One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I am so sick today, it's not funny.

You name the symptom, I've got it. And right now my skin actually hurts, from my all-day fever.

This came on suddenly; I went to work with what felt like a garden-variety head cold, when the bug struck; I came back home, fell into bed and remained there until evening when I crawled out to eat soup.

Why is it that I feel like my body doesn't like me anymore?

It's Not Procrastinating If You Have To Do the Other Stuff Too

It's like this: I've got these two essays to finish for the upcoming Ordinary Time book of devotionals. One is about King David being a schmuck; the other is based on the first chapter of Revelation -- heavy stuff. So I made myself some therapeutic popcorn for writing fuel (much to the delight of my dog; at our house we call it "pupcorn") and commenced sitting and thinking deep, furrowed-brow thoughts.

So how did I wind up in the kitchen, making my lunch for tomorrow and the next day?

Well, for one thing, I had to. And...sometimes recreational cooking helps me think -- you know, the deep, furrowed-brow thoughts. So after blog-surfing -- ahem -- another attempt at priming the ol' cognitive pump, you understand -- I decided to make myself a luncheon salad.

I Googled the recipe that follows while trying to get some new ideas for bean salad. Because of my delicate condition, I have been advised to eat a lot of iron, yet too much iron -- even a multivitamin with iron -- can make me violently, gut-wrenching ill. And I'm trying to watch my cholesterol, so as appealing as a nonstop diet of T-bone steak sounds to me right now, I can't do that either. Legumes, whole grains, dark greens, molasses and super-dark chocolate have become my good friends. Anyhow, my food coop had a great sale on canned beans this weekend, and now I had a can of cannellinis that needed something done to them. So I threw together:

Tuna-Cannellini Salad

a can of albacore tuna
some chopped sundried tomatoes packed in olive oil, with some of the oil
a can of cannellini beans
some balsamic vinegar
a little more olive oil
some chopped olives
salt and pepper

Good stuff, Maynard -- I think probably even better tomorrow.

If only I could throw together an essay this fast...

Don't Go There Anymore, LC

Against my better judgment I took a brief stroll through a pan-Lutheran webring tonight. Most of the blogs listed are authored by persons in the denomination of my childhood, people who do a lot of inveighing against heretics (which include pretty much everyone else in Christendom), and who don't much like my own church body; who think that typing quotes around "Lutheran" in reference to us, or calling us the E*CA, are rhetorical acts of genius. One of the blogs is all about Lutherans and contraception -- the blogmeisters, unsurprisingly, are agin' it. (I can only imagine what they must think of a gay woman popping the ungodly Pills of Death for the perimenopausal comfort of her ever-fallow uterus; I may as well be strobing radioactive purple: "Abomination! Anathema! Stone her!" I mean, I'm probably worse than moldy walls, or a donkey doing the wild thang with a horse out in the back forty.)

It's days like this, after reading pages of this stuff, when I ask The CEO, with some urgency, "What's my motivation here?"

"I am," he answers.

"Oh. Right."

So, on the advice of The CEO, I am shaking the dust of these sundry and assorted blogs from my sandals. My pastor has an interesting take on Jesus' instruction to his disciples when they encounter the inhospitable and hostile; he suggests that what Jesus is describing is less an act of contempt than of simply giving up and commending the whole thing to God: "I can't deal with these people anymore, Lord -- you handle it. I'm outta here."

And so I am. Besides...I've got two Ordinary Time essays to write before midnight, or I'll turn into a pumpkin.

Pantypalooza -- Show You Care With Underwear!

Blogger Mindy has hit upon a great idea to celebrate Valentine's Day in a way that helps women in your community who need some loving care: Pantypalooza.

Here's how it works:

Identify an agency in your community that assists women in crisis situations -- your local women's shelter, food/household-goods bank, homeless shelter, etc.

Go shopping. Buy some women's underwear (remember, many women fleeing abusive situations or who find themself homeless are lucky to have a change of clothing). Or, alternately, buy some pampering, civilizing comfort items for women -- soaps, lotions, grooming products and the like.

On or around Valentine's Day, take your purchases to the agency of your choice -- maybe with a valentine to let the women there know that someone is thinking about them.

Let's make this a phenomenon. Please share this idea with the people you work with, the people you worship with, your circles of friends and acquaintances. Wouldn't it be kewl if mystified social-services agencies across the globe suddenly began receiving unsolicited packages of undies and personal-care items, with a big "WE LOVE YOU" message to the women they serve?

Thanks to Mindy for this delightful plot. Hey, I might actually enjoy Valentine's Day this year!

We see London, we see France -- time to buy some underpants (or other stuff) for women in crisis 

Street Cred

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn. -- Charlie Parker

I majored in advertising in college. One of my required classes was called Advertising Acount Management; it was an upper-level class taught by a full professor. But a few days into the class it became apparent that something was "off"; the prof was vague and tentative about the course material. My classmates pressed her for some practical information about working at an ad agency; one day she finally admitted to us that she'd never actually worked as an account executive in an advertising agency; that her actual experience in the business was limited to a few summer jobs and some consulting work; that, in fact, she'd spent most of her working life in academia, teaching out of textbooks.

Her professional authority, her street cred, at that moment? Pretty much zero.

Our lessons today underscore the importance of street cred when claiming to speak on God's behalf. The Old Testament pulls no punches; fake it and you die. St. Paul doesn't call down the wrath of God on incompetent teachers, but he does issue this call to humility: If you think you know what you're talking about, you probably don't. (Evidently Pat Robertson's Bible is missing both these texts.)

The Gospel lesson underscores a point frequently made by the Gospel writers: Jesus' power and presence as a teacher is something completely different than what people expect. He's not like the other teachers of the Law; he speaks with a gravitas that makes people stop and pay attention.

How did Jesus speak with an authority different than the authority of the religious bigshots around him? I think the answer lies in Charlie Parker's observation about integrity in art. Jesus did not talk about "the good news"; he lived it. His way of being in the world integrated God's shalom into his words, his actions, his interactions. When Jesus talked about God as a loving divine Parent, people knew that he wasn't quoting a rabbinical proposition, but describing his own observable relationship with God. When he taught about radical faith, he wasn't providing a pat catechetical answer, but describing his own giving-over to God's will. Ween he told stories about the inbreaking Reign of God, he spoke as someone whose own trust in his Father's saving power made him a conduit for that power.

Doing ministry, whether as a layperson, a religious or a clergyperson, can be an extremely humbling experience. Personally, I find assisting the pastor -- being asked to pray on behalf of the whole congregation, offering up our shared regrets, sorrows, hopes and joys to God -- an exercise in humility...the paradox of my own smallness juxtaposed with our collective audacity in praying boldly, and my own audacity in offering to help with this. It gives me gooseflesh every time. On the other hand, ministry can also become an ego trip; depending on what we're doing, it can become a performance that leads us to expect praise for a job well done, or a self-serving exercise in "I know more than you do." That's the point where it's important to remember this Sunday's lessons. What's my street cred? Am I living something worth sounding from my horn?

Jesus the Teacher, Gisele Bauch 

We Could Have Told You This...

"Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant, Potshots

Turns out that the Internet doesn't create dysfunctionally isolated, reality-challenged individuals after all. (See link above.)

My question to the Powers That Be on Higgins Road and elsewhere in Christendom: Do you really get this? That the Internet is a place where people are "being the Church" in new, exciting ways? Where, just as an example, I can run a series of small-group discussions on Lutheranism, on liturgical worship, on Lent, and in turn benefit from participating in an online support group and an online class taught by a real-live seminary prof? Where I am a part of wonderful intersecting circles of Christian friends who provide me with everything from scholarly resources to cool mp3's to an occasional shoulder to wail on? Where I can be supported in my desire to follow a daily spiritual discipline by online Daily Office prayers, lectio divina and other spirituality resources? Where I am literally connected to believers across the globe and across denominational divides, in ways that could never have happened 20 years ago?

On the other hand...maybe it's best you don't get it. So...never mind.

The Problem of No Pain

How would you like to grow up without the experience of pain? Think that'd be swell?

Follow the link above to the story I recently read on the CNN website -- about a little boy born with a neurological disease that makes him immune to pain. It's heartbreaking -- imagine your child sucking on his or her thumb, like kids do, and nearly gnawing it off because s/he doesn't realize that's what s/he's doing. Or concussing himself or herself against a wall because s/he just can't feel how hard s/he's slamming into the surface.

Hansen's disease -- one of the conditions thought to be described by the word "leprosy" in the Bible -- is another illness that deadens the sensation of pain. I was told that oftentimes the grotesque mutilations one sees in Hansen's patients have less to do with the disease process itself and more to do with sufferers' inability to feel what's happening to their extremities; they're easily burned and broken.

As I was reading this, I thought not only about my recent revisiting of the Book of Genesis, but also about all the times in my childhood I'd been told that one of the results of the Fall was the entrance of pain and death into the world...as if having nerves responsive to stimuli, and mortal bodies, weren't a part of the picture before. This is nonsense. And it's not a matter of a fundamentalist interpretative method vs. an historical-critical one; it's just not in the text.

The pain-in-childbirth curse leveled by God in the story is also nonsense if taken at face value; of course a human baby with a "big giant head" is going to hurt coming through a narrow birth canal. Carl Sagan had a really interesting take on the metaphorical truth of this story in The Dragons of Eden; that the size of the human head has evolved to its utmost -- any larger and the only way women could accomodate it would be to evolve pelvises so wide that they could no longer walk with ease. And what makes our heads so huge? Our cognitive ability. Which makes us not only reasoning creatures, but morally reasoning creatures. Creatures who evaluate their actions, or non-actions, in terms of good and bad; whose moral deliberations cause guilt and frustration and pain. The few sociopaths among us whose brain pathology prevents them from having this ability are -- dangerous. People we wouldn't want living next door to us or taking care of kids or old folks or making decisions in high places.

All of which is to say -- we need some pain. We need physical pain and we need emotional and moral pain -- as St. Teresa of Avila put it, the ability to be displeasing to ourselves. This is our dilemma living in the world, believing in a God who loves us and wishes us well but also knowing that suffering is part of the equation. Christianity, unlike belief systems that see our enfleshed existence and experience as illusory, as distractions to some greater truth, acknowledges both the reality and the necessity of pain.

But that message can get lost when religious teachers, through their own ignorance or simple unwillingness to deal with big questions on the part of their students, perpetuate the image of Eden as a real place "where everything was beautiful all the time" and we could have innocently cavorted through all eternity if we hadn't have screwed things up. No. The child in the CNN story is living in pain-free Eden that's more like hell; we long to rescue him from it. Sociopaths live in a moral Eden while making the world around them hell.

There's a medieval Christmas carol -- I can't remember which one -- that speaks of the Fall as a happy misfortune because it began the process that led to the Incarnation -- to God With Us. I think this one line in an old song contains more sound theology than much of the blather about the creation story generated by the Church before and since. We're the way we are because we have to be, to be human. We believe that God loves us enough to have chosen to be with us, to walk with us, as one of us, and in doing so hallows and redeems the suffering that we must go through to be human. To me that's a more profound and moving image than the Sunday School comic-book story. Which isn't to say that I expect churches to start feeding five-year-olds Kierkegaard-level musings on the nature of brokenness and redemption. But I would challenge churches to stop treating 25- and 45- and 65-year-olds like five-year-olds, and create church cultures that support and encourage ongoing religious formation for all -- education that isn't afraid of hard questions and doesn't rely on easy answers.

Five Guilty Pleasure Songs

Since I have very little profundity to share, I'll play this meme -- hat tip to Lutherpunk . Here are five songs that I secretly enjoy, but am ashamed to admit that I enjoy.

1. Stairway to Heaven. Yeah, I know.

2. Nights in White Satin -- with the entire "Late Night Lament" appended to it. It's heavy, man. And I can actually still recite it word for word, a fact I find frightening (especially when other, important information, like where I parked my car in the Meijer lot, frequently escapes me).

3. All My Exes Live in Texas. This one really embarrasses me, because I am known at work as the Country Music Hater.

4. The Codfish Ball. This isn't really a guilty pleasure -- I make no bones about adoring this ditty -- but people, including my own mother, don't understand my attraction to what is a Tin Pan Alley masterpiece. How can you not love a song with lyrics like "Oh, the catfish is a dancin' man/but he can't can-can like the sardine can"? It's genius.

5. Have You Evah? The line about getting pinched in the Astor Bar makes me laugh like a five-year-old, every time. What can I say? I'm easily amused.

Good Eats

Now, I know that out of all the people (all dozen of you?) who visit this blog with any regularity, almost none of you are from Michigan, and the ones who are live waaaaay down at the other end of the state. But...should any of you ever be traveling through the unpopulated hinterlands of The Water-Winter Wonderland, and find yourself nearing Clare -- "The Gateway to the North" sign's right there on US-127 -- take the exit and find the East Fifth Street Diner, just east of the main drag. (5th Street becomes old US-10.)

This newish bistro, which has limited breakfast and lunch hours, is my new favorite place to eat out. It occupies a building formerly home to a series of short-lived culinary and hygienic horrors; now it's spiffed up inside and out. It's run by an ex-executive chef from the UK with quite a colorful career culminating in his retirement to this most unlikely of places. All the food is made from scratch, from local products when possible.

Because of the diner's popularity, whenever I've tried to eat lunch there on my occasional jaunts through this city there have been absolutely no parking places anywhere near. Today, however, I was in town before the big lunch crush and -- whoo-hoo! -- got the second-to-last space in the lot.

The menu features lots of comfort food, all made from scratch -- pot pies, macaroni and cheese and such -- as well as interesting sandwiches and salads like turkey/cannelini, and daily specials. Craving iron, I chose a hot home-roasted beef sandwich topped with what looked like Stilton cheese and spicy pickled onions. It came with a most unusual homemade potato salad that included shreds of boiled ham, what looked like Swedish brown beans and a creamy, pleasantly understated herbed dressing. Mmmmm...mmmmm.... And decent coffee. Pleasant waitstaff. A cozy, cheery atmosphere that I wished I could have lingered in a bit more.

All of which goes to show that you can do things a quality way or a crappy way, so you may as well do things the quality way; and that even people in the ruralest of rural areas will appreciate it.

Friday Five

If you received books as holiday presents, how many and what were they? Did you buy any for yourself, and if so what are the titles?
I bought myself several books: The Daily Prayer of the Church; two books from Marva Dawn, Unfettered Hope and Truly the Community; and a book called Women's Work, about the history of women and textile-making, that I picked up for a quarter at a flea market.

Have you read any of them yet?
Nope.

What’s next on your list?
The copy of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency that I gave my mom for Christmas. (This is a fringe benefit of buying books for the people you live with.) And P.D. James' The Lighthouse, which I've heard nothing but good things about.

Do you have a favorite place to read a new book? And does the weather have an impact on that choice?
Curled up on the sofa is where I do my reading. And bad weather helps me justify being curled up on the sofa reading instead of doing something onerous and productive, like cleaning. (Recreational cooking -- another pastime made easier by inclement weather. I mean, who can argue with a big pot of soup during a blizzard?

Does reading in bed make you sleepy?
Since my dog has become the sultan of our harem, I do not read in bed, not even with a booklight, because it annoys him. He sighs deeply -- the sigh of one in pain; he grumbles; he tosses and turns. ("My God," noted one of my work friends, "he sounds like a husband.") These past few weeks, I'm so tired that I don't need to read myself to sleep anyway -- it'll be 9:30 p.m. and I'm already snorking away in the living room.

The Conversion of St. Paul

There are times when I intensely dislike the Apostle Paul -- his wordiness, his tendency toward braggadocio, his scoldy schoolmaster tone. I think, if I met this guy at a church conference, I would do whatever it took to get away from him. I suspect that, up close and personal, he was what a friend of mine calls "one of the high-eyebrow people" -- intense to the point of creepiness; a little whoo-hoo. I'm disappointed by what I read as his concessions to the mores of the dominant culture that seem to go against his own vision of the Reign of God.

On the other hand, I sometimes feel sorry for him. It turns out that a lot of Scripture that's been attributed to him -- a lot of the misogynistic stuff that Paul-haters like to quote in order to prove what a jerk he was -- probably wasn't written by him at all. I think he gets quoted out of context; I think he was probably much more socially radical than what he gets credit for. Evidently he lived with a fairly serious physical or emotional problem that caused him anguish.

Sometimes I admire Paul. I admire his grasp on the concept of God's grace, and his chutzpah in arguing for full inclusion of Gentile Christians in the nascent Christian community. I admire his relationships with female leaders in the Christian community; revolutionary stuff for a former Pharisee. I admire his rhetorical skill, as when he addressed the Athenians.

And sometimes, when I think about the things that annoy me about Paul, it occurs to me that many of them are the same things that annoy me about...me.

Today's the day to think about Paul -- another forgiven sinner-saint, saved by the grace of God, called to proclaim the Good News, empowered to be a minister of reconciliation: As we celebrate his conversion, we pray that we may follow his example and be witnesses to the truth in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

"The Conversion of St. Paul," Lucas Cranach the Younger 

25 Weird Questions

The latest meme to make the rounds:

1. When you looked in the mirror first thing this morning, what was the first thing you thought?
"Where did my eyes go?"

2. How much cash do you have on you?
Nothin' -- I'm wearing pocketless sweatpants.

3. What's a word that rhymes with TEST?
Breast. (I guess I just flunked the psych evaluation for seminary.)

4. Planet?
Out. (Stee-rike two!)

5. Who is the fourth person on your missed calls?
Mr. Slick Gladhand, sales rep, calling back with a quote for a project I'm working on.

6. What is your favourite ring on your phone?
That'd be no ring, since all my phone calls are either for work or are annoying telemarketing calls. But I think the question refers to cell phone ringtones. I don't own a cell phone (sounds of bodies dropping to the floor throughout the blogosphere). But if I did, I might like to follow my friend Melancthon's lead and use the opening notes to "A Mighty Fortress." Or one of the cheery psalm tones. Or the opening to the Gospel Acclamation: "Word of Life, Jesus Christ/all glory to you." Any of those.

7. What shirt are you wearing?
My chill-out blue sweatshirt.

8. What do you label youself as?
Hand Wash Only; Do Not Iron

9. Name the brand of shoes you've recently worn.
Stylish black Massini pumps from my semi-exclusive clothier, the House of Meijer. On major sale; retail is for suckers. Best $20 I've spent in a long time.

10. Bright room or dark room?
Semi-dark.

11. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Telling myself a story; listening to the wall clock chime twelve times.

12. What did the last text message on your phone say?
See #6; I just have a Luddite phone.

13. Where is your nearest 7-11?
35 miles away, more or less.

14. What's a saying you say a lot?
"Not so much."

15. Who told you they loved you last?
My little dog, with whom I was just snuggling, murmured, "Ah-wah-wah-wah"; which could be "I love you," or my real/non-blogging name translated into Dog, or maybe just indigestion.

16. Last furry thing you touched?
See #15.

17. How many drugs have you done in the past three days?
Diltiazem; Mircette; Advil. Not much of a buzz, man. Bummer.

18. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed?
What is this "film" of which you speak?

19. Favourite age you've been so far?
45 -- last year was a pretty good year. 44 was okay too.

20. Your worst enemy?
Oh, that's easy -- me. Always.

21. What is your current desktop picture?
The Christ Pantocrator icon from St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai.

22. What was the last thing you said to someone?
"It's yucky medicine time!" (Addressed to the dog.)

23. If you had to choose between a millions bucks and being able to fly, which would you choose?
Show me the money!

24. Do you like someone?
Oh, I like lots of people, including my fellow bloglings. If you mean like like -- ahem -- depends on who's doin' the askin'.

25. The last song you listened to?
"My Father's Eyes," Eric Clapton, playing in the supermarket this evening.

Dear God, Save Me From Your Idiot Followers

I hear they've cancelled the TV series The Book of Daniel. Way too controversial. All the conservative Christian groups up in arms over this latest affront to their sensibilities -- especially its portrayal of Jesus who is someone other than Rambo with a halo.

Yet tonight, watching television -- frankly, I hate most television, but my mother, like a lot of elderly folk, wants to have it on all the time -- in two hours, despite my best efforts to the contrary I saw two bloodied, bullet-ridden corpses sprawled all over a sofa; a man getting his kneecap shot off, with the attendant gore and screaming; an individual being run over by a car; someone stabbed with a sword; persons hacked with an axe, with a charming close-up of the bloodied stump of a finger. That's when I finally turned the damn thing off. (Read a book, Mom.)

Where are the outraged Koncerned Kristian Krusaders writing angry letters to network executives and their local papers about this nonstop mutilation-fest and jamming the talk-radio phone lines to complain? Oh -- they're in the kitchen, popping more corn. And don't expect to see them at the barricades protesting the systematic gutting of our civil liberties anytime soon.

That's another thing. Today in the paper Cynthia Tucker's column talked about cultural conservatives' efforts to limit access to birth control. This got me to thinking, because I am on the pill right now, for my much-lamented ladies' complaint. What would happen if I lived in a community with a single pharmacy, one that refused to fill my prescription? What if I didn't have a car and couldn't drive to the next town? For that matter, what if my doctor refused to treat me, on "moral" grounds? This is already happening in localities in this country.

I have every reason to believe that, if God forbid I were raped tomorrow, there are people in this country who'd be more upset that I was on birth control and thus unlikely to conceive in this situation than that I had been sexually assaulted.

Dear God, save me from your idiot followers.

And for any readers offended by my use of the word "idiot": Be very glad that I didn't add all the other adjectives that I'm thinking right now.

Vocation, All I Ever Wanted

I'm not a happy camper at my job.

That thought has been percolating in my head for awhile, now, but I've kept it nicely supressed until this weekend.

Someone once told me that if your first thought upon awakening Monday morning is "Good God -- morning," instead of "Good morning, God" -- you've got problems. I think I've got problems.

I came of age at a time when academic advisors and career counselors all operated under the principle that I'll call A Beam of Light From Heaven -- that you must educate yourself for and train for and interview for one narrowly-defined career area, or else noone will take you seriously as an employable person. Imagine my distress when, after several years of college, the Beam of Light never appeared. It did for my friends; the roommate who was born to be an accountant; my best friend the audiologist; the buddy who was absolutely geeked to be a doctor. I never felt that compelling longing. And that panicked me. What window of opportunity had I missed to somehow find this vocation that I had been, according to all accounts, meant for?

As my life progressed, I learned to make peace with my generalist's fate. As the economy changed, I even felt somewhat fortunate in not being too boxed in vocationally; there's something to be said for being flexible and a quick study. One of the best books on job-hunting I've ever read, Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Laurence Boldt, even made what is the bold suggestion in the vocational-counseling genre -- that sometimes a job is just a job that helps finance the real, non-paying vocation(s) of your heart. That made me feel validated. And if you like the "just a job," that does work.

But "just a job" can also kill you by degrees, no matter how generous the pay and benefits.

So...what do I really want to be when I grow up? I don't know.

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Martin?

You know that bumper sticker that says "There's a Village in Texas That's Lost Its Idiot"? Well, it seems the village has hired another one.

The Crying Game

I think I mentioned awhile back that I am afflicted with what I will call, in my winsomely Victorian way, a ladies' complaint. Having just reread Leviticus from beginning to end, I can tell you that if I were an ancient Israelite I'd be the community equivalent of kryptonite; and that's even before the family patriarch tried to marry me off to some jamoke over on the other side of the encampment.

Anyway, it finally got to the point where I felt compelled to drag myself to my doctor, who prescribed me some low-dose hormones and advised me to eat more iron. And even though this is the third time on this particular fun ride for me, I walked out of her office with the hope that This is all going to be over soon!

Well, it's Day Three of the Drug Regimen. It's not over, and now in addition to everything else I've found that my prescription is wreaking havoc with my emotions. I'm sitting here wailing for no reason; I mean, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to weep today, from the plight of Jill Carroll to the ominous aggressive noises coming from the government or Iran to the sad ending to the whale-in-the-Thames story; but I could be watching WWF wrestling and I'd be boo-hooing into my coconut sorbet. When I'm not weepy I'm kick-yo'-ass angry, for no particular reason. And I'm still in wet-dishrag mode, energy-wise. I can't concentrate; can't string words together into coherent sentences. Last night while grocery shopping I got weak and buzzy-headed in the supermarket and almost left my cart in the aisle and bailed; then I got home, lugged in five bags of groceries plus my work stuff, all of which kept falling on the ground and on the floor...I blurted out, "I am never not carrying something! I am so tired of carrying things!"

I wish I were a bear and could just crawl in some nice, dark, enclosed space, fall asleep and wake up in a brand-new season surrounded by sunlight and green, growing things. Which is a nicer way of saying, I'm sick of this shit.

Drop It

When I hear Christ calling, do I drop everything, and as Mark's Gospel puts it immediately follow him...or am I more like Jonah, who needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into my vocation, and then sulks and kvetches about it to God?

"Come Follow Me," Graham Braddock  

Saturday Snow Blogging

8:30 a.m., post-blizzard 

Five Pleasures

The RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five challenge this week is to name five of our pleasures. Oh, my. Well, okay. Here are five, in no particular order:

1. I just discovered this one tonight after dinner: coconut sorbet. I had a big scoop of it on fresh pineapple...mmmmmm. Dark chocolate sauce on it would be great -- like a big, cold Mounds bar -- although that would tend to cancel out the whole low-fat/healthy snack thing.

2. What I just heard described on another blog as intuitive driving. Or maybe process driving, for you theology buffs out there. You get in the car and just drive, preferably on two-lane "blue highways," and see where you wind up. I especially enjoy this in the fall, when the autumnal color gives you two, two, two pleasures in one.

3. Greenhouses. I tend to treat these like botanical gardens; I'm there as much for the atmosphere as to actually buy anything. (A fact that I'm sure annoys the greenhouse owners in my area.) There is nothing like coming out of a cold, snowy, dreary day into a warm, humusy greenhouse and being surrounded by green growing things.

4. Birdwatching. It's way more fun than television.

5. The canned music inside Barnes and Noble. I'm really not that enamored of "Buns and Noodle" bookwise, but the music rocks...so to speak.

G'head...Ask Me Anything

While randomly accessing blogs the other evening (and my apologies to the RevGal from whom I stole this idea), I came upon a great post: "Ask me anything." Sort of like The Carol Burnett Show, when she'd take questions from the audience.

So in lieu of another meme, I'm going to open the floor to questions. Yes; all five of you. Ask away. Ask me anything about anything -- myself, my dog, the Maternal Unit, the fair city of Outer Podunk, my little white clapboard church next to a hayfield...anything. Go for it.

The Rules

What Rule, or rules, do you follow?

Margaret Guenther -- priest, spiritual director and professor of ascetic theology (that sounds a little painful, doesn't it?) -- reminds us in her book Toward Holy Ground that, no matter how free-spirited or right-brained we may believe ourselves to be, we all follow a Rule. If 10:00 p.m. on Thursday means a bowl of popcorn and your favorite must-see TV -- you have a Rule, just as if 10:00 p.m. signaled your time to kneel at your bedside for Compline.

And for most of us, ordering our lives means managing concentric circles of rules: the calendar year; the Church year, if you're a certain flavor of Christian; your body's regular rhythms; your work year; your Rule for managing your household; your Rule for maintaining your health and fitness; and so it goes.

Personally, the various cycles of my life often look more like wobbly amoebas. Sometimes they break up altogether. In re-reading the Book of Genesis and Exodus this month, and their word-pictures of the cosmic struggle between order and chaos, I've been thinking about the chaotic aspects of my own life, which are many. Some of them are beyond my control, like my currently haywire hormonal cycle. Some of the chaos is a matter of will and intention, or lack thereof, like my not-always-faithful following of the Daily Office, or -- on a lighter note -- my not having a good system (yet) for reading through all the websites and blogs that interest me, that I want to honor by paying regular attention to.

I often find myself craving more order in my life. But I also find myself needing some externally imposed pattern for that order. I can't seem to manufacture it myself. The other day I wrote about the housekeeping-for-dummies book that provided readers with a kind of almanac of household chores; I like this, because I know I would neither be able to invent or follow such a schedule on my own. At work I love bulleted to-do lists whose items I can check off as I complete them. I appreciate the discipline of the Daily Office, because left to my own devices I just wouldn't pray so intentionally, so often. I find myself really longing for a spiritual director to help me get that part of my life more together. And sometimes my moroseness over my singletude stems from a realization that sometimes I just don't give enough of a damn about myself or my immediate surroundings without the motivation of a caring other giving me a reason to pull it together, and maybe some direction as well.

And, frankly, this can bug me. It offends me. It makes me feel as if I'm on the less evolved end of a developmental scale. What is wrong with me? I think. Why can't I just run my life on my own? Why am I so inadequate a human being that I need to have so much help from outside myself in order to live the world?

Which brings us back to: a Rule. We all have one. Rejecting the idea of a Rule is itself a Rule. And not a particularly good one. It speaks to the condition of curvatus in se -- our essential problem; our inward-turnedness, our insistence on making ourselves, with our capricious thoughts and impulses, our own little god.

Elsewhere online I'm involved in a discussion called "Why Bother With Church?", talking about why we need to live in community. I think that the mutual support, mutual accountability and striving toward a same goal, for love of the same Beloved, are why we should bother with Church, which I am defining in the broadest way -- you and me, and the whole people of God. We need each other as encouragers; as reality checks; as role models; as helpers, and also as people we can help; sometimes as kvetchers and sometimes as irritants that help us stretch and grow. Being willing not only to be displeasing to ourselves but to be displeasing to and displeased by other Christians is an act of placing ourselves under a Rule.

There are days when I feel most acutely God's saving hand -- sometimes directly, sometimes via the hands of my Christian friends -- rescuing me from spiritual chaos. The other chaos in my life -- well, sometimes not so much. (Do not look in the trunk of my car.) But I am, I think, learning to let go of the idea that "freedom" is synonymous with "doing whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it." And, hey -- it's only taken 45 years.

The Confession of St. Peter

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

"You Are the Christ," detail of "The Life of St. Peter" by Bertrand Bahuet 

Meme Meme Meme Meme!

Oh, so many memes, so little time. My friends bls and some of the RevGals have done the Meme of Four; I'll give it a shot.

Four jobs you've had in your life:

(unpaid) farmhand

janitor

legal proofreader

strugging-nonprofit gal Friday


Four movies you could watch over and over:

Casablanca

Rear Window

The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Fried Green Tomatoes


Four places you've lived:

an old stone hip-roofed farmhouse with a wonderful front porch

a formerly swanky, later down-at-the-heels apartment that had its good points -- a beautiful, sunny yellow upstairs bedroom, built-in bookcases, colorful neighbors, once-nice wooden floors, design elements that led me to believe that, once upon a time, someone cared -- but also bad points like windows so flimsy that in the wintertime the Visqueen that covered them billowed out like sails in a nor'easter, a perpetually leaking, circa-1950 refrigerator and supers who spent all day smoking dope and all night screaming at one another

a back apartment inside an old Victorian monstrosity -- the front of the house was a real estate agency -- this was to be, I thought hopefully, my Mary Tyler Moore apartment; until the fleas hatched, several days into my arrival; two of the more interesting weeks of my life

a little white bungalow in the 'burbs


Four TV shows you love to watch:

(I don't know if I have four, and if I love them)

American Experience (sometimes)

Globe Trekker -- escapist fun, even if I don't want to drink rancid-butter tea in Mongolia anytime soon

Fork in the Road (a homegrown Michiganian public TV cooking show)

Northern Exposure and Homicide: Life on the Street -- R.I.P., both of them, and I only mention them because they're the last TV shows I really did love


Four places you've been on vacation:

Toronto

Leelanau Peninsula and surrounds

Grand Haven/Hoffmaster Beach/Blue Lake area (home of Whippy Dip ice cream joints)

an electricity-free, water-pipe-less hut in the middle of the Michigan woods

(As you can see, LC doesn't get out much)


Four websites you visit daily:

Google

lots-o-blogs

CNN

Beliefnet


Four of your favorite foods:

curry (of various kinds)

my mom's smothered chicken

spanakopita

especially these days, RED MEAT (any kind and cut will do), and lots of it


Four places you'd rather be right now:

stalking the elusive thylacine in Tasmania (really)

being alternately nurtured and challenged at a retreat house somewhere

warming myself, after an enjoyable snowshoe hike, in front of a crackling fireplace in a Benzie/Leelanau County B&B, drinking real hot chocolate while watching the snow gently fall outside

soaking up culture and essing gut in some historic European city -- preferably somewhere a little off the beaten path, like one of the Baltic countries

There's a Meme of Two going around, but I think you've all had enough of me for the time being. So -- tag! You're it!

Kelly Fryer is Out

Wow.

I just read about it on Luthersem's blog .

Fryer asks for our prayers. I'd ask, too, for prayers that one day good pastors and other rostered leaders in our denomination aren't forced to make these choices.

Gathering and Sending

See, this is what happens when I get a day off: I've just put out feelers for a new three-week Beliefnet Dialogue Group called "Getting the Most Out of Liturgical Worship." I will be basing topic threads on material from two Augsburg Fortress books, Gathered and Sent by Karen G. Bockelman and Nicholas T. Markell, and Truly Present: Practicing Prayer in the Liturgy by Lisa Dahill. Participants do not have to have access to these books. (Although if you'd like to anyway, check out the link to Augsburg Fortress over in my sidebar.)

Part of the dialogue will be offering participants basic information on the whys of liturgical worship. Part will be helping make some meaningful connections between corporate worship and personal spiritual practice.

Any readers who are not Beliefnet members but want to participate: You need to register with Beliefnet in order to sign up for dialogue groups or lurk there. This is easy and painless.

Join us for what I think is going to be a good discussion. I'm going to be using "talking points" that are intended for journaling and personal reflection as well as for group discussion, so I hope they'll be a good jumping-off point for participants' personal spiritual explorations.

Ice, Ice Baby

This hardly ever happens...we were hit with an ice storm overnight, with more freezing rain expected today, and I got a call from my boss this morning telling me not to try to drive in to work.

Whoo-hoo!

So I got back into my stretchy pants and MSU sweatshirt...lingered over my coffee...read the Morning Prayer...read through some chapters in Exodus where God is getting really bipolar...and am getting ready to clean my oven. A lone car has ventured past on the glassy blacktop. A gaggle of goldfinches are snacking on my thistle sack; a nuthatch is pulling sunflower seeds from my gen-u-wine squirrel-proof Duncraft feeder. It's going to be a good day, at least as long as the power stays on.

Cody, overcome with emotion at the thought of spending ALL DAY with the Chik 

A Stitch In Time...

...helps keep the people of Afghanistan a little warmer.

Afghans for Afghans is a project that helps connect knitters and crocheters with people in Afghanistan and surrounding areas who need warm winter clothing. The organization periodically collects handcrafted afghans and winter wear to distribute to Afghans who need them.

Several years ago I found myself in such an artsy-craftsy mood that I taught myself to knit (very rudimentary hats and two-needle mittens -- one color, thank you, although I did learn a few pattern stitches). I wound up knitting several watch caps, scarves and pairs of mittens of various si