One Wild and Precious Life

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!

One Wild and Precious Day (Well, Two, Actually)

Two beautiful weekends of Indian Summer just past; last weekend I thought of all the shoulds and oughts first:  I could weed a badly overgrown veggie garden, and put it to bed for winter:

Or maybe I should clear the windfall tree that fell onto my labyrinth in the last big storm:

Nah.  I didn't want to do either one of those things.  I'd have had to go get my chain saw back from the sharpening shop to clear the tree, and I just didn't feel like weeding and mulching on such a gorgeous day.  But then there's the brush pile that needs burning -- I love a bonfire!

Or there's the brush pile behind the church -- even bigger and more in need of a burn!

But really, you can see by the light even in these pictures, that the day was calling me -- calling me to something way beyond work.  This day wanted to be admired and adored, savored and enjoyed.  The day called me to do what I wanted to do -- asked me how best to make use of this one wild and precious day. 

So I started out with a bike ride that made me feel wild and free, like a kid again, really, exploring roads I'd never taken, panting my way up small hills (hey, I do live in the mountains here!), scaring myself a little bit with the speed of the downhill coasts.  What fun!  I was having too much fun (and too out of breath) to take pictures of my ride.  But when I got home, the day still beckoned, and I went for a solitary walk in the woods behind the church.

Our church is blessed with 18.8 acres of property, only about 3 acres of which is cleared.  The other 15 acres or so is woodland, complete with a rough, overgrown gravel roadbed-path laid by a previous owner.  So I set off down the path, through the woods, across the creek:

And on back through that particularly beautiul slant of light that only comes in the fall.  First I checked on the tumble-down A-frame that used to be someone's fishing cabin:

Then I took a look at what I think was once a hunting blind -- someone told me it looks like the top to a silo -- but I always fancied it to be a flying saucer:

Ah, what fun I would have had with this, when I was a kid!  It would have been the ultimate clubhouse, spaceship, playhouse, fort, teepee, whatever my iimagination could have conjured!

Finally, I came to the pond.  Please don't tell my dogs I came here without them!

Ah, the light was so perfect and round, the sky so blue that I sat down right there for a time to watch some small fish, listen to the breeze, and puzzle out why trees seem to like to lean right out over the water, as this one has.  Slowly, slowly, in the silence broken only by woods noises, I began to feel my soul fill up again.  Then I could head back out, re-crossing the creek and walking uphill to get back out to the church parking lot -- and this is what I saw as I left the woods:

It's hard to see that tiny, tiny moon in the very center of that blue, blue sky -- but it's there!  And it looked much bigger when I actually saw it last week!  Of course, tomorrow that moon will be full -- but last week it was just a plump crescent, hanging there in that late afternoon sky.

This weekend -- last Friday on my day off, actually, I went on another adventure -- with the dogs this time!  I finally decided to explore Fall Creek Falls State Park, one of the several that are fairly near to me, this one being only about 45 minutes from my home.  Other people have encouraged me to explore it, saying it's "really nice," and the park's own PR says that Southern Living Magazine called it "the best state park in the south."    So Mapquest was my friend, giving me great driving directions, and off I went.  Yes, it was/is spectacular.  I can only show you these pictures to prove my point:

I got down there to the base of the falls (maybe 300 feet?) by way of a heavily-traveled, but steep and rather treacherous path.  The dogs loved it, but they wore me out, trying to keep them from greeting every fellow-traveler, not pull me down the path too quickly, not explore every nook and cranny, like this one:

And then, once we got to the bottom, a fairly steep half-mile -- well, then we had to come back up!  Whew!  I was beat by the time we made it back to the car -- but I felt glorious, at the same time.  And I don't think I could have done it before I lost this 68 pounds in the last 18 months!  And the view from the top was deinitely worth it:

Why didn't I find this park sooner?  Why did I have to live here for nearly 9 years before I got around to exploring here?  There are lots of other features and vistas that I didn't have time to explore yet, and the campgrounds look really fine.  It makes me want to get a pickup truck with a camper cap and just take off for a few days -- or the rest of my life!

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!

Hello, I'm Back -- Again! Lent, Easter, & Related Topics

Well, I'm posting again at the request of my friend Sharon -- who is keeping me from running off the rails, blogwise.  I don't have photos to share -- at least when I post photos, I feel as though I'm giving you something besides my own narcissistic ramblings.  But oh, well, today that's what you get.

What was I thinking I might say about a stressful Lent?  Lots of obligations, I think, a book study group that went very well, but on about the 4th reading, I wasn't really happy with the book (Richard Foster's "A Celebration of Discipline").  There were a number of surgeries and hospitalizations that merited visits in addition to the normal Lenten stuff.  Planning for everything:  flowers, candles, Holy Week services -- I love all those things, and have people who assist, but it's really still a massive effort on the part of this small, sleepy retirement parish, and some of my usual "assistant planners" also have their own life stressors, primarily personal illness and ailing spouses or family members.

But finally, we got to Holy Week.  Oh, my.  At 3 am on Palm Sunday I got a call from the hospital: a parishioner had died and his widow was asking for me.  I had been up late the night before, finishing my Palm Sunday sermon and just messing around -- I found I stayed up late lots of nights during Lent, because the busy schedule left me little time for reflection and relaxation, and I tended to grab that time late at night.  In any event, I found myself at the hospital before 3:30, holding the widow as she wept, praying prayers for the dead and anointing my parishioner/friend who died so suddenly.  The time around death and funerals is a very holy time for me, and while I was exhausted, I knew that I was fulfilling my highest calling when I was with the widow at the hospital that night.  Home for another 2 hours' sleep, and then up and off to church for a service we only do once a year (those invariably make me a little nervous, I want to get them just right), and instead of being able to process outside with our palms this year, it was raining, and so we started in the parish hall and simply proceeded down the hallway to the church proper (which we Episcopalians call the nave).

Palm Sunday is the first day of Holy Week, and Holy Week is the busiest (and often most stressful) in a priest's life.  We had services on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (2 services), Saturday (2 services, with the unexpected funeral scheduled for that day), and then on to Easter Sunday.  Counting Palm Sunday, I had 5 sermons to write and preach in that time.  I also had another parishioner who had surgery the week before in a town 1/2 hour away, and I needed and wanted to visit her.  And at the office, there were all the preparations -- service leaflets, church arrangements (again, I certainly didn't do it all, but I had to supervise and coordinate it all), two receptions (after the funeral, and after the Great Vigil of Easter, on Saturday night) to make sure all was well.

Through this all, the owls (to which I referred you in the last post) kept me sane.  Molly has been such a good mom, and McGee has been such a good provider for the family (owls mate for life, or nearly so, you know).  The chicks (we got 4 out of 6 eggs -- the 1st and last didn't hatch) are growing like weeds, and may begin flying lessons soon.  Literally millions of people have visited their site, including numerous classes of elementary and middle school kids.  I wonder how many zoologists this experience could spawn.  Yes, I've been a little obsessed, a little enamored by them.  But they really are one aspect of the Easter story -- life blooms and grows and continues, generation after generation.

But I'm telling you:  this was probably the most profound and meaningful Holy Week I've almost ever had -- certainly one of the top 2 that I've had in the 7 Easters I've been here at this church.  Palm Sunday was a blur (on maybe 4 hours' sleep), but the Holy Week services were incredibly moving.  Our bible study is focusing on the book of Exodus, and the parallels for me on promise and deliverance, slavery and freedom, and God's hand reaching down into the course of human affairs, really, really moved me profoundly this year.  If you haven't read Julian of Norwich's "Revelations of Divine Love," or "Showings," you really should.  She had mystical visions of the crucifixion that are initially somewhat disturbing, but which ultimately make her well-known phrase, "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," something we all need to hear.

I took Monday and Tuesday off -- it was all so intense that my neurological circuits were fried.  Then Wednesday we had a healing service that was like no other.  This small Wednesday service is one of the high points of my week (along with the bible study that follows it).  I love anointing people for healing, laying on my hands and praying especially for them and those whose concerns are on their hearts.  I don't know what happens, exactly, but it is profound, and was more profound than usual this week.  I had my newly widowed lady (who has NEVER attended this service) and another couple who had never attended, the wife of whom had surgery for cancer today.  Oh, my, such raw pain and need for healing, and everyone there (all the "old regulars") felt it, too.  It was a really, really holy time.

I think I'll talk about me -- my own feelings about my winter weight gain, what I'm doing about that, etc. another time.  I still feel as though I'm standing barefoot on holy ground when I write about Holy Week.  The last 3 days, especially (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday), and then Easter Sunday, were so transcendent for me, so redolent of life and death, of slavery and freedom, of promise and fulfillment.  All the rest, including this beautiful spring on the Plateau and my languishing veggie garden, will have to wait until at least tomorrow.  Maybe I can even get some pictures to break up this "wall of words" for you!

Please, those of you who care about the Christian yearly cycle -- remember that we do celebrate FIFTY days of Easter!  It's as important as the twelve days of Christmas!  Keep celebrating!  How can you NOT when spring is here??

The Owl Box: Life and Refreshment for a Tired Soul

This is not a big post, but I want you to see what's consuming a lot of my time: http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox

Lent has been a stressful time in the parish: I may have more to say about this later. But this has given me life during a stressful time.