeault, "The Meaning of Mary Magdalene;" Phil Cousineau, "The Art of Pilgrimage;" Richard Rohr, "Breathing Under Water;" Diane Mott Davidson, "Fatally Flaky," and more and more to come).  I've been catching up on Jack's Blog, which I'm enjoying very much.  I've been catching up on email.  I've been taking naps.  I've even been reading Facebook from time to time! Sunday I got to finally see "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."  I guess it would be hard to go wrong with the cast it has, but I was simply enchanted.  I could have stayed with those people and watched their lives the whole night, and was sad when the 2 hours was over.

I'm also listening to a lot of old music -- revisiting the past, I guess.  Before I left, I downloaded Beach Boys (yes, it feels like 1966), Neil Diamond (yes, it feels like 1973), the BeeGees (yes, it feels like 1982), James Taylor (1971).  Oh, music can take me right back to how it felt back then!  I've also got "Graceland," the Beatles, and "Born in the USA," and I keep thinking of more music I want.

The next leg of my great sabbatical adventure is Europe -- 5 weeks in Belgium, France, Spain, and Italy.  Parishioners have given me a week's time share in southern Italy and a week in southern Spain.  I'll be chasing black madonnas all over the continent!  I'm particularly excited about seeing Paris, about which I've had dreams -- literal, night-dreams, though I've never been there, and about all the madonnas I'll be near in southern France and northern Spain.  It's truly going to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip -- unless my retirement dreams of winters in Sicily and summers in the US really work out.

So I'll be writing and adventuring and posting more here.  Stay tuned!

Holiday Weekend

Wow!  I checked a lot of categories; I guess I have a lot to say tonight.  It's the eve of a holiday for me -- not exactly a "holiday weekend," as my title implies, but a day off my normal routine, at least.  Ordinarily, it would have been Friday, Saturday, and Monday off, with only the morning service at church.  But this week I had a wedding rehearsal on Friday (with rehearsal dinner afterward), the wedding itself Saturday morning (with reception luncheon afterward), and two sermons to write, one for the wedding, one for Trinity Sunday at church.  So all I get is a day, but ah, what a lovely day I've got planned!  But sigh -- I don't think the weather is going to cooperate -- 60% chance of rain tomorrow. 

When I was a little girl, my mother and I would go camping on Memorial Day Weekend; it was the opening of the summer camping and recreation season.  Our habitual haunt was Raccoon Lake State Recreation Area, about 1/2 hour from our home.  We would set up our tent in a campsite just inside the edge of the woods, so there was plenty of shade, and plenty of trees from which my mother would string rope to hang large sheets of plastic.  The plastic sheltered our campsite from rain, but also from any debris that might fall from the trees.  It made a cozy, covered "living space" under which we'd place our picnic tables, our food and supplies, and our Coleman camp stove.  The campfire would be outside the plastic "roof," of course.  My camping memories are lovely ones, but it nearly always rained on Memorial Day weekend.  There was usually enough sunshine and warmth to make the adventure worthwhile, but yes, we got rain, too.  Memorial Day Weekend was always punctuated with the plip, plip, plip of raindrops on the plastic overhead, with a wet sleeping bag where our canvas tent got wet, and the need to wear warm jeans, socks, and a sweatshirt, rather than the brand new swimsuit and flip flops I had for the summer. So tomorrow will remind me of my childhood camping days, I fear.

Some of the things I've planned I can still do inside, rather than outside on my porch:

A little creative work can certainly be done inside, though I confess that it really feels more like carefree play when I'm on the sunny back porch.

But there are also lots of things that can't happen inside, and almost certainly won't happen.  I can't really burn my brush pile at all, because we got a couple of downpours today.  It really takes 2-3 days of dry weather to dry out my brush well enough to burn, especially since some of it is still fairly green and recent trimming, and some fair-size logs that I pulled out of the wood chips that were given to me.

I'm not going to want to wrestle wood-chip mulch for my labyrinth in the rain.

I'm not sure even one whole day could make much progress in my veggie garden.  I was actually going to pay someone to come and help me clear out the jungle that it has become, but he called a couple of days ago and said he's been in an auto accident, and now he really can't help me.  If I still want help, I'm going to have to find someone else.  Of course, the pouring rain is a pretty good time to pull weeds -- lots of nice, soft earth, if I don't mind getting filthy and soaked (but that's the gardener's lot, anyway!).

So this probably isn't going to happen for me tomorrow, but I may get something done:

Oh, my, but it looks so lovely and orderly!

But perhaps I'll get a run with the dogs in between rain showers.  My weight loss is continuing; I'm still keeping my rules about increasing activity and eating salads and not drinking alcohol (though I had 2 glasses of wine at the wedding rehearsal dinner).  I'm a little frustrated because I seem to have hit a plateau last week, despite good behavior (I do expect it after 14 pounds, and am surprised it didn't come sooner!), and now over the weekend, I ate and drank more than I should have, even though I came home and was a perfect little paragon of dietary virtue.  So that scale isn't really budging just now -- but it will again, O it will!  A new indulgence I've discovered is Crystal Light Sunrise Tangerine Strawberry.  Oh, yum, yum.  I've known about Crystal Light since the first time I went to Weight Watchers in 1989, but I never tried it until just a couple of weeks ago.  Oh, my.  Oh, yum.  It kind of reminds me of having a pitcher of Kool-Aid around when I was a young married girl.  My only caution is that I can just about overdose on Aspartame, if I'm not careful.  And despite what I heard at Weight Watchers oh, these many years ago, it really doesn't substitute for good, clear, filtered water.

Today, of course, I preached on the doctrine of the Trinity, since it's Trinity Sunday.  If you're even slightly interested, I highly recommend Karen Armstrong's latest, The Case for God.  She does a really, really great job of describing the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, which was originally intended as a spiritual exercise that, rather than being fully understood, was meant to show us how utterly incomprehensible God actually is.  We were never meant to understand the Trinity.  And furthermore, faith originally had little to do with intellectual comprehension and agreement, but rather with loyalty and commitment.  Whether I understand the Trinity, whether I agree with the Church's doctrine of the Trinity, I stand behind and within it, and I commit my whole being to the Triune God and the teachings of Christ.  That's all that really matters!

While we're talking about books, I'm also listening to a really great one.  Most of my fiction "reading" is done in the car as I drive on my daily errands, visits, and meetings.  I'm currently listening to The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  It's one I can barely "put down" -- I want to just keep driving and driving so I can hear more and more of this story.

So tomorrow I plan to sleep in (which seems to mean about 7:30 these days, since I go to bed so early), get some exercise, and do some creative work.  I plan to play a lot and work just a little.  I might get some yard work done.  I feel very grateful for this good little life of mine.  I hope you all have something delicious planned for your day off!

First Snow

Fall has been and is still beautiful around here.  This is the best place for seasons that I've ever lived.  Each one is of roughly equal length, and none so severe as to impose serious hardship.  The length allows us to truly savor each one fully, and anticipate the coming of the next.  The colors are just about at full height right now; last week I had occasion to drive down off the mountain to Knoxville twice, and the brilliance of the leaves took my breath away.  There's simply no more beautiful place to live.

Now the bad news.  I have photos -- any number of photos.  I have a couple of autumn shots, and several of our first snow two nights ago.  But for some reason, Typepad is refusing to upload my photos tonight.  I've noticed that since their "new improved" format, my photos take a long time -- but tonight I gave two different ones over a half-hour, and they still didn't upload.  Maybe tomorrow.  Or something.  Or maybe I'll have to try another server.  I've certainly seen good results on the free blog servers.  I pay good money to get frustrated.  Sigh.

Anyway -- there are other things to say.  I've been thinking about lots and lots of things, and life has been good here in my little corner of Tennessee.  We've had a couple of nights of hard freeze, but temperatures are moderating, so I may still get some glorious time in the garden, preparing it for winter.  I've got volunteer lettuce coming up!  I've covered it with a row cover, so we'll see if it survived.  You know how I love gardening: it truly grounds me, both literally and metaphorically.  I think it's good to counter time spent in the lofty, heavenly reaches, with a bit of time shoveling manure onto vegetable beds.  It's the nature of us humans to reach toward heaven, but to also need to ground ourselves to our mother earth.

I had a root canal today, and feel pretty good (Tylenol is my friend).  It wasn't really painful, thank God.  I had one years ago that was excruciating -- but not today.  I'll tell you, though, it's not comforting to hear one's dentist say, "Uh-oh.  I don't like the look of that."  There I was, helpless, with my mouth gaping open, full of sharp tools.  When I told her that, though, she said that a worse thing to hear the dentist say is, "Oops."  I had to agree.  Now there's just the matter of paying her for the work, and the crown I'll receive next month.  Isn't it funny that they call that appointment "the delivery?"  I told them it sounds like childbirth, but they said it was a little like that, only they "don't go there" to that other end of the body, where childbirth happens.

I had an argument (yep, a real argument) with a parishioner a couple of weeks ago, and this person told me, "You just don't listen to us!"  Well, as someone who was a professional listener for 18 years, you can imagine that I was quite taken aback!  Then I realized that we English speakers tend to use "listen to" in a couple of different ways.  One is a simple attending to, receiving, and acknowledging information.  That's how I listen.  But there's another way we use it:  "listen to" can mean to obey.  Remember how we sometimes say to our kids, "Listen to me!"  We mean, "Do what I say!"  "You should have listened to me!" means "You should have done what I advised you to."  And in that sense, no, I often do not "listen" to my parishioners.  When I make a change in the way we do things at church, it is usually a well-thought out one, with due consideration given to pros, cons, and dissenting opinions.  Sometimes I act anyway, despite dissenting opinions.  This was one of those times -- but at least I understand the accusation a little better now.  No, I'm not the obedient "little woman" or "hired hand" that some may have imagined I would be.

I've been feeling a kind of restlessness.  Time is flying by.  As I said, two nights ago we had our first snow, and most of us missed it, because it fell overnight, as we slept.  Sometimes I feel as though I'm sleeping my way through the "first snows" of life a lot of the time.  On Monday a parishioner described the passing of time as though driving down the road with the telephone poles seeming to whizz past the windows -- that's how the days and weeks and months, and yes, even the years are whizzing by me -- sometimes I can almost hear them blowing past my ears like a strong wind.  It is three years now since I was in Italy; it's six years since I came here.  Just about this time of year I interviewed for this position, and it was the first week in November when they called me to be their Rector, and the second week in December when I finally arrived here, lock, stock, and barrel.  Where has the time gone?  My life keeps slipping away, and there is so much I want to do.  There are books to write, and countries to see -- whole chunks of the world that I haven't yet experienced.  There are all those black madonnas in Europe that I still haven't seen.  Yes, I've been to Costa Rica and the Caribbean since I was in Italy -- but I haven't been back to Europe, and I'm desperate to go.  And I just keep getting older.

Maybe this is how it feels sometimes as another year draws to a close.  Maybe this is how it feels to be getting older.  Maybe the time is coming for me to put on my traveling shoes once again.  Who knows?

But it amazes me that life can be so rich, and at the same time feel so elusive, so slippery.

I finished Joyce Rockwell Hudson's "Natural Spirituality: Recovering the Wisdom Tradition in Christianity."  I highly recommend it for those who want to pursue a Christian spirituality that allows for the teachings of Carl Jung, for listening to dreams (an old and esteemed biblical tradition), and for listening to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit that we sometimes carry within us.  It's a refreshing and stimulating breath of fresh air when you life in the land of fundamentalism.  Keep in mind that I only live 50 miles or so from Dayton, Tennessee, home of the Scopes Trial, and where opposition to the theory of evolution is alive and well in the churches.

I'm having a suit made -- knit gaucho pants and a jacket.  I know gauchos went out of style a couple of years ago, but I've got one pair that I wear to death because they're adaptable, flattering to my less-than-perfect body, and so very easy to wear.  I want them in every color, so I can wake up in the morning and dress like a guy -- gauchos, a top, a jacket, and look presentable to go wherever I need to.  If this suit (in a dark blue, not quite navy) is a success, I may have others made in different colors.  I used to sew -- I think I'd try it myself, but knit fabric is crucial, and I never learned to sew with knits -- it's a real art.

I've been developing another idea for a book.  This is the third idea that seems really, truly viable.  Now if I could just finish one of them.

These are some of the many things that seem to keep me away from this blog -- these things and also the frustration of not being able to post pictures.  Yep, I just tried again.  No go.  Typepad, please get it together, OK?

Down off the Mountaintop

Interesting that this Sunday's assigned readings are the Transfiguration -- the origin of that "down off the mountaintop" phrase.  That's what's on my mind tonight.  It hasn't been an entirely easy week and a half, coming back to the real world after my graduation weekend, which was both literally and metaphorically a mountaintop experience.  I came back to many pastoral care needs, large and small.  It's hard being in a parish made up primarily of retirement-age and older people who inevitably go from vibrant, active retirement to increasing frailty and illness, eventually to decline and death.  Just now one of my best-beloveds in the parish (I know, I shouldn't have favorites, but it's an impossible expectation) is facing very serious heart surgery.  His bride of only 12 years (they are both in their 80s) is worried sick.  He is amazingly calm and accepting, whatever the outcome of this risky procedure may be.  My heart is breaking.  And he's not the only one, of course.  It has happened over and over in my 5 years here, and will continue to happen more as my tenure here increases.  Yes, of course, there is always an influx of new members (mostly young, healthy retirees who move to this area, the retirement capital of the midwest), who I also come to love.  But that doesn't make the loss any less painful, even though I truly believe the ones who die are in a wonderful place.

I'm also left after my graduation with this great void, wondering, "Okay, what's next?"  I'm caught between wanting to create a dozen projects right away, in order to fill that void (the loss of a program I was passionate about), and on the other hand, suspecting that a bit of fallow time is probably what I need -- a time to grieve, a time to discern.  I already have a half-dozen projects in mind.  What I know is that I need to be doing something creative (more about this in a minute), something spiritual, and something physical.

I think I'm finally back on track with my exercise practices, which haven't been anything approaching normal since Christmas when I was sick.  I'm back to running with the dogs (well, what I call my "old lady runs" -- I run where it's downhill or flat, but mostly walk uphill, and it's quite hilly here in the mountains), and back to yoga.  I know when I run, it's definitely going to be a good day.  I attribute it to the endorphins that get kicked up when my heart rate elevates.  It's also good mindfulness practice, whether it's feeling how sore and out of breath I can get, delighting in the shenanigans of my dogs, or noticing the beauty of the geography where I live.  I credit yoga with changing my life.  It has taught me to love my body (yes, even this aching, overweight, aging body), and it quickly became a spiritual practice, as well.  There were times during savasana that I felt pure bliss -- enough to bring tears to my eyes and a song to my soul.  And I am poorer when I'm unable to get to 3 classes a week, since I can't seem to discipline myself to have a daily home practice.

I've actually been making some art since I got home.  Yesterday I went to a friend's birthday party.  She always invites 2-3 dozen women to come to lunch in some restaurant that can accommodate us all, and insists on "cards only, no gifts."  Some of us go to great lengths now to create handmade and elaborate cards -- I saw that at least half her cards (of course we pass them around the tables) were handmade: some very fine, some very simple, but all lovely.  I made a large card (perhaps 8x11 or 9x12 -- didn't measure) with a decoupaged picture of an angel (her theme this year), a hand-crafted border, and "Ave" (greetings) painted below, with my birthday wish on the back.  I should have photographed it for you!  I coated it with acrylic gloss finish and it was barely dry by the time I had to leave!  I had a picture in my head of what I wanted my greeting to look like, how I wanted to write it -- and it actually came out very much as I wanted it to.  That's new for me, and I think maybe artistic progress.  I'm getting technically just that teeny bit better so that I can come closer to realizing the vision that I have in my head.  I love that.  What fun it was!

Tonight I'm making a collage for the inside front page of my journal.  I thought it might be a black madonna.  I thought it might be something spiritual.  Turns out, once I got to my studio, I was drawn to my paper souvenirs from Italy, and it's going to be Italian (pictures, ticket stubs, business cards, etc -- I guess they're called "ephemera"), on a red acrylic painted background.  I'm usually surprised by what happens, and this one is no exception!

So I've got physical and creative practices back in my life.  You would think spiritual would be easy for a priest.  It is, in a way.  I pray daily, and I mean it when I pray -- it's not just an empty practice.  Wednesdays I do centering prayer, and in our savasana at yoga class (the "corpse pose," the resting period at the end) I do my best to clear my mind and just rest in the presence of the Holy.  But there's nothing setting my heart on fire just now.  When I was cramming my head with all those spiritual books, doing the suggested spiritual exercises, it all felt much more alive and passionate.  It will come again, I know -- probably sooner, rather than later.  But now it feels just a little blah.

There is some good news, I think.  An elderly parishioner has decided, it seems, to become my "fairy godmother."  She's a great and very interesting lady, recently received an inheritance from her beloved sister, and I think is doing a little "life review," having also lost her husband a year and a half ago.  She has no children, and I think she wants to leave a little something that will outlive her.  At any rate, she has offered to help financially with my sabbatical, but also wants me to write a book (or an outline and first chapter, at least), which she will shop around to various agents with whom she has connections -- she has published at least one book, and also sells her paintings.  I don't know if this will truly go anywhere at all, but it's kind of exciting to think about.  I don't even know if it's ethical -- I need to think and pray more about that, I suppose -- to accept all this assistance from her.  Perhaps I really need to channel the money into the church, since she's a member here.  I would never want to use my position as her priest for personal gain from her.  I need to talk to others, I think -- my Bishop and spiritual director, to start with.  I have no problem with the assistance with writing a book -- non-monetary help -- but I'm not so sure about the other.  Any thoughts?

No photos today.  As I said before, my digital camera is broken -- it's quite a bit outdated, anyway, and so needs to be replaced.  Only my phone camera works -- no flash, less megapixils.  Time to buy a new one, but it's on my list, after new glasses and car maintenance and some bills that need to be paid.  It may be summer before I can take really good shots!

Snow is predicted for tomorrow, February 1, but I know that by mid-month, the witch hazel will be blooming!  Spring is almost here!