La grandeur de ces vastes espaces m'effraie

I knew I was going clear to the other side of the country — a day-long flight proved that but I had no idea I was going to end up literary 50 yards from the Pacific Ocean! My hosts decided to put me up at a casino (!) resort hotel that is smack on the Oregon coast. If I open the window (as I did overnight), I can hear the breaking waves down below on the beach.

The light and weather here are dramatic: one minute the sun is out; the next, it is sleeting or raining or grauple is landing on the ground. The weather is more variable than even that of my dear New England.

Since there is this huge casino (Chinook Winds Resort), the town has become a tourist destination. The locals don’t go to the beach so I guess I am enjoying it on their behalf. I have spent a lot of time looking at the waves and marvelling, perhaps foolishly, that this is the same ocean that I see when I go to the beach in El Salvador, only miles and miles away. What a difference in water temperature, however.

So my time here has been more gentle than anticipated. This reconnecting with the ocean has been restorative.

My host is the rector of the Episcopal congregation in town, so I actually went to their vestry meeting last night — as I told them, I flew all the way across the United States to attend a vestry meeting. I was fascinated to listen in on another church’s daily life, see their financials and realise that while the particulars of their struggles differ from ours, they still have their concerns.

On the other side

Here I am clear on the other side of the country in Portland OR. It has been a long day, sitting in a tin can at 38000 feet, having nothing to eat really between Burlington VT and Portand OR. However, some 'za, wine from Washington state have revived me a little.

The airport here in Portland is most civilised with outlets for computers!!!! and FREE wifi everywhere in the airport. It can't get much better than that if one has two wait three hours for one's ride, as I am today.

I will be visiting a parish in Lincoln OR, preaching at their HE tomorrow morning and doing whatever else might be demanded of me.

And then Thursday, it's back to Portland and on Friday we start Executive Council. The emails are now beginning to flood my inbox. I need time and stillness to think about what I want to say at this meeting.

Since I don't know exactly where I will be staying for the next two nights, this may be the last posting until Thursday. Not the end of the world, hardly.

Let's hope, too, that this time my computer doesn't melt down as it was on the last Executive Council trip that it melted down.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go

Actually not but I am leaving on a jet plane tomorrow and I do know when I will be back again.

The cats decide they'll help out. Just before I took this shot, La Doyenne was sitting on top of the shirts that I was folding up.

So it's off to Portland, OR for Executive Council and a visit to a colleague's church two days prior to the start of the EC meeting.

I have no idea what internet access I will have before Thursday when I arrive at the hotel, so this blog may go quiet for two days.

The World's Best Cat-Sitter, who is also mourning the departure of the Waif, will take care of the Unholy Three in my absence.

Prayers, especially for the EC meeting, are most certainly desired.

A Wonderful Christmas Present

What a wonderful Christmas present! Compa and I were given an amaryllis this past Christmas Day. It's the first time I have ever had one of these plants. It has suddenly come to life this week and the blooms keep on coming like a grand finale of a fireworks display. This was taken a bit earlier and there are now two more blooms that will emerge.

Somehow, after all the craziness of this week and particularly of this weekend, before heading off to more craziness, it seems fitting to put to bed this week with an image of something beautiful, something of God's creation whose sole existence is to flourish.

BTW, this flower survived being in an unheated house at 45 degrees for five ays. It is more hardy than advertised.

And thanks to the givers. It truly is a delight.

From the ABC

From the 2/24/2007 interview with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in the Tanzania Guardian:

...

Q:We go back to the primates meeting in Dar es Salaam. The meeting has failed to come out with a clear decision on the raging controversy regarding same sex marriages.

A:That's not true actually.

Q:It seems that the leaders are more concerned with preserving their cohesion rather than communicating the truth to the faithful. So, given the circumstances, what does the Anglican Church stand for and why are you dilly-dallying to give a stance in this very crucial moral issue?

A:The stance of the Anglican Communion is clear: It has never said anything other than that. The ordination of active homosexuals is not acceptable.

It has never said anything other than that the marriage of same sex-couples is not to be admitted.

That's what the Lambeth Conference said in 1998, and every meeting has said so since then.

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Now, one has to consider where this interview took place. Was the ABC wanting only to speak to the Tanzanian faithful? Or is what he said meant for all? And has he also taken Lambeth I.10, not originally in the report but thrown in at the last-minute, to be enshrined? What about the rest of the report, like listening to us, inviting us to conversation? We still remain the third-party, third-person subject in all these so-called discussions.

In any event, there are a few responses. Like...

Oh, really.

So what is he proposing to do with those of us LGBT who are already ordained?

We've been through this so many times. I remember the vote for authorising the creation of blessing rites for same-gender couples at General convention 1997 in Philly. The vote went down by two votes in one order and one vote in the other (or something like that). We got the results just before going into the big whoopdeedo liturgy with the previous ABC, George Carey. I was to vest and serve chalice. I almost didn't because it was the church saying that we LGBT clergy and lay people were not full members of the church. And there have been other times, too.

So, again, what is the church going to do with those of us who have had our SSG relationships blessed and who also happen to be clergy?

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Or, in modern parlance, BTDT.

Quoi de neuf? On va voir? What's new? We'll see. But it seems to be more of the same.

Lent 1C

Every Lent, we begin by hearing the story of Jesus’ time in the desert, and how he resists the temptations of the devil. He goes to the wilderness, the place of desolation, struggle and trial. He enters not only the actual physical wasteland but also the wasteland of Massah and Meribah, into the entire Israelite wilderness tradition of temptation and trial. The accounts of Jesus in the desert speak of his fragility: he is tired, he weeps, he hungers and thirsts.

The temptations Jesus faces all address his relationship with others and with God. First there is the temptation to turn stones into bread. Jesus is confronted by the temptation to acquire economic power at the expense of others, to choose the path of economic provider, to be the one who could satisfy other’s demand for food… but to be in that role would mean he would have one over his neighbour, because there would be a hook there, the hook of power over someone else’s basic needs.

The second temptation asks that he perform a miracle, that he assert his spiritual power, using his spiritual resources to attract the support and devotion of others to the point of manipulation, to be a wonder worker. God would not be worshipped in this display of power; only Jesus’ capacities would be the focus of attention.

Lastly, Jesus confronts the temptation to acquire political power in exchange for idolatrous worship. He could become a political autocrat, a one-man show.

Each temptation represents a call to accept power, a call to distance himself from his neighbours and God. Jesus sees in the temptations the danger of accepting this personal power; instead, he takes what could be evil and offers the good of his power to the community. His power here is the Holy Spirit who nourishes the Christian community, who infuses it with the power of God working within it to perform spiritual miracles. Instead of turning stones into bread, Jesus gives of himself to be eucharistic bread. Instead of performing a miracle, in a spectacular display of power, Jesus creates a community that will be a spiritual force. And instead of becoming a dictator, Jesus walks with his community that will be committed to values of equality, and share to transform those forces in society that differentiate people unfairly. (1)

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Maybe it is a factor of growing older, but it seems to me as though keeping a Lenten discipline was far easier when I was a kid than now. I remember how my youthful piety tortured my mother for six weeks because I gave up everything with butter in it (don’t ask me why — I can’t remember the logic behind it). Did I think any more of Jesus because of my fast? I am not sure. I just remember how good it felt to hit Easter and I could put butter on my toast again.

Now it seems so much harder to take on some action of denial. Now keeping Lent means more a conscious attempt (or struggle!) to be silent, still aware, to listen to my heart at prayer, to find those moments of intersection of the holy and the daily and the daily with the holy and to enter consciously and willingly the desert spaces of my life. Maybe it is a function of my life, with its busy-ness, the time spent doing things when I really need to be still, but the idea of giving up something for Lent in quite the same terms as I did as an earnest seventh-grader just doesn’t ring true.

Maybe we need to remember Lent’s original purpose. It was two-fold in function but singular in purpose. Lent was a time for preparing newcomers into the faith tradition, a time to introduce newcomers to their future relationship with God. At the same time, as the Ash Wednesday exhortation in the prayer book reminds us, Lent was a time when notorious sinners sought forgiveness and were restored to right relationship with the rest of the community. In both cases, Lent was a time to sustain relationships — with God and neighbour.

‘Lenten disciplines and routine that call us to self-examination and interior meditation only strengthen our tendencies to bear up under life alone, or in silent communion with some distant deity. In a society already fractured and isolated, and among a people hunkered down in individualism, many of our customary spiritual disciplines serve not as preparation for life in community or the healing of our disaffections, but rather as exercise to extend our powers of endurance. So much of what passes for Lenten or other spiritual discipline renders us unfit for human companionship.’ These critical words written by Sam Portaro, Episcopal Chaplain to the University of Chicago, also contain grains of truth.

We are relational beings with one another and with God. We need one another. And God needs us. Rabbi Abraham Heschel believed that God created humanity in order to have a conversation with us, because God needed someone to share the wondrous stories of creation and covenant. And Heschel also believed firmly that it was dangerous to pray alone. One had to pray in community, too.

On a deeper level, according to writer Wendy M. Wright, ‘Lent is a time when we enter into the mystery of pain and brokenness, both our own and the world’s, to discover that we are not alone, that what seems hopeless is in fact hope-filled, that what appears dead can spring forth in life. It happens because we are embedded in a wider, more sustaining matrix of love than we can possibly imagine.’

If we are to fast this Lent or take on some discipline, then it should be the type of fast that Isaiah envisioned God desiring:

This is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry; sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

This citation from Isaiah 58, read on Ash Wednesday, is our presiding bishop’s mantra — she knows it so well that this summer at General Convention, when testifying to adopting a policy that would commit The Episcopal Church to giving 0.7% of its operating budget to support the Millennium Development Goals (a resolution that was subsequently passed), she was able to recite it by heart. It is one of those passages from scripture, along with the Beatitudes and Magnificat, that should guide us in our daily life, whether during Lent or any other time of year.

Isaiah describes relational activities, actions that bring us not only closer to our neighbour but also to God. So maybe Lent is more about finding the balance between personal and private reflection and engaging on a true, honest level with our neighbours, to try to bring about healing and integration to this broken world. That doesn’t mean that we never enter into the desert, but always, we emerge from that place of stillness to engage with the world. Each person must find his or her natural rhythm of time apart and time with community for both nourish us. Always we walk with our neighbour rather than uniquely by ourselves even though we spend time alone.

While the particulars may vary in how we approach this Lent, may we spend it and our life in the love of neighbour and of God… ‘because we are embedded in a wider, more sustaining matrix of love than we can possibly imagine.’

END NOTE
(1) Based on Kenneth Leech, We Preach Christ Crucified (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1994), 15-16.

The Waif is gone

After two months on not missing her cat, the neighbour phoned up this morning, threatening to call the police. So I surrendered the waif to a household where there is screaming and where she will once again be turned outside at night because 'all cats are nocturnal.'

It is so painful that I can't even speak or write. It is like a death. And I know that the Waif's wellfare is once again endangered.

I am sick.

Friday cat blogging

Here's a series of photos of Close Encounters of the First Time

I put Orange Boy, your typical mellow yellow, into the carrier, and brought him into the Waif's suite. He didn't seem particularly concerned about it; he just settled in and watched. The Waif was suspicious of the intruder.

For about ten minutes, I simply watched the two of them sniff each other and monitored the energy with which the Waif stuck her paw into the crate.

I was encouraged when she rolled on the floor in front of the carrier. So far, so good. So finally, after 15 minutes, I let Orange Boy out of his prison.

He has never been allowed in the back half of the house, so it was a totally new place for him to explore. He was not at all interested in the Waif; he wanted to see what was around each corner (and if there was food in the dishes). He wandered around, with her trailing him. Incredibly, there were no hisses!

Finally, he got under the folding chair and it was at that point that she took a swipe at him to the point that he meowed, somewhat pitifully as though to say, 'I haven't done anything wrong! I'm just being a nice guy here.'

That was last Saturday and since then, everybody has been allowed into the back half of the upstairs. The Waif has shown no interest in coming into the front part of the house, though I have brought her into my study. The others have gone into her space — la Doyenne takes about two steps inside the door, hisses and then runs back out again. Young Guy goes in, hisses at everything and meows at me, as though to say: 'Am I safe? Is it OK? Am I a good boy?' And Orange Guy can't wait to get in there. The Waif looks at all this riff-raff with utter horror and refuses to engage with any of them.

When he's not scared to death of being in the new space, Young Guy considers the map of El Salvador I have up on the wall to figure out where I go when I disappear for a week or two.

And La Doyenne, when she's not running in terror from the Waif, curls up on her favourite spot, as always.

I am wondering if I will always have a divide household? It can't be because on the 4th, some people are going to meet in the upstairs space. Ay, that means I have to clean it before I leave and then make sure that my cat sitter takes the Waif out of her space and locks her up in my study for the duration of the meeting... unless I can fully integrate the house between now and Monday. I don't think so.

Thank you, Bonnie!

Of all the statements made in the past week since the primates issued their communiqué and schedule, I find that the President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson's statement is the most concise and clear. In it, she clearly spells out the polity of The Episcopal Church in a way that these primates seem to ignore willfully or not.

[ENS] Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, has issued a statement on the recently concluded Primates’ Meeting and the resulting communiqué.

The full text of Anderson’s statement follows.

As I read the Communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I am deeply troubled by its implications for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

I continue to offer the Primates my affection, prayer and companionship along the way of the Cross and I respect their leadership of our Communion. Their Communiqué, however, raises profound and serious issues regarding their authority to require any member Church to take the types of specific actions the Communiqué contemplates and whether they have authority to enforce consequences or penalties against any member Church that does not act in a way they desire. The type of authority for the Primates implicit in the Communiqué would change not only the Episcopal Church but the essence of the Anglican Communion.

The polity of the Episcopal Church is one of shared decision making among the laity, priests and deacons and bishops. The House of Bishops does not make binding, final decisions about the governance of the Church. Decisions like those requested by the Primates must be carefully considered and ultimately decided by the whole Church, all orders of ministry, together.

Some are asking whether the Primates can ask our House of Bishops to take certain actions and put a deadline on their request. Yes, they can ask. There are larger questions that need to be addressed, including: Is it a good idea for our House of Bishops to do what they have asked? Is the House of Bishops the right body within the Episcopal Church to respond to the Primates’ requests?

Our baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all people must be very carefully considered when we are being asked as Episcopalians to exclude some of our members from answering the Holy Spirit’s call to use their God-given gifts to lead faithful lives of ministry. Our promise to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of all people binds us together. The Episcopal Church has declared repeatedly that our understanding of the Baptismal Covenant requires that we treat all persons equally regardless of their race, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, disabilities, age, color, ethnic origin, or national origin.

To honor all of the Primates’ requests would change the way the Episcopal Church understands its role in the Communion and the way Episcopalians make decisions about our common life. Our church makes policy and interprets its resolutions and Canons through the General Convention and, to a lesser extent, the Executive Council.

As president of the 800-plus member House of Deputies, it is my duty to ensure that the voice of the clergy and the laity of our Church will be heard as the Church discusses and debates the Primates’ requests and that that process will not be pre-empted by the House of Bishops or any other group. I have already begun to work toward that end.

All Anglicans must remember that the second Lambeth Conference in 1878 recommended that “the duly certified action of every national or particular Church, and of each ecclesiastical province (or diocese not included in a province), in the exercise of its own discipline, should be respected by all the other Churches, and by their individual members.”

This has been the tradition of the Anglican Communion. To demand strict uniformity of practice diminishes our Anglican traditions.

Our tradition of autonomous churches in the Anglican Communion, that come together because of our love of Christ and our common heritage, has allowed us to focus on mission and evangelism to our broken world which is in desperate need of the Good News of God in Christ. In recent times, however, we have spent too much of our time, talent and treasure debating if we ought to deny some people a place at the table to which Jesus calls us all. Instead, we must listen to each other – really listen and not just read reports – so that we can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit moving through all of us and calling us to be more faithful.

Thirty years ago today

Romero was consecrated as Archbishop of San Salvador on Tuesday, 22 February 1977, in a discrete ceremony in the church that is adjacent to the St. Joseph of the Mountain Seminary. It was not yet a time of war; there were a few years left until the massacres like Rio Sumpul and El Mozote. Three priests had been expelled from the country during the previous month, and the house of a fourth priest had been bombed. The political tension was, thus, one of the reasons for such a quiet enthronement of Romero as the archbishop of the capital. Another reason for the discretion of the ceremony was the uncertainty of the archdiocese concerning the new archbishop. Many expected the worse. Jesus Delgado, a priest who worked closely with Romero, says that when Romero began to speak that morning, 'there was
tomb-like silence.'

In his first sermon, he said: I come from a world of books, and there is much to learn in their pages, but I have much else to learn. There is ferment and division alive in our land. Certain priests accept — express — the most radical ideas, glibly. But none of us can pretend to know all the answers and demand that others implement them. We, in the Church, must keep to the center, watchfully, in the traditional way, but seeking justice.

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With the death of Rutillo Grande (the first priest Romero had ordained) in March 1977, Romero was radicalised himself. He no longer hewed to the tradition of the church; he spoke out for the oppressed and against the military that was killing his brother and sister Salvadorans. The man who was placed as Archbishop of San Salvador because he was 'safe,' turned out to be the biggest surprise of them all, to himself included.

There are so many gems of short snippet quotes but here are a few of my favourite ones paraphrased:

Each one of us can do something.
We are all God's microphones.
If I am killed, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.

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Where are our prophets? What if in The Episcopal Church we were to undergo a like conversion of heart the same way Oscar Romero did? Change is possible. He understood that keeping to the safe centre was antithetical to bringing God's justice (not human justice) to his divided country. If we stay in the centre, we may never see God's economy in our church. Which is worth more? Unity or God's hesed?

On this 30th anniversary of the 'enthronement' of Oscar Romero, may those of us in The Episcopal Church who are committed to justice, the equality of all and living out the baptismal covenant remember blessed Oscar and the example he gave.

Drop, drop, drip, drip

After the Ash Wednesday liturgy last night, the chalice bearer reported that he heard dripping in the room that is behind our 1830 Hook tracker organ. So another parishioner and I spent time in the back room (where the choir robes and books are housed), poking around in the casing. There's a little ladder that enables the organ tuner to get into the pipes, the real innards of the organ so I climbed up it, still in stole and alb, but I couldn't see any water or signs of water. Neither of us could locate the sound but we certainly heard the dripping. We gave up after five minutes of poking around and looking with a flashlight.

This afternoon, with a bit more daylight, I went back into the little room (it's an addition to the original chancel; there's a stained glass window that is under the roof of this side shed, so we illuminate it from behind by a spotlight) and climbed back up into the pipes, but I still couldn't locate the origins of the dripping. Another parishioner, according to his wife, is really, really good at figuring out from where sounds are coming once she can convince him that there's something to which he needs to listen (!). So he'll stop by later.

This makes the third ice dam build-up and resultant dripping. One wall of the rectory is totally punked up from a massive backup years ago but until we repair the outside of the house and fix the source of the buidlup, there's no point in redoing the plaster and paint. That's why there are things known as long wall hangings from Guatemala.

Ash Wednesday

As I think about all the places and years I have kept Ash Wednesday and why it matters so much, I began to wonder about the particular rite through which we go today.

What is it about Ash Wednesday? Our speaker yesterday at clergy day works at Saint Paul’s Chapel, NYC. It survived the collapse of the WTC towers and now is a cross between a museum, shrine and worshipping congregation. He sighed when we talked about Ash Wednesday. Evidently there is a drastic increase of population in the liturgy at the time of the imposition of ashes: the congregation swells from 40 to over 250. He knows of a Roman priest who is sent to Grand Central Station to spend ten hours smearing ashes on people’s foreheads. Why do people want this reminder on this solemn day, this Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement of the Christian faith, of coming close to and accepting the brokenness that all of us as human beings share? Why do they want to united by those ashes?

What is it about having one’s forehead marked by ashes that invariably dribble down one’s nose? Thinking about that question makes me think about a conversation I had recently in which someone said that at their church, they are going to have a packet of handiwipes available for anyone who wants to wipe the ashes from their foreheads before they go back into the world. I remembered raging debates with a good friend in my grad school days. He always wiped off his ashes before leaving church; I always left them on. He said it was vain; I said they were a sacramental reminder of our mortality. We always ended these conversations at a draw, where neither is right; neither is wrong.

Still, we were onto one of the mysteries of today. Why do something that seems to contradict the gospel we hear for Ash Wednesday? What does it mean to hear that we practise our piety and then turn around and place such a visible sign of our frailty on our forehead?

Perhaps that is the whole point. Perhaps by placing those ashes on our forehead we are being asked to confront honestly what our faith is all about. Confronting what our motives really are. Confronting where our priorities in life are.

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In the gospel lesson for today Jesus talks with the disciples about the practise of piety. He urges the disciples not to practise their piety so that they will be praised by others, but to practise their piety in such a way that others will be helped and God’s name will be glorified. Throughout the lesson Jesus is concerned with the motives for the piety they practise.

First Jesus speaks to them about almsgiving. All Christians are to give so that others might have, but this giving is not to be done for the esteem of others. Don’t sound a trumpet in the synagogue (as apparently used to happen particularly when someone gave a large donation). Don’t do it for show but do it because that is part of living out one’s Christian faith, building up the kindom.

Jesus urges the same thing with prayer. Don’t pray in public places so others can see you. Pray not so others can see how prayerful we are, but so that God’s will might be done. Pray because we are called to pray. Pray because it sustains one another.

The same is for fasting. Don’t make it a public occasion but do it quietly. Anoint your head and wash your face because that is what you will do if you were preparing for a great feast. And you are — you are preparing for repentance which leads to joy in a new way of life, the great banquet feast in heaven to which we are all invited.
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Deeper than these simple instructions is the root issue of what it means to be a Christian. And that comes down to dying to oneself and being born to new life in Christ. That difficult word, renunciation, is not limited to Ash Wednesday or Lent; rather renunciation is a life-long, day-in and day-out effort. Renunciation is the giving up of oneself, of one’s desires, and one’s need for public affirmation, so that one can be made whole and new in Christ.

And so the ashes that are placed on our forehead which seem to clash with the gospel message of secrecy become a sign of what our Lenten and life-time journeys are about — the renouncing of those ways of life and attitudes, values and perspectives that go against our baptismal vows. Our Lenten journey, then, becomes a time when we are invited to reconsider how our daily life squares with our baptismal vows and work at putting them into right relationship. However we do it — whether through fasting, prayer, mourning those broken relationships and parts of our life, retreat, active participation in the rites of the church — we are called to consider the priorities and our motives that underlie our life of faith. We are called to let go of those idols, relationships, habits or whatever else gets in the way of our living out our baptismal vows.

‘Remember, my brothers and sisters, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.’ Remember that the dust we are is what will be made new at the resurrection. We are headed toward that moment when we will know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection through Jesus Christ. And it is that perfection, through the resurrection, toward which we are headed as we go deeper into the Ash Wednesday liturgy and Lent itself.

Mardi Gras

It has been a very, very long day so I don't have much energy in me to write too much.... clergy day, standing committee and then back in time to get things organised for Mardi Gras, a simple pancake supper. This is the second year we have done it in my 13 1/2 years here and while it doesn't attract the kids, the adults enjoy it.

Thanks to a sister priest in New Orleans, who also was a deputy at General Convention last June, we had plenty of Mardi Gras beads (she said her attic was full of them so she'd send me a box and so she did — the postal service opened the box because it rattled so) to put on the tables as decoration and then ensure that everybody had beads to wear.

Even as people were arriving, we were still decorating our one-room (basically) parish house.

Here's the kitchen CREWE as they made pancakes, sausage, and bacon. Total pig-out great dinner.

The serious part of the evening was watching the DVD that the Diocese of Louisiana put out (and distributed at General Convention) about reconstruction. Though we were 20 people, in a free-will donation, we collected $125 that will go to their efforts in rebuilding their lives. While our attention span as a nation has long moved on, the people in NOLA are still having to reclaim their space and their lives.

So, as the Anglican Communion turns, we keep on doing.

The sky's falling

Or is it?

On first reaction to the communiqué and schedule that have emerged from Tanzania, my gut says that once again the church has decided that the LGBT community is expendable and can be merrily told to wait again until the feuding get their act together. It would seem that Lambeth 1998 I.1 is fully enshrined as canon and despite the fact that it came out of a report (and was inserted at the last minute, not being part of the original report), this one line has gained the status of holy writ. Furthermore, it would seem as though The Episcopal Church is again being the scape goat for actions in which a few other provinces have also engaged. At first glimpse, it would seem as though the church allowing for the blessing of persons living in same-gender couples is still on hold (and, no, a house blessing doesn't cut it, to those heterosexuals who think that substitution is sufficient).

On further thought, it seems as though it's the same-old, same-old holding pattern in which we have been for a long time. TEC will argue to the primates, who still don't seem to understand as a collectivity, though I know there are individuals who do get it, that our church operates on a bicameral basis and so the House of Bishops cannot do what it pleases without input from the laity and clergy (who are increasingly being shoved to the side with each meeting of the primates, where they decide to make themselves a curia that determines all), though there are some things (such as not consenting and in the General Convention process, regarding liturgical changes, their house gets the resolutions first so anything to do with blessings of same-gender couples could be stopped there) they can legitimately do.

Is the sky falling? I don't know. But it's not as clear as the photo shows.

The one thing that keeps me from giving into utter despair tonight is that I know there were voices in Tanzania representing the LGBT population of the church and I am confident they spoke out. The problem is that they are outnumbered. And those voices that are stridently against the existence of LGBT people in the church are unfortunately much louder.

Our Executive Council meeting next week is going to be very interesting.

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Staying away from the breaking news and what it may portend for TEC is why I spent a good two hours this afternoon shovelling out of the pathway and driveway the snow a parishioner pushed off the roof of the back half of the rectory. If you look closely at the photo, you can see brown ice formed on the side of the house. There's a good ice dam above, a puddle of water on the roof that is leaking through the upstairs windows down the side of the house between the siding and the original wall of the house and entering through the ceiling and window of the room below. Getting the snow off the roof will help some in the melting process.

The parishioner (who fell off a roof this fall and shattered his wrist) brought over his 13 year-old son to help but the son was less interested in helping out than wondering about the sandwich he would get in return for working (!). He marvelled at my shovelling prowess and proclaimed to his father: 'She's a fast shoveller!' Uhuh. Call it priest-teenager time -- it was fine.

And a good distraction.

Last Epiphany

Epiphany 7

In 1997 the 72nd General Convention voted a resolution (A205) establishing the last Sunday of Epiphany World Mission Sunday. The resolution was quite simple:

Resolved, That the last Sunday of Epiphany of each year be designated World Mission Sunday, and be it further

Resolved, That educational opportunities be provided at every level of the church in preparation for the celebration of World Mission Sunday to increase awareness of and participation in world mission; and be it further

Resolved, That mission networks such as Companion Dioceses, parish linkages, voluntary missionary societies, and the Anglican and Global Relations Office of the Episcopal Church Center be urged to develop and promote resources for the celebration of World Mission Sunday.

The explanation was likewise short and sweet:

Every member of the Episcopal Church is a member of a missionary society, The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Whether we understand the imperative of mission from the perspective of the Great Commission or the Great Commandment, or a combination of both, we are united in the one call to God’s mission in the world. As God sent Jesus into the world, we, too, are sent into the world. This resolution calls upon the church to hold up and celebrate our shared commitment and call to mission on a specific and common Sunday each year. It challenges congregations, dioceses, and provinces to learn about and become more fully engaged in God’s global mission.

Tucked away in the 2000 Blue Book, the book of reports of the Committees, Commissions, Boards and Agencies of the General Convention, is a wonderful summary of how we understand mission. The Standing Commission on World Mission affirms the primacy of mission in the church’s life. The report cites our catechism: [this mission is] ‘to restore all people to unity to God and each other in Christ.’ The SCWM has seen over and over again, through its missionaries how participating in mission transforms people’s lives as both missioner and host community are changed through a shared witness to Christ.

Perhaps the best presentation of how The Episcopal Church now understands mission is articulated in the SCWM’s 2003 booklet, Companions in Transformation: The Episcopal Church’s World Mission in a New Century. The report bases its understanding of Christian mission as our sending and being sent in Christ and being grounded in the missionary nature of God as revealed in Scripture. It says that

• God reached out to create communities of life in creation;
• with Israel and throughout history, God moved to restore people to unity with God, with one another and with creation;
• in Christ, God is still on mission in the world through the Holy Spirit.

The report says that ‘Missionary character is important at all levels in the church: in parishes and dioceses, individual missionaries and their supporters, voluntary societies, church-wide agencies and their leaders. And how we live out this missionary ethos has changed greatly from the days of Christians going to save the foreign heathens from their sins.

Here are some of the characteristics of a new understanding of mission that is based in…

• Companionship, a central characteristic of God’s missionary people. Both missionary and supporting community are transfigured as they experience the gospel life of their companion communities. Companionship in mission constitutes a shift from some modes of the colonial era, when sending churches in the Global North were sometimes confident that they had everything to teach and nothing to learn. The mission church may not be able to solve the anguish, violence and injustice suffered by the companion church, but simply being present in the place of fear, loss and isolation expresses the love of Christ.

• Witness ‘You are witnesses of these things.’ Witness in word means sharing the story of what God has done with us in light of the story of what God has done in Jesus Christ. Sharing our story with others must be a part of a dialogue in which we listen to the stories others share with us, whether from places of little faith or other religious paths.

• Pilgrim Episcopal missionaries see themselves today as pilgrims, growing in their knowledge of God, through the perspectives of the people to whom they are sent, learning as much as they share, receiving as much as they give. [T]he pilgrim motif opens the door to true mutuality in mission, where… ‘All are givers and all are receivers.’

• Servant ‘I came not to be served but to serve.’ Servanthood means listening to the stated needs of mission companions, looking for signs of God’s work in them, and collaborating with them in discerning how God is guiding the implementation of a mission vision.

• Prophet Mission pilgrims find their views of political, racial and economic relationships in the world challenged and transformed. Experiences of poverty, suffering, violence, alongside opulence, oppression and security often radicalise the foreigners, who then prophesy to the sending church, prodding it to delve more deeply into the systemic reasons why these inequalities exist. So Episcopalians are called to prophesy to their home church and guest church.

• Ambassador The missioner always is an ambassador of The Episcopal Church and that where they are, people look at them as representatives of TEC.

• Host ‘Let a little water be brought and wash your feet.’ Hospitality is central to receiving missioners here and offering it abroad. Hospitality means that we listen to what our companions say, offer them opportunities to experience the breadth of our church, and care for their needs.

• Sacrament All Christians are members of the communion of saints, and are members of God embodied in the incarnation. A Christian on mission is a sacramental sign of God’s mission to reconcile all people with one another and God in Christ. People and communities the missioner meets are also signs of God’s global presence.

This year’s World Mission Sunday focuses on the missionary world of Episcopal youth, ages 17-30, who serve throughout the world in a program created by the 2000 General Convention, Young Adult Service Corps. By 2006, there were at least some two dozen young adults serving around the world. The church hopes to have 110 by 2010. One of these missioners now serves on Executive Council and her time as a missioner in Panamá gives her a fresh view on how we do things here. Her insights are valuable.

So what does this all have to do with us in snow-bound Northfield? Perhaps our role as missioner can be best summed up in Psalm 99: ‘Let us confess God’s Name, which is great and awesome; God is the Holy One.’ If we are not called to go be a missioner far off, then let us be missioners close at home. If we can’t go abroad, let us support the charitable organisations and agencies that sponsor missioners and the work they do. Perhaps we can support Amy and Vince Zuninga, who are missioners in El Salvador. Or John Habeker who is a Volunteer in Mission in El Salvador. Or we can support Cristosal that is helping the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador start a new mission outreach in the eastern part of the country (our bishop is there right now as part of this initiative). Or perhaps there’s a missioner you know. Or we can give to ERD or UTO. There are many, many ways in which we can support missionary work.

Why does it matter? Because you and I can counter the harsh truths as so beautifully expressed in hymn 573, written right after WWI, truths that still exist. Verses 2 and 5 of the hymn say in part:

Races and people, lo, we stand divided,
and, sharing not our griefs, no joy can share;
by wars and tumults love is mocked, derided;
his saving cross no nation yet will bear…

How shall we love thee, holy hidden Being,
if we love not the world which thou has made?
Bind us in thine own love for better seeing
thy Word made flesh, and in a manger laid.

You and I have good news to share! We are missioners, too, so let us be about the joyous task God has set before us, to reconcile the world in Christ and proclaim God's glory.

[roof dumps, the fallout from Wednesday's blizzard]

Next project

This will be short and sweet tonight. It is, after all, a work night.

A parishioner latched onto an old iTalk microphone that turns an iPod into a recorder. (When I introduced this to the vestry on Tuesday, the poor clerk didn't know what I was talking about and sort of lost it, making gardening jokes.)

This evening I tried recording my sermon. Of course the preaching moment live is quite different from simply proclaiming one's sermon without a congregation. I know it takes longer in church than in a recording. This particular sermon, on world mission, was something like 9'34".

That is well and good but now I have to figure out two things:

1) how to increase the input volume because in order to hear what I am saying, I have to turn up the volume to the max and even at that, it is feeble;

2) how to convert the WAV to a MP3.

I know this is so old hat for so many out there but it's a new adventure for me.

Somewhere out in the great world of the internet I have read about podcasting.. OK, I guess using Audacity (which is what I have for my turntable... the only problem being that since I loaded iLife onto my laptop, Garageband has taken over all the input/output preferences and I can't find how to undo it) to fiddle with the file and then convert it with LAME.

Sigh. It's a stiff learning curve for this French medievalist.

All of this is done with the hope that our little congregation might be the first or one of the first in the diocese to podcast the sermons.

Friday cat blogging

It's hard not to get photos of cats asleep because that's all they do. So here's Orange Guy resting by two cat molas and one hibiscus mola (from Panamá), on a Guatemalan blanket that I brought back in 1987 of a quetzal (the national bird that has a super long tail and is very rarely seen). He's on the bird's body; its head is obscured under the little Guatemalan throw pillows.

Young Guy sits on the other end of the same blanket, which has three mountains. It's easy to turn a lounge lizard into a mountain cat. He's by two mountains with the sun rising between them. I bought this blanket (and two others) in Chichicastenango at their open market and then hauled them back in a big canasta (basket) inside of a strong rope net. I have never regretted the $25 (I can't remember what it cost in quetzales; I think they were something like 7Q/$1) I spent on this one blanket and $20 on the others.

The Waif is not one to curl up; she likes to stretch across two cushions that are on top of a table (her suite is an on-again off-again meeting space that way back was rented out as a studio apartment). She is getting more friendly when I go into the room, even though I think it's simply because she knows that I sometimes bring her food. She has a great motor.

Finally, La Doyenne in her favourite spot, on the Kliban towel. The poor towel is in shreds with so many thread pulls from twenty years of cat claws, but it still serves its purpose. For some reason, La Doyenne and Orange Guy have totally spurned the two little nests/igloos this year and when I have tried to put them inside, they balk. I can't figure out why.

Salvation! (It comes in many forms.)

When I got up this morning, the driveways still hadn't been plowed and I was beginning to think about 'Plan C,' having already enacted 'Plan B' last night. But I couldn't do much because I had to get ready for the 10.00 HE over at the local assisted living place. Since my car was totally blocked in, I phoned someone for a ride (no problem).

Later, while meeting with our intern/transitional deacon, I heard a welcome noise, snowblowing! The team that comes with our snowplow guy was busy finishing off the ramps (which seem to go on for miles) and stairs. I was happy to have the church freed up again. It really bothered me to have its steps and walkway still covered in thigh-deep snow.

And then this somewhat jury-rigged tractor with big snowblower on one end and tied-on somehow snowplow blade on the bucket on the other, and a hand-made cab arrived from I don't know where. I didn't get to see the man undo the church driveway but it took him two or three passes to do the rectory driveway, easy.

Apparently one of the kids arriving for nursery school this morning, noticing the two places I had hacked through the thick wall of crud and the connecting little path, said to his mother, 'Look, there's a cross.' Uhuh.

I tell you, sometimes some of the most mundane things can make me very happy. This snowplow made my day. It's like the time years and years ago I was cleaning out a house in which a family of four (two teen-age boys, the mother an artist and the father a packrat) had lived. They had dumped rugs on the back porch of the house and it had rained in on them so they were crawling with earwigs. When the garbage truck arrived the first morning, I ran out to ask if they could pick up the eight garbage cans worth of broken hockey sticks, crutches and take up the old rugs. I think they had pity on me because I looked so grubby and because I clearly was so happy to see them. They were very nice and came back after they had made their appointed rounds and took up everything.

So, I have a healthy respect for those people who do the unglamourous, but oh so essential, jobs that keep us functioning.

One sad note about this blizzard: while no human lives were lost, at least eleven barns collapsed under the weight of the snow and so far it is confirmed that 21 cows were killed. A farmer's life already is harsh; to lose their animals in a storm where the snow came too fast is sad.

Sand castles

This is a bit like building sand castles; when the high tide comes in, one's work is washed away, never to be seen again in that particular form. So it is with my magnus opus, my chef d'œuvre, my pièce de resistance of snow shovelling. I hope that by morning most of this will be obliterated by a front-end loader. But for the moment, it's worth casting into permanency through photographs, taken late at night after the 12-step meeting.

So, first there is the view from the street, looking up the driveway to the steps.

Next, there's the view looking down the ramp toward the rectory (which I did all the way to my office, which is to the left at the end of the ramp).

After that, comes a look down the steps back toward the driveway. The snow had really drifted over them and it was shovelling waist-high snow drifts.

Finally, looking back to the street.

I hadn't intended to put these up aligned centre but it's too late for me to go back and resend them all. It's not the end of the world, for sure.

The 12-step folks all remarked at how neatly it had been done. Not intended; it's the way I broke through the crust with the snow shovel. But function determined form and it does look pretty cool, almost intestinal in some ways (!).

Enough.

Meanwhile, a sane voice from Canada

The Road to Tanzania
Written by Andrew Hutchison, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada
Thursday, 15 February 2007

I write to you from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania... My blogs have not been as frequent as I would like but this time I write to you from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania where I have come for a meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion. The setting is a conference centre on the shores of the Indian Ocean and the weather is between 28 and 31degrees Celsius and very humid. This is an important meeting with many items on the agenda. The questions around human sexuality and what kind of Church we will be are at the top of the agenda. There are issues around whether the new presiding Bishop of the United States can represent her country, discussions about the Lambeth gathering of the Bishops scheduled for next year, the Millennium goals and many other things. We begin with worship and bible study and part of my prayer is that we can truly listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church. I believe in an inclusive Church that has its doors open to all and that accepts and welcomes people regardless of the human definitions that we may place upon them – male/female, white/black, gay/straight etc etc. We run the danger of making the Church a club for like-minded people rather than a place of refuge for the sinner and hope for the hurt and vulnerable.

It all came into perspective for me after I arrived at the Dar es Salaam airport at 7:30 in the morning. The drive to the conference centre takes about an hour. Despite being tired my eyes were wide open as we drove over dusty unkempt roads and through a sea of thousands upon thousands of people. Most were standing beside the side of road looking desperate and without hope. Adults and children intermingled and behind them were some of the most dilapidated shacks that I had ever seen. For many these are the only houses they will ever know. Most were patched with cardboard and jammed together. So many different things kept running through my mind – there is no space for these people, hardly an inch of grass for any kind of rest or refreshment, never an opportunity for a quiet moment, pollution and dust a constant feature.

I am going to a meeting with a gospel of hope and a preferential option for the poor and we are debating who is in and whom we are going to keep out. I have been at this long enough to know that it never boils down to one simple question. Meetings like this are filled with all manner of ego, authority and power but as we gather and are preparing to begin, that endless stream of humanity that I saw on my way haunts my memory. I wish we were dealing with what difference a gospel of hope could make in their lives, rather than worrying about strategies for the Primates and the politics that are an inevitable part of such gatherings. Please remember to pray for my brothers and sister who share in these meetings in the next few days. There is a huge amount at stake and the world needs to hear the good news again – that the gospel does not say God so loved the Church – rather it says God so loved the world!

from his blog at
http://generation.anglican.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=235&Itemid=9

So this is what the "Orthodox" are thinking

in regards to the subcommittee's report on TEC's response to the WR...

per Ruth Gledhill of the London Times (hardly a progressive writer):

"[I]nitial responses from the orthodox are not promising. 'Chilling,' is how Kendall Harmon described it, warning that schism now was even closer than before. This report would have the effect of propelling TEC further away from the centre and hasten any breach that is looming, he said. The responses on the conservative site StandFirm support Kendall's analysis. And I love this analysis from the GetReligion site, from which this 'Anglican Bomb' picture is taken: 'Once again the Africans pray, the Americans pay and the British write the resolutions.'"

They are consistent if anything. They so want schism, no?

And isn't that a cheerful, lovely image?

It sort of reminds me of what one person said this summer at General Convention, how they were ready to fight and keep fighting.

Um, so much for reconciliation.

At least per reports (see Jake's Place), our presiding bishop was seated today. May angels surround her.

The Valentine's Day Blizzard, day after and some musings on Tanzania

I am not sure I can generate enough text to match the photos and it doesn't really matter.

This is the view from the front porch after I pushed open the door which was blocked by snow. It's hard to see but the snow on the far end of the porch (north), comes all the way up, covering three steps that lead to the ramp. The ramp is solid snow. I don't know how the poor guy who does our walks is going to retrieve his buried snowblower and then get it to chop through all that snow.

This is the view through the storm door from the kitchen. I didn't dare open the door because of curious kitties and drifting snow. The driveway only has 16" in it but that's because it was plowed twice yesterday. The front yard measures from 24-28" and according to the radio, Montpelier got 30" so we're somewhere in that ballpark. I have shovelled the backsteps off but need to clear a path to the shed door so I can retrieve a flat-ended shovel (for digging up dirt), useful for hacking through the three and a half-foot wall of crud left at the end of the driveway by the snowplows.

Again, this is a flawed shot, taken through a dirty, dirty storm window, but it gives you an idea of the drifted snow on top of the church and parish house roofs. This is taken from the Waif's suite in the back of the house. In 2001, when we had four feet of snow on the parish house roof and ten feet of roof dumps between the church and the parish house, I could literally walk up on the parish house roof from the back, climb on the overhang to the back door and get up on the roof where I spent a day shovelling off snow.

And here is a shot of the whole block, taken from the town-cleared sidewalk, after I shovelled a pathway for the postal carrier to get up to the porch. The snow is level with the porch as well as the side railings to the ramp. It has also drifted which makes it a good three feet in places. I am about ready to go out and do some more shovelling after a couple hours' rest.

It's very pretty and this is the way that Vermont should look like at this time. Snowfalls like this make it worth the inconveniences.

I hope, somehow, to get over to Mad River Glenn on the other side of the ridge because now I know they have snow. They are the only ski area that doesn't have snow-making and at the end of this season, they will be restoring the 1934 or thereabouts single-passenger diesel-run chairlift that is one of the scariest things I have been on because the towers are tall, passing over big ravines, and the little safety gate on the chair is for psychological purposes only. Compa's and my schedules don't permit our getting there next week and the following week I leave for Portland, OR for Executive Council, so it may just be a dream.

Back outside to shovel.

[15.37] More photos!

I shovelled a path from the kitchen door to the shed/garage to get a flat blade shovel. I also cleared away in front of the garage door because I know the snowplow (which has yet to arrive), can't do that even if the blade is dropped and snow is pulled back away from the door.

This is with my back to the garage door, looking back at the kitchen steps and then beyond to the pathway I made out to the street. This is before I then went and tackled the huge drift of crud, created both by the town plow and by the sidewalk snowplow which evidently last night as it made its last pass, no longer knew where the driveway was so simply dumped all the snow in the driveway. It's real hard crud and since the plower has to make a perpendicular turn into the driveway (i.e, he doesn't have a good running start), I was concerned his plow might not be able to break through the waist-high solidly packed drift.

For some reason, the sidewalk across the street doesn't end up with the huge drift between it and the street. Therefore, people who live on that side only have one drift of crud to shovel through. It's hard to see, but I shovelled out the width of the driveway so the guy who does the plowing knows exactly where it is.

Needless to say, the garbage truck was not able to make its pick up today. But I had cleared a path for the postal carrier before he arrived.

So... here's the big unspoken question: Who really gives a flip about all this? Aren't there more important things about which to blog?

Of course.

But my heart is not into dissecting what is going on in Tanzania. I am glad that the subcommittee to the Windsor Report (aka The Golden Calf for some quarters)

[More later but I just got a call from the guy who does the plowing that his truck broke down and he can't get to plow us out for tonight so I guess I have to get suited back up again — waste of a shower — and keep digging.]

[18.50] I am tired and my back is sore. But there is a path from the sidewalk up the driveway to the parish house door, then down the ramp to my office. That was another two hours of shovelling probably for naught because I think that for the first time in all the years I have been here, the 12-step group isn't going to meet. I think they took one look at the blocked driveway and went elsewhere. I feel very bad about that.

For all those seminarians out there who are distressed not to have gotten straight 5s or 4s on their GOEs, if you decide to come to a small congregation in the snow district, as long as you have a strong back, good stamina and a healthy heart, your crown and reward shall be in heaven... at least I would pray so.

The one time I would have appreciated having someone else snowblow the ramp (it is at least 30 inches of snow, it comes half way up to my hip and I am 5'8" with long legs), it didn't happen. Oh, how I am tired of that ramp. I have spent hours over the past 13 years shovelling that thing.

So, back to where I was before the snowplow guy called....

My heart is not into dissecting what is going on in Tanzania though I have very strong opinions about it. I am glad that the subcommittee to the Windsor Report (aka The Golden Calf for some quarters) has mostly said that TEC responded to WR at its General Convention. Frankly, the WR overtook GC to the point that many other important pieces of legislation never made it to one house or another because we were bogged down in debate over WR-related resolutions.

The one place that the subcommittee says that TEC failed to respond to WR is about the blessing of same-gender relationships. I still fail to understand why this should be a make-or-break matter (I refuse to reduce it to 'issue' or 'problem' because people's lives are involved here) for so many. No point in rehashing the pros and cons; they are out there en vrac (in great quantity).

The Bishop of Utah has said eloquently that what is stake here is misogyny. I agree. It's male/female relationships; power over rather than accompaniment. I am painting with a broad brush but it seems that so much of the fear about same-gender relationships is based in a fear of women's self-authority, autonomy and self-definition. This also is old-hat.

The refusal of some bishops to sit at table with our presiding bishop is not because of what she has said or written. It's pure and simply because she is a WOMAN and a woman should not have that sort of power and authority.

Hence the clash of world-views and the intractability of some.

I pray for our presiding bishop, Katharine, and for the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America, Martín, in particular and for all the bishops in general.

That is all I want to say. There are volumes written elsewhere. I find most of this heart-breaking and tiring to the heart. Hence, I shovel snow instead.

[20.10] All that shovelling is worth it: I am so glad because the 12-step folks are in the parish house at their usual meeting. I was so afraid they would decamp somewhere else. They said the path was a bit maze-like but they are ensconced in the warm parish house, surrounded by nursery school stuff that usually is taken down in anticipation of the Thursday night group. At least that part of the world is right again.

Feliz dia de amistad

Despite the blizzard outside, an invisible Saint Valentine struck downtown Montpelier, including leaving hearts on the semi-clear steps up to the statehouse. This stealth Valentine decorator remains at large and has never been caught. Presumably a few hardy souls who made it into Montpelier got to see the hearts scattered about town and, if authorities have any sense of humour, perhaps they will leave them up for tomorrow when the rest of the state wakes up from this 15-30 inch blizzard.

Happy Valentines Day, el díá de amistad (como se dice en El Salvador).

Hype or not....

[Image taken from the Mount Washington Observatory]

Hype or not, that is, with the weather forecasters saying this is going to go down in the record books as the 'Valentine's Day Blizzard of 2007,' it is snowing, FINALLY, quite hard out there.

This view was taken from the rectory porch. The guy who plows our driveways has just made one pass down the church driveway. (I think this will probably be a three-plow storm.) So far, we've gotten five or so inches by my unscientific estimate.

The forecasters say that visibility is going to go down to zip this afternoon and that the worst of the storm is not here yet.

I have my Sorrels in the house so I am ready. Later on, I will go out and do a round of shovelling (making a path from the house to the shed/garage), I discovered that the snow is light and fluffy... I think we are safe from getting the sleet and freezing rain that parts further south may get.

More later.

[14.58] The snow now is coming down sideways and it is THICK. But the UPS truck has just gone by, the little sidewalk snowplow (photo here) has gone by, and the mail arrived practically on time.

This snowplow (which reminds me of some sort of dinosaur) sort of lumbers along, creating a path on the sidewalks. That's fine but then in its wake, there's always a lip of snow that then needs clearing in order to get out of the driveway. No matter; so far we have been plowed twice and I think this is going to be a four-plow storm. I took this picture standing downtown with my back to the bank, looking across the main drag to the Congregational church. They have the only clock tower and part of it is owned by the town and part of it by the church.

If you ignore the fact that the aluminum siding on the front of the church is filthy and stained yellow by years of sun (as this side faces due west), you can at least admire the front of the church. I guess it's time to take down the Christmas wreaths. One Saturday I got back from a day away to find that some kids in town had made a snowboard jump on the front steps. They had to have spent hours shovelling snow from the sides of the walk to create the jump. It backed up against the church doors so you couldn't get in. It took me two hours to unshovel so I could get into the church to turn the furnace on.

And this is the rectory, parish house and church as I look north. It's impossible to take a decent photo because of all the electric and phone wires. There are so many, I am not even sure I could gom them out. By the end of March 2001, there was so much snow on the ground from three March storms that the church sign was bent sideways because of the snow piles on the side of the yard. On April Fools' Day of that year, we had four feet of snow on the ground. So, we have a long way to go with this storm, officially called a blizzard, before we get there.

Still, according to the AP,

The National Weather Service’s Vermont location in Burlington said that today’s storm could be one of the top ten in history and could be the largest in February.

29.8 inches on Dec. 25-28, 1969
24.7 inches on Jan. 13-14, 1934
22.9 inches on March 5-6, 2001
22.4 inches on March 13-14, 1993
20.0 inches on Nov. 25 1900
19.7 inches on Jan. 25-28, 1986
19.1 inches on March 16-17, 1937
18.8 inches on Dec. 14-15, 2003
18.3 inches on Dec. 6-7, 2003
17.8 inches on Jan. 3-4, 2003
17.8 inches on Feb. 4-5, 1995

NOTE...ONLY ONE TOP TEN GREATEST SNOW STORMS HAS EVER OCCURRED IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY AT BURLINGTON...WITH ONLY A TOTAL OF 4 TOP 20 GREATEST SNOW STORMS OCCURRING IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY AT BTV (17.1" FEB 25-26 1966...15.9" FEB 15-17 1909....15.7" FEB 7-8 1983).

OK, some photos taken in the course of the afternoon, first mid-afternoon, around 16.00, of the large tree outside the backdoor. It has a huge lilac tree in front of it, which you can't readily discern. Then more shots of the ramp as it gets increasingly filled with snow, even though it was cleared out when I went out for my walk.

Then there's a shot looking across the street at Miss C's house, with its front stairs disappearing in the snow. I can't tell how much we have gotten, surely 15 inches.

The next set of photos I took at 17.00, as the light is fading. You can't really tell, but now the snow is coming down sideways with wind gusts. Now we're getting into the blizzard conditions. It has been a while since the state has been as shut down as it is today.

The airport is pretty much closed (why not? there aren't any incoming flights because this storm affects the eastern seaboard, and the limited visibility makes it impossible to have any take off. UVM shut down, and a lot of other places did. It's mighty quiet out there, although there has been a steady stream of traffic all day outside my door.

I picked up the waif and held her and walked over to the window to show her the blizzard she is missing by no longer being a homeless cat. She went ballistic, hissing, growling, biting. I really think she does not ever want to go out again... and she is afraid I will put her out the way she clearly was. I let her down and she calmed down but I will let her watch the weather on her own terms.