Back to the mountains

So tomorrow, despite whatever the weather will be doing, it's back off to the mountains, this time walking into somewhere (Goose Eye Mountain in the Mohoosics?), setting up the tent, hiking Thursday (below tree line because of projected thunderstorms), hiking out and going to the Great Gulf, setting up again, hiking Friday up Mount Adams and then coming out Saturday. At least, that is the plan tonight.

Long day (but good) with seven hours in one-on-one or group meetings.There's a lot of stuff and illness going on in the collective parish population. But one neat thing from today was hearing how someone who has been chewing for a long time on what 'epiphany' really means, figured it out this morning in a way that works personally.

The outside excitment, beyond a father/son combo working on the ramp and the senior warden pruning a lot of saplings out from alongside the house was looking up at my study ceiling and realising that the tile panels were in imminent danger of collapsing on top of my desk. So I got the father to come up and he screwed in a long plank that will hold the unglued tiles up until we decide to take the whole thing down and replace it. (Who knows what is under there! We really don't.)

Now to miggly things before I go. The Anglican World can turn or spin or gyrate without me for the next few days.


[photo: Killington looking to Pico]

No great loss

President travels widely, but skips Green Mountains
August 27, 2007
By Dave Gram Associated Press

MONTPELIER — It's a land of liberal politics, tie-dyed entrepreneurs and rugged Yankee individualism, the state that gave us President Calvin Coolidge, screaming Howard Dean and socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

These days, Vermont has another noteworthy distinction: It's the only state President Bush hasn't visited as president.

For the nation's 43rd commander in chief, the clock is ticking. He has 17 months left to squeeze in a visit to the bluest of blue states.

Not that everyone here is holding their breath. After all, it's a state that voted against him in 2000 and 2004, and whose state Senate approved a resolution calling for his impeachment earlier this year.

"The vast bulk of Vermonters not only don't want to see him in Vermont, they don't want to see him in the White House any longer," said Garrison Nelson, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont.

Opinions vary as to why Bush has been a Green Mountain no-show.

"He's saving the best for last," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., one of his harshest critics in Congress.

Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has directed a flurry of subpoenas at administration officials, trying to get to the bottom of electronic eavesdropping, the firing of federal prosecutors and other issues.

Despite his ideological opposition, Sanders, I-Vt., thinks a trip north would be an excellent way for Bush to break his tradition of tightly controlled appearances before supportive audiences.

"I'd love to seem him do something which he virtually never does," Sanders said. "In the tradition of New England and in the tradition of Vermont, have a town meeting and allow people to ask questions that he very rarely has heard in person."

Dan DeWalt, a Newfane Selectboard member and a leader of the Vermont impeachment movement, shares Sanders' view. His message: Bring him on.

"It really is useful for people to hear from folks who disagree with them," DeWalt said. "He's been surrounded by yes people, or he's been one of the yes people. ... That's how you get yourself into quagmires, disasters."

Linda Fowler, a political science professor at Dartmouth College, said Bush has a duty to visit Vermont, if only to honor the fact that it ranks high in Iraq war casualties for a state with only about 620,000 people.

She called the fact that he hasn't visited yet "lousy."

But there's a bright side, she says. Presidential visits are disruptive events."It shuts down the airport, it shuts down traffic. Pretty much everything grinds to a halt when the president's in town."

Thar goes anuthuh

I told my 80 year old mother the news this morning, that Alberto Gonzales had resigned. Being a tad hard of hearing she gasped, “He DIED?”

“No,” I said. “He reSIGNED.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I guess that’s something.”

May they all resign. Or something.

[from comments at the New York Times web site]

As for the President, he just doesn't get it and never will. Another 'heck of a job, Brownie,' comment:

After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.

Sans espoir.

Hooray (good riddance)

From today's online New York Times:

August 27, 2007, 8:55 am
LowerMyBills Lowers Its Ad Bill

By Brad Stone

Tags: advertising, LowerMyBills.com

The dancing aliens must have gone back to their home planet.

The once obnoxiously ubiquitous ads from the mortgage lead generator LowerMyBills.com seem curiously absent from major Web sites these days. The notorious ads, with their dancing silhouettes, shimmying green aliens and bizarre boogeying office workers, were once plastered across many major Internet sites, including NYTimes.com. They are now much harder to find.

Our colleagues Louise Story and Vikas Bajaj write about how the advertising of online lenders is weathering the credit storm. LowerMyBills, which has the most annoying online advertisements of the bunch, appears to be among the hardest hit.

[etc.]

I actually devised a paper screen so I wouldn't have to look at those dancing aliens, or dreadlock women gyrating across the screen. I am quite happy that the ads are less prevalent.

Proper 16C

After our brief foray into two major feasts of the church year, the feast of the Transfiguration and that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we return to the lectionary cycle. This morning’s gospel places us in the second half of Luke’s gospel in the midst of a healing story and a controversy. There are many different directions in which one can go with this gospel reading but I would like to explore just two: the debate over healing on the Sabbath and the woman’s response.

"In a story that is unique to Luke, Jesus heals a nameless woman by giving her the freedom to unbend and stand up straight after she has lived for years in crippling bondage. The woman has not asked to be healed. She simply finds herself in Jesus’ presence — and that leads to healing and life for her. This beautiful story, however, is not without conflict. Jesus heals the woman in sacred space (a synagogue, mentioned twice) and within sacred time, namely on a Sabbath (noted no fewer than five times), and he is criticized for this breach of the law. Jesus insists that the synagogue and the Sabbath are not the only things that are holy — so is this woman’s life. She is a daughter of the promise —a ‘daughter of Abraham,’ as Jesus names her.

"He turns to his critics and says, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for 18 long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’" (1)

"This story recalls a number of others. Luke had found two such stories in Mark (2:23-28 and 3:1-6) and brings them in (6:1-5 and 6-11). Only the second was a healing. It, too, was in a synagogue. Luke also knew the healing of the man with paralysis in Mark 2:1-12. The story he brings here stands on its own and must have come to him from independent sources. The synagogue leader voices the objection we might surmise could have been raised in the other synagogue healing on the sabbath. Why couldn’t the woman have waited for another day? No one objects to healing. But why not do it on a work day?

"Jesus’ reply points to the need to water animals on the sabbath. One could argue that that was necessary for survival. But the woman would have survived another day. She had been in this state for eighteen years! It is not a very good argument. In fact the real issue lies elsewhere. It is not about the finer points of what might be permissible. Jesus is not really playing the game of competing interpretations and when we think he is, he is not very successful. The counter is weak and off hand because Jesus’ understanding of the Law is quite different. His basic assumption is that God’s will (in the Law as elsewhere) is focused on people’s well being. Elsewhere he states: ‘The sabbath was made for people; not people for the sabbath’ (Mark 2:27)." (2) He is interested in bringing about God’s realm, as so eloquently described in the words of Mary we heard last week.

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What about the woman whose only name is ‘the bent-over woman’ until Jesus calls her a ‘daughter of Abraham’? Beyond his restoring her dignity as a chosen and beloved daughter, how else is she healed and why?

A commentator remarks:

"Jesus’ importance in this passage stems not only from what he does but from what he says. His language in v. 12 is literally, 'You have been set free from your debility.' The command, in the imperative mood, is in the perfect tense. The significance of the perfect tense is that it expresses an idea which already has begun in the past but which has continued implications and effect on the present. That is, the meaning of the term is that the woman had already been free from her weakness and she was still free from it when she encountered Jesus. What this means is that the physical healing was the culmination rather than the initiation of her freedom. When did her freedom begin? Who knows? All the text says is the mysterious “there appeared a woman” (v. 11). Perhaps she appeared because she had already decided in her mind that she was healed, or, to use Luke’s language of release, that she was set free. Jesus’ encounter with her, as it were, only added the 'icing to the cake.' Jesus’ encounter with her gave her what she already had.

"This is a significant point about healing or release which ought not to be overlooked. We find in our own lives that significant points of connection with people (like the woman with Jesus here) occur after we have taken steps to 'clean up' our lives or to establish a new and helpful direction in life. That is, we often think of healing or of deliverance as something that inaugurates a new life with God. Quite the contrary. The healing happens after the person has already decided that life is different. So many people are sitting around in life waiting for some miracle to happen to them; waiting to win the lottery of life. But this isn’t the way that lives are changed. They are turned around when the decision is made by the woman to show up in the same place where Jesus was; they are turned around when we decide to take those stops that put us in healthy relationships or a good flow of our life. Thus, when Jesus says that “You have been set free from your debility,” he is saying that her being set free began well before Jesus pronounced the words and touched her back. She was set free in the private spaces of her mind when she wanted to be set free." (3)

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The woman has lived in her heart for 18 years as though she were healed; it is her meeting Jesus that finalises that healing. She lived as if she — a woman, approaching a teacher on the Sabbath even — could be healed. And she was.

Living ‘as if’ is a very popular idea in AA (it’s not in the Big Book, though). The idea is, you take your body where you want to go, and your spirit will catch up later. (In the case of the woman, she took her spirit where she wanted to go and her body caught up later.) If you are afraid, act as if you are not, and sooner or later, you won’t feel that way. Live into the kingdom as though it’s real, here, present, realised. And eventually it will be.

Living 'as if' is not just for people in recovery. We could consider it, too. Where are the places in your life right now where you need to do some living ‘as if’? Is it living as if you have been reconciled with someone? Is it living as if you have conquered those demons of sadness, worry, jealousy, spite, or whatever else it is that threatens to estrange you from others and God? Is it living as if you can do all things, even when your sister body can’t quite do what it used to be able to do? Is it living as if you have found that peace and wholeness that God so desires for you?

This living as if is not Pollyanna living. It is living with the steadfast faith that the daughter of Abraham carried for 18 years that she would be healed. She lived as if until she could believe that God was her strong rock, a castle to keep her safe, her crag and her stronghold, her hope, her confidence. She lived as if until she could believe she had been sustained by God ever since she was born; from her mother’s womb God had been her strength. Ultimately she was set free.

If we have to, may we live ‘as if’ until we reach, too, reach that point of deep belief when we, too, can be set free.


END NOTES
(1) Teresa Burger, ‘Off the Record,’ The Christian Century, 10 August 2004, 19.
(2) http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/LkPentecost13.htm
(3) http://www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryII/Lk13.html

PHOTO: Leonor, Salvadoran Anglican woman (age 85), Villa Anglicana, agosto 2004.

[I don't usually crib so much from other commentaries and such but found out on Friday I had been preparing the wrong propers!]

All in a 24-hour period (or thereabouts)

So, what's the life of a country parson?

There's Bernanois' version of Le Curé that takes place in the 19th century. And there is the Mitford series (that drove me nuts because the stories were too, too sweet and improbable), and other stories.

But here's a sampling of my petit train-train (putterings) on a work day and day off.

First, I come out before going off to preside at a communion service at the local assisted living home with a group I call the Saints, to find a brave parishioner about to tackle the never-ending ramp. There's a real sense of déjà-vu because he, as scout master, ended up finishing an Eagle Scout's project two years ago. What he is now doing in horrendous humidity, is replacing the little gangplank I have had to walk for the past two years with a real ramp.

So, after trimming ferociously the forsythia, he yanks out the porch steps (still upside-down because they are being replaced, which means a full circuit onto the sidewalk to get to the church and parish house). Once again, lumber is all over the front yard.

He has to dig up the path way and has dumped the dirt under the porch which is fine because it can act as insulation and keep the skunks out.

His old dog, Murphy, a real friendly guy, when he's not tangled up around the tree or railing post, surveys the work.

Here's the view back to the house.

So I left this valiant parishioner in the humid Panamanian-like weather and took off to the doctor's and then to my home-away-from-home, Compa's and my house.

Today we were supposed to chop down a bunch of trees and start working on the winter woodpile but the chainsaw was totally stuck. She took it all apart but to no avail. of course, then she had to put it back together as best she could (one part she couldn't because she didn't have the right tool). Fine by me. I've already been mauled once by the chainsaw.

So I mowed the yard and she took down suckers and saplings with pruning impliments.

It was time to drive back up north to get ready for tomorrow, finish off my sermon.

On the way out, ten turkeys blocked the road. By the time I got my camera out, they'd wandered off into the nearby field but you can make out five of them.

Then, things got interesting. Two towns over in Woodstock, 14 miles away, I stopped at a farmers' market. It was overcast when I went in. By the time I left, it was raining sideways with 40-50 mph wind gusts. It was crazy but I went up the usual dirt road I like to take. I didn't get too far before I could someone ahead of me turning around. When they got down to me, they said there were downed electric lines. So I also did a K turn and went back to the main drag.

It was still pouring and gusting and I was worried more trees would come down on top of my car so I pulled over into a parking lot. I chose my spot intentionally: it's the White Cottage, a family-run restaurant that has been going since 1957. They have good hamburgers, fried clams and other things. Well, since I was parked there, once the rain calmed down, I went in and got dinner. Why not?

On the way up north, I saw many trees down, branches and leaves on the road and one other road that I usually take was also closed.

Compa has been without electricity since 17.30 this evening but that's because our house is at the end of a dirt road. The rectory is smack-dab in town and it is rare that we lose electricity.

So, that's a brief overview.

And all day long, I have been singing Padre Mickey's version of The Letter.

Bendito quinto aniversario, Obispo

¡Bendito quinto aniversario, Obispo Barahona!

Five years ago today in a festival eucharist, Bishop Martín Barahona, Bishop of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, was installed as Primado de IARCA, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America (including Panamá where our Padre Mickey lives and works). He was re-elected last year by the House of Bishops of IARCA to a second and final term. He has been a witness to God's love and also a strong voice of the Global Center.

May God richly bless Obispo Barahona, and the peoples of IARCA. And, blessed fifth anniversary, as well.

[photo: August 2004, at San Juan Evangelista, San Salvador, El Salvador]

Friday cat blogging

Young Guy has unfortunately discovered the lucky stork feathers I brought back from Spain. They're on the second shelf of the bookcase along with some macaw feathers from El Salvador. Here he sits up top the bookcase, ready to make his move. (Above his head is a water stain which appeared I don't remember when and behind him is a façade organ pipe that I got more than 30 years ago.)


Now he gets to the first shelf of books. Good body action. He also knocks things off in his wake and I don't let him get any closer to the feathers than that.


Afterwards, he settles down into the donut on the bunkbed and La Doyenne once again takes over his space.


Meanwhile, Orange Guy takes a snooze on a funky bedspread my sister gave me. Those creatures are supposed to be cats.

Vermont task force on same-sex marriage

Gay-marriage committee begins work; opponents boycott meeting
1:20 p.m.
August 23, 2007

By DANIEL BARLOW
Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – With little fanfare or fireworks, a legislative committee charged with exploring the possibility of expanding marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples cautiously began its work Thursday morning.

Tom Little, the Shelburne Republican chairing the commission, steered the other eight members present at the meeting toward deciding basic guidelines for the proceedings, such as the format of its upcoming public hearings and what historical information members and Vermonters may need. [Little is also an Episcopalian.]

Little, who oversaw the writing of the state’s historic civil union law in the Vermont House seven years ago, said he wants to get the commission out before residents to hear their thoughts as soon as possible.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be fully ready,” he said at the end of the first meeting of the 11-member Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection. “But we need to get out there and get our feet wet even if we aren’t ready.”

Meanwhile, same-sex marriage opponents announced at the Statehouse that they will be boycotting the committee’s upcoming slate of public hearings because they believe the members have already decided to endorse gay marriage.

Stephen Cable, the president of Vermont Renewal, said he is worried that allowing gay marriage would lead to group marriages or recognition of incestuous relationships. He called out Democrats in the Vermont Legislature to scrap the committee and form a new one “under bipartisan management.”

“As a result of their actions and refusal to address the issues we have raised, we are asking Vermonters to boycott the hearings and pay no attention to the report,” Cable said.

But despite the strong words there was little to suggest at the opening meeting of the historic commission that the issue of gay marriage would be as contentious as it was when the state passed civil union legislation in 2000.

There were no “take back Vermont” signs and very few, if any, activists on either side of the issue observing the proceedings to be seen. Most of those in attendance Thursday morning were members of the state’s media.

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Also cited in the news report is another member of the opposition saying that this is a kangaroo court and people opposed to gay marriage should boycott the meetings because it's the left talking to the far left.

Given that Vermont already has civil unions, and there's no way we are going back, does it make sense to have someone opposed to same-sex marriages to be on this commission? I really don't think so. We're past this point of discussion. We're not going back; it's time to go forward.

For really accurate portrayal of what we went through in 1999-2000, go read Pulitzer-prize winner David Moat's Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2004). He really gets it.

Compa and I were at the 25 January 2000 hearing (pages 164ff). A friend had reserved us seats on the floor of the House chamber, which was a good thing, since it was packed. Before entering, we were able to put our names into a box from which speakers would be selected. Imagine my surprise when, in the second or third (?) hour mine was drawn. Whatever I said is long lost to history, but it was broadcast, along with everyone else's words on Vermont Public Radio, such that when I arrived in church on Sunday, a few people said they had heard me on the radio.

I wrote in our parish newsletter in March 2000:

Some of you may be aware that I was one of the 110 Vermonters whose name was picked out of the hat to testify at the State House on Tuesday, 25 January at the House Judiciary’s Hearing on how the Legislature should respond to the December ruling of the Vermont Supreme Court in Baker vs. the State of Vermont. Attending that hearing was a remarkable experience—one worth reflecting on and sharing.

Despite the first real snowstorm of the year which started early that morning, the State House was packed with people who had come from all corners of the state. There were so many people that the overflow ended up downstairs in rooms set-up with televisions. Fortunately, an acquaintance had reserved a seat for me up front, down on the main floor so I had a close-up view of the procedings (so close that I was seated behind the chair of the House Judiciary Committee!). For four hours, 500 of us occupied the House Chamber.

The chamber is elegant, a true gift of respect to the people. Deep red velvet curtains, held back with gold tassles, frame the large windows; red carpeting imitating an Oriental tapestry covers the floor, and the semi-circle of wooden flip-top desks speak of decades of struggle that have taken place in this regal setting.

What was so amazing about the entire evening was, first, how civil people behaved (even if some of the words some said were less than civil) and second, that we were engaged in this process at all.

When my name was called, and I stood in line waiting to speak my two-minute piece, I looked up front, beyond the table at which the members of the House Judiciary Committee were seated, to the Vermont seal. Holding up the design are the three simple words, ‘Freedom and Unity.’ My heart and mind focused on that first word, ‘Freedom.’

No matter what each one of us thinks about the question of same-gender marriage or domestic partnerships, surely we can be thankful for the mere fact that, by virtue of the way democracy is lived out in Vermont, we can speak out. The freedom that we have been given by our living in this place at this time is one that is sadly taken for granted by too many. Yet, as I stood waiting, all I could think of is those places in the world—South Africa during the era of apartheid, El Salvador pre-1994, Guatemala, East Timor and so many others—where the exercise of free speech is one that brings risk of death. I was moved by our freedom to gather—in safety—to listen to one another, to speak to our elected representatives and to struggle with an issue that touches all of us.

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I pray that the same civility (for the most part) that prevailed in 2000 can once again be manifest.

From the Archbishop of IARCA/Bishop of El Salvador

A Call of Love and Solidarity

From our Anglican Church in El Salvador, we have been following the reports of so many recent disasters, such as the earthquake in Peru and the effects of Hurricane Dean. In Christian love we are praying for the people who are suffering from the effects of these disasters. We also pray for the force and witness of our relief and development institution that has already given so much help to these affected people, especially those in Peru hit by the earthquake.

Here in El Salvador, we know the suffering wrought by such disasters, the same as for other countries in the Province of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America. It is for this reason, that through love for our Savior Jesus Christ, I make a call for solidarity to the people of our province, to our friends in the United States and Canada, and other parts of the world that, within each of our capacities, we can help our suffering brothers and sisters. The quantity of our donations is less important than our being truly united in our love for Christ.

Please send any donations to Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD). Even better, if you wish to designate specifically the donation, it can be earmarked for the Emergency Relief Fund. We can agree that God will give us in recompense 101%.

Faithfully,
The Most Reverend Martín Barahona
Bishop of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador
and Primate of IARCA (Anglican Church of the Region of Central America)

Please make checks payable to: Episcopal Relief and Development c/o EM07-7
Mail To: PO Box 7058 Merrifield, VA 22116-7058

+++

Un llamado de amor y de solidaridad.

Desde nuestra Iglesia Anglicana en El Salvador, hemos estado siguiendo los acontecimientos de tantos desastres recientes como el terremoto en el Perú y los efectos del huracán Dean y con amor como cristianos, estamos orando por las personas que están sufriendo por los efectos de estos desastres y también oramos por el esfuerzo y testimonio de nuestra institución de ayuda y desarrollo que esta dando mucha ayuda a las personas afectadas especialmente en el terremoto en el Perú.

Nosotros en El Salvador sabemos del sufrimiento con motivo de desastres lo mismo de otros países de la Providencia Anglicana de la Región Central de América es por eso que con amor en nuestro Señor Jesucristo hago un llamado de solidaridad a los pueblos de nuestra provincia, a nuestros amigos y amigas en los Estados Unidos, Canadá y otras partes del mundo para que en la medida de nuestras posibilidades ayudemos a nuestros hermanos y hermanas que sufren, no importa la cantidad de nuestras donaciones si no lo importante es el que verdaderamente estemos unidos en el amor de Cristo.

Por favor enviemos nuestras donaciones a Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) y si queremos mas específicamente designarlo para el fondo de emergencia y desastres seria mejor (Emergency Relief Found) acordemonos que Dios nos dará en recompensa el ciento por uno.


Revdmo. Martín Barahona
Obispo de La Iglesia Episcopal – Anglicana
de El Salvador y Primado de IARCA

A nugget from André Gide (1869-1951)

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

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This quotation really doesn't need much explaining. I think it fits well to the current situation in the Anglican Communion.

I have read a lot of André Gide's works, starting with La Symphonie Pastorale, then La Porte Etroite (which has led me to pondering about Gide, since this week's gospel is on the narrow door), Les Faux Monnayeurs, and so on. I plowed through his journals and many other novels.

Perhaps my favourite quote from him, one that has always stuck with me and which I have tried to live is:

Le sage est celui qui s'étonne de tout. The wise one is the one who marvels at everything.

The rest of the quotation speaks about seeing each new day as a marvel. It comes from Les Nourritures Terrestres.

Yes. Gide's life was pretty wild — wild enough that thirty years ago, the details of his sexual doings were not mentioned in books or classes. Despite it, he was a wonderful lyrical author.

In any event, read, mark and inwardly digest this one nugget:

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

And it was evening...

Listening to Sarah T. Monte's I Can Do All Things (bi-lingual), and unwinding from vestry....

I could use a Flor de Caña but it's too late. (This is a bitty image I yanked off the web.)

Why Flor? Because when I went to Nicaragua in 1984, during the contra war, with an ecumenical group, we'd unwind at the end of the super-full days with Flor.

It's super cheap in El Salvador (though it has gone up in the past year): $6.00 for the 4-year rum, $7.00 for the 5-year rum. Up here, if you can even find it (I did in Colorado), it's more like $20.00 for the 4 year-rum.

Oh, perhaps I shouldn't write about this subject, but I did see in one of the Friday Dance Party photos some Ron Abuelo so I know there are other rum drinkers out there.

Enjoy, even if it is virtual.

Le Lion Couchant or Camels Hump

[Camels Hump was called the Crouching Lion by the French; of course it had another name before de Champlain 'discovered' it, which was for the Waubawekee Indians, Tawabodi-e-wadso, the Saddle Mountain. In 1789 Ira Allen called it Camel's Rump. Then, in 1830 Zadock Thompson called it Camel's Hump.]

Since today is my legitimate day off and it was supposed to be cool and clear, I decided to go up Camels Hump (4083 feet), that funky mountain that is the north central part of the state. It is the mountain that is on the Vermont quarter and one that is readily visible if you fly into Burlington.

The hike on the Monroe trail is much more gentle than going up Hunger Mountain. It has places where it levels out, and it never really gets strenuous. The elevation gain is only 1800 feet over 3.4 miles.

It took me an hour and 35 minutes to go up and an hour and 20 minutes to come down. I am always surprised at how little difference there is between the ascent and descent times. Camels Hump has rare and endangered tundra grass up top so one sticks to the rocks up on the summit.

Up top today we could see 100 miles in all directions:

north to Stowe/Mount Mansfield

south to Mount Allen and beyond that Killington/Pico

east to the NH Whites. I got a through-hiker on the Long Trail to take a photo of me -- over my right shoulder you can see the Worcester Range, with Hunger Mountain being the hump in the middle; over my left shoulder if you look hard or imagine, you can make out Mounts Jefferson, Clay and Washington. The snake-like line in the valley below is Route 89.

It was cool up top... and it was quite busy with the one through-hiker (who started on the 4th and will finish on the 28th), two overnight hikers doing just a segment from the Appalachian Gap to Route 2, and a bunch of day hikers like me.

Glorious day -- nice enough that I might have played hookey if it weren't my day off.

And how was church this morning?

The day started off with a lovely celebration of Mary's feast with cheerful altar vestments (from my private collection of stoles and materials). The chalice veil is a tortilla cover that my friend in El Salvador whom I call mi hermana salvadoreña made for me and gave me just before I left this June. The stole is one that is made by a woman who lives in the eastern part of the country whom I met in June.

After coffee hour, a small army of people moved EVERYTHING out of the parish house so that the floor can be cleaned and waxed this Tuesday. That is no small feat, given the amount of stuff the nursery school has crammed into our tiny (basically) one-room parish house.

The people moving all the stuff into my office grabbed me at coffee hour and said that whatever I wanted, I had better get it now. No kidding. I took this shot from the outside door looking in. Can you find the rocking chair from the other day?

I am standing in the parish house, looking at my office. Come Wednesday it will be put back together.

The parish house looks far bigger than it is when there's nothing in it. How I would love to cut down on some of the nursery school stuff (to be a teacher is to be a pack-rat; I know because I taught for about 12 years, 5 of which were full-time). I am standing by the main entrance, looking to my office door on the right, the nursery school teacher's office to the right straight ahead and the kitchen pass-through.

So the other things (some of it junk IMNSHO) got carted over to the church to surround the baptismal font and paschal candle, ay. Supposedly the window in the very back is a Tiffany window.

That big tree branch has the hugest wasp nest I have ever seen. It normally is propped up on the wall next to my office door. The stained glass window behind all the stuff is the next one to be restored; it is paper-thin and the leading is falling out as we speak.

The one photo that is missing is my going through the garbage well after church ended. The junior warden called to say that she had thrown out her double crown (!): she had bitten into a blueberry muffin, hit something hard and threw it out. Not until she got home did she realise it was from her mouth. So before she arrived, I thought I would go through the garbage to find it. I didn't know we go through three coffee filters at coffee hour (for just 30 people), or a bunch of napkins. I didn't find it, alas, despite pawing through all the coffee grounds. She came with her rubber gloves (I was bared-handed which meant my hands smelled of coffee for a while afterwards), and she found the crown on the second go-round.

Just a normal day at church. Ha.

The Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary (transferred)

One of the realities of walking the Camino de Santiago is that I cannot pick up a zillion guidebooks, picture books or even postcards. The Camino is one unending feast of Romanesque churches, an architectural style that I studied while in college and later as a grad student, both in France and in Spain but I can’t show you many photos because of the above limitation.

Another reality of the Camino and the Chemin de France is that it is populated with 12th and 13th-century statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary with her child, Jesus. (c.f., photos of the Black Virgin in Le Puy, France and a postcard that shows some of the Virgins and Piètas that are on the first half of the Chemin in France.) Some may find the style odd but I like it: she always looks straight at you, with big eyes, and so does Jesus, perched from his spot on her lap. Their gaze is direct, inviting and, in some ways, demanding. Her right hand is always raised in a blessing.

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The statue of Mary in Nájera, Spain lives in a grotto that is in a church that is built up against a red stone cliff. As always, there’s a story behind it. Kerry Egan, in Fumbling: A Journey of Love, Adventure, and Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, explains:

The statue, according to legend, was found in 1052, by King García while out hunting. His falcon found her lodged in a limestone crevice.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Spain, the religious importance of images, like this statue, soared. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, devotion to saints was directed at relics, which tended to be in churches.… [W]ith the rise in western Europe of the notion of images as markers and even sources of the sacred in this world, little shrines to Mary exploded out into the countryside, statues here, paintings there. Throughout Spain, statues of Mary were found in caves or in fields. A shepherd out wandering found her image in a crevice, or a farmer would dig her up. Story after story tells that upon finding a statue, the people in the nearest town would try to move it into a church or a private home. Somehow the statue would escape and be found the next day, stubbornly in the place where it was first unearthed. Mary, apparently, wanted to be in the countryside.

Relics were in church buildings, but Mary was out in the places where people lived and worked. An image of Mary could transform any space into a sacred place. She belonged to the people, to the poor and the illiterate, as well as to the elite who could afford to buy relics and the clergy who controlled churches. (1)

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While this church, Saint Mary’s Parish, may be named after a judge’s wife, for that is what our history tells us, it doesn’t really matter now because we claim a close relationship with Mary, Jesus’ mother, the God-bearer. I find special delight in being part of a congregation that bears Mary’s name for precisely some of the reasons that Egan enumerates:

Mary belongs to the people. She has been an icon of hope for countless ordinary people, who have been inspired by the words of the Magnificat. I see that again and again in El Salvador. I also witness that here.

I love the stories of the migratory Maries: she just doesn’t want to be contained in a church, she wants to be out in the countryside, amongst the people.

I don’t think the statue of Mary that lives over by the columbarium is all of a sudden going to emerge in the rectory garden or somewhere else. But perhaps we need to think of how Mary can move figuratively beyond the walls of the church. How can Mary’s words in the Magnificat inspire us? How can we bring her words of reversal to the world? How can we bring her among our people, our town? How can she live amongst us?

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Mary today is extremely popular. Egan muses:

Statues of Mary used to show up in caves, and then apparitions used to appear in meadows and forests, and now images of her show up on the sides of mirrored high-rise buildings. Now you get Mary everywhere: she is uncontainable. People see her all over. I have no idea if Mary really chose to show up on a potato, but I do know what it tells me about the human desire to see Mary everywhere. The hope of what Mary symbolizes, the possibility of human beings to carry and give birth to the divine in this world, to be creative in the sense of creating with God, explodes out into everyday life. This happens not in places of power but everywhere. It throws open where we can do God’s work, where we can turn toward God. And if she is showing up on tortilla chips and bank buildings during rush hour, she has a killer sense of humor. (2)

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Now the people who sell on eBay for thousands of dollars their potatoes with Mary’s image on it, or Jesus’ face on a piece of toast, have totally missed the point of the image. There, it becomes an object of idolatry.

Instead, the images we have of Mary are icons of, as Egan says, ‘[t]he hope of what Mary symbolizes, the possibility of human beings to carry and give birth to the divine in this world, to be creative in the sense of creating with God….’

Oscar Romero, whose birthday shares Mary’s feast day preached on this feast day in 1977: ‘Mary serves for us as a beacon for our eternal destination, and… she illuminates our humanity and our rights. Like Mary, we are called on to defend this dignity, this liberty, and these rights because we know we are not destined to be earth’s toys but are destined, like Mary, for God’s realm, because we, too, are God’s chosen ones.’

How does Mary inspire us to defend human dignity and rights? How does Mary inspire us to create with God? What do we create with God? How, with Mary, do we bring about the new creation that God desires for all of the world and its creatures? (If you look at the Salvadoran cross in the parish hall, you will read the words, in Spanish, the New Creation, for that is what we are about.) How do we say ‘Yes’ to God without qualifications the way Mary did? On a more personal level, how does our soul ‘proclaim the greatness of the Lord’ as did Mary’s? How can we spread the joy of God’s wonders around? Because that is what Mary invites us to do.

We can do all these things because Mary is our star of certain hope for all of God’s people who are still on pilgrimage on earth — and that includes you and me.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour…

Let us join Mary in her song, and let us proclaim it to the world.


Photo: Nájera, Spain [click on it for larger image; it is high resolution]

END NOTES
(1) Kerry Egan, Fumbling: A Journey of Love, Adventure, and Renewal on the Camino de Santiago (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2004), 154-55.
(2) Ibid., 157.

(This makes my 400th posting!)

Any ideas?

Anyone have any ideas of what the world-politik and Anglicano will look like when this oft-touted date, 1 October arrives?

We've got the president telling us to wait for the Petreaus report (which will be ghost-written anyway) to be issued 30 September. Not until we get the report, he says, can anyone make any decishons (his pronounciation of it looks like that) on Iraq.

And then we've got a bunch of people clamouring for the House of Bishops' decision also to arrive 30 September (if not before, since that is the 'deadline'). Hold fast, bishops! What you said in March was sufficient.

In any event, it feels like waiting for a cosmic stellar crash. So what's your prognosis for the day after? Mine? Same old, same old.

We'll revisit this as the weeks advance.

Friday cat blogging

Thanks goodness for Friday cat blogging — by the time I get to Friday, I am too mentally fatigued to come up with anything clever.

Young Guy looks as though he is in utter bliss. This is highly unusual that La Doyenne and he share the bunk bed together.

Where does one begin and where do the other end?

From two summers ago, here is Orange Guy as a total sun slug in the bedroom window.

Sit yourself down, take a look around

I am a bit brain dead tonight so this will be short.

Today I spent five hours in my church office listening to people. They always migrate to the Kennedy rocker, a chair I bought very early on here with my Christmas gift from the congregation. I've watched nervous brides-to-be rock themselves into the wall, bereaved people sit very still, young mothers hold their children, older people deal with their mortality and countless others settle into that chair and begin to rock. It could tell stories.

Oddly, the only time I sit in it is when I turn it around to consult the books (lectionary commentaries) that reside in the bookcase behind it.

It lives in a small office in a small parish house, an office that is used by a lot of other people (vestry counters on Sunday mornings and the nursery school teacher for parent-teacher conferences). It's hard to keep neat. But at least it is once again the rector's office (it wasn't when I arrived here 13 years ago).

Time for me to find my rocking chair at home and chill out.

Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary

More and more Episcopalians today find that Mary touches their lives. The Living Church every year has an editorial on the importance of today. A newspaper in Florida last week published a special article about a congregation observing this feast today. All this attention highlights our increasing acceptance of Mary’s pivotal role in the history and story of salvation. We’ve moved beyond a saccharine image of a meek and mild brunette, blue-eyed woman to a feisty Middle-Eastern teenager. It’s quite a change. All I can say is, thanks be to God.

One person whose life was changed by Mary is Jonathan Myrick Daniels, martyr. His feast day was yesterday and I think it’s appropriate that it land on the vigil of this feast. (1)

Here is his story:

Daniels was born in Keene, New Hampshire in 1939, one of two offspring of a Congregationalist physician. In high school, he joined the Episcopal Church and also began to take his studies seriously, and to consider the possibility of entering the priesthood. After high school, he enrolled at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia, where at first he seemed a misfit, but managed to stick it out, and was elected Valedictorian of his graduating class. In the fall of 1961 he entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston, to study English literature, and in the spring of 1962, while attending Easter services at the Church of the Advent in Boston, he underwent a conversion experience and renewal of grace. Soon after, he made a definite decision to study for the priesthood, and after a year of work to repair the family finances, he enrolled at Episcopal Theological Seminary (now Episcopal Divinity School) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1963, expecting to graduate in the spring of 1966.

In March 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, asked students and others to join him in Selma, Alabama, for a march to the state capital in Montgomery demonstrating support for his civil rights program. News of the request reached the campus of ETS in early March, and during Evening Prayer at the chapel, Jon Daniels decided that he ought to go. Later he wrote (and this is where his story intersects with today’s readings):

“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” I had come to Evening Prayer as usual that evening, and as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence I have always felt for Mary’s glad song. “He hath showed strength with his arm.” As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled “moment” that would, in retrospect, remind me of others — particularly one at Easter three years ago. Then it came. “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things.” I knew then that I must go to Selma. The Virgin’s song was to grow more and more dear in the weeks ahead.

He and others left on Thursday for Selma, intending to stay only that weekend; but he and a friend missed the bus back, and began to reflect on how an in-and-out visit like theirs looked to those living in Selma, and decided that they must stay longer. They went home to request permission to spend the rest of the term in Selma, studying on their own and returning to take their examinations.

Jon devoted many of his Sundays in Selma to bringing small groups of Negroes, mostly high school students, to church with him in an effort to integrate the local Episcopal church. They were seated but scowled at. Many parishioners openly resented their presence, and put their pastor squarely in the middle. (He was integrationist enough to risk his job by accommodating Jon's group as far as he did, but not integrationist enough to satisfy Jon.)

In May, Jon went back to ETS to take examinations and complete other requirements, and in July he returned to Alabama, where he helped to produce a listing of local, state, and federal agencies and other resources legally available to persons in need of assistance. On Friday 13 August Jon and others went to the town of Fort Deposit to join in picketing three local businesses. On Saturday they were arrested and held in the county jail in Hayneville for six days until they were bailed out. (They had agreed that none would accept bail until there was bail money for all.) After their release on Friday 20 August, four of them undertook to enter a local shop, and were met at the door by a man with a shotgun who told them to leave or be shot. After a brief confrontation, he aimed the gun at a young girl in the party, and Jon pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself. (Whether he stepped between her and the shotgun is not clear.) He was killed instantly. (2)

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Daniel’s life was changed by the Magnificat as he prayed it. How might Mary’s song change your life? How might you respond to the powerful words that invite us to make a difference, reverse the injustices of the world to bring about God’s realm here and now? Not that we are being called to martyrdom in the way that Jon was, but we are still called to be martyrs in the original sense of the word, witnesses, to God’s love that is for everyone, a love that turns the conventional world upside-down.

Mary’s feast day invites us not only to pray the Magnificat, but to live it. May her example, that of Jonathan Daniels and of countless others, inspire us to live likewise.



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END NOTES
(1) Because Bernard of Clairvaux is remembered on 20 August, Jonathan Daniels is remembered on the day of his arrest, 14 August.

(2) http://satucket.com/lectionary/Jonathan_Daniels.htm
The writer of this biography based it on The Jon Daniels Story, ed. William J Schneider (Morehouse, 1992 ; ISBN: 0819215864 - out of print but may be available used) (orig. publ. 1967)

Mebbe this is more accurate?

Sorry for the low quantity and quality blogging; I am under a deadline (mañana) for something important.

Kind of says it all

Come and Grow

I am not sure this is what the person who came up with this slogan imagined but it works for me.

Here's today's crop... first, from a parishioner's garden:
lettuce (which Young Guy says is good)
wax and burgundy beans
tomatoes
blueberries (in the blue bowl)

And from mine:
parsley
potatoes
peppers (very hot red ones)

And from the farm stand, fresh peaches from PA Amish farms.

Oh, life is so, so good.

Proper 14C

After yesterday’s burial office, one member of the family engaged in one of those conversations that so often arises at moments like a funeral. In this person’s case, it was about faith. He wanted to know how come, despite searching and asking God for it, he didn’t seem to have faith. He wanted to know why he found God in his mother, but couldn’t find God as or in God. He said that he knew right from wrong — he remembered stealing something as a kid and learning that, first, he didn’t enjoy the object as much as the one his friend had and, two, he felt so bad about it that he returned it to the store. So he knew that he had the moral and ethical underpinnings of faith. He knew in his head that faith exists; he once believed but he no longer felt God’s presence in his heart. But now… he wanted to know how come if he wanted to believe, he couldn’t yet.

As if that weren’t enough for the hard questions, he then wanted to know why God allows humankind to know good and wrong. Surely it was the devil who inspired us to learn evil. Surely God wouldn’t let humankind know evil, would God? I told him I honestly needed time to chew on that one.

Really, he hit on the major struggles humankind has had with belief, faith, and right and wrong.

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Paradoxically, the readings this morning respond to some of his tough questions with which we wrestled for an hour but which really take a lifetime to sort out.

Isaiah tells the people:

Wash yourselves;
make yourselves clean;
remove the evil from your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good:
seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews expresses some of what I inadequately tried to say yesterday to the man asking me all these questions: ‘Now faith if the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ There are things I believe with the heart of faith, and not with my intellect. As I told him, some things, like the resurrection of the body, I simply believe without trying to understand with logic. I believe because I have to, I need to, I want to. I believe and accept the mystery.

And Luke’s gospel picks up on this thread of belief and faith with the words, ‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ For where your faith is, there your heart will be also.

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The Rev’d John F. Kavanaugh, a Jesuit priest, wrote about his defining encounter with faith:

“Long ago, when I spent a month working at the ‘house of the dying’ in Calcutta, I sought a sure answer to my future. On the first morning I met with Mother Teresa after Mass at dawn. She asked, ‘And what can I do for you?’ I asked her to pray for me. ‘What do you want me to pray for?’ I voiced the request I had borne thousands of miles. ‘Pray that I have clarity.’

“She said no. That was that. When I asked why, she announced that clarity was the last thing I was clinging to and had to let go of. When I commented that she herself had always seemed to have the clarity I longed for, she laughed: ‘I have never had clarity; what I’ve always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust.’

“Thus Mother Teresa became for me a member of that cloud of witnesses to which the Letter of Hebrews refers: heroes [and heroines] of faith, who had conviction about things unseen. So it was with Abraham and Sarah, who believed they would give birth to a child in their old age (the very idea was enough to make Sarah laugh out loud) and make ‘descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore.’

“The Letter to the Hebrews celebrates the faith of Abel, dead but still teaching us; of Noah and his improbable ark; of Jacob, at death’s door, finally able to bless Joseph’s sons, of Moses, the child unguarded and abandoned, who would one day lead a nation, against impossible odds, into a territory his feet would never touch. Faith felled the walls of Jericho and saved the prostitute Rahab. It was faith, the letter says, that discovered new lands, bestowed wondrous strength, and inspired uncommon courage in ordinary men and women. ‘Some were pilloried, flogged, even chained in prison, stoned, beheaded, homeless, dressed in rags, penniless, given nothing but ill-treatment, living in caves and deserts and ravines.’ They were all heroes [and heroines] of faith, the letter continues, but they did not live to see what was promised.

“How much we have to learn from the great ones who have gone before us, not only the Hebrew saints praised above, but our own — those who, after Christ, believed in [Christ] despite adversity.

“We imagine faith to ease confusion, dull the pain, redeem the times, but we miss the testimony of the clouds of witnesses. Our faith does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not disarm the demons. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch so we might walk. When all else is unclear, the heart of faith says, ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit.’

“So it was with all our heroes [and heroines]. ‘Those died in faith. They did not obtain what had been promised but saw and saluted it from afar… searching for a better and heavenly home.’” (1)

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It is hard sometimes to have or find that bedrock solid faith of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks. If we are honest about our life journey, we would have to admit that sometimes ‘the future is… faced with uncertainty, even panic.’ Sometimes ‘the unknown is seen as more terrifying than the known, for we are not certain our coping behaviors have developed to meet the new challenges. Besides, we get accustomed to dealing with the familiar. It’s secure, like old bedroom slippers. Anything new might require us to reprogram ourselves altogether. And that we find a most threatening prospect.… How does one face tomorrow without fear?’ (2)

How does one face tomorrow without fear? How does one move from seeking clarity to trusting? Through faith — in the understanding of the Letter to the Hebrews, the way we follow Christ. We follow with patience, perseverance, holding fast to the hope that has been given us through Christ. Faith — being able to hold to in hope even that which cannot be seen… the Spirit of God which works in us and transforms us. Faith — looking toward our heroes and heroines, our mentors and teachers who have gone before us, trusting in God, even when to do so seems like utter folly.

Thank God we do have a cloud of witnesses that can show us what it means to be a person of faith! A cloud of witnesses that exemplifies that trust which enables us to handle uncertainty and change.

Who have been your mentors in faith? Beyond the obvious, public ones like Mother Teresa or Ghandi or Oscar Romero or Martin Luther King. Who, in your own life, has been an icon of faith — someone who believes confidently in what we hope for and about things we do not see? For the man in my conversation yesterday, it was his mother.

It is wonderful to have a cloud of witnesses to whom we can look for examples of faith. But the life of faith cannot stop with them. It must continue with each one of us. Each one of us is called to be a witness to the God of Hope, the God who makes all things new. We are called to enter into the cloud of witnesses, to believe and trust and hope in that which cannot be seen but which we know is of God. And so the biggest question is also the last: How can each one of us become a witness, a mentor in faith for someone else? How can we be in our own way someone who, as an icon, points a seeker to God?

Learning and trusting how to be a person of faith comes through prayer and the grace of God. Let that grace fill you and me this morning as we are renewed by the Sacrament so that you and I may go out into the world, to proclaim the Good News and join in the way of the cloud of witnesses.

END NOTES

(1) The preceding paragraphs are from John Kavanaugh, The Word Encountered (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 91-92.
(2) Imaging the Word, Volume 2 (Columbus, OH: United Church Press, 1995), 251.

[photo: altar window reflections, 5 August 2007]

Post-funeral play list

I am finally home from the 10.00 funeral, having spent two hours talking at the reception with intense people who would still have me there, listening, had the altar guild person not fetched me to find out what frontal to put on the altar for tomorrow. Meanwhile, the sunny day has clouded over.

~ Howard Jones • IGY (What a beautiful world this would be) • The Best
~ Peter Gabriel • Salisbury Hill • Shaking the Tree
~ John Hammer • Miami Vice Theme • 1985
~ Rodriguez • Fantasía para un Gentilhombre, Allegro con Brio • Concerto de Aranjuez
~ Animation • Obsession • 1985
~ Santana • No one to depend on • The Essential Santana
~ Shocking Blue • Venus • Only Rock 'n Roll
~ Taverner • Cycle I: The Primordial Call • The Veil of the Temple
~ Genesis • White Mountain • Trespass
~ Martin • Mass: Gloria • Robert Shaw Singers: Evocation of the Spirit

I need some tunes to clear out of my head, 'I come to the garden,' and 'Blessed Assurance.' Even though people have gone to the Episcopal Church for years, they still migrate to the old Methodist and Congregational stompers.

[gif comes from: http://kecute.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/cat-with-headphones/]

From I can has cheezburger?

This is too, too good to ignore.

My seminary's informal mascott is the penguin.

Take a bunch of middle-age or older balding male professors who outnumber the younger women, stick them all in cassocks and surplices, have them walk down the chapel aisle every night for Evensong, and you'll understand why we called their procession the 'Penguin Parade.'

I even have some toy penguins in my office.

Thus ends the late edition of Friday Cat Blogging.

Friday cat blogging

This has to be the funniest photo of my sister's cats she has ever sent me. All but one is in on the act.

The flame-point cat in the back with his face all scrunched up is blind in one eye. My sister and BIL adopted him from their local vet/shelter. He had been brought in by teenagers who claimed they found him injured. Uhuh. Someone had shot him with BB bullets. One of them went through his eye and is permanently lodged in his brain. We call him 'Flipper,' because he lies on his back and sort of pushes himself along by his paws.

The grey kitty is my sister's La Doyenne. She keeps the boys all in line. She isn't big but she is forceful. One of her traits is to shred the end of any flower that comes into the house so they all get this designer-frill that no one could ever find in a store.

Lastly, I can't remember which of the two orange boys is on the side-lines cheering the two on.

Meanwhile, on the home front, that pathos plant is in imminent danger. It's almost dinner time and Young Guy is getting ready to chomp on it. I don't know why he is in the bookshelf — he has been there for ten minutes, wedged in between the plant and the notebooks of all my sermons. Right now he looks annoyed because the radio had dog barking going on. He looks oh so cute, but I know better.

Capping off a fine day

Today Compa and I hiked up the Caps Ridge Trail to the summit of Mount Jefferson (5716 feet), one of the 5000 footers in the Presidential Range of the NH White Mountains. It took us 2h16 minutes going up (book time 2h35 or 2h40, depending on which edition one uses) and about 2h10 coming down. By contrast, my big bro ran up it in 54 minutes and down in 51. There's a clear break in the gene pool.

The hiker starts in a parking lot at 3009 feet, which as the sign informs us, is the highest road in the NH Whites.

While the distance of the trail is short, 2.5 miles, the altitude gain is 2700 feet. The catch is that one goes over three rock caps; hence the name of the trail.

As the AMC Guide Book says: The route is more strenuous than might be anticipated from the relatively small distance and elevation gain.

The Caps Ridge Trail follows the narrow crest of the ridge, becoming steeper and rougher as it climbs up into scrub, and views become more and more frequent. At 1.5 miles, the trail reaches the lowest Cap after a steep scramble up ledges and it runs entirely in the open from here. The trail ascends very steeply up the ridge to the highest Cap... then continues to climb steeply as the ridge blends into the summit mass.

So, the first 1.1 mile is pretty gentle. One gets to peek through the trees to see the summit way up there.

Even two-thirds of the way up today, we could see all the way to Camels Hump, pointed out by the red arrow. To the right is Mount Mansfield. Easily 90-100 mile views, though we couldn't see the Adirondak High Peaks.

The red arrow indicates from whence we have already come, a bunch of rocks that give the hiker the first good views of the NH Whites.

Big Bro passed us about 0.4 miles from the summit. He'd been following our progress up the Caps (which really do require what I call 'Four Wheel Drive,' i.e., hands and feet) through his telescope at home so when he saw us go up the first Cap, he took off from his house. So, here he is steadily hiking up. He did wait for us up top: because it was such a fine day, he wasn't worried about getting chilled.

Up top Mount Jefferson (which was a zoo today because so many people had done as we; you just don't get a bunch of 100-mile view days — yesterday was rainy), you can look across the Great Gulf to the summit of Mount Washington (6288 feet). The red arrow indicates the path that Compa and I took two summers ago up the Great Gulf Trail, which in that gulf ascends 1600 feet over 0.8 miles (on a topo map, the lines are practically together). Compa and I thought it looked far worse from afar than when one is actually about to do it. The other red arrow, that bends, shows the route we did last October to Lake of the Clouds hut and then up Mount Monroe.

Now we are on the way down and this photo shows you some of the rocks you have to scramble down.

This is looking down, knowing that we have to go there. Just follow the yellow paint stripes on the rocks and the rock cairns and you'll stay on course.

I never can get enough of looking across at Mount Washington or taking in all the rock slides and fields up on the Presidential Range. All the smoke comes from the cog railway. It really seems crazy in these pristine mountains to have a steam-operated ancient railroad go up the ridge of the Mountain but there's no talk of stopping it.

The people in the photo give you an idea of how the trail goes.

Yes, the trail takes you over that crest and down, down where the red arrow is.

Just before I took this photo, there was a labradoodle that had scrambled down this rock face with no trouble at all. She was in the bushes by the time the shutter clicked. Oddly, she got down that wall which was harder than other places, but there she balked and her owner had to carry her down.

Shall we say a fine time was had by all and best of all, we got back down all in one piece (always desirable, especially today since I have a funeral on Saturday).