A "Love Your Mother" Friday Five

This week's Friday Five was inspired by the extreme weather events happening...well, just about everywhere around the globe.

1. Have you experienced living through an extreme weather event- what was it and how did you cope?

When I was about junior-high-school age our area experienced a three-day blizzard/ice storm that knocked out our power. I remember my parents burying food from the freezer in the snow outside...eating by candlelight...shivering in the cold, despite our back-up wood stove, and cooking on same...snow banks that soared above the roads, once the county plows were finally able to get out. At the time it was more exciting than frightening, although now as a Responsible Adult I'd be in an uproar over impassible roads and frozen pipes and spoiling food and dying tropical foliage in my home.

I've also been in the immediate area of a tornado. This was when I was in school. One afternoon, in the wake of a strong thunderstorm, the sky grew eerily green and quiet, with woolly black clouds dangling ominously overhead, and suddenly an emergency siren sounded across campus. My dormmates and I were evacuated to the basement, where we had to sit along the hallways and "assume the position" -- knees up, head down -- until the all-clear was given. (A pizza delivery kid who'd been in the building at the time was also there with us, which provided a small bit of comic relief as we wondered what was going on outside.)


2. How important is it that we wake up to issues such as global warming?
I think it's very important; which isn't to say that people will actually do it, until it affects them personally in a dramatic way. And even then you will find people wanting to ideologize the science of it in ways that make me want to bite a chunk out of my desk.


3. The Christian message needs to include stewardship of the earths resources agree/ disagree?
I very much agree. But I think the discussion needs to become serious, and not devolve into the sort of superficial, ribbon-wearing "awareness" campaigns and minimal-commitment gestures that -- ahem -- some of us mainliners are inclined to fall into. Good stewardship is going to, in the end, hurt. It's going to make us uncomfortable, and inconvenience us, and keep us from owning all the toys we want. Are we truly willing to step up to that? And I'm asking myself this same question, as I look at my own piddling efforts to reduce my carbon footprint.


And because it is summer- on a brighter note....


4. What is your favourite season and why?

Oh, definitely autumn -- mild sweater-weather, temperatures, beautiful colors, those misty fall mornings...delightful. The best time for hikes and picnics, in my humble opinion.


5. Describe your perfect vacation weather....
See above. Or pre-summer -- like, the first couple weeks of June, when everything is still freshly green and it isn't stiflingly hot.

Friday Poetry Bloggery

The Peace of Wild Things .

Ministerially Speaking Friday Five

Share a moment/ time of real encouragement in your journey of faith.
It happened a couple of weeks ago, when our assisting-minister team pow-wowed with our pastor at his home for a couple of hours, just talking about how we might take lay ministry to the next level in our community. Frankly, I have been so frustrated with my formal lay ministry program, so fuzzy about what the point of it all actually is and so distracted by other issues that I'd kind of put this sector of my life on a back burner -- way back. Being able to talk freely and being challenged to think ahead instead of ruminate on the present was very helpful.

Do you have a current vision / dream for your work/ family/ministry?
Well, I'll talk about ministry, since that's the general direction these questions seem to be headed. And you know, as far as ministry, I really don't have a specific vision. I mean, my pastor and I are talking about the Internet as a way to open up the walls of our church, so to speak, far beyond the boundaries of geography or even church affiliation, and that would be kind of fun to pursue. I enjoy doing what I'm doing now, as an assisting minister; would maybe like to do more of it. I did tell my pastor that what excites me is being able to do Christianity "at the margins," with people who have been alienated from Christianity by their past Christian experience. Maybe I could be...kind of an undercover pastor. A pastor without portfolio. A Friar Tuck to the religiously disaffected people whose paths cross mine. Somefin' like that.

Money is no object and so you will.....
Quit working for money and become a jack-of-all-trades church rat at my parish/professional volunteer elsewhere, doing things that interest me.

How do you see your way through the disappointments? What keeps you going?
I think that one of the big things that keeps me going is, interestingly, my experience of communal worship. I can be feeling very discouraged, ready to pack it all in, but then when I worship with others, pray with them, share the Eucharist with them -- it recharges my spiritual batteries. It may be the reminder that this isn't a solitary trip; that we're all in this thing together.


How important are your roots?
The other day I was thinking about my first experience of church: being a tiny little child, happy to be in church because it was such an interesting place, swinging my patent-leather-clad feet contentedly back and forth in the pew and -- much to the consternation of my parents -- applauding after each portion of the liturgy. An early warning sign, perhaps, of my future as a Church Lady, or unique permutation thereof. (And I know that this response really doesn't answer the question...but it's a good story. And it's true.)

Trouble in Paradise

This weekend we went up to Houghton Lake (right hand -- locate spot on upper palm right under middle finger) to go to a large arts-and-crafts store there, and just to sightsee) -- in many ways the experience was similar to our trip to downtown Detroit. There were dozens and dozens of boarded-up, out-of-businesses stores; countless "For Sale" signs in residential areas. Several of the still-extant stores were holding going-out-of-business sales. Once popular, if kitschy, "up north" recreational venues -- putt-putt golf courses, miniature midways, go-cart tracks and such -- were either closed or devoid of customers.

Houghton Lake was always a popular blue-collar resort area. If you lived in southeastern Michigan and worked for the Big Three, you could afford a weekend cottage there; with any luck you could one day retire there.

I fear that those days are gone forever.

I'm really not sure that people from other states understand how badly our state is hurting. And evidently neither do our legislators, many of whom seem to spend most of their time shilling for social-morality legislation safeguarding "traditional marriage" and Ten Commandments statuary while our economy continues to swirl the drain, and our residents continue to flee. A recent poll showed that most new college graduates intend to leave Michigan.

It's a sad state of affairs.

They Get No Respect

Maybe I'm in a perverse mood, but this online conversation just cracked me up. (And for an extra laff, read the "Bible and Science" thread in the same forum.)

If I bite my tongue any more I'll need surgery to reattach it.

Friday Five Potpourri

Well, since I am presently not initiated into the world of Harry Potter -- yes, that's right; haven't even read the first book -- I will tackle the alternative (and eclectic) RevGalBlogPals Friday Five:

Former U.S. First Lady "Lady Bird" Johnson died this week. In honor of her love of the land and the environment, share your favorite flower or wildflower.
Part of me wants to say old roses -- the rambling heirloom-variety rosebushes one finds next to abandoned houses and in old cemeteries. Another part of me wants to say native Michigan orchids, because they're so endangered, and such a treat to find out in the wild: pink lady's slippers are beautiful, and rattlesnake plantains -- the name comes from the checkerboard/scale pattern on the leaves -- that I will very occasionally find in my woods.

A man flew almost 200 miles in a lawn chair, held aloft by helium balloons. Share something zany you'd like to try someday.
I occasionally harbor fantasies of chucking my job and moving up to Benzie County to work as a barista in a cafe. That's pretty zany for me.

Do you have an iPhone? If not, would you want one?
No and no. I have an iPod Nano that I am just barely able to operate, if that tells you anything about my ability to adapt to new technology.

Speaking of which, Blendtec Blenders put an iPhone in one of their super-duper blenders as part of their "Will It Blend?" series. What would YOU like to see ground up, whizzed up or otherwise pulverized in a blender?
Why am I conjuring up sentimental images of Saturday Night Live's "Bassomatic"? (My father used to make bluegill burgers -- they're actually very tasty -- using an old-fashioned meat grinder -- hmmmm....)

According to News of the Weird, a jury in Weld County, Colo., declined to hold Kathleen Ensz accountable for leaving a flier containing her dog's droppings on the doorstep of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, apparently agreeing with Ensz that she was merely exercising free speech. What do you think? Is doggy doo-doo protected by the First Amendment?

I will let my dog, Cody, respond to this question: "Dog doo should absolutely be protected by the First Amendment...along with pee, barking and my remaining three teeth. That's all I have, dammit!"

Motown and Surrounds

Well, I'm back from my trip to the opposite end of the state. Had a great time -- especially at Comerica Park, watching the Tigers beat the Red Sox. (Curtis Granderson rocks the house -- what an outstanding ballplayer.) The next day, Saturday, Fellow Traveler and I spent a marathon day at Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn -- at the latter we sat in the back seats of the same bus where Rosa Parks made a stand, or actually a sit, for civil rights. (You may not know this, but the Henry Ford isn't connected with the Ford Motor Company -- it's run by a nonprofit corporation -- and the museum isn't just about automobiles, although obviously the auto industry and American automobile culture are predominant themes of exhibits. Oh -- and this museum complex is also home to a charter school whose students, all from Wayne County, are chosen by lottery; the classrooms are right on premises for full-immersion, hands-on learning. How cool would it be to go to high school here?
On Saturday evening we went to dinner in Greektown -- had absolutely fabulous stuffed grape leaves, hummus and lemon chicken soup. On Sunday we headed into Ann Arbor for our periodic visit to Whole Foods Market, where we provision for those hard months back up in the boonies where hell will freeze over before a Whole Foods ever opens for business.

I've been to Detroit before, as a much younger person, but this was the first time I spent any significant time right in the city. It's a bittersweet experience -- Comerica Park, for instance, is an incredible ballpark, from the tiger statuary at the entrance to the "walk of fame" inside the stadium featuring statues of famous Tigers ranging from Ty Cobb to Hank Greenburg to Al Kaline. Greektown is fun -- the kitsch factor aside (using faux Greek lettering on a store sign does not guarantee actual Greek food or merchandise inside), it's nice to see a lively, prosperous area in town. But seeing the slow, sad demise of all the wonderful architecture of old Detroit -- all the buildings familiar to my mother when she worked downtown at the old Michigan Consolidated Gas Company -- is extremely depressing. It's a shame of epic proportions. We drove past one venerable building, empty except for the ground floor, that housed a preschool -- door and windows heavily barred, like a jail. What's it like to drop your kid off there in the morning on the way to work, or to work there, or to be a child looking out of the barred windows at the ravaged downtown? Terribly, terribly sad. On the other hand -- some institutions, Detroit-tough, maintain; the beautiful old Episcopal church next to Comerica Park sported a large banner on its side advising, "This Is the Place To Pray For the Tigers and the Lions."

It was, overall, a good vacation -- recreational, educational, social, relaxing, stimulating; everything a vacation should be. And a reminder of how much I need to be out of my current job and into some endeavor that can help me feel as if I'm not looking out through barred windows at the world.

Chop Talk

I know...too much foodology and too little theology. (Blame my lay ministry program...I have no idea what in hell is going on with that; I feel like the ugly stepchild languishing in a cindery corner of that endeavor. Not that I'm bitter or anything.) But this is a great recipe:

You need two cups of Guinness Stout -- which I've conveniently had gathering dust in a corner of the pantry since St. Patrick's Day. You need two cups of water. One finely chopped onion and one or two minced garlic cloves. A quarter cup of brown sugar, a quarter cup of molasses and a quarter cup of kosher (NO substitutes) salt.

You throw some pork chops in this brine; I used boneless loin chops. You let them marinate for at least half a day. Then you charcoal-grill them. Better yet, toss some soaked applewood chips on the hot coals just before you put the chops on the grill.

The chops are incredibly tender; have a very intriguing and nuanced flavor courtesy of the marinade; and develop a golden self-glaze from same.

These chops are so good that you may not want to make them for guests; you may want to keep this recipe as a proprietary treat for your closest loved ones, on a nice summer day when you want to spend quality time on the porch.

Nowhere Land

Traveling down to Motown one day, then up north to The Leelanau the next -- two areas of Michigan with a distinct feel and attitude -- has been a rather sad and frustrating reminder to me that mid-Michigan, home of Outer Podunk, has no regional character whatsoever.

I shouldn't say that, exactly. But for some unfathomable reason, instead of embracing any kind of regional pride of place, folks around here -- including people with my own pedigree, whose babushka'd great-grandmothers from Hamburg or Odessa or Danzig hung on the rails of steamers headed for Ellis Island, staring uncomprehendingly at Lady Liberty -- have appropriated a certain sort of off-the-rack faux Southern culture as their own; country music, pickup trucks, Walmart and NASCAR, with a chaw of Skoal in your cheek for good measure.

(And I just need to add, because I must vent, that if I had to listen to my local country music station all day -- jingoistic songs and news reports that sound like they've been vetted through the GOP propaganda department and Focus on the Family [which I guess is the same thing], plus vomitrocious fundamentalist cant -- I'd either ask to be sponsored by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, or beg for someone to hold a nail gun to my temple and put me out of my misery.)

What the hell?

I mean, if you're going to borrow someone else's regional character, why not borrow it from a region that makes more sense? I make fun of my neighbor's extremely WASPy kid swaggering around in ghetto wear and listing to rap music...but at least it's a kind of paen to the south side of Nine Mile, here in our own state. Now, I find The Red Green Show so much like my own neighborhood -- especially the ubiquitous chainsaw in the background -- cottage culture here is very much like that across the border, or even over the Bridge. But the pseudo-Dixie psychic connection, I just don't get. Why?

Good Eats Up North

Well, I'm into the third day of my vacation, and I have literally traveled from one end of the state to the other: On Saturday Fellow Traveler and I drove to Detroit to pick up her son, who's visiting from New York City, and then yesterday we drove all the way up to Leelanau County to see the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

We couldn't have had a nicer driving day yesterday -- temps barely pushing 70 and the bluest of blue skies. After taking some good-natured ribbing for navigating my citified companions into a whole lot of nowhere we reached the charming, historic and artsy village of Empire right next to the dunes, and had lunch at Joe's Friendly Tavern , at the end of Front Street, the village's main drag.

Joe's Tavern is a village fixture, comfortably "up north" without being precious, and attracts everyone from locals out for Sunday dinner to the large numbers of kayakers, cyclists and other outdoorsy folks who hang out in this area, to garden-variety fudgies like ourselves. Their menu is great -- they're locally famous for their hamburgers, and have a long list of specialty burgers, and they also carry a number of menu items with interesting regional twists.

We started out our meal with a basket of paper-thin sweet potato chips and a bowl of black cherry salsa -- for you non-Michiganians out there, you need to understand that, in this cherry-growing region of the state, if cooks can add cherries or cherry products to anything, no matter how improbable, they will do so -- that were excellent; the slow-burning, sweet heat of the salsa was great with the crispy brown chips. (The bar also serves a sweet potato nachos dish that includes more of the salsa, plus bleu cheese.) FT's son ordered a barbecued buffalo brisket sandwich that was mighty tasty, while FT and I split two appetizers -- whitefish strips and "Joe wings." The whitefish -- another regional speciality, and so fresh it tasted like it had just come in off the docks down the road -- was cut into strips, breaded with flour and cornmeal and deep-fried; like fish sticks for discerning grownups. The chicken wings are coated generously with the bar's own wing sauce recipe, which -- surprise! -- includes cherries; assertively nippy without being overpoweringly hot, but with a hint of sweetness. All of which is to say...we enjoyed our meal a great deal, and were so full afterward that we eschewed all our other favorite snack-attack destinations the rest of the day...not even the Phoenix Cafe in Beulah, which makes the ginger scones that I need at least one of each year to call it a summer.

After crawling around in the dune sand a bit, we headed up to Leland, just to give The Kid a quick tour of Fishtown, and to stop in at the Good Harbor Vineyard winery, where we toured the facilities and then engaged in some wine tasting. (Fellow Traveler and I love the Fishtown white table wine, which lends itself to a lot of foods and is also pretty inexpensive.) I picked up a dry Riesling and a chardonnay -- the stores around here sell a very limited selection of Good Harbor wines, and none of the varietals, so it was interesting to see some of their other wines. In the village of Leland we ran into the local grocery store, where I was pleasantly surprised to find some of the local Leelanau Cheese Company raclette (which makes the best top-drawer grilled cheese sandwiches), and fresh hummus from a local organic-foods restaurant. (We did not, however, stop in at The Cove, a popular restaurant next to Fishtown, whose signature cocktail is a "Chubby Mary" -- a Bloody Mary sporting a hollow-eyed smoked chub from the fish smokery next door, instead of a celery stick.)

It was a fun day. Long but fun.

Friday Five: Gifts and Talents

Astoudingly, we were talking about a lot of this stuff at my lay ministry pow-wow last night; so imagine my surprise to see the RevGalBlogPals Friday Five this morning:

1.Personality tests; love them or hate them?
Oh, I loooooove them. If I see one in a magazine, I am compelled to take it. Whether I actually learn anything useful from them, or if it's just an exercise in narcissism, is another question.

2. Would you describe yourself as practical, creative, intellectual or a mixture ?
Yes. But probably less practical than the others. Which I suspect makes life a little harder for me and the ones around me. ("Ground Control to Major Tom....")

3. It is said that everyone has their 15 minutes of fame; have you had your yet? If so what was it, if not dream away what would you like it to be?
Because I work in public relations on a local level I have a certain degree of extremely localized "fame" -- get a byline in the local papers every now and then and do a regular 1-minute radio PSA on a local station. This is probably as good as it gets; but if I dared to dream, I might dream of becoming a regularly published essayist.

4. If you were given a 2 year sabatical ( oh the dream of it) to create something would it be music, literature, art.....something completely different...share your dream with us...
Oh, literature, definitely. Those essays. About all kinds of things.

5. Describe a talent you would like to develop, but that seems completely beyond you.
Is life organization a talent? I think probably so. That'd be it. Not living in physical and mental chaos. Oh, and swimming...which is less a matter of feeling that it's beyond me and more a lack of opportunity for adult "Swimming For Dummies" lessons where I live. (Ironically, here in the lake-studded northwoods there are almost no formal swimming classes for anyone over the age of about 12.)

I Am a Camera...

I have to be, because my camera is broken, again, with the same disk-error problem it developed last year during our UP vacation.

This means that there is a new camera in my future (one that is not a Canon PowerShot A80, in case you're wondering).

But in the meantime, I'll tell you about my perennial garden, the one I began from scratch last spring. My nigra hollyhocks, a velvety purple-black, are blooming profusely; I have a mauve foxglove with multiple flower stalks; my purple hourglass flowers have been blooming to beat the band, as have my pinks and volunteer "Jolly Joker" violas, with their surprising plum-and-orange two-tone petals; a beautiful purple Japanese iris just opened yesterday. I can see now where I made some poor choices in positioning certain plants -- a lavender aster is trying valiantly to squeeze into the light between a sprawling butterfly bush and a coneflower -- but moving stuff around is part of the gardening game, isn't it.

Can't wait to get a new camera, though, so you can actually see all of this.

Notes From Depressionville

My shrink tells me that I need to "accentuate the positive" and -- he was inspired by listening to Madeleine Peyroux in concert -- "smile though your heart is breaking." If this were so freakin' easy, then why would I need to see a shrink in the first place?

If you're depressed, do not read the story of Saul.

On a brighter note: Having lost much of my appetite, I find myself losing some weight. "Make depression work for you." But what happens when the positive reinforcement of seeing a buffer me in the mirror gets my tastebuds rebooted for Buffalo wings and Ben & Jerry's?

Believe it or not, one of the things that has shored up my lagging feelings of personal competency is...golf. This weekend, for the very first time, I picked up some golf clubs and batted some whiffle balls around. And -- I can scarcely believe this -- I was fairly good at it. I did what FT told me to do with the club and with my feet, and the ball went in the direction I wanted it to go. At home, I tried my hand at putting, and actually sent the ball into a styrofoam cup. Who knew that I might be good at a sport? (A caution to others who might be inspired by my story: It is not a good idea to learn golf in the presence of three dogs. Cody found knocking the whiffle balls off the tee with his nose to be great fun, while the two big dogs felt compelled to stand within inches of me and my swinging golf club: We love you. Whatever it is you're doing, we're with you 100 percent. Let's stand even closer to you. Because we love you. Keep whacking the metal thing; we'll just duck. Maybe.

Another way to bolster weak self-esteem: Go on a job interview. Just for kicks and giggles; even if you're not serious about it. I've been out of practice for about seven years; it felt good to get back in the saddle.

It's a blessing to have a loved one who understands depression and knows that my feeling down is not a reflection on her or on our relationship. Even when we go through our weekly Kelly Fryer devotional and my responses sound like something out of Hamlet.

A Great Cucumber Salad

It's been wicked hot here in Michigan -- unnaturally so, when you consider that it isn't even July yet -- so we have been living on our respective porch and patio much of the week, and grilling our meals; we invested in a nice little portable charcoal grill for my place, and I've lent Fellow Traveler my mack-daddy George Foreman electric kettle grill for her patio.

This weekend I made chicken satay with bottled peanut sauce...while looking for suitable go-alongs on the Internet I came upon this recipe. It is so good...I am not usually thrilled about traditional cucumber salad, but this kicks things up a notch.

Indonesian Cucumber Salad For Two

1 large cucumber, peeled/seeded/sliced thin
the juice of half a lime
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp. sweet chile paste
maybe three sliced green onions
a tiny splat of fish sauce or oyster sauce or soy sauce

First of all: These measurements are highly arbitrary starting points; taste and refine. (You'll want to add a lot more chili paste, I found, and you might want more lime juice as well.) Refrigerate at least an hour. Enjoy. This rocks; and I think the flavors improve the next day.

Stuff Happenin' at Church

Our lay ministry training program may be in a moribund state these days -- our facilitators communicate solely via notes on their website -- but lay ministry is being kicked up into a new gear at my congregation this summer. This week we assisting ministers will be meeting with the pastor to talk about how we can expand the parameters of our duties in our congregation.

My pastor is looking ahead to the day when he retires. He really wants to create a congregational culture in which "Herr Pastor" is not the be-all and end-all of ministry. With trained lay ministers on deck, and with the congregation about to move into a new worship space, it seems to be a good time to retool around here.

Especially in the context of my own paid-job malaise...I'm looking forward to this discussion. Maybe I'll finally discover what I want to do when I grow up.

Friday Five: Summertime

This week's five from the RevGalBlogPals:


1.Favorite summer food(s) and beverage(s)
Ah, where to start...asparagus; strawberries; raspberries; sweet corn; summer squash and zucchini; fresh, non-store-bought tomatoes; anything grilled over charcoal. Iced tea; Grand Traverse Select semi-dry Reisling, a very light and almost effervescent regional wine that goes really well with grilled chicken and other lighter summer foods.

2. Song that "says" summer to you. (Need not be about summer explicitly.)
Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" -- but only if I'm in the car with the windows open and the radio really loud.

3. A childhood summer memory.
I was just reminiscing about this the other day. In the summertime, after long days spent haying, canning or engaged in other summer activities, my mom, dad and I would sit behind our farmhouse -- years before my grandfather had salvaged an old church pew from somewhere, painted it and placed it against the south wall -- and watch the sun go down. There in the twilight you could listen to killdeer, bobwhite and jacksnipe...smell clover and curing hay...watch the changing colors of the evening...see flittering bats overhead...feel the dark slowly envelope the farm. It was one of our few family bonding moments.

4. An adult summer memory.
I have amassed so many delightful recent summer memories...it's hard to pick one. Driving around the coast of Lake Superior last year and eating a pasty in Paradise was a great memory, as was hanging out in the wonderful little Upper Peninsula village of Hessel. It wasn't quite summer yet, as I recall, but Fellow Traveler and I also had a great time driving around the Sleeping Bear Dunes last year. This year some of our pleasantest times have been right out on my front porch, sitting in our stadium chairs and "chilling." Let's see...back in my solo days, one memorable Saturday afternoon was spent in Benzonia, Michigan, in what used to be its cheerfully bohemian natural-foods restaurant, drinking cherry cider and quietly grooving to Van Morrison's "Moondance" while watching the parade of Interesting People that such venues tend to draw.

5. Describe a wonderful summer day you'd like to have in the near future. (weather, location, activities)
In two weeks I am going to be 1)doing the Ann Arbor culture crawl; 2)going to a Tigers game; and 3)going back up to the Leelanau Peninsula. I hope that all these days will be wonderful in their own ways.

Optional: Does your place of worship do anything differently in the summer? (Fewer services, casual dress, etc.)
Well, about a third of our congregation disappears, for various reasons, between Memorial Day and Labor Day; so our already low formality quotient ratchets down several more notches. It's actually a great time to assist or lay-preach.

Hibernating...

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth...just regrouping. Please check back! And I know I owe at least two of you memes.

The Virtual Congregation

Over at our place we're talking about setting up a congregational website, or even a blog, where our geographically scattered parishoners and supporters can keep in touch with what's going on.

I think this is a great idea, and one that has potential for reaching out to far more people than those connected to our congregation.

Here's a question for you, readers: If you could design an online presence for your congregation, what are some things you'd like that presence to do? Do you envision it primarily as a meeting place for members of your church, or something with a broader outreach and appeal? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Friday Poetry Blogging

Fellow "blue highways" travelers know those feelings of mingled curiosity and melancholy elicited by an abandoned village along the roadside -- abandoned houses, sometimes reduced to just the chimneys; an empty, windowless false-front store or two; streets laid out with deliberation, but going nowhere, with perhaps just one or two extant households still hanging on.

Here is a poem about such places.

Friday Five: Fantasy Island

This week's questions from the RevGalBlogPals ask us to design our own "fantasy island" vacation:

1)What book(s) will you bring?
Light reading with lots of pictures -- cookbooks, bird books, etc. You probably thought I was going to get all theological here. My experience is that "heavy" reading and vacations don't mix well.

2) What music accompanies you?
An eclectic mix of jazz, blues, folk, with some world music and classic beach-bum tunes thrown in.

3) What essentials of everyday living must you take (as in the health and beauty aids aisle variety)?
Soap. Toothpaste. Deodorant. Non-DEET bug dope. (My fantasy island is here in the Upper Midwest, where that's a necessity.) That's about it.

4a) What technological gadgets if any, will you take with you or do you leave it all behind?
Oh, I'd take my iPod. And it'd be swell if this quiet, stress-free island miraculously had wi-fi.

4b) What level of technology would you insist be present on the island?
Flush toilets. I will pump my own water and even heat it up on a woodstove, but the romance of scurrying outside to some odiferous and vermin-filled outhouse has lost whatever marginal thrill it may have ever held for me.

5) What culinary delights will you partake in while there?
Pancakes and maple syrup. Gotta have pancakes and maple syrup while staying in a vacation cottage.

As a bonus question, what makes for a perfect day on vacation for you?
The ability to live completely in the moment -- to have not a care in the world except what I might be doing at any given time.

Love My Job; Hate My job

I love my job. I love the fact that I work for an agency that can make a real difference in individuals' quality of life. I love being able to write, to create, to educate. I love the feeling that what I do matters in my community.

I hate my job. I hate the fact that it is a public-sector job, and subject to the sort of niggling, soul-killing, bean-counting federal and state regulations that squelch improvement and innovation, and that really have nothing to do with the quality of the front-line services our agency provides. I hate the fact that I have multiple bosses -- depending on what day it is, it ranges from one to four. I hate the feeling of being trapped because I'm too timid to explore other options. I hate the economic malaise of my state; the lack of vision.

This is where I am right now. I feel like that Flannery O'Connor character who had LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles. I don't know what to do; I don't know where to go. But I know, now, that here is not the place I need to be. This week we're working through the themes of "lost" and "found" in Dancing Down the Hallway; and right now, vocationally, I am feeling very lost.

Creature Comforts

For those of you who have given up on network TV...right now we are both absolutely cracking up over Creature Comforts on CBS. This show, created by the Wallace and Grommit people, superimposes "slice o' life" interviews of just folks upon Claymation animals. It is too funny...literally, it's too funny to have a snowball's chance on mass-market television. But we're enjoying it right now.

We've All Had Days Like This...

Hat tip to Going Jesus , a great website to visit if you need a laugh.

The Deal of the Meal

Our search for a healthier lifestyle got kicked up a notch last week when Fellow Traveler received notice from her doctor that her cholesterol levels were waaaaay too high, and that she was headed for bypass country in another decade or so if things didn't change.

Because our dietary needs are sometimes so different -- I need lots of fiber; she can't eat very much of it; I like lots of vegetables and fruits; she can't always eat them comfortably -- trying to work up menus for the two of us can constitute a culinary minefield. But we both have family and personal medical histories that are moving us in a more vegetarian direction, even though it's a real challenge.

I'm generally not a real fan of meat analogues -- in my experience, the more that a product tries to replicate meat, the worse it tastes -- but today we had BLT's with Morningstar Farms fake bacon and some sliced avocado, on Amish dill bread, and they were very good. Even though the bakn, or ba-con, or whatever it calls itself, looks damned scary in the package, like something a little kid extruded through a Play-Doh machine -- keep an open mind, and you'll find it surprisingly edible, even if you're like me and prefer your bacon on the chewy, not crispy, side. I think it would be good to add to dishes that generally have a smoked meat in them, like pea soup or red beans and rice, to add a familiar smoky flavor.

We also got out the charcoal grill last night and made grilled Mediterranean pizzas -- the little Bobolis with herbed soy feta, baby spinach, marinated fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and olives; grilled zucchini and eggplant that had first been marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and Greek herb mix; and grilled peaches for dessert. Apart from the complicating factor of a vigorous thunderstorm rolling through the area just as the pizzas were ready to go in the grill -- this was a great meal. We used a wood-chip pan in the grill, so the food absorbed a nice, smoky but not overpowering flavor. And we learned that it is worth the fuss of preparing the charcoal to grill vegetables and vegetable entrees.

Of course, as I'm typing this, I have the hugest craving for a big ol' half a barbecued chicken, or a steak, or Greek shish kabobs...but we're serious about eating lower on the food chain, so we figure if we have to do it we're going to do it with a little ingenuity and panache. It's the best revenge.

Booking It

Since my humble blog was recently visited by no less a Lutheran celebrity than Kelly Fryer (I am not worthy!), this is probably a good time to put a plug in for the devotional book Dancing Down the Hallway: Spiritual Reflections For the Every Day, cowritten by Fryer and Rimothy J. Ressmeyer, which was just delivered to our house.

Fellow Traveler was looking for a user-friendly devotional book with Scripture readings and meditations. Dancing Down the Hallway is divided into 52 chapters, one for each week of the year; each week features a Scripture reading, a kind of minimalist meditation based on the reading, a series of questions for reflection for the coming week, and space for journaling. We spent about an hour discussing the first chapter, and we found this so insightful and enjoyable that we think we're going to make this a household "family night" ritual, then do our own private reflection and journaling as well. It's a simple, but not simpleminded, book; and keeping it simple around here is what we nant to do in the weeks to come.

Cooties

There's a young woman who goes to our church -- she's maybe late 20's or early 30's -- who won't sit with us in the pew.

It happened again today. Fellow Traveler was ahead of me, going down the main aisle to find a seat; she picked out our favorite row (as one of our seniors remarked to me once, "We're all like cows in the barn, heading for our favorite stanchions"), said, "Excuse me," and then proceeded down the pew to the other end, next to the window. As we sat down, the woman got up and left for another seat. But when the pastor's wife sat next to us a few minutes later, the woman changed her seat again, and resumed her previous position at the aisle end of that row, as if the pastor's wife had created a kind of physical boundary that made it okay to to sit in our pew.

Initially, when this phenomenon began, I thought that the woman simply didn't want to have any company in the pew; and the front rows of our church, like that of other Lutheran churches, tend to be a no-man's-land, so solitary folks who can nonetheless tolerate being that front and center pretty much have their pick of wide open spaces. But we've observed this flight behavior enough to conclude that something is up; that for whatever reason, this woman doesn't want to sit in the same pew as us, even at the far end.

We shower every morning; we don't smell bad, at least as far as I can tell. We do not have communicable diseases. We don't have screaming, hooliganesque small children in tow. We don't mumble to our imaginary friends during the service. We just sit and stand; stand and sit; make the sign of the cross a few times; murmur "And also with you" at the appropriate points in the liturgy; pass the peace. (This individual, by the way, does not care to engage in this ritual with us either.)

I remember back in about first grade, when Cootie was the rage in my class. If you were "it," the other kids would shriek in mock horror and run away from you; sometimes "cootie" status would follow you from the playground back into the classroom, where you'd find yourself in a state of pariahhood for the rest of the day.

I can see six-year-olds, savages that they are, getting some sort of psychic payoff from indulging in Cootie. Twenty- or thirty-somethings...not so much. I just don't get it.

Friday Poetry Bloggery

Last Monday Fellow Traveler -- who has been my nursemaid, activity director and amateur therapist during my recent time of trial -- persuaded me to go for a ride around the countryside. We drove around my old neighborhood, past the 40 acres of pasture and hayfield, a few miles down the road from my childhood home, that my family used to own. I pointed out the pair of gnarled, half-dead snow apple trees out in the middle of the hayfield, and noted that my grandparents had planted them sometime back in the 'teens.

I've always liked being around apple trees...enjoying their motherly silhouettes against back yards and farm fields, sitting under them on a hot summer day, climbing the low-hanging limbs, watching the everchanging assortment of birds that like them too.

Here is a poem by Wendell Berry, about apple trees.

Friday Five: Hopes, Visions and Dreams

1. Think back to the time you left high school: What were your hopes, visions and dreams for your life/for the world?
Oh, this one is easy. I wanted to be Mary Tyler Moore, tossing my beret in the air on the way to some exciting, creative job in the big city, then going home to a well-appointed career-gal apartment in a folkloric/historic old house.

2. Have those hopes, visions and dreams changed a lot, or are some of them still alive and kicking? (Share one if you can.)
Right now my major hope/dream/vision is feeling better. A new beret would be nice too, though.

3. Hebrews 11:1: " Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. " Comforting, challenging or frustrating?
I'm reminded of the line in Baptized We Live that talks about clinging to faith even when there's no evidence that God exists or cares. A friend of mine noted, in response, "God, you Lutherans are a depressing people."

4. If resources were unlimited, and you had free rein to pursue a vision, what would it be?
I would love to find a way to earn a living in northwest Michigan, Fellow Traveler's and my favorite place in the state; find a nice, low-maintenance, un-fancy house with enough room for the four-legged children; and settle into a laid-back, crunchy-granola lifestyle.

5. Finally, with summer upon us- and not to make this too heavy- share your dream holiday....where, when and who with...
FT and I have talked about someday talking the the grand tour through New England and the Maritime Provinces. Might Vermont become the new Benzie County in our household consciousness? Hmmm.

Checked Out

I checked out last week.

A combination of life stressors, chronic and acute, as well as a latent tendency toward depression that I think runs on both sides of my family and that I have been laboring under my whole life, even before I had a name for what it was, came to a head on Friday. I found myself in the midst of a full-blown panic attack. I couldn't think sequentially; I couldn't make simple decisions; I got lost driving a route I've driven for ages; I was crying, and sweating, and felt like I was dying. I'd had to attend a late-afternoon community meeting for my job that was fortuitously close to the local Community Mental Health office; so a concerned Fellow Traveler met me in the parking lot, and we went in, and I dissolved into a warm puddle of meltdown.

I'm not going to talk a lot about what happened next, although I will say that if you don't feel suicidal or homicidal before walking into a CMH, you will a half-hour later when the staff is still interrogating you about your damn proofs of income and health insurance.

Anyhow...I got fast-tracked to a therapy appointment the following week. And in the interim I spent Memorial Day weekend alternating between the sofa and the bed, cowered under a comforter, wishing I could enter a kind of hibernation state and remain there until...whenever. I only spoke or ate under duress. And I cried, a lot.

This week I was able to muddle my way through the workday, and also had my first therapy session. I am waiting to see a doctor to get a prescription for some antidepressants; I've always resisted mood-altering pharmaceuticals, just because I didn't want to wind up on another maintenance drug, and because I was afraid of some of the side effects I saw in friends and coworkers who were on "happy pills"...but I'm tired of feeling tired and overwhelmed and befuddled and anxious. No mas.

So...I'm back. Maybe not every day. But I'm here.

Friday Poetry Blogging

It's spring plowing time in Outer Podunk...drive around and you'll see the local Amish farmers driving their four- and sometimes even eight-horse teams around the fields. This photo is obviously not of the Amish -- it's from the Willamette Valley back in the 1930's -- but it still looks very familiar.

And also familiar is the image captured in this contemporary haiku:

spring plowing
a flock of blackbirds
turns inside out
-- Tom Painting

Friday Five: Fantasy Meet-Up

This week's Friday Five asks the RevGalBlogPals to imagine their ideal future meetup. While I suspect I would have to participate in such an affair in spirit but not in body, here are my thoughts:

What would the meeting be like? (Continuing Ed? Retreat? Outside Speakers? Interest Groups? Workshops? Hot Stone Massages? Pedicures? Glorified Slumber Party?)
Yes.

When in 2008 might you be able to attend? January? Shortly after Easter? Summer? Fall? Some other time?
When I'm much richer and much less busy. (For some reason those two things don't seem to mesh, do they.)

Where would your dream meeting location be? (Urban Hotel? Rural Retreat Center? New England Camp? Southwestern Fantasy Hotel? Far away from civilization? Nearby Outlets or Really Great Thrift Stores?)
While I know that the Upper Midwest isn't represented all that strongly in the group, a really great retreat center is The Kettunen Center in Tustin, Michigan. It has all the rustic charm of a camp, with many wonderful and actually surprising amenities, including room options that rival that of many area motels. For RevGals desiring some sort of big-city distraction, the Traverse City area -- major upscale shopping and eating opportunities, as well as beautiful lakeshore scenery -- is a little over an hour away.

On the other hand...you could all come to Outer Podunk and camp out in the city park. Dining amenities include the lake perch fish fry down at the local golf course; a flashing-neon 50's-repro diner in the next town, run by collectors of 50's-60's memorabilia, serving great burgers and shakes; and excellent Buffalo wings with bleu cheese dressing from a tavern down the street. If you're a vegan you're pretty much out of luck in rural Michigan, but we could whip you up a bowl of hummus or somethin' at Cold Comfort Cottage. (Which, sadly, only sleeps maybe three -- four counting the La-Z-Boy and five-and-a-half if I'd ever clean out the scary middle bedroom. Camping on premises would require multiple immersion baths in DEET -- probably not a strong selling point.)

Who would make a great keynote speaker? (That's if #1 leads us in that direction.)
I could be partisan and suggest Kelly Fryer -- someone who has been and should again be free to engage in pastoral ministry in the ELCA. For those of us who feel a need to mindfully form our spirituality in ways that better hold us up through the day and through the week, Margaret Guenther -- one of my favorite authors -- might be an interesting choice.

Did I leave out something you want to suggest?
No karaoke. Please.

Jerry Falwell

Last night the ABC evening news carried a story about the plight of the small, furry and utterly adorable pica, the smallest member of the rabbit family, which is disappearing from much of its favored mountainside habitat due to global warming, and may be headed for total extinction.

In all seriousness, I felt more genuine sorrow over this story than I did over the demise of Jerry Falwell. That's just me being honest.

Which begs the question of how one should deal with the death of someone like Falwell, whose legacy -- at least from where I'm sitting -- is one of hatred; of division; of distortion of the Christian message; of ignorance; of diminishment of the quality of public discourse in this country.

I remember Falwell's rise, during my teen years. He, like Richard Nixon, seemed to tap into the fears and discomfort of working-class white people -- people like my parents -- who'd been broadsided by the cultural revolution of the 60's: people appalled by race and anti-war riots; by the hippie culture; by Tillich-quoting white clerics in turtlenecks walking arm in arm with civil-rights activists; by uppity women questioning their traditional roles. My Missouri Synodian father, who wouldn't have given two cents for Falwell's theology, was in Falwell's amen corner when it came to sec-u-lar hu-man-ists and fem-in-ists and ho-mo-sexuals and the ACLU and everyone else who was, in his eyes, running this country into the ground.

Even in those days I thought Falwell was an oaf, a redneck cariacature right out of the Dukes of Hazzard. Later on, Falwell came to represent everything about American pop Christianity that disgusted me; when I went on my Christianity vacation in my 30's, he and his ideological kinfolk were the Christians in my rear-view mirror I was happiest to disassociate myself from.

But that was then, and this is now. And the question becomes: What do you do with the death of a Christian whom you feel spent his time on earth not "mending the broken places" but wilfully breaking them?

And then I have to go back to something my pastor once said. He was talking about his decision to conduct a wedding for a couple he knew -- one partner was a friend from his campus ministry days, and still an active Lutheran layperson, while the other was an atheist. The atheist fiance had agreed to a church wedding out of deference to his significant other and her family, whom he loved; but he requested that my pastor remove any mention of the G-word from the actual wedding vows; because, he pointed out, he did not want to begin his married life in a state of damaged personal integrity by being compelled to make vows to a God in whom he did not believe.

My pastor decided to conduct the wedding with the groom-to-be's proviso. Because, as he asked our congregation afterward, "Have you ever been wrong about anything before?"

I'm sure I have been wrong and will continue to be wrong about a great many things, and do not relish the prospect, even as I rest in the loving and forgiving arms of God, of reviewing all the things that I did get wrong in this life. If there's such a thing as purgatory, I'm guessing this is it. Death is the great leveler, the thing that brings us all to that same place of what my 12-Step friends would call the fearless moral inventory.

So even if I can't think of Falwell's passing with a sense of affection or loss, I can think about it with the empathy of a fellow sinner, getting it wrong in my own ways, saved in the end by grace.

As Long As We're Talking Pizza...

The Friday Five pizza question made me, unsurprisingly, hungry for pizza.

If I had thought about my answer more, I probably would have noted that I tend to go in for the unusual when it comes to pizza. A couple of years ago I came up with this idea, and I enjoy it a lot:

Ratatouille Pizza
a mess of zucchini, yellow squash and, if you like them, eggplant, in whatever proportions you favor, sliced very thin
one large onion, sliced very thin
1 red bell pepper, sliced very thin
two (or more) garlic cloves, minced
olive oil
a couple of fresh tomatoes, diced
mushrooms, if you like them
mozzarella and Parmesan/hard-cheese blend of your choice (I like the parm/romano/asiago
herbs of your choice
Boboli or other premade pizza crust

Place squash/eggplant slices, bell pepper, onion and garlic in a large covered frying pan to which you've added a generous sploosh of olive oil. Heat on high; stir occasionally; when things start really cookin' in the pan, add the mushrooms and turn the heat down to medium. Keep the pan covered; keep stirring. (You're basically half-sauteeing, half steaming the veggies.) After about 15 minutes, the veggies should be tender, with a lot of the vegetable liquid at the bottom of the pan. Add the tomatoes and cook for maybe 5 mintues more, until the tomato has integrated into the rest of the vegetables. Drain the veggies well.

Meanwhile, place some mozzarella cheese on the bottom of the pizza crust. Spread a generous portion of vegetables atop the cheese. Add more mozzarella and the hard cheese(s) of your choice, plus any herbs that you might enjoy, and maybe a few grinds of pepper.

Broil pizza until cheese is melty.

Friday Poetry Blogging

This poem, by Kristin Berkey-Abbott, had me laughing in the car on the way to work this morning.

Incidentally, if Jesus shows up at Cold Comfort Cottage tonight he's getting Morningstar Farms chicken-ish quesadillas with cheese and choice of salsas, and maybe Edy's lime pops for dessert. And we'll break open our new pack of SkipBo cards.

Friday Five: Either/Or

This week's RevGalBlogPals challenge:

There are two types of people in the world, morning people and night owls. Or Red Sox fans and Yankees fans. Or boxers and briefs. Or people who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't. Let your preferences be known here. And if you're feeling verbose, defend your choices!

1. Mac? or PC?
I've always used a PC, by default. Is this a bad thing?

2. Pizza: Chicago style luscious hearty goodness, or New York floppy and flaccid?
This is interesting: I've always been a deep-dish, thick crust, pile-on-the-toppings kind of gal...but lately I've been intrigued by the concept of the simple sidewalk slice. One of these years we're probably going to NYC to visit our kids/in-laws, so I will have the opportunity to try real Brooklyn-style pizza.

3. Brownies/fudge containing nuts:
a) Good. I like the variation in texture.
b) An abomination unto the Lord. The nuts take up valuable chocolate space.
[or a response of your choosing]
Oh -- gotta have the nuts. But they have to be fresh nuts. There is nothing worse than having a delicious fudgy brownie ruined by a funky, rancid chunk of walnut in it.

4. Do you hang your toilet paper so that the "tail" hangs flush with the wall, or over the top of the roll like normal people do?
Under. Under is the way my mother would always hang TP. Under is the civilized way. In my opinion.

5. Toothpaste: Do you squeeze the tube wantonly in the middle, or squeeze from the bottom and flatten as you go just like the tube instructs?
Much to the consternation of family and close personal friends...I am a wanton tube squeezer. It's just more fun. And you still wind up, a month or so later, with a flattened tube.

Bonus: Share your favorite either/or.
Black ink. I just can't write longhand for extended periods of time without a black-ink inkpen. Blue is so...well...not black.

And They Blog, Too!

John, one of my Beliefnet buddies, has his own blog. Check it out at Progressive Involvement.

And -- I can't remember if I've listed this before, but another Beliefnet friend of mine, Dan, blogs at Culture Choc .

Sigh. One of these days I need to update my blogroll.

Friday Bloom Blogging

Now you see 'em; now you don't. Our very brief springtime here in Michigan is coming to an end, and with it comes an end to the spring bulb flowers. But I did manage to get a photo of these flowers before they fade away.

Friday Five: Party Down!

The RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five this week is all about partying down.

Would you rather be the host or the guest?
Maybe this is a little control issue thing, or because of the many parties where I've sat uncomfortably, like Ugly Betty at a Mode soiree'...but I'd rather be the host. Imagine that.

When you are hosting, do you clean everything up the minute the guests go home? Will you accept help with the dishes?
It depends on what time it is; and I hate doing dishes -- make that HATE -- so any help is more than appreciated.

If you had the wherewithal, and I guess I mean more than money, to throw a great theme party, what would the theme be?
Well, we like wine-and-cheese tasting, so I might be inclined to do that in a thematic way -- Michigan wine and cheese, or Spanish wine and cheese, with appropriate nibbles. On the other hand, a friend of mine once dreamed of throwing a kind of northern-Michigan-redneck party -- as one of our local radio personalities calls our populace, "jackpine savage" -- with cheese doodles, pickled gizzards, blind robins and jerky, and other local-party-store fare. Flannel attire requested; chainsaw optional. (Lest you think I'm joking, there is never a time during the day in my neighborhood where you cannot hear a chainsaw in the distance. I was home the other day after work to pick up my mail and look for sprouting morels...and there was that buzz again. Think Possum Lodge on The Red Green Show.)

What's the worst time you ever had at a party?
That would have to be my high school graduation party. My friends all had parties with their friends. My parents insisted that my relatives -- mostly people I didn't care for, and who didn't care for each other -- needed to be invited. I didn't want to invite my friends then, because I didn't want them to meet my relatives. In the meantime my dad had gotten into a huff about something and decided to go fishing; and my mother developed a "sick headache" and spent much of the day throwing up in the bathroom, leaving me to entertain the people whom I didn't want to be there in the first place; sort of an instant-karma thing, I think, in retrospect.

And to end on a brighter note, what was the best?
When I was in college, my gang -- these were my churchy friends from the local LCMS and ALC/LCA student parishes; we all, unlike our denominations, got along -- decided to throw an end-of-school-year party. The hostesses, who had a duplex in the campus neighborhood, decided upon a bordello theme. (Now, you have to remember that we're talking some of the most white-bread, pure-as-the-driven-snow, repressed, pious college students you can imagine, give or take the collective Lutheran fondness for elbow bending. Several of the participants, by the way, are now pastors. But they'll remain nameless here.) The hostesses dressed up Mae West style in feather boas and bling-bling and decorated their abode like...well, you know. It was quite the evening. Highlights included a unique commode-based "Hit the target" game for male revelers in our bathroom, a Motown singalong and a future-pastor-guest's jug of homemade wine from a relative in Arkansas. (A vintage that probably would not show up at one of my middle-aged wine-and-cheese parties.) A good time was had by all; many of whom spent the night crashed in the living room. I had such a good time that my the very roots of my hair hurt the next day...which also happened to be Sunday, when we all still managed to show up at church. I don't think I've ever been to a party quite like that, before or since.

Wednesday Poetry Bloggery

I drove home yesterday at lunch -- to my house; I stop by every other day to pick up the mail and make it look like someone is at home -- and spent a few minutes walking around the backup in my driveway where, every year, I harvest a small crop of morel mushrooms that seem to thrive in the gravelly margins.

No 'shrooms yet. We've had a lot of rain, but not, apparently, the proper mix of rain and warm weather to pop the morels.

Oh, well.

In the meantime, here is a a poem about mushrooms.

Thank God Someone Has Finally Explained It To Us!

Headline seen on my Yahoo! homepage:

"Vacation homes and a third car may hold you hostage and deprive you of real wealth."

Ever feel like you're dwelling on a different planet than everyone else?

Priests For One Another

The concept of “priesthood of all believers” so beloved of us Reformation types has, frankly, always been something of an abstraction for me; and I suspect for a lot more of us as well. Another abstraction – probably due to lack of opportunity as much as lack of understanding or immediate relevance – was the idea that persons in committed relationships are called to be priests for one another.

But it came home for me last week, during the hospital drama in our household, when Fellow Traveler asked me if we could pray together before her surgery.

I grew up in a household where “Come, Lord Jesus” around holiday dinner tables pretty much constituted family prayer. So despite my churchy interests and experience front and center in worship, praying with loved ones has always felt a bit odd and uncomfortable to me. I remember when my pastor came to the ICU after my mom’s heart attack to commune us – he was en route from somewhere else, and didn’t have all his chaplain gear, so I let him borrow my little pocket-size Book of Common Prayer that I sometimes take with me on anxiety-provoking trips, and we read aloud from it together – and how relieved I was that at last someone “official” was here to provide spiritual comfort to my mother.

But, anyway: FT and I agreed that praying together before her operation was a good thing to do. So we did. We prayed over the phone together while she was on the VA bus en route to Ann Arbor, and we prayed again over the phone after the surgery. I can’t exactly remember the words I used – I had a BCP-ish outline in my head, and just riffed from that – but it was both a powerful and an intimate experience, even over a distance, over the phone. There are times when I'm assisting in worship, and praying the Prayers of the Church, where I have a strong sense of carrying others with me in my petitions -- where the prayers that I treated, frankly, as a writing assignment the evening before are transformed into something much bigger; and that is how I felt at these times, but in an even more intense way.

But FT also provides spiritual care for me. It’s usually in the form of encouraging me in pursuing my lay ministry education and in helping lead worship; prodding me when I’m procrastinating in things like writing my Prayers of the Church or faith-blogging; and keeping the spiritual side of our relationship front and center when I get distracted by other things – which is a lot of the time. The other day she said, “You know, I think we ought to pray more together,” and of course she’s right. I’ve always wanted a spiritual director; well, now I have one.

So I think I’m kind of “getting” the priests-for-one-another thing now, in a way I never have before.

And In Other Local News...

In between all the personal drama around here...we dedicated the new sanctuary of our church last week. It's not nearly done -- we had to put up folding chairs on the bare cement of the floor -- but it was still very exciting to worship in this new space.

I especially love the fieldstone, which I think captures some of the flavor of our community; if you've been around farm country for any length of time you know all about the ubiquitous stone piles dotting the landscape; a reminder of the toil of the first settlers who cleared the land, that also become small islands of wilderness and new life in the midst of neatly cultivated fields.

Back when this project was a glint in the congregational eye, someone suggested that we save building costs by hiring the Amish. Our pastor noted, "I think we have to be the Amish." And, indeed, the bulk of labor in this endeavor has been homegrown; members of the congregation, and neighbors in the community, who've helped with everything from excavation to putting up drywall to carpentry work. We've even gotten contributions of money and labor from other churches of other denominations.

It's a pretty cool thing, this new sanctuary.

It's a Long Story...

Well, Fellow Traveler, tired and sore but happy to be home, is esconced on a living room sofa. I am on another sofa.

My car is sitting in my semi-sister-in-law's driveway in Bay City.

It's a long story.

Earlier in the week I'd taken my car in to one of those 15-minute oil change places; there the mechanics said that I was leaking oil and coolant. Yipes.

I went next door to an auto-parts store and asked to see the coolant. The clerk went out to my car and looked under the hood -- it was too hot to open the coolant tank, but we couldn't even see any coolant through the plastic.

I went home and put a couple of pints of coolant and water in the tank. It seemed awfully full, yet from the outside I still couldn't see any coolant at the fill line.

Friday I drove all over the place for work; no problem. I then drove to Bay City; no problem. Until I got to Sister-in-Law's house -- where, and I'm not making this up, as I pulled up to the curb steam started pouring out from under the hood. "Oh, crap," I said, or words to that effect.

So...anyway...Sister-in-Law drove us both back home -- which, in retrospect, was probably a lot easier on Fellow Traveler, not having to schlep into another car.

But my car is 40 minutes away. And -- and this makes the day even more interesting -- so is my wallet, which I evidently left in my car, in Bay City.

Other than that, we're having a swell morning. We really are. It's good to have FT home.

Friday Five: Whatcha Doin'?

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five asks, what are you:

Wearing? (Ever get a phone call like this?) Right at this moment I am wearing L.L. Bean khakis, L.L. Bean suede heeled clogs, a woolen turtleneck shell and a black/brown/tan argyle sweater. Because spring in Michigan doesn't mean a whole lot -- from day to day we have either extended winter or 80 degrees. I don't pack away my cold-weather clothes until June (and as I recall, last year I had to go back for them anyway). For the past few days it's been damp and chilly, so I am dressing accordingly.

Pondering? Let's see...I am pondering whether to drive to Bay City today via the freeway (I hate freeways), or via what is for me the less stress-inducing "scenic route" through Tri-Cities farm country. I am pondering my old vehicle's current leakage ailments, whether I put too much coolant in my car, and how much the latest trip to the mechanic is going to cost next week. I am pondering today's relay trip with FT's sister to pick her up in Ann Arbor, transfer to my car and then drive her back home. I am pondering the latest episode of what started out as a fairly mundane work project jobbed out to a usually reliable area printer that has been one headache, and one unacceptable proof, after another -- it's like the cat that came back, over and over and over again. I am pondering my need for a haircut.

Reading? At this moment I am reading my collected mail of the past couple of days, including an overdue notice for a safe deposit box (oops!). As far as real reading, I am still slowly going through Margaret Guenther's A Place in the World: A Rule of Life For the Rest of Us. It's a great book, and not a slow-goer; I just haven't had a lot of opportunity for recreational reading lately.

Dreaming? I'm going to interpret this literally. I had an interesting dream right before I woke up. I was in college, again, and trying to enroll in a series of classes -- even though I didn't know what my major was, or how many credits I needed to graduate, or how I'd gotten back to school, or where I was living, or how I was going to pay for the semester. (I have this dream, by the way, quite frequently.) Anyway, in the midst of my confused Sturm und Drang in the building where enrollment was going on, it suddenly occurred to me: You've already graduated. You don't need any more classes. So I left, and was taking a leisurely walk up one of the main thoroughfares of my old alma mater, noting all the changes on the campus and in the surrounding neighborhood, when I awoke. I actually think this dream means something significant other than eating spicy Italian food too late in the evening...but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Eating? I am ashamed to say that this morning my breakfast consisted of orange juice; a couple of mouthfuls of leftover spaghetti sauce; and, just a few minutes ago here at my desk, a Take 5 candy bar. A foodie gone bad.

A Modest Proposal

I tend to be a cynic when it comes to politics, so I was pleasantly surprised to read this article about the Governor of Oregon taking a shopping expedition with a food stamp recipient and attempting to budget a week's worth of groceries on his own with $21 worth of food stamps.

As the article indicates, the gov was kind of clueless in this endeavor. And this is probably normal. Because when I think of politically active people in my own community, they tend to fall into one of two categories: the Docker-and-Izod "comfortably appointed" set, or relatively affluent and politically savvy blue-collar union retirees. These are the "concerned citizens" who have our elected officials' ears; when politicians think of the Average Joe or Jane in their own districts, these are probably the people who come to mind, because they're the folks they see and hear and get regular feedback -- and contributions -- from.

Sure, this excursion into a day in the life of the economic underclass may have been a bit of sound-bitey populist political theater. But I really wouldn't mind more of our politicians regularly taking a day to slum with the people they normally don't see or hear.

Pinch-Hitting

I have to say...it's very odd stepping into someone's home when she's away.

I'm pretty well acquainted with Fellow Traveler's house, but there's a big difference between staying there as a guest and moving in, in her absence, to take care of the beasts and keep an eye on things.

First and foremost, I have to contend with two dogs and a cat who like me, a lot -- but who are missing their real mama and can't understand why, when I come home, she's not with me. The two golden retrievers, Katie and Cassie, greet me with enthusiasm, but then look behind me...and when they don't see FT, they sigh, or even emit a sad little yodel of disappointment. They're also used to human company all day long, so leaving for work in the morning elicits the same sad eyes and sighs.

And then there are the appliances. I'm reluctant to fiddle with things like the washing machine (which has a console like a vehicle) and the television remote control, which requires an engineering degree to operate properly. I know, for instance, that there's a way to get Sirius radio on it, but for the life of me I can't remember how; and it was only by dumb luck that I actually stumbled upon the combination of controls (which I promptly forgot) that allow me to change channels at all. Today I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out the answering machine, which has explicitly marked buttons for everything except Play or Listen or Get Messages. It's like being in a multidimensional IQ exam, and flunking.

And...it just feels odd stepping into someone else's living space -- even a someone I know very well, and with whose living space I have more than a passing acquaintance. There is something other about it that makes me feel like an invader.

I knew someone in college, a pastoral intern, who spent an entire academic year house-sitting for professors from our parish who'd gone on sabbatical. I imagine she felt that same odd sense of discomfort using their dishware and twiddling the dials on their home electronics and lounging on their furniture.

Update

Hey! Fellow Traveler came through her surgery okay. The doctors think that they'll keep her in the hospital until Friday. She's very tired, and hurts a lot, but sounded good on the phone.

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate them so much.

Surreal Life

I'm sitting here with my display table at a community "expo" event...while someone I love is at the opposite end of the state, having surgery even as I type.

It's an incredibly surreal and frustrating feeling; and more so because I can't talk to anyone at work about it, the way that people talk freely about their spouses.

This morning one of my coworkers came in late, explaining that her husband had been admitted to the hospital. I said, "You must have a lot on your mind right now," and mentioned that I had a friend in the hospital today as well. And that's it.

That's how it is here. That's what it's like not to be able to talk about important things in your life, because you're afraid, and to not have your life partnership recognized as real, and thus worthy of the benefits given to other couples. The "stop whining" people just don't get this; how hard it is.

My pastor has been a Godsend. He's actually at the downstate VA hospital now; he arranged his schedule to be there when Fellow Traveler arrived, so she'd be able to be with someone she knew before surgery. FT spent the night with her sister, in a halfway city; but her sister had to work today, too, so she had to leave her at the VA busstop at another VA hospital. I felt terrible about all of this; but we had no time to adjust schedules and get family members here.

So, anyway, I'm sitting here tapping into the free wi-fi, being the good PR do-bee, waiting for a phone call.

Where Have I Been?

Cold Comfort Cottage and its counterpart down the road have been whirlwinds of activity this week...Fellow Traveler got the startling news that her anticipated surgery was being scheduled for next week, not next month, so after dismantling our initial plans for this event we have been busy trying to get things ready for her imminent trip to the hospital and recovery back home; the last we've heard is that she will be in the hospital for only about three days, including pre-op time. (And to make things worse, I have a mandatory workplace commitment I have to keep one the day of surgery -- that, and The Way Things Are Around Here, have meant that this tumultuous thing is going on in my life, and I have hardly anyone to talk to about it; I'm having to put on a brave face and soldier on.)

So I haven't been blogging, or reading blogs; it's easier and faster to feed my need for online communication via the "drive-by" discussion forum method, when I have a moment.

And this Sunday we're having our new addition dedication, with the synodical bishop in attendance; I am on deck as assisting minister, and am trying to compose a set of worthy Prayers of the Church while waiting for choreography directions from my pastor, who is in his own whirlwind this week.

Don't be surprised if the posts here are sparse...or, on the other hand, if I decide to discharge my anxiety by blabbing about it here.

Friday Poetry Blogging

I am someone who cannot throw out a plant; not as long as there is one green fiber hanging on to life in its wizened stem. The philodendron currently cascading down the end table in my living room is, in fact, a refugee from the basement where my mother had intended to euthanize it; one day while fetching something from the freezer I noticed one sad little yellowed nubbin emerging from the dead vine, then brought the pot upstairs, watered the potbound dirt and waited to see what would happen. And the plant came back; a small resurrection that I found cheering.

This fall I overwintered my fancy-leaved geraniums -- let the frost nip the leaves, then cut the plants down almost to the soil, then let them sprout new growth over the winter in my sunny kitchen window. Right now they're pale and spindly, and look like they won't amount to anything, but I know that they will when it gets warm enough around here to put them back outside.

Here is the story of another rescued geranium.

Friday Five: Suprised By Joy

RevGal Songbird, in posting this week's Friday Five, writes:

This week I've been watching parents of the young people slain at Virgina Tech trying to make meaning out of the lives of their lost children, and each one seems to begin by focusing on something joyful about that child. It's a gift that most humans have brains wired to respond in that way. For some of us it can be harder to work our way out of dark places, but I believe joy remains the key. It is the spirit of resurrection.

Tell us about five people, places, or things that have brought surprising, healing joy into your life.

1. Of course, Fellow Traveler comes to mind first and foremost; and she came into my life during a dark time indeed. I had more or less resigned myself to the probability of being alone for the rest of my life when, on that fateful Mother's Day last year, I got invited to a restaurant for a meetup of online acquaintances needing a mutual cheer-up, got a flat tire and needed a lift...and the rest is history.

2. Animals. They are honest; forgiving; fascinating; funny, both intentionally and unintentionally (I am convinced that dogs and cats have a sense of humor). And they definitely have personalities; wild animals as well as companion animals. And while they're like us in so many ways, they are also mysteriously "other." To share a moment of mutual communication with an animal, to realize that both of you have figured out what the other is trying to convey...that's magic.

3. Music. Music can bring me joy...even the low-down, belly-draggin' blues.

4. Hospitality: This is a new discovery for me, since as I've mentioned in previous posts my home has never tended to be Party Central. Even though there's hard work and a certain amount of anxiety involved...when you can get people together for good food and conversation, that moment when it all comes together -- when there is what the Celtic folks would call "crack" -- that's pretty cool.

5. Nature. There is something about being a very small sentient being confronted by something something big and awesome -- a sunrise, a thunderstorm, a mountain, a jewel-toned body of water, the velvety blackness of a starry night -- that can bring joy, and peace.

Friday Poetry Bloggery

I am sitting here absolutely wallowing in remorse.

We have a new minor league baseball team in our area, the LA Dodgers-related Great Lakes Loons . The Loons' arrival here, and the building of the wonderful new Dow Diamond stadium to accomodate them, has been a rare bright spot in eastern Michigan's otherwise moribund economy and generally gloomy collective state of mind.

We have tickets for several Loons games. But a couple of nights ago Fellow Traveler called me to tell me that we had a last-minute opportunity to score some handicap-section tickets for the inaugural game at the Dow Diamond -- a totally big deal. Thing is, we'd just dug out of a late-season blizzard, with frigid temperatures forecast all weekend long.

I said, "Would you like to go?"

She said, "That's not what I asked. Do you want to go?"

Frankly, the thought of shivering in 30-degree weather for several hours didn't sound like a lot of fun to me, especially considering the thought of post-game arthritis misery, sinus headaches and the other consequences of two creaky middle-aged broads pursuing this type of recreation. I said:

"If you want to go, then I'm fine with going too."

We wound up not getting the tickets.

Today -- the game starts at 7:00 tonight -- the sun came out. The temperature must be a good 15 degrees above the projected forecast. Torrents of melting snow are flowing out of eavestroughs and into storm drains. It's a lovely spring day.

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!

So -- here's a poem about baseball. It's the least I can do.

A Confession

I have not been responding to reader posts -- and I am so tickled to get posts on my blog, especially from old friends -- nor have I been visiting friends' blogs, the way I usually do. It is not because I don't want to; I'm just having a somewhat hairy month. I promise to be more hospitable in the future!

A Minty-Fresh Friday Five

I went to the dentist this week for teeth-cleaning. This is usually a day of affirmation for me -- I tend to be a little OCD when it comes to dental hygiene, so my dentist usually gives me a verbal high-five for my good work -- but this time the frowny face appeared: "Do you use whiteners on your teeth?" "Um -- just whitening toothpaste." "Well, stop it -- you're wearing off your enamel." Yikers bikers. I am indeed a middle-aged woman falling apart at the seams. Anyway: no more baking soda toothpaste; no more pop; no more indulgences involving super-acidy foods, like sucking on a lemon wedge.

Sigh.

So how appropriate is it that this week's Friday Five is all about dentistry?

1. Are you a regular patron of dentists' offices? Or, do you go
a) faithfully, as long as you have insurance, or
b) every few years or so, whether you need it or not, or
c) dentist? what is this "dentist" thing you speak of?

My blue-collar family was of the generation and socioeconomic category whose dental philosophy was, "Use 'em until they fall out or you have to pull 'em out, and then get false teeth." So my formal dental health regimen was pretty hit-or-miss until I was an economically independent adult, and I didn't get needed orthodontics until I was in my 30's. Fortunately, I think because of my growing up on a farm and a my love of milk and dairy products as a tiny child, until recently my teeth were in great shape structurally; never had a cavity until I was in my mid-30's. But, nonetheless, I appreciate access to dental services and take advantage of them.

2. Whatever became of your wisdom teeth?
Interestingly, they never erupted until I was in my mid-30's and was wearing braces; as my teeth moved, they moved up. Unfortunately, by this time they were impacted in quite a bizarre fashion, so they needed to be reamed out of my gums by an oral surgeon. This experience introduced me to the killer combination of Versed and Demerol -- man, were those some good drugs. I understand that my surgery took twice as long as normal because of surgical complications from the impactions, but all I remember is sitting comfortably in the chair listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons singing Sherrrrrrrrrrry, Sherry Sherry bay-ay-bee -- I am not making that up. A friend who took me home afterward said that I was quite hilarious in my altered state -- laughing and joking even as blood was dripping gorily down my chin. It really wasn't that bad of a procedure. I'm not sure if the dental surgeon would agree, though.

Favorite thing to eat that's BAAAAAD for your teeth.
Chocolate. Coffee.

Ever had oral surgery? Commiserate with me.
My second oral surgery experience was last year, when my dentist discovered a hidden cavity deep in my very back molar, one that was too far gone to make a root canal feasible. This really depressed me -- because of my history, and of my numerous relatives who'd been wearing dentures since their 20's, it has been very important for me to keep my teeth intact, and the thought of losing one as an adult due to something other than an accident made me feel like a failure. Anyway, the extraction itself was so painless that I didn't even realize when it was over; but I was still a glum chum for the rest of the day. And it still makes me mad.

"I'd rather have a root canal than _________________."
Drive in big-city traffic. And that's the tooth -- I mean truth.

Bonus: Does your dentist recommend Trident?
Not to me, anymore. And he is a real foe of all whitening agents because of the way they deterioriate tooth enamel. He describes his own philosophy thusly: "I'm a coffee drinker. I love coffee. Coffee drinkers have stained teeth. Get used to it."

Irony

This morning I saw the following online headline referencing Don Imus' recent foot-in-mouth incident involving racial and sexist slurs against the Rutgers women's basketball team:

Imus Contrite: I Am a Good Person

Excuse me, but isn't trying to justify one's bad behavior by pointing to one's perceived relative goodness kind of the opposite of contrition?

Easter Feaster

It’s interesting that, the older I get, the more I have come to appreciate the ministry of hospitality.

I’ve always been a Mary to someone’s Martha; much more interested in talk and thought than in the logistics of entertaining. And I grew up in a household with socially anxious parents who really didn’t care to have guests over very often; one of my more unfortunate memories is of my high school graduation party, when my mother, unnerved by the thought of her in-laws descending upon our house, spent most of the day being sick in the bathroom. So I’ve had to spend the past two or so decades unlearning that awful twisty feeling in my insides at the thought of opening my household to others or organizing a group outing.

In the last year Fellow Traveler and I have tried to organize get-togethers, either at her house or at some midway point in the state, because we think it’s a good thing, and because the people who show up really seem to appreciate it. And we’ve been beneficiaries of similar hospitality by others, and appreciate that; being able to be ourselves and relax in good company.

All of which is the scenic-drive way of getting to my tale of Easter dinner, which this year consisted of Fellow Traveler, her empty-nest sister and myself. After considering our thematic possibilities, including the $40 premade giganto-mart spiral ham dinner special, we decided to do something completely different, because we could: roast leg of lamb. And because my own fussily equivocal enjoyment of lamb makes me lean toward seasoning it Mediterranean style – lots of garlic and herbs -- my suggestion was to serve it with Greek/Middle Eastern side dishes. This plan violated one of my mother’s major culinary rules, namely, don’t experiment with untried recipes on guests. (When FT asked me the last time I made a whole leg of lamb, I said, “Never.” She responded, “Oh…okay…” in the sort of tentative way you might respond to a friend informing you, as she whipped around a banked section of unfamiliar urban multilane, that she’d never actually driven on a freeway before. I didn’t tell FT that, except for tabbouli, I’d never made any of the proposed side dishes either.) But sometimes you have to set your sights toward the unknown, even if it’s just down the hall in the kitchen.

So yesterday, after church, I cooked. The lamb, pre-rubbed with lemon, olive oil, kosher salt and pepper and studded with garlic slivers and rosemary sprigs from my little overwintering rosemary shrub, was placed in a 450 degree oven, then the temperature immediately turned down to 325 degrees. I then prepared roasted baby red potatoes Greek style – peeled mid-tater, rolled in kosher salt, pepper and oregano, then placed in a pan with olive oil, lemon juice, a bit of chicken broth, Greek oregano and peeled garlic cloves and cooked uncovered next to the meat (the potatoes absorb much of the oil and liquid, and get nice and roasty on the outside, soft on the inside). I made a simple beet salad with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, onion and garlic. And, just before dinner, I steamed a big batch of spinach, mixed it with green onions and garlic sautéed in olive oil and added fresh dillweed and feta cheese – sort of like spanakopita innards without the phyllo dough around them. And then there was the homemade tabbouli, made the evening before, and some mixed marinated olives.

The experiment worked very well. We ate lots – lots – supplemented by some very nice bakery rolls (great for sopping up the residual Greek potato marinade) and an Amish raspberry pie. Greek-Amish fusion; whoddathunkit.

Of course, I suspect this means that I have now inherited the responsibility for future Easter dinners. I wonder what world cuisine will show up on the table next year.

This Joyful Eastertide

This joyful Easter-tide,

Away with care and sorrow!

My Love, the Crucified,

Hath sprung to life this morrow.

Had Christ, that once was slain,

Ne’er burst His three day prison,

Our faith had been in vain;

But now hath Christ arisen,

Arisen, arisen, arisen!

My flesh in hope shall rest,

And for a season slumber;

Till trump from east to west,

Shall wake the dead in number.

Had Christ, that once was slain,

Ne’er burst His three day prison,

Our faith had been in vain;

But now hath Christ arisen,

Arisen, arisen, arisen!

Death’s flood hath lost his chill,

Since Jesus crossed the river:

Lover of souls, from ill

My passing soul deliver.

Had Christ, that once was slain

Ne'er burst His three day prison,

Our faith had been in vain;

But now hath Christ arisen,

Arisen, arisen, arisen!

Have a bright, happy and blessed Easter, everyone!

Artwork: "Et Resurrexit," Gisele Bauch

My Maundy Thursday Adventure

I have nothing to say about my last-minute, no-script Good Friday gig other than to observe that liturgies are a good gift of God -- a gift that keeps worship from dissolving into chaos and lets everyone participate in an easily understandable way, instead of people, including worship leaders, standing around going D'oh. And that I don't do spontaneity well.

Anyway...on Maundy Thursday, Fellow Traveler and I decided to forego our own church's agape meal service, due to her dietary considerations and also because neither of us really wanted to have to go through the small-group performances at our table that that service entails; we wanted a more traditional service, from a vantage point in a back pew, where we could melt into the crowd and worship without having to role-play or read aloud individually.

So we went to a combined ELCA/Episcopal Maundy Thursday service in our area, in a tiny Episcopal church that I've worshipped in before. We sat in our car and waited until a decent number of people had entered, and then walked in.

We met a friendly gauntlet of laypeople from the host church, who greeted us warmly. We took our places at the back and enjoyed the Abendsonnenschein casting an otherworldly glow upon the venerable stained glass windows.

It was a very calming, meaningful service. And, actually, service was the theme of the evening -- in lieu of foot-washing, we all processed up to the front after the sermon, and the presiding clergypeople anointed the palms of our hands; it was a gentle and moving act. We sang "The Servant Song" and "I, The Lord of Sea and Sky," as well as some of the traditional Passion Week hymns that I in my middle age miss singing. (It's hard, these days of studied perkiness, to belong to the Society For the Preservation of Minor Chords.) After the Eucharist, women I assumed were from the Altar Guild slowly and solemnly stripped the altar and removed the reserved sacrament from the sanctuary; the lights slowly dimmed; and we left in silence.

Because I overthink everything, I came to the service with a certain feeling of unease as a kind of ecclesiatical tourist -- especially on this evening, when one might assume that one would want to be in an intimate gathering with one's own church family. But it was a good thing, I think, that we went.

Hello, I Must Be Going

I have been tapped to lead a meditation on one of the "seven last words of Christ" today at our church's Good Friday service. Not having been to one of our midday services before, I have no idea what I'm doing, and when I asked my pastor his direction was, "Oh, do whatever you want" -- but I have about two more hours to pull the "whatever I want" together.

Let's see what happens.

I'd like to tell you about my church-tourist experience last night...maybe later.

Stuck in a Moment

My mother died one year ago today.

I honestly didn't think that I would be affected so by this anniversary...but I find myself very down. Flat affect, as they say. I usually enjoy, if that is the correct word, Holy Week...but this year I just don't care; I don't feel anything. I'm not blogging because I have nothing to say.

We wound up not going to Palm Sunday services, muchly because the thought of contending with loud, misbehaving children fencing with cardboard palm fronds and otherwise coopting the worship was a little more than I could handle. I'm going back and forth about our Maundy Thursday service, which involves a stew-and-bread meal incorporating the Eucharist -- partly because there are some dietary issues in our household that will make the menu problematic for us, but partly because...well...novelty isn't something that makes me feel comfortable this week. I don't want to be a part of a performance art installation or small-group experience. I want to be an anonymous worshipper in the back of a church, in a by-the-book service where I don't have to be "on" in any way.

I just don't feel very good. And as I'm not feeling good I'm bracing for the online criticism that Holy Week isn't about me, it's not about feeling good, do I think it was a picnic for Jesus, what is the matter with me anyway, stop whining and get with the program.

Yeah, well.