The Failed Experiment

Of all my many goals for this special year, this year of intentional freedom from paid employment, one has just not panned out. It is, for all intents and purposes, kaput.

That's my online class in webmeistering.

There: I've said it and I'm glad.

I have found that I simply do not possess whatever aptitude it takes to spend hours reading lines of code. It was taking me frustrating, rest-of-life-derailing eight-hour days to finish simple assignments. And I wasn't getting any sense of proficiency or accomplishment out of the thing; just futility, especially with the knowledge that most of this stuff is not memorizable; and that chances are it will become obsolete about the time I "get" it.

With the crystal clear vision of hindsight, it is now apparent to me that I could have taken the money for my course and instead leveraged it into decent web design software that would still let me be creative while doing the heavy lifting for me. "Work smarter, not harder." D'oh.

And, to put things into perspective: I already have a decent amount of real-world experience helping out on two websites that Fellow Traveler and I set up for our church and our gym, just for the fun and experience, as well as experience developing an integrated online presence for our church. So this academic defeat is, in the grand scheme of things, a bumpy detour on the road of life, not a dead end.

Gays and Guys' Guys

So today is the big referendum day in Maine regarding marriage-equality Proposition 1.

I was thinking about that yesterday, and about the ways in which the Yes on 1 agitators are attempting to manipulate emotions in Maine, and about the Sincere Bible Study Guys I mentioned in a previous post. They're usually about 30-something, usually dads of smaller children, very down-to-earth and manly-man; the kind of guys who want a "yes" to be "yes" and a "no" to be "no," who mean what they say and say what they mean; who'd pull you out of a burning house or crashed automobile without blinking.  But they seem to find teh gay, as a class, pretty intolerable.

What's up with that?

One of my best buddies when I worked up north, Zen Congregationalist Marine -- one of the five males who worked in our overwhelmingly female company -- was a guys' guy who nonetheless had an easy way with the ladies (perhaps because he was the baby in a large family of mostly sisters), and was quite happy to act as the office Dear Jake in explaining to his female coworkers What Guys Think. One day the topic swung around to homophobia, and another friend of mine mused that straight men seemed a lot more uncomfortable dealing with gay men than straight women are discomfitted interacting with lesbians.

ZCM explained that many men are at heart terrified of being solicited for sex by another man -- or, worse yet, being sexually assaulted by another man -- and that this fear tends to short-circuit rational thought about homosexuality in a lot of male circles.  When straight women meet gay women, they tend to accept them as members of the larger sisterhood of double-X chromosomes; for straight men, encounters with or even thoughts of their gay brothers seem to conjure up...well, the laundry-room scene in The Shawshank Redemption.

"Well, welcome to our world," responded my female friend, rolling her eyes. "Women have to deal with unwanted sexual advances and sexual predators all the time."

ZCM shrugged. "I'm just sayin'."

Some time later, after a day working out of town, ZCM confided to us that, en route home, he had been propositioned by a stranger at a freeway rest stop; some middle-class guy who looked like he was on his way to a Rotary meeting.

"What did you do?" we asked. ZCM was a burly lumberjack type who'd been in military intelligence during the Vietnam era, who probably possessed a frightening personal-defense skill set; despite his mild-mannered civilian persona, we wondered what exactly had transpired in that men's room.

"I'll tell you," he replied. "I said, 'Look at you. You're sneaking around in a public bathroom, for God's sake, begging for sex. That is just pathetic. And it's dangerous -- for you and for your wife if you have one. If you're gay, then why don't you just get honest with yourself and everyone else and say, "Hey, I'm gay," and find a good man in the gay community, and settle down?'" He said that the stranger, who had stood transfixed as ZCM delivered his little urinal-side homily, slowly backed out of the men's room, fled as fast as he could to his vehicle and sped off.

I wish Zen Congregationalist Marine could talk to every Sincere Bible Study Guy in this country, and share this particular story with them; how a real, straight, manly-man guys' guy deals with his worst gay fear realized.

Maid Women

We made a big decision at our house a couple of weeks ago.

We came to the conclusion that we were tired of stressing out about housekeeping -- a task that neither of us finds any joy in performing, and that our busy lives don't give us a lot of time to do.

We counted our pennies and decided that it was worth it to economize elsewhere in order to hire someone to help us with the house once or twice a month. We knew someone from church who keeps houses for a living, who has also had personal experience with Fellow Traveler's medical issues and attendant cleaning needs, whom we trust and whom we knew would appreciate the business, and asked her if she could help us out.

So now we have a housekeeper.

Today was her second day on the job, bringing up the neatness level of our house to our desired baseline so that we can dial back to a less intensive maintenance schedule.

Having a housekeeper is wonderful. It's also weird.

It's odd, of course, to give someone such access to our home on a regular basis. And it's odd to have a housekeeper who's a friend. We sometimes don't quite know where to draw boundaries. How much do we chit-chat, for instance? And about what?

Our housekeeper also makes us both feel very inadequate about our own housekeeping skills even in a maintenance capacity. Like many people with housekeepers, we "pre-clean" before she arrives; and still she spends hours here, saving us from ourselves. We already had what we thought was a rather formidible arsenal of cleaning products and tools, but after surveying our supply she gave us a wish list of technologically superior supplies she prefers -- ouch. And she finds things to clean that completely escape our attention. Today she asked us if we had an old toothbrush. When we asked why, she said she needed it to brush the mesh at the end of the faucet, to clean off the hard-water deposits. This is not something we would have thought of on our own, ever. She performed some sort of magic on our stove cooktop that erased accumulated scorch predating Fellow Traveler's purchasing this house. We feel kind of dumb.

Mollie the cat is not at all happy about this new turn of household events; when the housekeeper shows up, Mollie heads for the closet in the guest room and stays there all day. Gertie is less angsty, but still isn't really sure that she likes this lady coming into our house. And I noticed today that within about a half hour of her leaving, Gertie had all her toys out of the box and onto the floor again.

On the other hand...clean house. And we're now motivated to keep it that way.

Happy All Saints' Day

The Opposite of Reformation

Arlene (not her real name) rode my schoolbus. She was about three years older than me; friendly girl, always very fashion-forward, and radically uninterested in scholarship -- a natural disinclination accentuated in her teen years by the copious amounts of ganja she and her friends smoked during lunchtime in their shag-carpeting-lined Chevy vans over in Student Parking.

Arlene was in my American history class, which at the time was state-mandated for high school graduation. This was her third trip through the course. I remember one day, after the unit on World War II, when the teacher passed out our graded exams, and we could see that Arlene's bore a prominent red "E." We heard her sigh over her exam, and saw her out-of-order eyes try to focus on the the document before them. "So, like, who did win World War II? Like, it wasn't, like, Hitler? Damn."

There was no fourth American history class for Arlene.  About a decade later I ran into her cashiering at a supermarket in the next county, apparently a responsible taxpaying citizen despite the less-than-glorious end of her academic career.

The virtues of perseverence aside, there often comes a point, in certain endeavors, when you just have to cut your losses and stop trying. John Shelby Spong seems to have reached this point, at least according to his recent manifesto announcing his refusal to further debate homosexuality, the role of women in the Church and other issues whose resolutions are so self-evident that it's pointless to discuss them further.

I first read Jack Spong when I was in college. I thought that his Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism was brilliant. Over the years I thought he'd gotten a little too strident, a little too self-promoting, a little too eager to assume for himself the mantle of modern-day Reformer. But I rather liked this particular segment of his manifesto:

I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United States on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day.

Many of us can relate to that sentiment. Just yesterday I was reading a gentle, patient attempt by a seminarian to try and exegete "clobber verses" in Romans for the benefit of Sincere Bible Study Guy (those of you who frequent Bible studies will be acquainted with this Typ) who seemed incapable of understanding what she was saying. She may as well have been typing in Japanese characters. It wasn't a case of "I passionately disagree with you." It was more like the Peanuts films where adult voices are represented as a discordant "WONK-WONK-WONK." I caught a brief mental glimpse of Arlene, back in history class, staring slack-jawed at the chalkboard, probably working out the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven while our teacher was lecturing about VE Day. Another year, another lecture, wouldn't have made a difference.

So part of me is with Jack Spong: Over it; moving on. But another part of me resists giving up. How can a Church be "ever-reforming" if reformers decide, "To hell with it," and recuse themselves from the conversation?

And...I can't help but wonder if Spong is really capable of carrying out his own resolution. My money is on "no."

O The Horror!

Halloween wouldn't be Halloween without terrified Real Christians[tm] whimpering about Satan and his demonic minions lurking under every rock and behind every curtain. Evidently, according to the frequently amusing blog Stuff Christian Culture Likes, Harry Potter is still on the fundie short list of Tools o' the Devil.

If that's not frightening enough...turns out that we Lutherans are also in league with Satan.

I know; making fun of Real Christians[tm] is too easy, and not scary unless it's Election Day.

But here is something really, really frightening, especially if you possess a Y chromosome or an unsteady hand.

Hope you had a fun Halloween. Go ahead -- eat the rest of the chocolate.

The Bishop and The Boys' Club

Like many of my fellow ELCAers, and as someone of German heritage, I was delighted to hear that a woman, theologian and Bishop of Hanover Margot Kaessmann, had been elected to become head of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

Kaessman has some impressive street cred. Active in the church since her youth, she has been a parish pastor; a scholar and teacher; a EKD official; a member of the World Council of Churches' Central Committee. (She resigned from the WCC in protest after the WCC appeared to be waffling on its commitment to ecumenical fellowship, in deference to its more conservative members.) She has been an active opponent of right-wing extremism in Germany. She has been a strong advocate for progressive social policies as well as an advocate for re-spiritualizing the German church by placing more emphasis on prayer, Bible study and devotional life. She is also a mother of four, and a survivor of breast cancer.

I didn't know anything about Bishop Kaessman before reading about her online. But, interestingly, most of the information I just shared with you was nowhere to be found in most of the articles announcing her election as head of the EKD. Oh, no.

"German Protestants on Wednesday elected Margot Kaessmann, a divorcee and the Lutheran bishop of Hanover, to lead them, the first woman to take the post and only the third woman to head a major Christian church," reported Reuters. This meme was repeated in several other online news features...that and a reference to her as "Mother Teresa crossed with Demi Moore."

What decade are we in, again? I mean, when I was in grade school a "divorcee" was an exotic and dangerous creature whose stereotype was clad in jungle-print stretch pants and indolently puffed on alimony-funded Pall Malls while adolescent boys leered and decently married housewives tut-tutted. But we're not living in 1967 anymore. So why is the lead sentence in an important news story, from a respected news syndicate, about a respected woman with a lengthy curriculum vitae and significant spiritual as well as professional gravitas identifying her principally in terms of her marital status, and then adding insult to injury by completely ignoring her personal story as a church leader?

The worst part of this: The reporter who wrote the story is female.

At least she didn't refer to the Bishop as "perky."

Friday Five: "Lifesavers" Edition

Hmmm...it's been awhile since I've tackled a Friday Five. (Or blogged, for that matter...great to be back!)

This week's Friday Five asks us about our personal "lifesavers" -- things that keep us afloat when life tries to drag us down.

1) Your lifesaving food/beverage.
Those would be, respectively, chocolate and coffee. For me coffee is necessary every morning before I can truly assume a locked and upright position, physically and mentally. (This is maybe why my goal of early-morning yoga hasn't yet happened -- for some reason it seems wrong to precede yoga with a cup of joe, but on the other hand without the coffee I am in a defacto Corpse pose.) And chocolate's natural mellowing agents take the edge off sadness, frustration and anger. I've recently developed a real taste for chile-infused dark chocolate, which seems to amp up all those good qualities.


2) Your lifesaving article of clothing.
When I am safely esconced in my home, my favorite thing to wear is a pair of men's flannel night pants, preferably plaid. I'm not making a statement about the constructs of gender; it's just that the guys' styles have more room to move for someone who likes sitting cross-legged. In the summer the flannel gets a little lighter and is paired with a T-shirt; in the wintertime the flannel gets thicker and is topped with a hoodie. It's a human cocoon. I like it.

3) Your lifesaving movie/book/tv show/music.
If you're speaking in terms of spiritual and other profundity, I would have to say the Book of Common Prayer's Daily Office; the prayers and Scripture readings ground me even if I'm only half-attending to them, even if I don't get through an entire prayer, even if I don't want to be reading them. In terms of welcome mindless distraction, I do loves me my Deadliest Catch. In terms of general "making any day go better" -- I enjoy music of all kinds; and when I'm down or depressed, nothing beats the blues.

4) Your lifesaving friend.
The first three years of my school career I was a geeky, unloved and frequently bullied loser. Sometime during the third grade, though, I was befriended by a group of boys who shared my academic interests. We remained fast friends for the rest of our public-school careers, even when we got to middle school and found ourselves rising to the top of the school pecking order. Many years later, working in northern Michigan, my coworkers in my department -- fellow overeducated, underpaid former  liberal-arts majors -- and I developed a close friendship that extended beyond working hours; it would have been a lonely decade without those pals. And, of course, my most lifesaving friend is Fellow Traveler, who's not only saved me from loneliness and self-absorption but has expanded my life in so many ways.

5) Your lifesaving moment.
I had an actual, physical lifesaving moment when I was about 2 1/2. While my parents were distracted by one thing or another during a typical day on the farm, I -- playing "Jack in the Beanstalk," I later explained -- crawled up our farm elevator and fell into the interior chimney of our almost-empty corn crib. I could have easily -- easily -- fallen to my death; instead I landed on a pile of old corn cobs, where I wailed indignantly until our neighbors, called by my frantic parents, came and somehow extracted me from the wire tube at the center of the corn crib. One of my less dramatic but no less profound  psychological lifesaving moments came when I went away to college -- that day I felt a freedom that, for too many reasons to relate here, I'd never felt before. And another lifesaving moment was that moment I came out to myself -- that sense of utter relief and self-affirmation that is sometimes frankly very hard to convey to straight people.

Bonus question (my own): What is your favorite Lifesavers flavor? I'm not even sure if they make this anymore, which tells you how often I eat Lifesavers these days...but I used to just love the mango melon flavor inside the tropical-fruits pack.

Daffodils for All Saints

This week I visited the family graves; something we've always done in my family around this time of year to remove weathered decorations and tidy things up for the winter.

I was on a mission. I came armed with gardening tools, some grass seed and a large bag of mixed daffodil bulbs.

Part of my goal was aesthetic: Local and family custom to the contrary, I hate artificial flowers and other assorted manufactured junk on graves. Fellow Traveler and I have warned our extended family that if our graves ever look as if a dollar store vomited on them we are personally coming back to haunt them, and not in a good way. So this year I said "No mas" even to the relatively small and tidy bouquets of silk flowers I have dutifully placed on the relation's gravesites these past years.  Now I'm looking forward to coming back in the spring and seeing bright, cheerful, real flowers. Especially for my Aunt Marian, who was a skilled and enthusiastic gardener; I think they're a fitting tribute to someone who enjoyed them so much in life.

But there's another reason I've suddenly become interested in cemetery perennials.

Fellow Traveler and I have been talking about the possibility of moving out of Michigan. Not anytime soon; not until our house is paid for, at least; but someday. We want to live somewhere with open spaces and four seasons but with progressive values, where our relationship is respected legally as well as socially. We honestly don't see that ever happening in Michigan, a state that used to have a progressive reputation but that in our perception is slipping ever farther backward into the redneck zone.

In our frequent travels to cemeteries to humor Gertie's need for steeplechase games around grave monuments, I notice the untended graves of persons whose families are apparently no longer in the area to care for them. When we were in the Upper Peninsula we came upon an old graveyard, up by Seney, filled with several dozen flat, weathered wooden plaques inscribed simply with the names of men; we figured they were lumberjacks or other itinerant workers who died there in the northern forestland, far from home and family ties. It's a sad thing; but inevitable in our mobile age. On the other hand, I'm always a little cheered when I find a clump of iris or daylilies or violets atop an old, otherwise forgotten grave; once upon a time someone cared enough to leave something lasting, ever-renewing, there before they themselves left.

So I've planted my daffodils. With any luck they'll multiply like the daffodils back at Cold Comfort Cottage.  And even if we leave this area physically, they'll help us continue to honor the ancestors who remain here.

Con-Evs Invade New England!

I was all set to get angry about this story .

"Please don't let them ruin Vermont before we get there," I muttered to Fellow Traveler as I summarized the article, about a new influx of politically and theologically conservative Evangelical missionaries to New England, trash-talking the liberal church tradition there and eager to manifest some new rightward-turning Great Awakening.

Take a combination of militant moral superiority and the annoying enthusiasm of a dog that won't stop humping your leg, and cross that with the knowledge that these same individuals want to disempower and marginalize me by any means necessary while destroying my family -- well, let's just say that I have serious issues with these sisters and brothers in Christ. I don't believe that their primary purpose is a sudden desire to save souls in New England; I think their goal is political and social domination of that region. Because in their jihadian heads, it's all the same thing.

While it gives me no pleasure to say this, two days ahead of All Saints Day: I would rather spend the rest of my life as a puzzling but accepted religiously observant oddity in an overwhelmingly and cheerfully irreligious society than spend one minute under the rule of a Southern Baptist or Orthodox Presbyterian vision of God's kingdom come to earth. And I will do everything I can as a citizen in a democracy to keep the latter from ever happening. And if it did anyway -- O Canada.

But I digress. Anyway, I'm reading this article, and I feel the smoke starting to curl out of my ears...but then I started thinking about Fellow Traveler's life in Maine. She spent about a dozen years there. She's got stories.

A picture developed in my mind. I saw an earnest young theological heir to Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, re-wrapped in tats and a jazz patch in an attempt to appear hipster, standing at a Maine farm-field gate. I can hear the Mainer speaking to the eager young missionary.

"New church? Don't need a new church. Got an old church in town. Bean suppah Sattaday night."

And suddenly I was in a good mood again.

In Which We Explain It All...

A seminarian friend of mine sent this. It's just so...funny.

OMG! Facebook Idolatry!

My attention was recently directed to a post on the blog Pretty Good Lutherans, discussing the fact that ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson has a Facebook page.

Since Lutherans are a pugnacious bunch, and since we have always seemed to have a Puritan rump -- what Garrison Keillor calls the Dark Lutherans -- in our midst, it is completely unsurprising that some people find +Hanson's Facebook presence an affront -- specifically an invitation to idolatry.

Idolatry? Really? Seriously?

After snorting a few cc's of coffee out of my nostrils reading some of the frowny-faced comments regarding the good bishop's page, I went to my own list of "fanned" Facebook pages. There I found:

Bob Dylan
The New York Times
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
NPR
Sonic
The Old Fraunces Tavern
Trader Joe's
The Indigo Girls
Irshad Manji (progressive Muslim activist and author of The Trouble With Islam)
The Detroit Tigers
Michigan State University
Dow Gardens
Tell Dick Cheney to Shut the Hell Up
Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland
The Hunger Site
The Deadliest Catch

There are about 20 other persons, businesses and institutions I've "fanned."

Out of all these...there aren't any that I would call  the ground of all being, none that I would consider my ultimate concern; none that I pray to, burn incense before or otherwise venerate. Bishop Hanson seems like a swell guy and all, but -- I mean, he's on the same list as Sonic limeade. Come on.

Bait-and-Switch Bible Study

When my day is going too smoothly -- when I don't have enough tension in my day to ramp up my blood pressure to a satisfactory level -- I read the comments on the ELCA's Facebook page.

Don't get me wrong. I think that this project is one of the smartest things the ELCA has done in a long time. Each day some Internet-savvy elf on Higgins Road posts prayers or quotes, and a question of the day. It's encouraging to see the interaction and information sharing going on. And perhaps the folks at the other end of the computer are learning more about the laity from reading their responses.

But inevitably the conversations, no matter where they begin, seem to wind up in the realm of The Troubles. And I have to read, again, about people's "pain" and "struggle" and "anguish" about being asked to accept partnered gay and lesbian members of our denomination as full participants in all ministries.

My gut reaction is, "Pain? Oh, please." An ileostomy is pain. A breast biopsy is pain. Being asked to share a church body -- not necessarily even your own congregation! -- with a pastor or deacon or other rostered leader who happens to be gay and partnered is not pain. Get over it.

But there's this one guy who keeps writing on the Wall, who keeps reiterating his state of upset, whose recent comments inadvertently stumbled upon an issue that I think actually underlies much of the controversy over the role of gay people in the Church. The other day he said, more or less: So what else are you going to tell me is wrong in the Bible? Because apparently, through his attempts to understand the CWA vote, he was exposed to people discussing the Bible using an historical-critical interpretative methodology. This stuff is honestly news to him. His applecart of faith is starting to shake.

I grew up in the LCMS. I cut my theological milk teeth on the Seminex controversy; my ueber-conservative uncle subscribed my sympathetic, but not quite as exciteable, father to a newsletter that breathlessly reported, month after month, on the heretical, Bible-hating shenanigans going on in Lutheran seminaries. I didn't find the accusations, once one got past the hyperbolics of the authors, all that awful; it was kind of a relief, actually, for a pious but precocious Missouri Synodian teen, to discover that I didn't have to believe in a six-day creation, or in an historical Adam and Eve, or a real guy named Jonah swallowed by a real fish, in order to be a Christian. And then I went away to school and took biblical studies courses (taught by two excellent professors, one Methodist and one Presbyterian, who happened to be pastors as well as scholars) that provided more context with which to understand what I was reading, and the controversy between biblical literalism and a more nuanced reading of the texts.

But that illustrates the gap between people whose biblical education is more like mine and people whose understanding of the Bible has been formed solely by grade-school-level religious education,  Sunday preaching and devotional reading (which is what most adult Bible studies are, really). The Troubles with Teh Gay in the ELCA are, as personally frustrating to me, just a symptom, I believe, of a bigger Trouble -- the Bible gap.

The confused soul on Facebook feels as if he's been played in a game of biblical bait-and-switch. And you really can't blame him.

I told him that I don't think that that is the intent at all of preachers and teachers. But I do wonder what damage has been wrought in our church body and its predecessors over the decades by the sort of intellectual elitism that, in both children's and adults' religious education, has tended to provide only lightweight, principally devotionally oriented Bible study to the laity. This is the Reformation that Luther risked his life for? Bunny-slope Bible study for average laypeople, versus a rigorous, contextual Bible study for a special few? Because the peasants really aren't up to learning how to read the Bible critically and contextually, and besides, we don't want them getting all riled up? Really?

I think the ELCA's Book of Faith Initiative is a modest attempt to rectify this situation. I hope it works. But I think it may be too late for some church members who have taken the apparent low expectations of Church leadership to heart, to the point where they can't/won't process what they're hearing when the elite exegete and hermeneute. And honestly -- how are our kids learning to read the Bible? Same ol', same ol', so that by the time they hit adulthood we'll have the same conceptual gap?

Putting the Garden to Bed

Since it finally stopped raining today, it presents a great opportunity to put our garden to bed for the year.

Last weekend I planted garlic; our only overwintering crop other than the late-planted savoy cabbages that are flourishing in the cool weather but not forming real heads, that I'm going to show mercy on by mulching with leaves for the forseeable future in an effort to at least harvest some useable pot greens or roll wrappers. The garlic, though, I planted in a raised bed; I raised it by lowering the walkway around it by about 5 inches all around. That's what the whole garden will be next year; a series of French-style raised beds, with slightly sloping sides. I double-dug the bed, amending the soil with our first homemade compost, some organic fertilizer and a few generous handfuls of crab-shell fertilizer (my personal paen to "The Deadliest Catch" -- and the crab shells are supposed to be quite beneficial for crops). I planted "Chesnok Purple" and "Music" hardnecked garlics, and filled up the last empty section with a half-dozen shallot cloves from a package I bought at the grocery store. All that's left to do is rake about 2 inches of leaves -- which are in plentiful supply now, thanks to the rain -- over the top and let Mother Nature do her thing.

My garden has been one of the most therapeutic projects I've undertaken in the past year, despite the fact that some of my experiments on this first-year plot have been abject failures. (I've thought, many a day, that it's a good thing I'm not a pioneer woman depending on the garden to keep me alive through the winter.) Gardens are good that way, because they're alive, and changing, and changeable; there's always a way to wrest some element of success, or at least wisdom, out of misfortune. They're the "Serenity Prayer" writ in green.

While failures are of course disappointing -- as was the case the other day when I dug up my little row of "Chioggia" beets, which had been crowded out (through my own fault) by potatoes and found only 2 normal-sized, useable roots -- they're opportunities for learning. I don't know why I can't apply that good sense to the rest of my life, but in the garden it seems to be a gentler lesson. Next year: more attention to spacing. I've also had great successes: Ruby-red "Mascara" lettuce that, despite frank neglect on my part, produced all season long without bitterness, only bolting at the end of last month; beans that survived flooding and chill; cutting celery, planted late, that I dried into some beautifully fragrant, tasty flakes for winter soups and stews -- definitely a crop for next year, and more of it. I found that pruning tomatoes around the bottom, keeping all the branches off the ground, and pinching out all the side shoots as they appear, really does keep the plants healthier.

So anyway: Today I pull out the tattered remains of vegetable rows and add them to the compost. I lime the soil, raking it in a little but letting the elements really work it into the ground. I mulch my garlic. And then that's it; goodbye until April.  Thank you for being my classroom, my chapel, my palette.

The Stealth Breviary

I almost entitled this, "What I did on my summer vacation," since I've been mostly AWOL on this blog for months.

One of the things I did was set up a Facebook page, and a blog, for our congregation. Our website, like most, can be very unwieldy to update, and is fairly static -- and thus forgettable -- from season to season. Even though only a small percentage of our people even own computers, much less have a competency in getting around well online, many of our leaders and information disseminators do. And it seemed to me that we needed a couple of different online vehicles; one to add some depth to our ministry, one to keep people plugged in to what's going on.
So this is what I did. I created a blog, updated almost daily (Saturday is this blogmeister's sabbath) , with a theme for each day. Yesterday was Mission Monday, which is pretty self-explanatory; this week I talked about the ELCA inviting individuals and congregations to send Thanksgiving greeting cards to missionaries this year. Today is Tuneful Tuesday, when I post a music video appropriate for the Sunday lectionary or Church calendar.  I write special posts for saints' days and commemorations, and anything else worth blogging about. I'm not sure that anyone else finds it interesting or helpful, but if nothing else it's imposed a welcome sense of structure in my life and made me better prepared for each Sunday, whether I'm assisting or in the pew.

Meanwhile, I created a Facebook page for our church. (And since you're my peeps, I'll invite you to "fan" us -- search "Hope Lutheran Church" and look for the stained-glass window.) This is, for our congregation, the 21st century version of calling Aunt Bee down at the store to spread the news about what's going on in our parish.

In an effort to keep readers interested, I've made a commitment to post something on Facebook every single day, even if it's just a teaser for something on our blog. One day, searching for something worth posting, I thought, "Why don't I just post a snippet of liturgy from The Daily Office?" So I did. And I kept going. I'm very random -- one day I might post a prayer from the short-form individual/family devotional; the next I might post a few lines of a Psalm from the Morning or Evening Prayer; the next I might draw from the Noonday Prayer or Compline. And in response to persons wondering why I'm cherry-picking from the Book of Common Prayer rather than a Lutheran prayer book...frankly, it's easier, because my Anglican friends make better use of the Internet in the realm of daily devotions. Just sayin'.

But here's the real interesting thing: Of all our new and improved online activities, the random daily prayers are what draw the most feedback. Our readership loves them. I was ill for a couple of days, and someone mentioned to me that she missed the daily Facebook prayers. This has been a real "aha!" phenomenon, for me anyway. So if any of you are contemplating hooking up your people to Facebook -- go for it. And try this.

Friday Five: In the Presence of the Lord

The RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five this week asks:

Where do you find God's peace and presence?  Is there:



1. A place that holds a special memory?
Morningstar, a retreat center for women in the woodlands of northern Michigan, has a certain spot on its property with some very old, enormous trees...I remember misty morning walks in this place that literally gave me gooseflesh. For me at least it's one of those "thin places" where the divine Presence is easier to discern.

2. A song that seems to usher you into the Holy of Holies?
The Agnus Dei, in any number of settings.

3.A book/ poem/ prayer that says what you cannot?
Definitely the Daily Office in Book of Common Prayer. When I don't have the words, it has the words for me.

4. How do you remind yourself of these things at times when God seems far away?

5.Post a picture/ poem or song that speaks of where you are right now in your relationship with God...

Hoarders

Monday evenings have become a kind of Dysfunction Junction at our house, as we curl up in front of the TV and watch A&E's prime-time offerings, Intervention and Hoarders.

We find Intervention compelling in part because we've dealt with addiction in Fellow Traveler's family and in our broad circle of friends. We recognize the behaviors, the rationalizations, the resistance to help. And we're also cheered by the success stories of this series. When we see the show postscripts that announce a participant has been sober for months or years, we cheer.

Hoarders is a different matter.

I've seen this behavior firsthand. My aunt M, in the later years of her life, could have been a subject for this show. Her hoarding literally drove her out of her own home. After she was hospitalized, I remember spending a day with my mother trying to sift through her mountain of collected trash, looking for family papers and keepsakes, and finally giving up when the job became too hopeless.

I also detect seeds of this disorder in myself. In my life my out-of-control accumulation of stuff has been, thankfully, confined to discrete areas -- to the infamous Alligator Room of The Cottage; to the trunk of my old car. And unlike my aunt, and most of the subjects of Hoarders, my struggles with material chaos have been less a matter of attachment to things -- I actually find a sense of happiness and relief in giving other people things I no longer need -- than a sense of being overwhelmed by the stuff of life to the point of paralysis...and more than a touch of perfectionism; wanting to come up with a system, a "right" way of wresting order out of disorder, before actually doing anything.

So Hoarders strikes home for me in the same way that Intervention strikes a note of fear in the heart of someone whose family is predisposed to addiction.

And what's especially troubling is the lack of success in helping the Hoarders subjects, who are picked on the basis of crises related to their behavior.  I visited the Hoarders website and was rather disheartened to see that almost none of the participants have made substantial progress in getting well. The producers admit that the short time frame in which the participants are compelled to clean up their homes is part of this poor track record -- the professional organizers and therapists assigned to each project may be able to help the individuals achieve some degree of order and cleanliness in their living spaces, but there's not enough time to adequately address the underlying behaviors. And...sadly...hoarding is a compulsion with a poor prognosis; there's no pharmaceutical or other therapeutic magic bullet.

Since I've been watching this show I find I've been paying more attention to housework; been trying to come up with a basic, not-too-rigid schedule for cleaning and tidying that cuts down my anxiety level and, on some level, reassures me that I am not in danger of turning into my aunt.

A Fall-ish Friday Five (on Saturday)

Sweet irony -- we were so busy yesterday enjoying the beginnings of autumn that I never got around to writing my fall-themed Friday Five! (The photo above, by the way, is from last autumn, up in the Lake Leelanau area.)

1. Share a Fall memory.

One of my fondest recent fall memories is of two autumns ago when we took Cody, my irascible, irreplaceable 16-year-old Maltese, up to the Leelanau for the better part of a week. The Codeman was half-blinded by cataracts, largely deaf and stiff with arthritis...but he had the time of his life. We devoted one day to exploring the old farmsteads of the Port Oneida Historical Area, and I can still remember him running -- running -- with glee through the old orchards and fields. He died that Thanksgiving, and I remember my grief being blunted by the knowledge that he had literally had the time of his life just a few weeks earlier. Whenever I hear Sting's "Fields of Gold" I think of my little white dog prancing through the autumn grasses.

2. Your favorite Fall clothes--(past or present)?
I love fall colors, first of all -- browns and golds and rusts and scarlets. I love big baggy sweaters and hoodies. I love the smell of fall outerwear, which reminds me of my dad's old buffalo-plaid hunting jacket.

3. Share a campfire story, song, experience...etc.
My family was not so much into bonfires and such -- I don't think I ever experienced a fall campfire until I was in college, on a Lutheran Student Movement retreat out in rural Ohio-diana (can't remember which state). I do recall, during one such fall event, having some emotionally touched co-camper put his arm around my waist and my thinking, "Please don't put your hand there." I was so polite then.

4. What is your favorite thing about this time of year?
For me fall feels more like a new year than New Year's Day. It seems like a natural time to take stock of the previous year, to celebrate one's literal and figurative harvests, to start over again.

5. What changes are you anticipating in your life, your church, family...whatever...as the season changes and winter approaches?
A major change in our family is impending grandmotherhood...which is especially interesting since I missed that whole motherhood step. (This seems to be a trend in my family, by the way -- several of my cousins also got paired up later in life and became instant grandparents.) I'm feeling some trepidation about assuming some of the usual tasks of grandparenthood -- for instance, while I'm well acquainted with pet poopiness in all its manifestations, changing a diaper is a mystery to me -- but feeling pretty good about others: storytelling; transmitting family memories; nature hikes and kitchen projects and other fun stuff when the chitlin gets bigger. At church, I find that my ministry activities are spreading out into different directions; I care a lot about worship, and assisting is a primary responsibility as a lay minister in our congregation, but in the last month I've also expanded our church's online presence about threefold, and find myself in an increasing role as an educator as I create content for our various online projects. As far as other vocation -- well, who knows where I'll be in the next year; but I'm finding myself increasingly happy and satisfied in the realm of domesticity. I think my relationship with paid employment has changed forever, in a positive direction, in that I have finally smashed the idol of seating my identity and worth in a paying job. It's a liberating feeling. I know that the next paid employment I have will not swallow my life and loyalties the way my past jobs have, because I've tasted the fullness of life as a free agent, and it's a sweet thing. So the only constant in my life this fall seems to be change. And I'm okay with that.

Bonus question: What is a favorite fall food? Apples and squash. We are gearing up, at our house, for a major applesauce canning extravaganza in a couple of weeks. I also have a fondness for heirloom apples, and next weekend we are going to a local orchard that advertises 100 different varieties...when we go up to the Leelanau later in the fall we'll probably visit Christmas Cove Orchard, which has many more varieties; an entire pole barn filled with tantalizing crates of multicolored, multi-shaped, multi-sized apples with evocative names like Blue Sheepnose and Cox's Orange Pippin and Fameuse. I am a latecomer to the charms of winter squash -- I was in my 20's before I could easily eat a hunk of baked butternut -- but I'm now a fan; and my goal this fall is to try "one of everything" offered by our local growers. (I'm a little scared of trying to hack open the Hubbards, but I guess where there's a will there's a way.)  Recipe hint: While I do like baking squash my mom's way, with generous dollops of butter and brown sugar, I've also made it with savory seasonings -- carmelized onion, sage, some Parmesan cheese -- and have enjoyed that as well. And -- for you grillers out there -- butternut squash necks cut lengthwise into strips about a quarter inch thick, then brushed with olive oil and seasonings of choice, work well on the grill; are a great accompaniment to grilled pork.















Bonus: What food says "AUTUMN" at your house?

The Wrong Pie

Reading this Sunday's lectionary texts, specifically the Numbers text and the Gospel lesson, I found myself, for some reason, remembering the church potlucks of my childhood and the way that I would refuse to eat any pie except my mom's. Because my mother's pie was fabulous. The sweet-tart ratio, the mix of spices, the flakiness factor of the crust, were always just right. Other people's moms' pies -- well, you just didn't know. They cut up the apples differently. They topped their pies differently -- with a crust instead of my mom's delicious streusel; or, worse yet, no topping at all, just bare chunks of apple. The other pies looked suspicious; all of them.

"Try a different pie," my mother would instruct, sotto voce, at the dessert table.  "Let other people have our pie."

"No," I'd whine. "I want your pie. I don't like the way their pies look."

I wonder how much spiritual nourishment, not to mention enjoyment, I miss out on because it's in the wrong pie.

Friday Five: Halfway Down the Stairs Edition

Halfway down the stairs


Is a stair


Where I sit.


There isn't any


Other stair


Quite like


It.


I'm not at the bottom,


I'm not at the top;


So this is the stair


Where


I always


Stop.




Halfway up the stairs


Isn't up,


And isn't down.


it isn't in the nursery,


it isn't in the town.


And all sorts of funny thoughts


Run round my head:


"It isn't really


Anywhere!


It's somewhere else


Instead!"


— A. A. Milne


“Halfway Down,” When We Were Very Young


Thinking of your childhood as a stairway, when did you feel (and how did you feel then)

1. at the bottom?
For me that was my kindergarten year of school. I walked into class happy, confident, a little intellectually cocky...and by the end of the day I had been bullied, scolded, rejected on the playground...and to top things off I got on the wrong bus home and had to be retrieved, sobbing, from the bus garage by my parents. That was pretty much how the whole year went, including three hospitalizations for pneumonia. (Don't think there's not a mind-body connection, either.) The "K" word still gives me the shivers. I was definitely on the bottom of the stairs then.

2. at the top?
Fourth grade. I had a teacher who liked me, knew I needed some extra challenge and let me run with the ball -- extra credit, mentoring my classmates and so on. I was also developing my own little posse of friends. I started to get my confidence back. Good times.

3. halfway?
Sixth grade -- not a little kid anymore but not quite a teen. I remember aspiring to teenhood by reading Teen magazine and some well-worn paperback I'd ordered from Scholastic called Teen Scene or some such thing -- it had a trippy cover with a psychadelic graphic on it and all manner of advice about makeup and hygiene, style, boys (?) and parental relations, written in a light and "groovy" style. I didn't quite get it, but I wanted to...at the time.

4. At this point in your life, where would you place yourself on your own stairway?
As a very busy, happy, but currently non-gainfully-employed (by choice) person, I'm definitely halfway up the stairs; neither here nor there. I balk when people kid me about being retired -- oh, please -- but in a way I think I am retired, namely from a particular mindset, one encouraged by the dominant culture, about seating my identity as a person primarily in my career. Been there; done that; over it. At this stage of the game I'm much more interested in vocation: Where's God calling me to be and to do, right now?

5. Identify a place for you that "isn't really anywhere" but "somewhere else instead."
I'm feeling that way right now about my monthly spiritual direction appointment. It's not quite like a therapy session...not quite like a church-office chat with my pastor...there's not a lot of graspable "there" there, at least at this point, but yet it makes me happy to go there, and I always feel happy and affirmed when I leave.

Wired

For the past two weeks I've been engaged in a labor of love to benefit my congregation -- expanding our online presence, which up to now has been a rather basic webpage, to include a Facebook page and blog. I've also been setting up a posting schedule for the latter (pretty funny, considering the hit-or-miss posting schedule on my own blog), with theme days a la the RevGalBlogPals.

I began to get discouraged early on simply because so few people in our congregation (and this, sadly, encompasses all age ranges) know how to use a computer. But when I started getting feedback from members and friends who are online -- including someone serving in Iraq -- I knew it was worthwhile.

My goal, as de facto webmeister of these two online presences, is to keep them fresh with daily posts, even if they're only links to somewhere else. And this seems to be working in terms of how many hits our Facebook page gets per day.  I have added to the blog a long list of links to places of interest (one hopes) elsewhere on the Web, and widgets ranging from the Old Lutheran Tidbit of the Day to a self-updating church calendar.

Our pastor suggested that I take interested members on an after-church virtual tour of our online properties, using the church-office computer. I think this is a swell idea, and will follow up in a couple weeks when there's more "there" there.

Tongue-Tied

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield  fresh. -- from the Epistle of James

I'm still chewing on our epistle lesson from last Sunday.

Maybe that's because, as if on cue,  current events have been filled with stories of intemperate people -- Joe Wilson, Kanye West, Serena Williams, Glenn Beck, et al -- shooting off their mouths in public. Granted, James is speaking to the Christian community, not the world at large; but it's the same problem, with the same consequences.

But I've also been thinking about other examples of people, particularly people with spiritual or social gravitas, using words in a destructive way.

I regularly read an opinion column by a political writer who constantly writes hand-wringing jeremiads about The End of the World As We Know It. Multiply him by every other influence in the media and the world of letters for whom every change in demographics, in politics, in the environment, in society, is a catastrophe. Yes, sometimes change is unfortunate; yes, it's natural to mourn the loss of the familiar and feel anxiety about the new. But a constant drumbeat of "The sky is falling" -- does that not have the power to send others, especially anxious others, into despair? Or -- when the sky does not in fact fall -- cynicism? How does one balance the need to talk about perceived "bad news" with the need to keep people's hope alive? "Without a vision the people perish."

Likewise, I've been thinking about a tendency that I find in myself; an impatience with biblical literalists that gives me almost a kind of impious pleasure in kicking over their right strawy cradles of simpleminded interpretation. Getting into pissing matches with aggressive Bible bangers is one thing -- but is it really so important to overwhelm the doe-eyed newbie in Bible study with historical-critical analysis in response to one of her innocent comments about a text? What is the desired outcome here? What's the more likely outcome? Am I really concerned about learning happening? Is there a better way to respond -- one with less risk of knocking over a spiritually vulnerable person's applecart of faith?

See, folks -- the lectionary does work. If presented well, the texts keep percolating in your brain long after Sunday.

Recovering From Work

I had a dream the other night -- actually, a full-tilt-boogie nightmare -- about my previous job. I woke myself up shouting out at some critical point in the dream; my pulse was racing, and my molars hurt, apparently from their grinding together in my sleep.

I can honestly say that I have never hated a job so much before -- and that includes my disastrous term as a secretary in a college office, whose voluntary leaving I celebrated by burning my job paperwork.  And it had nothing to do with my work tasks per se, which I often found enjoyable -- in the end it was all about the people.

It's taken me almost seven months to even begin to feel "normal" again -- to feel smart and competent and happy to wake up in the morning. It's also taken me almost seven months to reconnect with a couple of friendly coworkers; before that, I just didn't want to be that close to the job.

A sobering thought for me, though, is...how many stories of quiet desperation are never told? How many of the people living those stories do not, like me, have the opportunity to opt out, at least for a time, and regroup?

A Flannel Friday Five

Ah...a warm, snuggly Friday Five from the RevGalBlogPals!

1. What was your favorite sleeping attire as a child? And did you call them pjs, pajamas (to rhyme with llamas), pajamas (to sort of rhyme with bananas), jammies, or ???

My favorite pajamas (which we pronounced with the broad Midwestern "a") were flannel footies. Alas, my mother decided that the footies were too hard to keep clean, so at some point I transitioned to standard flannel pj's.



2. Favorite sleepwear put on your own little ones, or perhaps those you babysat? (Bonus points if you made it).

Not applicable. Although I do recall trying to fit our cat into an old onesie from my babyhood. (The cat did not approve.)

3. How about today-do you prefer nightgown, pajamas, undies, or au naturel?

In the warm months I prefer sleepshirts -- not too long, not too short. In the wintertime I switch to either a classic granny nightgown or flannel lounge pants with a long-sleeved T-shirt.

4. Silky smooth or flannel-y cozy?

Flannel all the way. I crave womblike warmth and security in bed, and flannel does the job. Victoria's Secret is for sissies.

5. Socks or bare feet?

In the dead of winter I often find myself wearing slipper-socks to bed; they also come in handy when one of the animals insists on a late-night potty outing.

Irony Alert

Encountered while attempting to find some appropriate artwork for this week's RevGalBLogPals Lectionary Leanings: "You do not have permission to access/saints..."

My bad!

A Self-Affirming Friday Five

RevGalBlogPal's prologue to this Friday's Five begins:
Lately I seem to be encountering many people who have a very difficult time finding anything good to say about themselves. They are able to extend grace and forgiveness's to others but find it difficult to extend that same grace to themselves.

With that in mind, let's share some healthy affirmation today! Tell us five things you like about yourself!

Alrighty then!

1. I have a quick wit. I find humor in much of what goes on around me. It's kind of a survival skill. I'd hate not to have it.

2. I like to learn. I never, ever want to stop learning things.

3. I know how to express myself verbally -- a skill that's gotten me far in this life.

4. Animals love me. With few exceptions, I seem to be able to make up with most beasties...even feral cats and wild birds. I consider it a gift and a privilege to be able to engage in cross-species rapprochement.

5. I can cook for my own and others' enjoyment, even in my own inuitive/untutored way. (Don't ever watch me cut up vegetables, for instance -- Gordon Ramsey would drop a Hiroshima of F-bombs at my less than finessed technique.) I know some people struggle mightily with this skill, which they think of as a chore; but I love it.

Hey...that felt good!

Alt.Medicine

I gave myself the gift of an hour-long massage yesterday morning, after our crazy, tension-filled week.

My appointment was at an outfit called the Naturopathic Institute of Therapies and Education, located in Mt. Pleasant -- ironically in what used to be a funeral home. Part of the building has been transformed into a retail store, but the rest of the place is a school offering training in naturopathic medicine, massage and other alternative health therapies. I'd never been there before; but I was looking for something a little different than either the very clinical massage experience of our local medical center's PT department or the foofy, girly-girl massages at the nearby beauty emporium.

When it comes to alternative medicine, I'm like Agent Mulder: I want to believe. I truly believe in a mind-body aspect to wellness, and I also think that practices like meditation, various physical disciplines like yoga can make a positive difference in people's health, for reasons that can't always be explained by conventional science. I've had good luck with some herbal medicines (with the disclaimer that I've done my homework, and steer clear of the potentially dangerous stuff -- I'm talking innocuous herbs like peppermint and crampbark for "ladies' complaints," arnica cream for external bang-ups and so on.) I'm also enough of a revolutionary to feel satisfaction in seeking alternate answers to my health questions -- I think anytime we can safely and effectively go off the grid of Big Health and Big Pharm it's a good thing; fight the power.

But there's a whiff of snake oil in the alternative medicine universe. I felt that tension passing through the institute's retail shop, with its rows of homeopathic elixirs and books about the joys of colonic irrigation. It's why I wish that there were more accredited physicians out there with some academic and practical chops in integrative medicine to help laypeople navigate through all this, so that we're not left with a choice between eye-rolling by-the-book allopaths and quacks out of a 19th-century medicine show.

Nonetheless, my alt.med massage was heavenly. After filling out an information form detailing my health history and issues my masseuse, a slight young woman who nonetheless exhibited the body strength of a rugby player, attacked my constricted upper back, shoulders and neck with as much vigor as I requested...and then some. She did something to my spine that made it crack, but in a good way. She dug into the area around my kidneys, and seemed to elbow her way up and down my hips. She massaged my computer-stressed wrists, and made the tips of my fingers tingle. She pulled my head up from my neck and I felt like a turtle being stretched out of a hard shell. She pressed lightly around my upper chest, along the upper part of the breastbone, which momentarily startled me; but it seemed to create a soothing sensation in my back. She All the while I could hear, and smell, some interesting alchemy going on with oils and scents; unlike spa massages I've had, some of these aromas were not particularly pretty, but they seemed to have specific purposes. I could identify cedar, and lavender, and some warming potion that I think was Chinese linament.

I am definitely going back for more. And I'm re-dedicating myself to being a more active, less passive, healthcare consumer, even if it means veering off the beaten path of medical convention once in awhile.

Morning Delusional

No, I don't mean morning devotional. I mean morning delusional.

My morning delusional would begin as the sun slowly appears on the horizon. I would rise, go into our quiet front room and proceed with a leisurely examen, followed by Morning Prayer -- the whole enchilada, not the Cliff's Notes version for individuals. I would then move to the floor, roll out my yoga mat and do a few asanas to get the circulation flowing; or perhaps I'd move to the patio for some tai chi.

Here's how my real-life morning begins: I am startled into consciousness by the cold, wet, grassy paws of Gertie, who has already roused Fellow Traveler out of bed. A wet nose attempts to push past my lips as the wet paws slap at me.

Meanwhile a cat's head begins butting into my hair, accompanied by a loud purr. I feel Mollie's nose inserted into my ear.

"Brrrt? Brrrt?"

Gertie rolls on her back for a game of "Foot." Mollie leaps off the bed, runs to the doorway, then stops and looks back, with some impatience: "So...when can I expect the Whiskas?"

May as well get up and make the coffee.

Some Thoughts on the Churchwide Assembly

This past RevGalBlogPal's Friday Five -- which I didn't join in simply because I didn't have time or energy for the degree of reflection needed to comment intelligently on the good questions -- was all about "rules," specifically the spoken and unspoken rules that have guided our relationships.

I came from a family with a lot of unspoken, subtextual rules, not all of which were conducive to a healthily functioning family. One such rule was, "Don't disrupt the household peace by making your father angry or your mother upset." Because my dad was a very angry man, one whose life frustrations and limitations would, with regular frequency and little provocation, erupt like Krakatoa, with yelling that would literally shake the walls of the house. My mother was a very fearful, emotionally brittle woman; earlier in her life she'd had what they used to call a nervous breakdown, and after that point her ability to process anxiety was very limited. (For those of you who've read Jean Shinoda Bolen's book comparing dysfunctional, power-over family relationships to the Teutonic Ring cycle -- this is all familiar territory.)

When I was in middle school, around the end of the school year I took the pre-band music aptitude test administered by the school and received the highest score of my class. A few weeks later, at the beginning of summer vacation, school band teacher came to our house to congratulate me, to introduce himself to my parents and to explain the school music program to them. My father, without missing a beat, told the band instructor that he -- working man who breaks his back for long hours every day to pay the bills -- did not have time to chauffeur me back and forth from practices and ballgames and furthermore wasn't going to waste money on purchasing a musical instrument that was going to do nothing to further my ability to find a job as an adult: "We're not interested. You can leave now, and don't come back." My mother burst into horrified, embarrassed tears as the stunned teacher backed out of the house. That was the precursor to one of those epic domestic fights that live in family memories for decades. I think my mother wound up taking to bed while my father cursed and slammed doors and avoided my presence. I was numb; I retreated to my room and to farm fields for days.

My lessons from this little familial episode, and all those surrounding it before I finally left home: "If something good happens to you, something bad will inevitably follow"; "Don't do anything, even a good thing like acing a test, that is going to make other people angry or sad"; and, most importantly, "This is all your fault."

As you might imagine, it's taken some therapy for me to see how messed up my parents' relationship with one another and with me actually was, to see how misplaced my own shame for thinking that there was something wrong about me that precipitated these cycles of emotional abuse, and to grieve for myself and my lost opportunities as well as for the brokenness of my family.

Still, while catching bits and pieces of the CWA debate last week, even with the jaundiced eye of a natural cynic who can sometimes find such exercises in group discernment a little precious -- Hey! The ELCA is officially against malaria! Yay, us! -- I found myself experiencing that same feeling of doom I felt all those years ago, sitting at our kitchen table with my music aptitude test in my hand while my father thundered and my mother wept and cowered. I wanted to run -- to my room, under the covers; to the dark, dust-moted, fragrant comfort of the hayloft; to the grove at the far end of our pasture where I could sit under one of the ash trees and hug my dog, crying into his thick fur, and plot my liberation. Someday...someday...things would be different.

I want to say that I greeted the news of the CWA vote on LGBT participation in the ordained and rostered leadership of the church, and on the recognition, blessing and call to accountability of committed, monogamous same-sex relationships, with relief and rejoicing. I want to say that I found the general tone of sobriety and prayerfulness, and call for mutual respect and civility comforting and refreshing.

But on some level I'm still sitting in the dark, thinking, "This is all your fault. Again."

And in Other Family News...

We got a call last night from Son #1 announcing that he and his partner are making it legal in Boston next weekend. Son #2 and Semi-Daughter-in-Law -- the ones we've been silently rooting for to make it legal first, or at least in addition, what with in-utero G-baby and all -- are attending as witnesses. Yes, we appreciate the irony.

Respective moms of the happy couple have been invited to a reception at the end of January. Because -- well, we're not in the loop to understand the "whys" of The Kids' timetable.

Fellow Traveler is having a difficult time with all of this...actually, she's had one hell of a week, and this news, happy as it was, just capped it. Ora pro nobis.

Ties That Gag

Perhaps you need some levity after that last post. (I'm still wiping my smarting eyes after reliving the last few days.)

For reasons I can't explain, at some point during this medical emergency we said we'd invite FT's other sister and niece for a final familial send-off barbecue last night.

Now, I am pleasant with this SIL; we get along all right. But she has a sense of entitlement to FT's home and belongings that I, only child that I am, do not understand.

Yesterday, after arriving, she and FT engaged in semi-kidding -- and I mean semi- -- banter about a chalk landscape in our living room that SIL has, more than once, indicated that she intends to confiscate in the case of FT's departure from this mortal coil. But then she proceeded to take herself on a full visual tour of our home, noting and evaluating our collectibles: their mother's Brazilian iced tea samovar (I'm sure there's some special Portugese term for it, but that's what it is); our living-room lamps; my glass collection; our everyday dishes; our dining room table ("It has such a nice surface"); my great-grandparents' steamer trunk from The Old Country, which is now in our front room. On and on went the verbal inventory of our things.

I experienced flashbacks of the family broughaha that ensued after my paternal grandmother died, when the siblings all fought like cats and dogs for photos and Christmas ornaments, and FT's description of her former in-laws, after her partner died, backing up to her house the very next day with intent to load up pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down, before she stopped them.

"I almost asked your sister to empty her pockets before she left," I told FT, trying to inject some levity into what had been a generally un-funny day, let alone week.

I guess the moral of this story, kids, is to make your wills now. And to periodically change your locks. And that sometimes being an only child feels really, really good.

Ties That Bind

I hear tell that in the past week various weather events and CWA resolutions and other notable happenings have been going on in the wider world.

We've been rather preoccupied, you see, within our own family circle.

Fellow Traveler's sister and nephew came up from Florida last weekend to visit us and other FT family members. The plan was for them to bivouac with us for the second half of their stay, and go with us on a day trip to Mackinac Island, which our nephew had never visited before.

FT's sister is an alcoholic. Her drinking and other substance abuse problems have led to catastrophic consequences in her own life, including incarceration several years ago; she's a convicted felon. These days she maintains a certain level of functionality during the day -- she has a steady job and can pay her own way -- but as soon as she leaves work she starts drinking, and drinks for the rest of the day. She has a significant other who is also an alcoholic; her nights-and-weekends drinking buddy. Their home life is as dysfunctional as you might imagine. Her chain smoking has led to COPD, so she is never far from an inhaler and a portable nebulizer.d

Our nephew's dad, the sister's ex, is another substance-abuse casualty of the 60's and 70's. He is homeless, dying slowly of COPD and other health problems, and more or less lives on our nephew's sofa because no one else will take him in.

Our nephew -- who, FT tells me spent his early years being dragged by his neglectful, itinerent hippie parents from place to place, and who even spent time in foster care -- is a lovely, smart, funny and gentle young man who has, despite incredible odds, not only survived his childhood but has thrived in adulthood. He has a position of responsibility in a large company; he has a full-ride university scholarship and takes classes in addition to his full-time job. But he bears the burden of caring, in various ways, for two seriously damaged parents; he seems older, sadder, more serious, than his peers.

So he and his mother arrived this past week. She was edgy from the rationing of booze and cigarettes necessary in order to stay at her siblings' homes; she was also especially wheezy from COPD, spending a lot of time taking breathing treatments, and nursing a bandaged knee that she was reluctant to explain.

Our goal, as a household, was to help our nephew have as good a time as he could on what was also his vacation. And we knew that he was very much looking forward to a Mackinac Island experience, a place he'd never gotten to visit during his childhood. So we marshalled our resources for a fun trip to the Island and invited one of his other cousins to join us.

We arrived on Mackinac Island on Wednesday around noon and had lunch just a half-block from the dock, with plans to take a carriage tour around the Island afterward. FT's sister had become quiet during the meal, which we attributed to simple fatigue after our long car ride up north; but after a short trip up the street to find the departure point of our tour, we came back to find her in acute respiratory distress, purple and gasping for breath. Our niece said that as soon as she'd gotten on the main street sidewalk she'd started having a severe asthma attack. She'd also failed to pack the steroidal medication she is supposed to keep on hand for such incidents.

FT, seeing the stricken look on our nephew's face, said, "Why don't you and your cousin stay here today. We'll take your mother back to the mainland, and take her to the ER."

So that's what we did. FT's sister seemed to rally even on the ferry trip back; the quick exit from the proximity of horses and the fresh lake air seemed to do her good. By the time we reached St. Ignace she was breathing more smoothly, and insisted that she was fine, that she just needed some rest, and that she'd be happy to simply sightsee from our vehicle until it was time to pick up the kids. So we did that for an hour or so, up to the Les Cheneaux area and back.

As we approached St. Ignace and the ferry dock, FT's sister began to struggle with her breathing again. "I think you'd better take me to the hospital after all," she rasped. Fortunately we knew where that was, and got her to the ER; she was so weak she needed a wheelchair. We were both terrified -- especially from my own experience with my mother -- that she was on her way to a full-blown heart attack. FT stayed with her at the hospital while I took the Jeep back to the dock to pick up our nephew and niece.

We wound up spending the night in St. Ignace...and another night...and another night; with an intervening trip back home to drop off the cousin and find FT's sister's insurance card. It turned out that FT's sister had the beginnings of pneumonia. The doctor was also concerned about her health in general, especially after FT filled the staff in on the alcohol abuse and smoking and general life chaos. On Saturday morning, before she discharged FT's sister, the doctor had a come-to-Jesus chat with her, with her son and FT present, about the consequences of her addictions. "You have COPD. Your smoking, especially, is going to kill you," she added. "If you're not ready to die, you need to stop now."

FT's sister was defiant. "When I quit, it's going to be on my own terms," she announced to her crestfallen son, who'd told us he'd hoped that her cold-turkey three-day cigarette respite would somehow get her over the hump of at least that addiction.

So that's how the drama ended; with FT's sister self-absorbed, surly and demanding for the rest of her stay -- and not only that, but displaying actual aggression and cruelty toward FT, who has done nothing but help her these past few days -- and our nephew trying to put on a brave front for us while running interference for his mom; something I'm sure he's had to do his entire life for both his parents.

It takes a lot to make FT cry, but she cried herself to sleep last night. She is completely spent from this drama, angry at her sister and heartbroken for our nephew.

Addiction, up close like this, looks like a black hole whose voracity swallows everything in its path. It is not only self-destructive, but incredibly selfish.

Summer Vaycay: Da UP

Just a few travel pix from our journey to Hessel/Cedarville, then the southwestern Upper Peninsula:

We flatlanders aren't used to mack-daddy rocks like this boulder gracing the Hessel Cemetery.















Our very favorite tourist trap, just north of St. Ignace, run by a friendly but curmudgeonly older man who likes to talk current events. We were talking about the flat tourist season, and he told us he blamed the weather: "No one wants to spend big bucks taking the family to Mackinac Island and smelling wet horse manure all weekend."























Pte. Seul Choix Lighthouse in Gulliver -- a couple of past lighthouse keepers are supposed to haunt the property, but we didn't experience any paranormal activity the day we visited; just warmth and sunshine and a friendly docent. One of the unintentionally interesting finds at this site was the large pile of zebra mussel shells on the shoreline; zebra mussels are a rogue European mollusk, introduced by ships emptying their ballasts in the Great Lakes, whose voracious eating habits are disrupting the Great Lakes ecosystem. My thought, on seeing the sun-bleached pile of tiny shells, was selling them as landscaping mulch for the waterfront cottage crowd, if they could be mass-harvested without wreaking even more havoc upon our native wildlife. Any entrepreneurs reading this?













The light at Manistique.


















This is an artists' collective gallery in the tiny village of Garden, on the Garden Peninsula between Manistique and Rapid River. We were wowed not only by all the artwork and artisan items made by UP artists and craftspeople, but also by the reasonable prices; why buy a Yooper tourist tschotschke made in China when you can purchase the real deal here?

The peninsula seems to have a more moderate climate than the mainland, with many farms -- a winery, even. There's also a tiny fishing village, Fairport, at the very tip, and a state park preserving the ruins of the old iron-smelting boomtown of Fayette; it's very eerie to see the empty public buildings of this totally abandoned community and ponder the impermanence of life.

A Wild Friday Five

This week RevGalBlogPal Mompriest asks: For this Friday Five, share with us a wild animal story from your life. Or if you've never had such an encounter share with us your five favorite animals, and why. Bonus for videos and photos!

And, on cue, I produce a photo of a wonderful wildlife encounter we had this week on the Garden Peninsula of Michigan's Upper Peninsula...this is a little curled finger of mostly farmland that juts out into the north shore of Lake Michigan between Escanaba and Manistique.

We were backtracking from a drive down the highway that runs lengthwise down the peninsula, through the village of Garden down to the ruins of the historic Fayette iron-smelting town, then on to tiny Fairport at the tip, when we stopped at a small cemetery just south of Garden to let Gertie burn off the energy that builds up when she spends time in the Jeep. (As regular readers know, our dog loves to slalom around cemetery stones.) As we approached, we noticed a large bird sitting atop a pole planted in the middle of the graveyard; as we drew closer I recognized it as an osprey, a "fish hawk"; these are not necessarily uncommon in Michigan, but pesticide use in the 50's and 60's and ongoing habitat destruction have taken a toll on their numbers. The bird sat impassively as we pulled up to the roadside.

"Look," said Fellow Traveler. "There's its nest." At a corner of the cemetery stood a much longer pole with a nesting platform and second osprey sitting atop, covered with assorted dead branches and a jaunty sprig of what appeared to be cedar poking up from one end of the nest. A human benefactor had added a plastic owl to a nearby post, apparently to scare away possible predators.

I slowly got out my camera, while the osprey on the lower post fidgeted. I was able to take one picture before it flew away, accompanied by its mate, to a telephone pole a short distance away.

This was the best wildlife encounter we had on our entire trip, including our unintentional excursion into the southern edge of the Seney Wildlife Refuge the next day during a random adventure into the countryside. We wish long life and many successful fledges of youngsters to the osprey family we met.

Bonus: I'm an animal person; have been since I was a child growing up on a small farm that was a veritable Wild Kingdom of fascinating beasties large and small. It's hard for me to pick favorites. But I will name five wild animals that I enjoy and admire.

1. Wolves. I admire wolves for their intelligence, cooperative behavior and well-ordered social life. They often seem to be a more well adjusted species than homo sapiens.

2. Crows and ravens. I like members of the crow family for all the same reasons. I think there's a lot more going on in their "bird brains" than even animal behaviorists think, which is why our ancestors -- across cultures, I may add -- considered them significant, sacred creatures.

3. Chickadees. I love the childlike nosiness and friendliness of chickadees; the way they'll, with little prompting, sit on your hand when you come out to fill the bird feeder in the wintertime, and the way they'll respond to human mimicking of their happy "dee-dee-dee" call. (The ominous two-note song that sounds like an English police siren is the unhappy chickadee call.) I remember being on retreat several years ago and encountering a family of chickadees in an old spruce plantation -- Mom, Pop and several newly fledged youngsters. They acted as if I were the first human they'd ever encountered close-up. They perched within touching distance; they clowned around like little parakeets, swinging on spruce cones and hanging upside down from twigs. When they sang "Dee-dee-dee!" I answered back, which seemed to delight them and animate their antics even more. Apparently I was the best entertainment they'd had in the neighborhood in a long time.

4. Robins. Robins are another species whose ease of interaction with humankind I find touching. I remember, back at Cold Comfort Cottage, digging a flower bed one day and finding various obectionable things -- grubs and cutworms -- in the soil. A curious robin had been watching from a short distance; I tossed a fat grub out onto the lawn, and the robin immediately snatched it up and took it away. The robin came back; I kept tossing worms in its direction, and it kept taking them. When I was done, we kind of exchanged nods and went our separate ways. Interspecies cooperation -- it's a good thing.

5. Coyotes. I have only seen a coyote in action in the wild once -- I saw one slinking through the grass in a woodland clearing near Lake City. But I love their smarts and adaptibility. I also enjoy their mournful-sounding little howls.