Pharisee babe

Lection meditation Luke 20:19-26

The problem with all the imaginative depictions of the Pharisees in art and film is that they look like what they are inside. So they're all kind of craggy and nasty. That can't be how they really looked. They were probably tall, dark and handsome, with shining eyes that gazed compellingly at folk. Try imagining them that way and see what it reveals. The beautiful and powerful vs. he who had no comeliness.

Relgious rituals and child worship

Having returned from my cousin’s daughter’s bat mitzvah, I want to reflect a bit on my reactions to the service and what that means about my faith. There is so much to admire: the Rabbi’s incredible high heels, the abilities of my young cousins to read Hebrew, the elderly woman beside me who drove their wheelchair bound 90 year old grandmother) to all the services and was following along with the prayers, her finger under the Hebrew letters, the ability of all these people to sit through both an hour and a half service on Friday night and a full two hours on Saturday, the touching moment when she lit the yhartzeit candle for the seven-year=old Holocaust victim she’d been assigned as her twin. And this is actually a key point, what makes this service, though it does delight in the young person, and the family and the passing on of tradition, different from the child worship of St. Jonah’s and so many other protestant churches. It is one thing for those at the top of the social order to cluck over their children. It is frankly a bit unseemly. They have picked it up from the ethnic groups—the bat mitzvahs of the Jews, the quinceanos of the Latinos, etc. St. Jonah’s people admitted it: when they went to a bat mitzvah they were envious. But when they try to translate such rituals into Episcopalianism, and create new quasi-confirmation celebrations, it becomes self-aggrandizement. You see, the difference is not in how deeply both groups hold their faith, or whether or not they really believe any of the things they profess. How many of the Jews holding their prayer books to the Torah and kissing them really believe this to be God’s word? Some. Many, perhaps. But not all. In both liberal traditions, people are welcome and accepted whatever they think, because, after all, how important are all our thoughts? Not very, in truth. But when a victimized group like the Jews delights that our children are here, are alive and understand their connection to the God of our Tradition, it is truly something to fill all hearts with thankfullness; it eases the pain of the terrible loss that mars us all. To look at a beautiful young person reading this ancient text, the very scroll that was rescued from a synogogue where none of the people survived, no matter who or what we believe in, we must be in awe, and thankful. I’m sorry: white middle class Protestants can never emulate this. Don’t try. Let your children sit and behave themselves, please.

The good old days

An Anti-Israeli musician articulates the desire underlying all those who object to Israel's right to defend itself when he states that he will play music "from the time when Jews didn't have armies and police to harass freedom fighters, when Jews were victims..." Ah yes, I remember those days. Wasn't there something about ovens back then? See Gaza Protesters for the full story, including reasonable explanations of why the Israelis are not the ones using innocent people as cannon fodder: Hamas is guilty of that.

Lectionary Meditation

Feeling rather gloomy, after the prayers for the people at the Ascension Day service suggested in not so many words, that the nation of Israel ought to just roll over and play dead (be dead) I was struck in today's office reading that Luke says Jesus was 'full of joy through the Holy Spirit." Luke 10:21-24

I'll have to do a search on this later, but it seems to me that Jesus doesn't really express a lot of joy or delight or pleasure. Mostly he is weeping or mad or just plain exasperated, particularly because the disciples just don't get what he is saying about his impending death. This time he is joyful because they are having an aha moment. As a teacher, I can relate! Okay, he may not have succeeded in reaching the "wise and learned" but he got through the "little children."

Please stop clinging desperately to the wisdom of this world. Read this: "Palestine Betrayed"

Multiverses

The miserable chaplain who's losing his faith in Catch-22, which I'm listening to on my iPod, wonders what God was doing for all that endless infinite time before the creation of the universe. That's actually a theologically correct question to ask, because God must exist outside time and space, whether there is one universe or many. You are probably aware that there is a sudden spate of programs explaining astrophysics to laypeople. Likely this is due to how good the images all look in Hi Def. The last one we watched dealt with the possibility of parallel universes. I knew physicists consider this a possibility, but I didn't know they'd actually got funding to run experiments in their giant collider that might possibly create a particle that could somehow prove their existence. Of course, it could go on indefinitely without disproving it.

Mr. Crackles and I got to talking. Maybe Heaven and Hell are just parallel universes. Heaven's the place where everything went right and we can't get there in these bodies but our souls can slip through the wormhole. There could be zillions of Hells. Maybe God exists in that Heaven dimension. He can reach through to us, but we can only reach Him with spiritual energy: prayer. Hmmm. The scientists say someday we could replicate our universe if we can figure out how to send something through to a parallel universe. Maybe God did that, made our universe that way.

I get a chill. Mr. Crackles doesn't see what my problem is. He likes that God can be explained as a possibility even scientists can accept. But then he's just bigger and better than us but not ontologically different. I can be annoying and use words like ontologically when I have to. But he's soo soo vastly beyond us: isn't that what God is? I don't think so, actually. Better isn't better enough for me to give my soul over even if my soul would benefit. My God can enter the space/time continuum but He doesn't have to. The God of a parallel universe seems stuck there somehow, not really infinite. My God does exist in some way I can't understand before time and space.

Deja Vu

Listening to the news revealing more details about the behavior that drove a teenage girl in a neighboring town to hang herself, I find myself reacting the same way as I did during the hearings for Clarence Thomas, when Anita Hill described his sexual harassment. Oh, you mean that isn't just normal boss behavior, school behavior? The sad fact is, both kinds of harassment have been standard operating procedure since time immemorial. Now we are bringing it to light and saying it is wrong. Will that change it? I don't know. I just wish Phoebe had been tougher, like me, and like all the others who survived the malicious talk and threats.

Lectionary Meditation

January 8, 2010

Today’s readings all present pairings: there’s the “Massah and Meribah” of Exodus 17, aka, Kvetchin’ and Moanin’ a name that could be given to some churches I know. “Is the Lord with us or not” is the question those who were thirsty were asking. Moses names the places after the behaviors. In the time of John’s gospel, the places named are already redolent with associations: Bethlehem, the place of royal promise, Galilee, the place of those who do not count. Which one is Jesus from? It can’t be both, can it? But that is the genius of the Gospel narrative. It is both. And Colossians proclaims that union: visible, invisible, earth, heaven. What with holding all those things together, combining Galilee and Bethlehem was a small feat indeed!

Unauthorized intercessions

I just noticed that the rubrics for many liturgies in the BCP include an opportunity for "authorized intercessions." Does this mean that if prayers are invited all prayers are authorized? What if someone prayed for something unacceptable to the community, like, I dunno, that more Republicans win the mid-term elections? I've never heard of an officiant screening the intercessions before they are offered. The subversion potential is great. I think I'll name my next blog "unauthorized intercessions."

naming a new disease

We talk about people who can't keep from stealing as kleptomaniacs. We need to name a disease for writers who can't keep from plagiarizing. I really think there is a developing syndrome. It's happening more and more among published writers who definitely know better. And a recent student of mine, whom I thought I had put the fear of the Lord into on this matter, starting copying my posts in her comments to others students!

The Gospel According to Dr. Who

I'm told that the exec producer and head writer of Dr. Who (Russell T. Davis) is an atheist, but he must have imbibed the Christian story in his mother's milk, because it seems to be the Ur-Story behind all the stories. I just finished watching (most of, missed a few) Season II.

WARNING: SEASON II (ROSE TYLER) SPOILERS.

I was struck by how Rose's trajectory illustrates this passage from the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 10:


29"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last first." (New International Version).

In the last, "Doomsday," episode, she reminds the Doctor that she has already made the choice of him over her mother (whom she loves). She is willing to die with him to save the world again. At the last minute before she dies, she's whisked away to the parallel dimension where she will live with a restored family, including a father who died when she was very small. Of course, unlike the Kingdom of Heaven, she doesn't get to see the Doctor anymore when she's there. But still.

Kid stuff

So I’d probably seen about twenty or so Dr. Who episodes before I found out that the British consider this a children’s program. While Buffy was a teen-oriented show, it wasn’t for children, and we wouldn’t let the girls watch it when they were younger. Dr. Who is for children? Have I already entered my second youth then, that I find it engrossing and even scary at times? I wouldn’t even have known it was considered a children’s show if I hadn’t watched some of the supplemental material on the DVD and heard the actor speak of it that way. When I started watching, I did tell my husband he’d probably like it, because there wasn’t graphic violence (the fight scenes on Buffy used to bother him). But that didn’t detract from the fact that one usually gets caught up in the real possibility that the universe might be extinguished, or all human life made into stew for the delectation of some alien species. The suspense feels real, though one knows that the doctor, in some incarnation or other, will survive. His survival is pretty much the only thing one can count on.

I remember railing against the crap the girls used to watch on Disney or the other kids’ channels. They all told the same message: kids are powerful; kids know best; kids will fix the world. (It’s no wonder they voted for the big kid who promised to do so.) So I guess that’s the pabulum I expect from children’s programming. The kind of stuff that moves product!

Children in the US were not to be told that the universe is a deeply mysterious and deeply dangerous place, full of aliens that are basically the same as Buffy’s demons, only with pseudo-scientific explanations. They should never be told the truth about human loneliness and fragility. So what makes the British consider it reasonable to reveal it to the young ones? Well, the answer is clear, and was made so in the third episode of the new series, “The Empty Child” which takes us back to England’s primal trauma: World War II. Homeless children fend for themselves, and one in particular who wanders around asking “are you my mummy” haunts the city, spreads like an infection (due to some nanobots, of course).

English children experienced conditions that Americans never have and they have grown up and passed to their children an awareness of the darkness and fragility. Americans still believe they are Superman or at least Mighty Mouse come “to save the day.” I have to say that I find the British view far truer and more compelling. We do need a doctor, because we are very sick.

I have a writing coach

Julia had suggested that I divorce the writing process from work: get out of the office, get away from the computer. It is working, as I now begin to think of scribbling the novel as a relaxing activity, something I can do even if I’m a bit tired, or have already poured a glass of wine. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have to use a system of rewards and threats: no tv or novel reading until you’ve put in your fifteen minutes. Yes, fifteen minutes is what I start with and sometimes it’s longer and sometimes it isn’t, but even fifteen can produce a handwritten page or two. And, thanks to the liberal use of dialogue, the pages start to add up. It’s really much easier than all the agonizing I’d been experiencing. But the practice has not yet become truly a daily one. Particularly now with the thought of a possible full time position at Online U. and the reality of needing to finish prepping for the other online class, the discipline is slipping. When I went to see Julia last Wednesday, with pages I’d hurriedly typed up that morning, (having snatched the time from grading, so I’d have to complete that around 10 pm for the midnight deadline), I thought perhaps I’d not make a follow-up appointment, tell her I’d call to make one. Was it really worth it, after all, paying her when I was barely hanging on to do this thing? It’s still hard for me to define what role she plays in my life. Is she just a writing coach or is she also a therapist? My ambivalence washed away when I walked in the door and she welcomed me. She is so nice! What is it about her? Is it the way she somehow feels like a grandmother: happy to see me, totally accepting? I’ve really never had a therapist that made me feel that way. Let yourself experience that, I told myself. You need it!

Unwelcome blurbs, or appropriate ones?

Sorry, I'm ROTL, that Jimmy-gone-to-the-dark-side-Carter and Stephen Walt are upset that their books have been endorsed by Osama Bin Laden. It is absolutely predictable that their anti-Semitic lies are in accordance with his distorted and warped vision. I hope his "recommendations" ring in the heads of those who choose to read these books and help to keep their propaganda in perspective.

Tsk

I was driving down Maple Street, when I noticed a plain little ranch house with a stunning array of hollyhocks, in as many colors as I guess they come in, gracing the front yard. My tongue went to the roof of my mouth and I made a "tsk" sound. I have made that sound before, but never in response to flowers. Is this something that occurs when one passes a certain age? It seems like I can remember my grandmother making that sound at sights that pleased her, such as how I had grown, or my new tooth.

I love gardens, but I cannot view them without envy. My garden is pitiful. The Easter lilies were eaten completely by some bug: the star gazer lilies did open, but they were quite ragged too. Frankly, they looked like soldiers that had just returned from a routing. I know I've got too much shade and there has been way too much rain but I want to gaze at my own yard and go "tsk." Is that too much to ask?

Worries

I know it's a bit soon to worry about what might happen if this book got published, since I am only in the brainstorming stage, but it occurred to me that it would be hard to keep my stepdaughters, who are now 16 and 19, from reading a book that I might write that has something to do with a stepmother with two stepdaughters. I will, of course, change their names and call it fiction, but I have nothing to draw on but my experience. They will probably hate me. Should this stop me?


My wise friend Pru said not to read other works on the subject you are going to write about, but I think she may have meant not to read them once you've started, and I'm still in the brainstorming stage, as I believe I have mentioned, so I did do a little web search and then got the library to obtain "I'm not Julia Roberts" by Laura Ruby. Judging from some of the comments, either on Amazon.com or LibraryThing, the title is not a success. It requires one to remember a forgettable movie (note to Pru on why you should not reference Ephron's book). But so far, it's pretty good. Here's a paragraph from page 14:

"But worse than hating the ex was that Lu had started to hate Ward for having married the woman some gazillion years before, for having chosen such a solipsistic person as a mate. What could that say about him? And then what did marrying Ward, choosing someone with such flawed taste, say about Lu herself?" Wow, she nails a very essential dilemma very succinctly. Can I top this? Should I bother? Well, Ruby's book is about step sons, which are different. Daughter issues are very potent. Things like how at one point, they could borrow my shoes, but then, their feet grew and grew and grew into the huge feet their mother has, not my dainties. Spell-binding, won't it be?

It may have sounded like I would be satiated with trying new technology, but I have downloaded the trial version of a program that is supposed to help one organize a large writing project (Scrivener, it may be only for Mac) and am excited about learning it. At least, while I am working through the tutorials, I feel like I am actually, almost, working on a writing project. I have been inspired by Samantha Wilde's book on mommyhood: see [http://wildemama.blogspot.com/] to tell my tale of stepmommyhood, mommyhood's nasty underbelly. The advantages of being a stepmom as opposed to a mommom are things like intact perineums and other parts. The disadvantages include mommoms that are not dead and always want more money than whatever amount they have received. For other, fun, exciting pros and cons of being a step mom, stay tuned.

Goats everywhere

I had been listening to Robinson Crusoe on my mp3 player and, while on the elliptical at the gym, had just heard the part where he tames a baby goat. Then I got into my car and headed down the highway. The car in front of me was a red Tacoma, and I saw an animal face in the rear window. Now I'm seeing goats, I thought to myself, believing it must, of course, be a dog. But at the red light, I came closer. No, it really was a goat, staring straight at me! Only in Pixieville, do we take our goats out for a morning spin!

Listening to this classic novel, which I have not read before, is a good way to get through it, as I do find some of the details and repetition (why does he tell the story and present the daily journal that says the same thing?) a bit boring. But it is an important book for me to read in terms of literary history and my interest in literature and geography, and is filling in some missing pieces. Most of my sense of the novel comes from my knowledge of the Elizabeth Bishop poem that refers to it, but now I also see how Life of Pi builds from it. I didn't know how much Defoe dealt with Crusoe's spiritual condition, and questions of God's providence. (So far, in greater depth than The Shack!) I'm also intrigued by how he comes to think of his dwelling as "home." I haven't yet come to the part where he meets Friday, so more comments to follow, if I can figure out how to get the rest of the book onto one of my players, now that I am a mac person and my pc isn't even hooked up enough to use.

old dog

They say it is good to break habits: it keeps the mind supple and prevents mental deterioration. So this switchover from PC to mac must be extending my capacity to rant about them young people for at least another three years. I am amazed at how seamless my interface with my keyboard has been. The habits so strongly ingrained that switching keyboard shortcut strokes is agonizing. The only real shift I am struggling with is using the Command (or Apple) key instead of the Control Key, and for other features, the Alt (or Option key) instead of Control. Control! Interestingly, I do feel like I've lost control. Macs determine for you what it is you want to do. If you have already made your own determinations, their choices seem a bit creepy, at times. But I am discovering some cool things. I will accomplish this and teach my hand/brain interface new tricks.

Nightmares wrapped in dreams

We climbed the stairs at the museum to see a featured exhibit: the display of an arm that had been severed from its body. This was a political statement. But I worried it would cause nightmares. And to prove it, I could see them. This woman dreamed of her daughter’s arm being severed. Then she was an arm, waving goodbye.

Don't get out much

Doing all one's work online can lead one to do strange things, such as sit on the sandy floor of an attic-like bookstore, near people who smell like their dogs sit on way too many of their clothes, to watch some one-act plays, the final one being Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. I had forgotten that I was a character in a Beckett play. Any of his plays. Back in New York, I remember seeing the Public Theater’s production of Happy Days, in which a woman named Winnie rooted around in her purse for things, while sitting on top of a garbage heap. After that, the man I was seeing at the time aptly referred to my purse as my "Winnie Bag." In this play, Krapp first deals with his filing system and has some things fall of his desk. That is a day in my life. Then he listens to a tape of himself talking on his 39th birthday. While I do not have tapes, I have my diaries, and while I have not made a ritual of retrieving them, I know they are there, awaiting me. In fact, just today I had an idea about a story culled from the letters a beach bum I met in California when I was eighteen wrote me for a while. {Funny that I think first of taking someone else's words. But I am curious as I try to remember what on earth that drifter had to say in so many letters.} I realize I have reached the point where the accumulation need not continue. Now is the time to shape the material into something. But I feel dread, like Krapp, who felt disgust at listening to his younger self, yet then proceeded to speak again into the tape recorder. He is so pitiful and so typical. One doesn’t want to just pronounce alone in one’s room. One must record: imagine a listener (the listeners he actually has, because he is a character in a play; the listeners we don’t have, but imagine because we write). I blog, therefore I am! The imaginary listener gives some meaning to the meaninglessness: the confrontation with one’s washed up dreams of grandeur.

I don't even know who the actor was, but he was good. The performance was free, and very low budget, but that in no way matters to a Beckett play. As far as I know, this was it: the whole performance. All the work, all that talent, for a room of about forty people, to see once.

It kind of reminds me of last weekend. We went to a party up in the Live Free or Die state. "Pyroman" provided the fireworks. He spent the entire day setting them up. The introduction began before dark. He stood on the platform he had built, in a vinyl, boxy like costume. He began dancing in a robotic fashion to “Relax, Don’t Do it” playing on a boom box. (Interestingly, a search for that song title turns up the lyrics on “One Hit Wonders.” It’s kind of a theme here.) . Fireworks shot forth from his arms. He was a living fireworks display! He turned around, and his back presented a spiral item that spun and spewed white light. He stepped back and forth, no major dance moves, but it was clear that he was in bliss: dancing in the showers of sparks. When you thought he was done, two big blasts of fire and smoke that went up behind him, like the ones that appeared before the Wizard of Oz. What a delight to see an artist at work, focused and rejoicing in his creation, temporary though it may be.

Repurposing

Don't you hate that word--repurposing? I do. Nevertheless, that is what I will do. Rather than start a new blog, I will continue this one, though it no longer contains the ramblings of a crazed parish administrator, but a deranged online adjunct college professor. Contain your excitement.

Guess what's back in style?

The Jerusalem Post provides some information I don't hear much of in US media:

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

Time is strange and all that

Everytime someone says "only 10" or "only 9" more days till the election, I think, "what election?" That's in November, this is only October. October what? I can't believe how autumn is slipping past.

Today we had a reminder of sunshine and warmth. I had no idea how much it rained during the night, and didn't know that was why there were strips of leafless areas down my driveway, until, on my run, I saw the stream roaring by. I ran in a tank top, and then went into a sunny spot in my backyard and stretched in the sun. I even felt too hot to lie there in shavasana! The birds were very active. Why do that blue jay's feathers seem a much brighter blue than in the summer?

Those ads for some phone that features Google are aimed just at me: all those random questions you want answers to right away! Fortunately, I'm usually close enough to my computer.

Today is a day of recuperation after the academic conference it was mandatory for me to attend at the local college where I adjunct. They have to appease the accreditors by assuring them they are making sure all the adjuncts are toeing the line. So I had to listen to them proclaim as recent discoveries the facts about online teaching that I am practicing every day. I kind of feel dirty.

it's the space between

I grew up listening to vinyl. One by one, I added to my record collection, and played my favorite albums over and over. Now there was a thing this technology would do. Any little scratch in the vinyl would cause it to skip and the record would repeat a musical phrase over and over again. Sometimes you could stop it by stomping hard on the floor, but mostly you had to get up and tap the needle arm. It would reach the point that the skips became a part of the song. To this day, there songs from Janis Joplin's "Got Dem Old Kozmic Blues Again" that startle me when I heard them blasting right through the place where it was supposed to get stuck.

In the same way, record listeners grew to expect that songs would come on in a certain order, after a three or four second hiss of silence. That was their proper order. Some musicians created albums with this in mind. Some people still prefer to listen to music this way. I have to admit, I am not one of them.

That was always the appeal of radio, after all. The fortuitious playing of the song you really liked, or needed at that moment. The juxtaposition: both those songs mentioned pumpkins and it was like totally mind-blowing!!!

I tried listening to an old mix tape I had made (it was in the car and there was nothing but commercials and pledge appeals on the radio) and found myself listening just to hear what the next song was, rather than to enjoy the current song. I realized it then. It's the juxtapositions I like. The connections. The links I make in my own mind, when one song comments on another and turns it upside down. Does that mean I'm just an unreformed modernist, shoring fragments against my ruin? Or too post-modern to bother actually listening to a simple song?

None Dare Call it Islamofascism

But I don't know what else to call it when the threat of violence prevents a book from being published. Censorship in America, pure and simple. I can't really blame the publishers cowering, after all, I stay happily anonymous in my blog. But please, I can blame the Islamic "scholar" who started the fuss.

In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." The novel, for example, includes a scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life." Says Ms. Spellberg: "I walked through a metal detector to see 'Last Temptation of Christ,'" the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."

Excuse me, how is depicting the marital relationship that everyone agrees occured (and which I presume is in the Koran) playing with history, and depicting a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalen which contradicts the Bible not playing with sacred history? Ms. Spellburg is willing to go through metal detectors to see any film which denigrates any religion EXCEPT her own.

I would probably never read this novel, but I believe it should be published, just like The Last Temptation of Christ, Lady Chatterly's Love, Huckleberry Finn and all the other banned books. This is a very chill wind that blows through American freedom of speech.

Letters from camp 1970

I am still in the arduous but interesting process of sorting through a huge box of letters, mostly written between my mother and her sister, but others to my father during the war (more about that later) and some from and to me. I guess I learned from my mother that what one does with these things is put them in a box and store them in the attic. I found the letters I wrote from camp. They were worth keeping and they revised my recollection. I thought I was miserable from day one until the end. Enduring homesickness, hiding tears, reading Jane Eyre ("how do you pronounce Eyre" I asked in my first letter) and suffering through playing awful sports in searing heat. That is all I remember. But in fact, according to the letters, the homesickness was fleeting and I had fun a lot of the time. My poor parents! They were all set to pick me up early, after they enjoyed their vacation in Lake Placid and Queechy Lake without me. Then I wrote more anxious letters begging them not to come early.

Day 2's is so funny, I'll copy it here:

Dear Mommy and Daddy,
I hate to spoil your vacation but you'll have to come and get me. I'm dyeing of homesickness. It's not the camps fault or the counselors they're both really great. It's just that I can't bear being away from home. It's even worse than last year because its 4 weeks. I am sick to my stomach of homesickness. I feel like killing myself for being mean to you. You could make up some excuse that I could tell the girls I'd be embaressed to tell the truth and they're all so nice. I've started crying, I just can't hold it in. So tell me when you can get me, because you have to, I've tried every method in the book but it is just inevitable. Your homesick and loving daughter, xxxx. (in the margin, with a musical note, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.") Then. P.S. This is later. I reopened the letter. At the moment I'm having a good time. I don't know what to do. Call me up.

Mr. Crackles thought it was hilarious and said I hadn't changed a bit. That is disturbing, because it sounds to me like he is taking my mother's attitude, that I'm "Sandra Bernhardt" a term she always used, which suggests that I'm exaggerating for effect and that is not true. I am deeply feeling what I feel and doing my best to express it so that others may understand. No one ever really does, it is still apparent. Hmph.

Really, we tried

We tried to go to St. Jonah's this past Sunday, really we did. Since the step-daughters are now way too old and sophisticated to be willing to be counselors, we'd forgotten that the prior week had been the week of Going Medieval camp for kiddies. (The eldest is off on her jaunt of Germany and the 15-year-old would rather spend her week on facebook and text messaging and getting ready for her sleep away camp. Can't really say I blame her.) If we remembered about the camp and that the kids would be more than participating in the main service we might have gone to the early service or else to that outpost in a neighboring industrial city that we discovered a couple weeks ago. Both would have required waking up early, but we were up late enjoying Lucinda Williams at the Green River Festival. And we didn't even make it at 10:30 on the dot. I knew we were rather late since I didn't even hear the organ as we walked up the side street by the flower garden. The first lesson was in progress: we could hear a voice speaking. But what we saw was a child placing a ladder beside the altar table. Wha? I recognized the words as telling of Jacob's dream and understood the ladder but Mr. Crackles hovered in the doorway, gesturing to me. Psst, let's go. He'd been worried about the heat in the church anyway, and this was just the last straw. If you don't want to believe the altar is sacred space, then don't tell me it matters if I go to the service or not, sayeth he. Turning it into a jungle gym. He really hates what he calls "child worship." Of course it pervades St. Jonah's since all the up and coming families with potentially large incomes for a good number of years have kiddies. I can see how allowing the children to take over one service in the summer is a useful teaching exercise for them, even if it does subject the adults to listening to their prayers for their pets and their echoings of politically correct oversimplifications about how we shouldn't bomb nice people who are different from us. I can also see how for Mr. Crackles, who is so alienated from his children that worship of them does not reflect his glory the way it does for other parents, it is a painful thing to watch, as it is for me as well. So, we left. We went to the beach and worshipped with our bodies the God who made the vast seas and Leviathan, just for the sport of it.

Not quite getting it

Nothing like a corpse swap to improve neighborly relations. Hey guys, when we said hold a swap meet, this isn't exactly what we meant.

A rough mail day

The mail brought an end to my hopes: my first attempt to get the young adult novel published have failed. Form rejection. I know, do not despair, send it out again. I wasn't really surprised, despite my fervent attempts to visualize success. Failure after all is familiar.

Then, looking at my credit card bill I discovered charges from ValueMax and DealMax which I had never heard of. Calling them up they said that someone at the email address andylander@mac.com had purchased a gas card and membership in these companies. (Yes, you can bombard his email if you like, it probably is a dead letter box by now. I haven't bothered.) The companies acted all innocent and said they'd refund my membership. I think they are in on it with these fictitious people who "sign up" for free gas cards. But how did they get access to my credit card? The credit card company says to wait and see. Of course I feel assaulted and violated. Warning everyone: check your bills frequently. Do not sign up for "free gas" cards.

Literacy and its discontents

I turned the radio on yesterday and caught a snippet of someone speaking on Democracy Now. I'm not a fan of this program since it generally seems utterly paranoid, but this caught my attention and I was able to find out from their site today that the speaker was Buckminster Fuller. He said, "When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans themselves are literate, able to get the information, we’re in an entirely new relationship to universe. We’re at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do. It’s a matter now of humanity getting to the point where it’s now qualifying to make some of its own decisions in relation to its own information. That’s why we’ve come to a new moment of integrity." This awareness of the importance of literacy clicks with the issues I've been struggling regarding Episcopalians' approach to Scripture and authority, as well as the current presidential campaigns. What do we really want in a leader? I have probably noted before that St. Jonah's is conflicted to the marrow about this. We desperately want it both ways. We really want a leader who supports and affirms what we already think and feel, and maybe pushes us just a teensy bit further in that direction (and pushes those who aren't there a whole lot further in that direction). Which is why I think more and more that the very idea of a congregation choosing its own pastor is ill-founded and we should return to the idea of the hierarchy appointing people (I hear even the Methodists do this). But why, I ask myself, am I so ready to believe a hierarchy, a magisterium, is going to be more capable than we are? Aren't I just longing for pre-literacy days when us folks just had to listen to authority with humility and obedience? Isn't it natural that those two virtues would fade away now that we are all empowered to read and learn? And yet, and yet, this is no longer really the era of literacy that Fuller heralded. It is the post-literate era. No, that doesn't mean that fewer people can process letters and words in a textual form, and it doesn't just mean that fewer people choose to do so, particularly outside of the internet. It means that we now realize that each and every one of us derives a different meaning from those letters and words, and even one person derives a different meaning at different times. Yes, big revelation: that's the message of Derrida et al. and has been subsumed into the general postmodernist view, and all I'm really doing here is calling it the postliterate reality, because I think that is a more accurate term (and calling anything an accurate term in this context is, I suppose, an exercise in futility). Yet, it sheds a ray of light that reveals things are not really so different after all from the pre-literate era. Maybe now, more than ever, we need a magisterium.

The beach, life, death, etc.

The local news has been all about Ted Kennedy since his seizures and diagnosis of a brain tumor. I take great interest in hearing the medical details and seeing how well he is doing, happy he gets to go home and be with his dogs, his boats. I realize that even though I don't always agree with his positions, he is such a familiar figure and face here in Massachusetts. He's a fixture. It is getting on a year since my father's diagnosis of his cancer having metastasized to his brain, so I feel that connection too. Also strange, because when I think back to my earliest childhood memory of this Senator's brother being assassinated, I understand that this first intimation of the mortality of fathers has marked me in a deep way, so that I feel connected to Ted, the lesser brother, the one who screwed up bad at Chappy. On Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Crackles suggested we go to the Cape for the day and just check it out, so we wake up early, see the Teddy news and hear about the Fugawi boat race that he will not be racing in. First we go to Harwich, because that is where Mr. Crackles's family always went. It is nice: the parking is free till June, we walk on the beach, then head into town and find a restaurant and have a nice lunch. Then we decide to drive on to Hyannis, where there's more of a town, walk around have coffee and a snack at the twelve tribes coffee shop. Traffic is starting to get a bit more crowded, and the beautiful day is getting on. When we drive to another beach, where they are charging to park, the girls say "why don't you come back in 15 minutes when it won't cost you 15 dollars?" so we drive on and find a place where we seem to be able to park on the road and there's just a little spot of beach we bring our chairs to and sit down. Mr. Crackles is looking at the boat that has pulled up to the pier and saying it looks like Teddy's boat. How can you tell, I ask. Sailboats kind of look alike to me. It's got two wooden masts, like his, he says. And then we notice, there are about a dozen people gathered on the beach besides the pier and sure enough, that's him and his family, walking off the boat down the pier. And the two dogs! (One runs back towards the boat then follows along.) Apparently, he did go for a sail, though he was sitting out the race. He seemed jovial, walking in that strange way of his along the dock. Mr. Crackles is amazed. I actually feel like this is normal in some way. Like I said, I've felt this connection and this awareness of Ted as a familiar and local figure so it seems just kind of right that we should end up there, seeing him disembark.

Today he had brain surgery.

Princess & Goblin

I have just finishing listening to a recording of George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin, a book which was apparently very influential on folks like Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. I was struck by a comment the great grandmother makes in chapter 22 (the text is available on Gutenberg).

'You are right. Curdie is much farther on than Lootie, and you will see what will come of it. But in the meantime you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' 'What is that, grandmother?' 'To understand other people.'

My, this sounds a lot like the prayer attributed to St. Francis. Macdonald's book was written in 1872, so no, he couldn't have simply known the prayer, because it isn't really by St. Francis and doesn't appear until the second world war. It is actually possible that this is one of the sources for that mysterious prayer of unknown authorship!

bird update

The nest over the back door now emits a peeping sound. The mother bird still flies off when the door opens. The father bird gathers food. Cool!

spring notes

Sycamores are the last to admit to spring
trunken nakedness makes them hesitate
still just dressing
while maples send off spinning emissaries

Reading Addict

I would rather be reading. I just finished the last of Susan Howatch's Christian novels and when I read them even though I can see their literary flaws I am in totally addictive mode. Unlike the sugar coated Mitford books, these depict some pretty dark struggles that people go through. And unlike literary fiction their problems get solved. They have deliverances and come to terms with the demons from their past. Unlike real life?

Those clergy designated as wise come out with lengthy explanations, such as the following:

"But let me merely say that St. Paul didn't think resurrection involved the flesh. It all depends how you define 'body' and in this case the word 'body' is probably a codeword for the whole person, a pattern produced by a certain mind, spirit and body all working together. This pattern--a pattern of information you could call it--would be capable of being lifted from its original context and replayed in another environment. Like written music which gets to be played in the concert hall" (Heartbreaker 424).

It's an interesting way to come to a workable understanding of resurrection, though I'm not sure its quite orthodox.

Then there's also the insight from Gavin, the former prostitute's, point of view:

"I'm seeing us all as victims who got mown down in one of God's messier creative splurges and mangled by the splurge's dark vile bits, the bits which haven't yet come right. But I know now that God's not just out there lolling idly in front of his canvas. He's in a muck sweat, painting away to save the picture, and although my family was blasted apart by the thwack of the creative process, the creator himself can't rest until he's brought us into the right pattern" (447) .

This image does reflect the character, who is just coming to terms with the idea that there is a caring God, but I do feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of God's creativity being out of control… though the world does seem to testify to that…

Splanations requested

I'm sure most of you have seen them, the mossy phoebe's nests that are built in the eaves of houses. I have googled and googled and cannot find an explanation for why they always build them right over the door. At my house, for instance, there is an extended expanse of eave with all the same features as the spot above the door, with the advantage of there not being a door there. And yet, they always seem to choose the spot through which humans and cats come and go. Why?

Derby Day

Why do I always try to watch the Kentucky Derby, donning a silly hat and drinking something that resembles a mint julep? I don't have much to do with horses the rest of the year. I'm carrying on a tradition that for me dates back to the 80s. Back in my NYC days, a guy I was enamored of made a big to do about the Derby, having people over for real juleps and walking them over to the nearby OTB to place bets. It was fun, and perhaps its just my way of holding on to some good times from my twenties that I watch the race. My husband and I turn on the tv and place pretend bets: he went for the favorite (boring!, says I) and I went for the filly (break that glass ceiling baby!). We're good! If I'd bet her to win place or show I would have won something, and so would he. But then there came the equine ambulance and they said that Eight Belles broke both her ankles and was euthanized in less time than it took to run the race. Unlike other sporting events involving injured humans, they had the decency not to show the fallen animal, but it was hard to watch the exultation of the winners, knowing that this beautiful creature was dead. Dead because she was overbred to the point of such fragility she couldn't manage to do the thing they had bred her to do, and yet they asked her to anyway. I felt dirty for watching. "If I had won real money," I said, "I'd give it all to the Humane Society." Sad.

"Understanding the Terrorist"

Sums it up.

Problems with intelligent theologians as church leaders

Well, first the Pope made a muck of things with a misunderstood comment that got the Muslim community upset. Now the Archbishop of Canterbury has the other team's knickers in a knot. The first I'd heard of it was while driving and listening to right wing talk show host Jay Severin saying that the AB had recommended applying sharia in Britain. And that is the dumbed down version that has been making the rounds despite the fact that about the first twenty paragraphs of the AB's speech explains that sharia and the legal system of the country could not be placed in equivalency and should not be placed in opposition. (And Severin claims he is speaking to the "best and brightest" convincing them of such by frequent use of the word "aforementioned" which their other neanderthal friends can't pronounce.)

I find it interesting that, to make his point, the AB frequently uses the analogy of the Orthodox Jewish community within the larger British community. It's ironic, because the only English Jews I know finally had enough of polite English anti-semitism and in the 80s chose to move to Israel where they simply had to dodge rocket fire every so often. I also wonder whether the Orthodox Jewish community ever was the cause of any unrest within the nation. I don't recall ever hearing of their trying to stone any adulteresses in the last couple thousand years, but I guess they've had more time to get used to living in nations where their laws are not the laws of the land. Though I think in many ways the Jews simply didn't fight for their "rights" such as, (as in his example) not to handle a Bible in the course of their sales job. They were a minority and didn't expect concessions. Things have changed. As a minority becomes a significant portion of society, obviously, the balance starts to shift, and if the society as we have known it is to be salvaged, there has to be some way to take the religious views into account.

The questions the AB poses also apply to how a Christian viewpoint is to be incorporated into a secular society such as that of the U.S.. For example does the Christian view of marriage define what marriage is for everyone? Many Americans seem to think so. But the justification for this, based in the historical idea that marriage only existed thanks to the religious tradition, does not seem sufficient when there are people with other beliefes who want to participate in other kinds of marriages. So why don't the conservatives like what the AB is saying, when he is trying to figure out how there can be a place for religious ideas in our mutual society. This example of marriage demonstrates that the demarcation between church and state has never been as absolute as some would imagine and wish it to be.

Please read the full text of the Archbishop's lecture and judge for yourself:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575

2 years and 3000 words short

But I have done it! The first draft of the novel I began for NANO (was it two, or even three?) years ago is finished.

In many ways it is more of a plot outline, needing embellishment.

But it is something!

On the impossibility of running a church

A nice older lady from the church asked me the other day, "I hope you felt appreciated as the parish administrator. You did such a good job." I thanked her and said I did. Many people did compliment me on the quality of the church's publications. Of course there were those who nagged and nudged, feeling the web site was never quite trendy enough, but I wouldn't say over all that it was lack of appreciation that caused me to leave. Rather, it was lack of authority.

Authority is a closely related sibling: because if people appreciated the fact that I alone had an overview of the church's operations on both the physical and spiritual levels, they would have LISTENED TO ME! And yes, they would have paid me more than a quarter of the Rector's salary (remuneration being yet another sibling --one kept in a closet--of appreciation). But this disparity in wages is indicative of the systemic view which ultimately will cause the organization to collapse.

It is currently imploding, as the Rector hired someone completely incompetent to replace me. It's gotten so bad, they have called in a consultant. I hope, if she is not getting paid a flat fee, but by the hour, that someone suggests she talk to me. It'll save her A LOT of time. But what can the hired help know?

My husband suggests that the Rector, and perhaps the community, actually prefer having someone incompetent in that position, because that justifies their sense of superiority and the way their values are shown through the budget. First, you get clergy who have been to prep school and elite colleges. Then you send them to seminary where they learn all kinds of interesting critical theories about religion and NOTHING about organizational management, thereby reinforcing the idea that such things are mere details and not worthy of the spiritual giants that all the ordained must be. Then you wonder why the structure is in chaos, the Rector is tearing out his hair and falling asleep in meetings. The solution is to respect (not just appreciate) those with the gifts of administration. Give them power and authority equivalent to that of the clergy (or merely a step below, not a grand canyon below). But classism seems to be so built in to the structure of the Episcopal Church that it is the comfy log they keep in their own eye that feels so much nicer when they worry about injustice somewhere across the seas.

Save some animals today

Clicking apparently donates money for animal rescue.

Today's ski report

Run, hide, go back to your cubbies... The fact that I am writing this ski report, from the lodge, is indication enough that conditions are abysmal! Not just wet, but wet and icy! One minute, your sinking into mush, the next you are skidding across the surface. One run was enough for me. Naturally, the husband is still out there, though even he admitted that Sunset should be closed and was death defying.

I'm dry now and putting some time into the novel. Someday it will get done. There's just so much exposition that awkardly needs to be inserted when your two main characters leap ahead in time five years.

Why does "utilize" exist?

Is there ever a situation in which the word "utilize" would express a nuance of meaning that could not be conveyed by "use?" If you know of such a case, please let me know. And if not, can you explain why the word "utilize" came to exist, if not merely for the purpose of giving people more useless syllables to say?

Speaking of Martyrs

For those of us who follow the Daily Office lectionary the days after Christmas can be very confusing. Where are the readings? See page 922 of the Book of Common Prayer for the three Holy Days that occur in this interval.

They are a great relief. After all the sugary sweetness we worked ourselves up into thinking of babies, babies, babies (hope, renewal, yes they are cute, hope, yes we love babies) we can stop stretching the hope muscles for a bit and return to the world as we know it. The first thing that happens after the birth, liturgically, is Stephen gets himself stoned. John, whom we commemorate today, we are told by James Kiefer is "a martyr in will but not in deed." And of course tomorrow there are more babies: dead babies.

We received the good news of a great joy. Now get marching. It begins.

Martyrs

What a heroic woman was Benazir Bhutto. What a loss to the forces of moderation and sanity in this world. For those of us for whom the assassination of JKF remains the early primal trauma memory, such attacks are always painful to hear about.

I taught a short memoir called "American History" by Judith Cofer in this last semester. It is a narrative of a young girl's private trauma on that fateful November day in 1963 when America lost its innocence. Of course, every generation must lose its own innocence anew, a fact that I realized when I read my students' responses to this piece. Without an exception, they all wrote about how this story reminded them of the day that will live forever in their minds: 9/11. They all described where they were and what happened. Some schools kept it in secret, sending them home at the end of the day to let their parents explain. Others gathered in assemblies. Perhaps they'd already had these discussions with their parents, and realized the connection before they read the piece, since the point of the piece is that while Cofer will always remember that the day on which she faced racism and classism head on is the day of the assassination, it is the former which is significant.

more crumbles

I picked up an old copy of Imprimis, the newsletter that my father had received, which now comes to me, from the conservative Hillsdale College. The article, written by a reputable environmental scientist, questions whether global warming is really this crisis brought on by our sins or just a natural ebb and flow of planetary change: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2007&month=08 . It brought into focus many of the concerns that have troubled me. Let's face it. First of, I am troubled by fanaticism. And when I see people freezing their butts off trying to prove that it's getting warmer against all evidence to the contrary (see "Silly Priest tricks" below) I can only name it that. I can only see that those who have been raised in intellectualism and liberalism, when they find faith, cannot act it out by simply battling the sin in their own hearts, but must continue to see some evil empire bringing about destruction. They cannot call it Satan or end times, because that is what the right-wingers do, but they feel it all the same: the doom. What both teams forget is that the doom has always been looming, just as it does now. See Matthew 24, please. We hate change and we want to stop it. We are pathetic. Now that I no longer have to hold the positions of the church I will say it: the emperor has no clothes! I never saw the point in this whole "carbon exchange" idea and this article explains to me that my lack of understanding was not my fault but that it, in fact, makes no sense. Aah. I feel much better now. My dad was right about a lot of stuff, including the idea that the Nobel prize committee folks are by no means a neutral body and that their awards are simply the liberal awards, not some kind of world wide acclamation. Another idol falls. Clunk.

Jail

I had a lengthy dream last night about being in jail. It must have been minimum security, because everyone was wandering around these halls and rooms all the time. The bullies were allowed to do their thing and there were no guards or anyone in charge. Everyone was there. Young girls I knew as well as tough guys with their pants hanging down. There was a library. I went over to look at a big coffee table book on how to withstand torture (the cover was a photo of a guy sitting cooly with a gun pointed at his head) but when I got there it had disappeared. The treasurer from the church walked by. Was he in there too? Then a new load of inmates was coming in, and someone commented because they really should have bought more books in Spanish. None of these people spoke English.

I only mention this dream because when I woke up and came to my computer, the message of the day I get from http://shalomplace.com/seed was the following:

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely
dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened
from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent"
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Disgruntled update

It looks like I will only be furloughed for the winter session, which is all right with me. I will really really really finish the first Nano novel in that time.

More silly priest tricks

While some of us were skiing, and none of us were too warm...

Disgruntled

So I thought to myself, now that I'm quitting St. J's, and depending on my teaching jobs, those will probably dry up. Sure enough, I had ignored a couple emails from the online diploma mill where I teach, and then the other day I get this friendly, nearly incoherent email:

Adjuncts,

This email is to clarify that I have received any documents from you concerning your Diploma Mill Inc. 2006 PPAR. Despite my attempts to remind you and contact you, we are now forced to inactivate you in our system. This will prevent you from being offered any courses through Diploma Mill Inc.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

I hate those "dear Adjuncts" letters. (PPAR is some acronym for a form we have to fill out telling them what a great job we have been doing. I made the mistake of prioritizing responding to my students.) I would think this was a conspiracy to get rid of those who were going on their second year... if there was any associated pay increase. Which there isn't! There are no incentives for work well done. Only threats and now this. I think I've been fired! Readers, have you ever heard of a job that treats anyone this poorly? (And yes, there is a key word missing in that first sentence above--only the names have been changed, though someday soon, I may out them.)

On the Road

I am getting tons of my father's mail still. The newsletter from the Society of the Silurians, the organization to which my father had belonged and carried its card as his photo i.d., and which I never had any idea what it even was until this newsletter arrived (the oldest American association of veteran journalists--funny how it was so important to my father to retain that affiliation--is it for journalists who were also veterans, or just oldtimer journalists?), tells me that the NYPublic Library is displaying the actual original scroll of On The Road. http://www.nypl.org/press/2007/Beatific_exhibition.cfm They explain that Kerouac's manuscript was in his agent's vault all these years and was auctioned in 2001, bought by the owner of the Colts (who we had just watched lose a game to the Patriots!) and now, on the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road it is revealed for the world to see. The article by Patrick Fenton noted how in the 80s Kerouac's books weren't selling well. I suppose that coincides with the height of political correctness/identity politics in academia and other realms of literary awareness, which cringed at his misogyny, occasional eruptions of anti-Semitism and objectivizing views of racial minorities. I cringed a bit at them when I re-read the book about 10 years ago (in the 90s, listening to it on tape) and wondered how all those elements were unnoticed, unnoticeable to me, the female teen who adored this man, turning him into my mystical, mythical big brother, my patron saint accompanying me on my drunken rampages across campus my freshman year, when I was writing my freshman studies thesis on his journey "from Catholicism to Buddhism and back." While identity politics still reigns in academia and the few available American lit openings are for specialists in African-American or ethnic studies, the public ethos has shifted, and Kerouac's impassioned quest for freedom sings to our hearts once again. (Perhaps as the road shuts down and we start to recognize we must stop driving or die.) Now we are able to bracket and historicize his attitudes. The exhibition's section on jazz commented on his fault of primitivizing the African American musical ability, while still acknowledging his deep appreciation and love for their music. The one does not cancel out the other. We have learned to hold the contradictions. They can be quite shocking (he says at one point that Pound may be right about the Jews). The venom that comes out of him at times indicates a true paranoia (probably brought on by drug use, though also clearly inherited from his mother who hated his friends, particularly the Jew, Ginsberg) and at other times he sees how as exiled French-Canadians, his family is like the Jews and others outside American culture, trying to assimilate. But above all, there it was, the scroll, some of it to be seen in a 20-foot-long glass case that ended at a wall with the Robert Frank photo of a highway blown up, the scroll merging into the stripe on the highway. Excellent presentation. But the lights are dim and there are no chairs, so one cannot really try to read, just glance at some representative sections, see the typing and the cross outs (added later; the notes say). I will have to buy the exhibition book (ordering it at some later time, since it would be too heavy to carry on our NYC meanderings). Got the t-shirt, though.

It's almost over

On Monday after the previous post, I did apologize to the Rector for overstepping my bounds. He shrugged, didn't act like it was any big deal. In fact, I heard that the need for simplicity had made its way into his sermon (I was afraid to go to church). Despite the fact that we were now back to our friendly relationship, I told him I could not continue in this indefinite state of continuing to work for 12 hours a week, because there just is no way to limit myself (the demands don't let up) and I'm tearing my hair out. The fact that the committee is only just issuing a classified ad is not encouraging. As long as I am there, the situation will continue. So I'm done. All Souls' Day--last day... so scary.

But today I am at my teaching job, having not worked at St. Jonah's this morning (went in yesterday) and wow, does my life feel better. I think this will be okay.

So long as the husband doesn't have a meltdown from the pressure he is facing.... Staying up all those nights to watch the Sox was not really good for our energy levels. I guess you can say we are recovering.

I will take my parting cue from Schilling's courteous wave of the hat. What a gentleman. Or perhaps I should dance the Papelbon jig!

Outta here

I managed to wait until the Rector had been back from his Sabbatical for a week before entering his office and telling him I needed to move on. I think I worked here four years. It is finished. In order to allow them time to replace me, I am continuing at 12 hours a week for a while, but I can no longer manage juggling 30 hours a week at St. Jonah's with my online and live adjunct teaching.

The soundtrack for my life now consists of a battle between R.E.Ms "Losing my Religion" and A3's "[Not] Too Sick to Pray." I'm not sure I see the point in going to church anymore. I can receive teaching from books; I can pray alone. I am no longer sure of the validity of the Sacrament in my church, and how can I go to the other church, which has so abused its young, even if their leader does proclaim the truth? So fellowship? But all that seems to be at St. Jonah's and other churches is frantic busyness.

The Rector and I have little time to talk, now that I am on reduced hours, and as this morning was when he would be meeting with the newly convened human resource committee, I wanted to make some suggestions to him, so I kind of grabbed him as he was on his way out to go make good on the service he had sold at the services auction, more chain sawing. I should just accept the fact spoken loudly through the omission of any request on the part of anyone for an exit interview or from any input on me, the fact that no one wants my opinion. The way the vestry minutes read "we want our next Parish Administrator to not be a parishioner and to want to make this job a career goal" makes it sound as if there is no issue of burn out, of the job's forever no-win situation, and that it is all simply because I was not right for the job. Of course, most parishioners who have gotten the news have expressed their regret and their worry of what will happen without me. But the Vestry is, I see now, very complicit in the systemic dysfunction

So I mentioned to The Rector about how the previously tabled question of human support for parish hall rentals had come up again, and should be considered at the meeting. That was okay, that was within bounds. And then I more or less confronted him by saying "It seems like the Vestry got the idea that I was leaving for a better job. People have been congratulating me, but that is really not the case. I may not have any job at all next semester." I did not say how painful it was to be congratulated under false pretenses, with the perpetual uncertainty of being an adjunct hanging over my head. I did not directly say "did you tell them this?" but he did directly say that he told them there was an issue of burnout. I said I was glad, because you wanted whoever took over to be able to do this job and not leave. (How, I wonder, will anyone who is not a believer want to make the sacrifice of submission--do a job that would be better paid in the business world? How would a believer from some other denomination be able to put up with the nonsense? There are really not many people that I can imagine, but perhaps that is merely a sign of my burnout.) I then went on to mention how I had been looking at this book called "Simple Church" which criticized the program model and seemed to suggest that one needed a simple overview focus. And though the book didn't really seem to say anything earth-shattering, I thought its critique was useful: the danger of a program church is focusing on each specific program and losing sight of the simple whole. So I kept saying that what really needs to get fixed was systemic. I don't think I had entirely lost him there, but then I went on to tell him about the woman I met at a yoga class, who actually continues to support us financially, but never comes to church because it is so busy and chaotic. But I think the crushing blow was when I said, "I hear from lots of people who have no part of the whole Creativity thing. They don't know what's going on with it and they don't care."

"Are you done, now?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, and he swept out of my office. It is hard to recall that he was wearing his chain sawing clothes (jeans and a flannel church). There was such a feeling of the wind as he swept away, I can only remember it as a cassock swooping out.

It is true, back when they were writing the grant proposal, I helped them polish it up. By the time it came to me, it was far too gone in the process (a day or two before deadline) for me to challenge the idea itself, so I never said what I thought "this is the opposite of what St. Jonah's needs." It is just another chance to be busy and to shift the focus away from the Lord. Yes, I'm sure for the spiritually and creatively advanced people this effort be a work of spiritual adoration. For most of the parish it's more busyness. For me, it's more work. I knew, when I heard it, I'd commit to seeing them through it to the Rector's return and that would be it. Despite the fact that my only crime was speaking my truth, I of course, feel terrible. It has been my job to support and help the Rector, to maybe help him with small tweaks of the problems, not to ever say "you are on the wrong path." Perhaps the words from this Sunday's passage had influenced me, despite the fact that I hardly notice anymore what I am putting into the bulletin. "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully." (2 Tim 4) I will have to stand in this pain. I have no priest to turn to now.

The other day I had an inspiration and wrote down the thoughts I would like to write to the parish, in the newsletter, so that I can take control of the announcement of my departure. Now I am not sure I even want to bother, to give it a holy spin. Let it be the inkblot onto which they can project either their defenses or their awareness of the truth.

Here's what I wrote with pen.

I hope to be able to make time to pray, and to rediscover my own creative talents. While the Rector's time of re-entry may seem an unfortunate time for me to launch, it can also be a good time for a fresh start and for reconfiguring the structures which support St. Jonah's. I bid you to continue to tap into the creative energies which have been kindled and apply them to the question of our human structure and use of resources, so that the major burden of holding up the sky does not fall solely on clergy and staff. While it is likely that in a college community, we may have more prophets than helpers and administrators (see 1 Corinthians 13:28), I have to believe that St. Paul's vision of the loving body of Christ can be fulfilled in us. That even here, we have members who have received all the gifts necessary to create a vibrant life together that exalts Christ. I pray that it be so.

Should I bother?

Days of fog

Last night I dreamed that I (a teenager) met a cousin I didn't know I had: a boy about my age, dark haired. Then there was a handsome, slightly older blonde boy who I was speaking to. He asked if we were Jewish and I said yes. To my surprise, he was too. He had written a book that talked about his experiences on a kibbutz. I really liked this guy and got myself into a knot wondering how to tell him I was Jewish but... How could I make him understand I would never try to convert him? I would show him my book, which told my story. I looked and looked on the shelf and then, to my sorrow, realized I had never written it. I cried now, remembering the only book I have written was my dissertation. I remembered that we are in the days of awe: Yom Kippur was just three days away when I could recite the Kol Nidre and renounce my baptism. Entering that prayer would be like entering a cleansing fog, a deep darkness that would erase all the person I had been... I cried, realizing I needed more than three days to decide.

To Thine Own God Self Be True

The Duffer and I used to debate about whether the advice Polonius gives to his son Laertes' in Shakespeare's Hamlet is to be taken at face value or whether S. was a bit tongue in cheeck. My father thought they were simply well articulated bits of wisdom: there was no subtext. End of argument. I believed, from the context of the play and the character of Polonius, that S. viewed the wisdom as many of us view such good advice: that and a token will get you on to the subway. Of course, I could see why this would be disheartening for a father who felt he had so much wisdom to pass on, but here's a post on "Shakespeare 101" that argues my point in case you are interested: http://shakespeareantheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/polonius_speech_in_hamlet .

It is in this disputed speech that the lines "This above all: to thine own self be true, /And it must follow as the night the day/ Thou canst not then be false to any man" are spoken. And it is from this dubious wisdom that Rabbi Lerner of the Network of Spiritual Progressives derives his variation: "to thine own God self be true" (the phrase appears in an email sent out today, featuring a prayer of forgiveness for the 9/11 terrorist attacks).

There is some wisdom in this new turning of the phrase, thought it is awkward and unattractive. I am not averse to the idea that Christ is within me. (Col. 1:27). But reliance on doctored cliches reveals a sloppiness in thinking that concerns me, and makes me skeptical.

I don't know how I want to pray on this day. When I lay in shavasana at the end of this morning's yoga class and image came to my mind. The Palisades in Fort Lee, N.J.: the rocky stone cliffs just to the north of the George Washington Bridge. I am sitting there with a teenage girl I was friends with in high school. She has a black dog and a car: she is self-sufficient and cool. We walk up there and the bridge sparkles. Maybe that is the day I walk back and forth across the bridge, just for fun, for the airiness of it. This memory dates back to either 1974 or 5. The city for me then was like a geode, sparkling with art and music. I didn't yet know about the filth, the urine and how tired one gets when one is always inside it, and not on this promontory, looking out at its dazzling potential. The World Trade Towers would have been a recent addition to the skyline. We didn't particularly like them: the ornate stylings of the Chrysler and the Empire State Buildings were much more attractive. But all of those were distant spires from this northern end where we sat on rocks and thought about our limitless futures. As I came out of corpse pose, I remembered what day it was, and sent my mind downtown, to look at the rubble as it appeared the day I brought the Duffer to see it.

Adjunct Adventures I

It is still technically summer, though the temps are at this moment (7 a.m.) in the 40s. I'm in my fleece robe with a scarf draped around my head. The birches outside the window are speckled with yellow leaves, though this is due more to the lack of rain than to the actual position of the earth and the sun. It is beautiful and at this moment, feels right for school to have begun, though yesterday afternoon, when it was time to teach my first class, it seemed like a better time to lie in the sun and take a dip in the pond! The dazed students apparently agreed. It is an adjustment to get used to teenagers again after having worked in programs geared towards older students. I had forgotten their default attitude of skepticism and boredom. There are a few exceptions, young women who seem to enjoy reading and hope to get something out of the class, but for the most part it is clear that this is just a hoop they have to jump through. (Only 4 read Harry Potter this summer!) That does not mean I don't think I can win them over, and get them to have fun. I am surprised that two of them (in their responses to my freewrite questions about their hopes and fears regarding this class) mentioned that they had had their writing torn apart by "Grear." Hortense Grear, I recall, from the last faculty conference, is one of the fixtures of the department, its grande dame. I guess her methods precede the Elbowian theories I was raised on--get them to enjoy expressing themselves, then worry about tweaking the grammar… so I can see why I have some work to do in winning them over. It is interesting, when you ask them to freewrite, to see that some fill a page and others give up after a few lines, exhausted. Why is it that the three girls who fill in the seats right in front of me are the ones that want to chat amongst themselves? Perhaps because they really do want to engage with me.

Diversity in Pixieville

Yes, the students are coming back. The U-Hauls, piled high with mattresses, parade their way into town. In their wake come the derelicts: those few extra winos now sitting on the sidewalks, debating matters of great importance to themselves. But these are to be expected, like the draining out of chlorophyll and the revelation of the leaves' underlying yellows and reds.

But this fall, there is a new element, brought in by our own church, which, in the process of reconstructing its buildings, requires the use of laborers. They are imported from working class towns and they drive huge diesel-fueled pick up trucks with bumper stickers that say, "P.E.T.A.--People Eating Tasty Animals," "Gut deer?" and "Welcome to America: Now Speak English." Fortunately, these trucks aren't here on Sundays or our Prius-driving parishioners would be mightily offended, despite our committment to tolerance and diversity. Who knows, they might even threaten to learn how to jackhammer!

More Reading

I guess it's not coincidence that one comes across books that relate in some way to one's current situation. I mean I was browsing through the bookstore, reading the dust jackets, and I saw The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. I've never read anything by Welty, except for that one short story that made them name the mail program Eudora after her ("Why I Live at the P.O."). This short novel apparently revolved around the protagonist's father just dying. So it had to be read. Very different from my life, not just in its Southerness, but in the fact that the father had married a new, young wife, and much of the book revolved around the two women's interaction. I am really surprised this hasn't been turned into a play or a movie. The struggle between them is dramatic and compelling, although the widow is almost over the top stupid. But not quite beyond believability. I certainly couldn't understand Laurel's decision to burn what remained of her mother's letter. It was like she wanted to keep them from further desecration, but she could have taken them! Okay, this is the view of someone whose house now contains NUMEROUS boxes of papers and letters her parents have written. Not to mention boxes of my own words. I realized today that I have surely got enough material in my reams of diaries to mine for literature for the rest of my life. But I get tired just thinking about opening those boxes.

Reading

I finished Harry Potter, but I promise, this comment contains no spoilers:

As much as he may deny it, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was heavily influenced by the world situation, the Axis gaining control of more and more of Europe, the darkness spreading. It's easy for us from the perspective of victory to forget what that was like, but I saw a contemporary newsreel once, that showed in black the areas that were under Hitler or Mussolini's control and the picture looked very bleak indeed. It was, I guess, that sense of military dominance, rather than Nazi ideology, that compelled Tolkien's pen. Though we know he did disapprove of their racial theories, when he refused to tell them that he had no Jewish blood in him in order to let them publish the Hobbit in German. It is interesting that, half a century later, it is the racial purification/genocidal ideology of the Nazis that Rowling makes much more explicit in her works, which of course borrow so heavily from the Master (JRRT). I suppose it is an indication of the sad fact that this kind of thinking about racial purification did not die out with the Nazis but continues to rear its head, though it seems to me that religious divides are generally more contentious than ethnic ones, these days. Some might say that racism is simply an easy enemy to illustrate, for the same reason that it is always simpler to use Hitler as an example of evil which cannot be tolerated, than Stalin, who some consider responsible for as many as 10 million deaths.

No, this isn't a happy post. How happy can I be when there's no more Harry Potter to read?

Still dead?

It's been over two weeks, and I've told lots of people about my father's death, but each time, I have to pause a microsecond and ask myself "what am I saying? Aren't you pushing it? This hasn't happened yet (it was always something that was going to happen, in the future). What will he say when he comes back to his senses and hears you've been telling everyone he's dead?" And I have to force myself to picture it: him lying on the bed, in the room, the air conditioner on --he would never have let the room be that cold if he was alive--he had been too cold for weeks. The doctor explained it all. He was very professional. And what do you think is in the brass urn on the buffett, with a neatly folded American flag in front of it? It's a good thing I get to keep that for a while (another week). It helps. Maybe if I'd seen my Dad more often all along, it would seem more believable. As my husband has said, so much of the time the Duffer has existed as an idea--"got to give him a call, see how he's doing"--interspersed with quick visits. But still, he was there. Ruling the world from his assisted living apartment in NJ.

I remember when I spoke to him on New Years' day, he told me he was feeling optimistic. I assume he meant about the future of the world, as well as his health and perhaps his finances (which were always good, as far as I was concerned. He had enough for anything he wanted...). Then, a month or two later, he started talking about what became a growing obsession with the terrorists getting hold of nuclear materials. I didn't ask him, but I wondered, "I thought you were optimistic..." I wonder now, if his unconscious wasn't responding to growth of cancer cells, sending out messages of besiegement, that he interpreted politically. It is all the democrats fault for not taking terrorism seriously, really meant, something is coming and we are ignoring it.

The Duffer's Dead

I went to yoga, finished up with some abs, stopped in at the supermarket to bring some milk to work for my coffee. Had in my bag the copy of US News that had come for him. Yesterday he had taken an interest in looking at the National Review, so I felt hopeful that he might get back to being able to do some reading. I also had a letter announcing his doctor at Sloan-Kettering was leaving, so there'd be no need to wish he could still see him. About this time he had gone down to physical therapy, was practicing using his walker, when he gurgled, went limp, and was rushed back up to his bed. The doctor, who was already in the building, came to see him, but it was too late. Probably even if we hadn't had a DNR, it would have been too late, it happened so fast.

The other day when he was wishing to go home, where he could have his electric blanket, I asked him what he could do there that he couldn't do in the nursing home. Rest, he said. But then he admitted that the problem wasn't the noise, but that he was afraid. He would lie there and not be able to sleep because he was afraid that if he went to sleep he wouldn't wake up. "I don't think that's going to happen," I told him, in honesty. He seemed like he was improving, and the cancer wasn't likely to strike again very soon. Well, he did not die in his sleep, he was apparently up and quite active, having earlier used his tray table as a walker to wander out into the hall at 6 a.m. May his rest be peaceful.

The Duffer's Dreams

He's been having strange dreams, though the trick is figuring out that they are dreams. He began by commenting how much luckier the people who work in the nursing home are than the residents, because they can move around. Some of them, even on prosthetic legs. We have not seen that. He went on that yesterday, just outside, they had a race, and you couldn't even see their feet touch the ground. When we first stopped in he asked if we knew there was a Dr. Weitzman, who was higher than the doctor he had first seen. But he didn't wake me up. He came to see me but didn't bother to wake me up. He was the head of the corporation... oh, wait, I'm getting confused. Later, he brought him up again. I felt really good, good all over. And he was just there, visiting me in the night, and I kept looking for him, but he hasn't come back. "The only Weitzman I can think of, Dad, was one of the founders of Israeli." A father... an angel... But, even when the duffer could barely remember his name, he could state that he was an atheist. It's like what gay people say: they come out of a coma, don't know their name, but know that they're gay. Today, he mentioned how when he grew up, everyone just shrugged off religion as nonsense, and he saw no reason to ever think differently. There's a book I'd like to read, he said, that is against religion. The Hitchens one? No, not that, another. I know there's another, I can't remember what it's called. "Just want to make sure you're not making any mistakes?" I ask. (Now I see it is the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.) I ain't getting it for him. Maybe I'll print out that dialogue between Hitchens and Douglas Wilson that was in Christianity Today.

Conversations with the geezer atheist

Conversations with geezer atheist grow stranger and possibly more interesting since the cancer has gone to his brain and everything is a mystery, a riddle. What is the word that has a U in it, and possibly a C? Had to do with the lungs. Finally I realize, "tuberculosis": Yes, people died in the movies from this in the fifties. But it wasn't from the disease; it was from the shadow. He must have been thinking of that disease, because of the way he hacks violently while eating. Today I tell him I spoke to his sister and he asks if she is all right with him these days. You've been on good terms with her for years now, I remind him. He shakes his head, dubious. How is her relationship with her father? He's your father too. He's been dead for years. He nods. Does that mean you no longer have a relationship? Well, you no longer speak to him, or see him. And you stop praying to his God? Not necessarily. But your father didn't believe in God. We don't know why he wanted them to play Ave Maria at his funeral. He did? For the music, or for spite, or for some reason we cannot fathom. The thing that bothered me about my father…(long pause, loses track, comes back) he was ashamed of being a Jew. I comment on how this fits in with his admiration for Nietzsche who scorned Judaism and Christianity because it was so Jewish. They were the religion of slaves, in his view. I still don't know what you think about God. I believe in God. You know that. There are long silences as we sit at the table where people have been brought to await their dinner trays. Finally, he says, So if they clean part of it, then only the rest are slaves. And that is the part that God takes care of? That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what you mean.

Mystical Paths

I just finished the fifth in Susan Howatch's Church of England series. I love these books! I have never read anything that showed real people grappling with real theological issues as they live out their real lives (and okay, there's a touch of supernatural thrown in, and this last one turns into a bit of a whodunit as well--it's got it all!). I thought this was the last one, but to my delight I discovered there is one more to wrap up the series. The addict's reprieve. Now I must decide whether to get it out of the library TODAY-- NOW-- or to try to wait a month and save it for my vacation in the beginning of June. Of course, on vacation it's easier to read books that are less delectable, and needed for desperate escape from horrible life.

So my question, dear readers, is what next? Is there anything out there comparable to this series?

Salamanders

The salamanders must have made their crossing by now. In fact, they could have gone back and forth a few times, there have been so many rainy nights over forty degrees of late. I sit in my comfy living room thinking: I should get a flashlight and my raincoat and go out and SEE them. I should, I really should. Then it occured to me. I am not an amphibian. I don't want to be amphibious. I will stay in. Despite the fact that right now as I am typing this, my Rhapsody player started playing Ben Folds' version of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"!

Even the handbasket's broken

the handbasket that we're going to hell in, is nowadays no hand woven feat of human creativity but a disintegrating maelstrom. What has thrust me into such a bad mood, first thing in the morning, when I only am just coming from a lovely yoga class? Perhaps it is the fact that something very Important is going on at neighboring Pixieville College (not to be confused with the University of Pixieville). I'm not even that upset that there's nowhere to park, and people were zipping through the four-way stop sign like they were going to win a very big prize for getting ahead by one car. But when two middle-aged white guys, engaged in their very Important conversation, see a lady in a hot pink raincoat, you would think they might condense themselves to their allotted half of the sidewalk. Or at least say "excuse me" when--because she does not move onto the soggy grass--one must brush past her. This is the second time this week that I have not been able to walk on the sidewalk to this church without being pushed off it! This is a small town! I left New York cause I couldn't take this kind of rudeness!!! I could have been working at a well-paying job (at least) if I stayed there. Next time I am just going to stop and yell, "Excuse me for walking on the sidewalk and interrupting your very important conversation. Next time I'll just lie down here so you can tromple all over me!"

Spring Peepers!

We heard them last night--loud! Stay on the salamander alert!

Addiction to busyness

Never is it more apparent than during Holy Week just how addicted to busyness the parishioners of St. Jonah's and other residents of greater Pixieville are. I mean seriously, how can a member of the Vestry no less, think this is a good time to explore new ways to lock cabinets for storage of valuables? How can the fund-raising committee imagine that this is when you ask the Parish Administrator to begin a mass mailing? You'd almost think this parish was filled with a bunch of pagans who didn't realize that the most important week of observances is underway and that this means that the office is completely busy making its fabulous bulletins for all of them! They should all be sentenced to having their eyes pinned open and watching The Passion over and over until they get a clue!

The Two Processions

Palm Sunday at St. Jonah's was energized by the buzz of Borg and Crossan's new take on Jesus' triumphal entry. Those of us who appreciate structuralist criticism find it nice: Jesus rode on a donkey as a counterpoint to Pilate's militaristic procession. Yes, a more graphic illustration of the principle that Jesus clearly stated: God's kingdom is not of this world. Then how do Borg and Crossan use this to disprove the concept of substitutionary atonement and take some digs at Gibson's Passion (are we still talking about that? And not about his latest proclamation of insensitivity in Apocalypto?) ? Quite a feat, I might add. And one in need, I think, of some post-structuralist trashing of binaries (lest we want to hop on the other foot and wonder about those who substitute justice for worship). That is, they see Jesus' driving out of the money changers as reflecting on Jeremiah's criticism of "worshiping God as a substitute for enacting God's justice." Excuse me? Worshiping God a substitute--for anything? Isn't it the chief end of our existence? Perhaps I am just being a pesky English teacher, picking on poor Borg & Crossan for an unfortunate choice of words. They didn't mean actually worshiping the living God, they meant engaging in empty rituals (which is what Jeremiah was criticizing). But I'm afraid this is a telling and egregious error, revealing the murky priorities expressed in this article and by those who are so eager to embrace its view. We don't want to carry our palm leaves down the side street in town to show that we love and adore the Holy One of Israel. No, we need to prove we are standing against Empire. That way we'll prove we're worthy.

Let us begin and begin again

The Parish Administrator was actually able to spend a minute in the church today. She wanted to pray for a suicide whom we have just heard of (though none of us knew him).

I thought, as we embark on Holy Week, that if we do not walk with Christ, in his sufferings, we become trapped and can walk only in our own sufferings.