New Year's Eve Party Central

Here are some action-packed shots from New Year's Eve en la rectoria.

The kitties have a new basket (it came laden with wonderful goodies that are partly eaten) and so there was some vying for that. And then little Miss Funky Paws Agatha Birch got some attention.

Happy New Year's Eve from all of us.


Orange Guy tries out the basket first.


Young Guy comes along to inspect it but wanders off.


La Doyenne (note the curled tail) takes note.


Shortly thereafter, she takes over the basket.


And here's the newest feline sojourner with some of her toys.

Vacation follies

Here's a light posting for the last night of 2007 (at least for now).


Here is the tree that was so savagely chopped down last week. Compa wrestled it into place (she has bruises to show) and there it sits, lording over the 'living room.' Remember, the total house is 18x18 feet. Every inch counts, which is why the tree gets hoisted onto a file cabinet. This shot is taken from the loft at the other end of the house.


This has ended up being one of the snowiest Decembers on record. The Fairbanks Museum in Saint Johnsbury has gotten already 50+ inches. Last year, their total was 87.


We got about six inches overnight. More to come tomorrow. The snowblower works to a point.


The deck after I shovelled part of it and before the rest of the roof dumped.


Looking down to the pond between a maple and a cherry.


Looking down to a stand of birches that are pink/grey at this time of year.

How unlike last December when there was no snow at all.

Christmas I

Christmas-tide always immerses us in the contemplation of the Incarnation. It’s almost a crash course in reminding us what the Incarnation means, since we often forget it during the rest of the year, despite its lying at the root of everything else we celebrate during the course of the year.

There are plenty enough things in life to boggle one’s mind without taking on the mystery of the Incarnation. There’s also that struggle within the soul the desire to know everything or not to have all the answers.

I’ve used this example of that tension before: sometimes when I pick up one of my cats to listen to their purr, I wonder: ‘I really wish I understood how you guys do that.’ I also know that not even the vets and scientists haven’t quite figured out why cats purr and dogs don’t — they’ve gotten as far as determining that the purr has something to do with the blood circulating through their system but beyond that, they haven’t gotten too far. My next, almost immediate, thought is: ‘Yes, but if I know what makes you purr, then I will no longer consider it a mystery and some of my delight in hearing it will be diminished.’

So it is for the mystery and wonder of the Incarnation. We want to understand it, but at the same time, to parse it all out would then diminish the wonder it inspires in us. If we fully understood the Incarnation, for example, the artistic impulse to depict it might not have flourished for centuries and centuries. We might lose the genius of people like Hafiz, the Persian poet, who wrote: ‘God looked where in the world he might display his face. He pitched his tent in human fields, no other place.’

The book I chose to read to the children at the early service Christmas Eve consists of drawings of Jesus as a baby (appropriately titled, Baby Jesus). Granted, many of them are the early 1900s quasi-Victorian renditions of a blond, blue-eyed baby, but to cut the artists some slack, they were painting what they knew best — themselves. In another wonderful book on Jesus, The Faces of Jesus, written by Fred Buechner, page after page shows artistic renditions from all over the globe. It’s quite wondrous to see a Chinese or mahogany dark Jesus rather than the blue-eyed version (no offence). When all is said and done, there is no real way to capture Jesus — his being is a mystery.

The artists of the centuries know how to capture mystery. And so do we if we open our hearts to it. We have daily encounters with the Grace and Truth that has come into this world.

Even so, it seems hard to believe — the tragic events of this week in Pakistan with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the subsequent chaos with its scores of deaths underscore the struggle we have sometimes in recognising and believing that God has become incarnate amongst us to love us. We can believe in that desire when we look at a baby, but how do we find it in those who seek to do us harm? How do we believe in the Incarnation when faced with all the human frailty and brokenness that surround us — not just on a global level but as we look at one another sitting in these pews this morning and within ourselves? Where is God? Where is love?

Karl Rahner wrote: ‘God, you took up the very thing you wanted to discard. You began what we thought would end with your coming: our poor human kind of life, which is sheer frailty, finiteness, and death. Contrary to all our fond hopes, you seized upon precisely this kind of human life and made it your own. And you did this not in order to change or abolish it, not so that you could visibly and tangibly transform it, not to divinize it. No, you took upon yourself this kind of life, just as it is. You let it slip away from you, just as ours vanishes from us.’ (1)

That is the mystery — that the Word became flesh and lived among us, in all our limitations. In Jesus God took on our humanity, became a vessel of flesh so that we might understand and, in understanding, might be able to know and receive the love of God, which is this Word and Light made flesh in our silence and darkness.
God enfleshed, God present with us….

The Word, the Light from God becomes flesh and lives among us, full of grace and truth, reminding us that we, too, are meant for grace and truth, and that on a more simple level, we are not alone. God is with us.

God in Jesus discovers our humanity, so that we may in believable ways discover our divinity, our holiness and worth — it works both ways. God’s holy word among us helps us to accept our first birthing as well as our dying to new birth. Throughout our lives, we dance with this God of love, who became one of us in Christ. Sometimes we get it; sometimes we even see God’s love, sometimes we even see God in another person. It is in moments like these, that we understand that the Incarnation is God living a life, as one of us. We get that the human being is God fully alive. That living is love. And that love is eternal.

Fourth-century Prudentius, in his words that we sing in hymn 82, expresses this eternal love: Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be, he is Alpha and Omega, he the source, the ending he, of the things that are, that have been, and that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

To which I respond with deep awe and gratitude: Yes. Yes, O God, yes.

END NOTE

(1) Karl Rahner, ‘The Divine Dawning,’ cited in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing House, 2001). Found on Diocese of Washington’s web site Advent calendar, 14 December, 2004, or: www.edow.org/spirituality/readings_archive.html#1216.

VPR made me do it

When I got back from Panamá in October, Vermont Public Radio had gone to an all-talk format on its regular FM station and put its classical on HD 2. I have endured non-stop talk — particularly hard on Sunday morning at 6.30 when I am used to quiet classical — since then on the FM. If I want classical, I stream it on the computer.

For Christmas Compa gave me a HD tuner. So now I can get the classical upstairs and downstairs. Hooray!

No sooner than I had hooked it up, then the cats had to investigate. I hope they won't topple everything. The new receiver is the blue light. It gets good reception.

Under the red material is my USB turn table. Unfortunately iTunes has pre-empted Audacity and I can't get my laptop to talk with it right now.

The painting is one my sister did of the front range of the Rockies in Denver.

My brain is a bit tired so I am not writing anything terribly profound.

Doing penance

OK, so I have had five days without rowing, during which I have enjoyed all manner of goodies. I was given a basket full of cookies, fudge and pound cakes for Christmas and so Compa and I have been partaking of those yummies.


So today I decided I would row. It's a different proposition doing it downstate since the erg resides in the garage attic, not inside the house (no way could it fit in the house!). It was about 38 out this afternoon — not too terrible. Above me is a wonderful mobile, next to me a futon covered with a mattress pad so that the mice won't further eat the futon cover, leaning against it, Compa's Bianchi bicycle (funky colour). Two years ago Compa bought the rowing machine (identical to mine) on eBay for $150 and then drove down to Philly and back to pick it up.


But the weird thing is that despite my exercise, my left foot got cold. Even half an hour later, it still is. This blurred photo is to show you that the other one wasn't staged; I really was rowing. I did an easy 10K.

Neither photo is terribly flattering but so be it.

As for the garage, I should say that excepting some help (such as five of us towing out of the way the small shed, heavy excavation equipment to dig the foundation hole, cement trucks to pour the foundation and people to install the standing seam roof, occasional help on raising the rafters), Compa built the entire garage. I can remember Christmas 2000 when we only had the top, i.e., the floor which wasn't even finished, covered with blue tarp. I can remember helping out (by standing on the skroinky, our word for warped and twisted, six-twelve foot boards) on putting in the floor over Christmas 2002, I think. The French doors came from our favourite salvage joint, Vermont Salvage, which we call 'Vermont Salvation.' At the opposite end you can see the matching set. The garage was very much a work in progress, in fact, it still is. Someday, we will get all the siding and facia up and windows in. Someday, we will install the huge Vermont Castings Defiant stove we got for free. No matter, the garage functions quite well as is in protecting our cars and holding all our off-season stuff like bicycles, canoe, and all of Compa's tools.

Still unfathomable

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

It's hard to realise that yesterday she was still speaking at a rally and today, she has been buried.


If one speaks of hope and new ways of being, it seems that sooner or later, one will join the crowd of martyrs, such as Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Oscar Romero, and so many more. No one is perfect, none of these people were, but they did hold forth a glimmer of hope.


Mourners carry her coffin out of the hospital.

Friday cat blogging

Amazingly, I have no photos of the three so I will put up some of the seasonal visitor occupying the suite in the back half of the upstairs of the house. The World's Best Cat Sitter gave her some presents so here are some photos of her enjoying them.


Here she is waiting to open the first present. I thought she might engage with it a bit more since it involved catnip and I have discovered she likes that stuff.


The catnip definitely stirs her up and gets a good reaction.


You can get a glimpse of her funky paws. She has no problem gripping things with them.


Here she is with her other toys. She still doesn't know really how to play. The best she can do is go after the mouse's tail. But she is coming along.

Another name she is getting is Miss Birch because the colouring of her fur is like birch trees in winter, a combination of grey and pink. It's a familiar sight here in Vermont.

150 years later

The Rev'd George C. V. Eastman, Rector of Saint Mary's, Christmas Day 1874.

Yesterday evening, we celebrated in a simple eucharist the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the church building, a former Universalist meeting house. It's pretty awesome to consider 150 years of people's prayers, hopes, dreams, sorrows, and presence within those four walls.

On 26 December 1857, the Right Rev'd John Hopkins, First Bishop of Vermont consecrated the church.

In 1857 there was no chancel as seen in the above photo. There were no stained glass windows. The photo, taken before electricity arrived in town, shows the new stained glass window over the altar but the pulpit, eagle lectern, large altar had yet to arrive. (The marble top from the altar in the photo now is in the larger altar.) The font is up front rather than in the back. And there was not yet the Hook tracker organ, a 1830 organ that the church bought and moved in 1892. Also there no longer is a big black stove pipe running up the centre aisle, nor do we still have the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments on the wall behiind the altar. Somewhere along the line, the congregation painted the words, 'Holy, Holy, Holy' around the arch but they also now are gone.

And, my, how the congregation decorated the church in 1874!

Nine of us gathered last night to give thanks to God for Saint Mary's presence in town for the past 150 years and prayed that we might continue for another 150 years, God willing, Dios mediante.

Christmas Day sermon

Christmas Eve always seems to me to be the loud, exuberant service, whereas Christmas Day morning is the more quiet, meditative liturgy. When one pays attention to the gospel readings, one notices that they move from the intimate and quiet scene of a birth in humble surroundings to the outburst of the cosmos as described in the prologue to the gospel of John. We move from a very human-focused scene to the immensity of God’s creation. As one who loves paradoxes, I find that the juxtaposition between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day delightful and am always grateful to be able to worship in both contexts.

The soaring hymn of praise that we find in the fourth gospel is for me one of the most beautiful passages of scripture that we have. Poetry, prologue, setting the pathway for the gospel of John, the first eighteen verses set the scene not only for the gospel but for Christ’s disciples, for you and me.

‘The prologue to the Gospel of John is a wistful summary of the unsure dance between being and becoming, between What Is and What Has Come To Be. It offers a poignant commentary on the tension between Creator and created, the Word and the world.’ (1)

The prologue begins consciously with the same words with which the opening verses of the Book of Genesis begins. Whereas the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are content to direct us back in time to specific persons such as the prophets or the first people of creation, the gospel of John takes us back to a timeless moment, before Israel, before the patriarchs, before humanity even. ‘In the beginning’ is a cosmic opening.

‘What is’ in the beginning is the Word, logos in Greek. The Greek word, logos, translates the Hebrew word, dabar, which is used to relate the unseeable God to the world about us. Often times in the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than use the name of God, the word, dabar — word, deed — was substituted. John’s use of logos, which originally meant ‘to gather’ follows in the same tradition. From the beginning of John’s gospel, then, the Word and God become inseparable.

It is God/the Word that is before all time, creating, becoming, bringing into being life, light and humanity. Life, light, humanity… all arriving at the same time, all inter-related, inter-dependent.

But at the same time that the prologue to the gospel takes us back to the beginnings, it also squarely places us in time and space with the description of the Word made flesh, the incarnation of Jesus. In a line that is as well-known and loved as ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,’ the prologue continues by saying, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.’

The Word dwelt in us… that is, the Word became one of us, lived amongst us. God’s dwelling in history reaches its fullest form in the incarnation in Jesus the Galilean, the poor man of Nazareth. What is certain is God dwells in history, then and now. God irrupts, interjects Godself into history… but in such a small and seemingly insignificant way, becoming a child in the midst of the greatest world power of the times, coming to us in a stable.

And yet the prologue to the gospel reminds us that we have not always received the Light, life, and humanity that God has so freely given us. The world does not receive Jesus. But the gospel does not leave us hopeless. No matter what, Jesus Christ is not intimidated by the darkness of the world or of our souls. The Light of Christ — a reality we will jubilantly proclaim in the depths of spiritual and real darkness on Holy Saturday, at the Easter Vigil — is greater than all the shadows of our rejection, our weakness, our poverty. But if we are to dwell in the same tent that Jesus has pitched amongst us by dwelling with us, then we must enter into our own history, too, and nourish our hope and work toward bringing God’s kingdom to fruition.

We are people rooted in history — the history of the Christ child, the history of the church, at the same time as we are rooted in the timelessness of the glories described in the prologue to John’s Gospel.

+

As a bit of a digression this morning, but something worth sharing, I want to wander briefly into our history as a parish. Christmas Day this year marks the 150th anniversary of gentle people worshipping God in this building as an Episcopal Church. On Christmas Day, 1857, services were conducted here for the first time, presided by the Right Reverend John Hopkins, First Bishop of Vermont. Just think! For 150 years there has been a faithful congregation gathering in this building to praise God. As you sit on these uncomfortable pews and look at the sloping floor, realise that 150 years ago there was no apse where our altar currently stands, the gallery was open, there was a wood stove in the front. Tomorrow evening, we will mark the 150th anniversary of the consecration of this building and the fact that Bishop Hopkins ordained his son to the priesthood here. Yet we are connected through time with the first members of Saint Mary’s, worshipping in the building that had been moved during the summer months to its current place — and especially by the gift of God-with-us.

How wonderful that the first services here should have been held on Christmas Day, the day upon which we remember what the whole season of Christmas is about: beginnings, openings to larger journeys for us as individual pilgrims, but more so for humanity.

+

Just as the word, logos also means ‘to gather,’ let us on this Christmas morning gather up our thanksgivings and gratitude for the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, for the gift of light and life that God has given us by creating us, and by the ultimate self-giving gift of eternal life given us through Jesus Christ.

END NOTE

(1) Wes Howard Brook, Becoming Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 52.

Christmas Eve sermon

A fearsome and awesome event is happening tonight, something so awesome that we should be struck mute by it. Only a chorus of stones cries out in the stillness and silence the marvel that is taking place in our world, the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

In the stillness and darkness of the night, inside this small church, surrounded by incense and music, we gather to celebrate with joy and awe the coming of God amongst us. This coming is so amazing that words fail us… as they should. Yet we try to speak of the unspeakable because that is why we are here tonight.

In the form of a child, God comes to humanity. Jesus — the crossroads where God’s descending road and humanity’s ascending road meet — the bearer of hope, the redeemer and reconciler of us all, our saviour, comes to us tonight as a vulnerable child. In this child we find our hope, something that at times can be as fragile and vulnerable as a child.
And so tonight there are two things about the nativity story that I would like to emphasise: first, the larger, total meaning of Jesus’ birth and second, the gifts of Christ’s birth.

+

The words of Isaiah that we hear tonight — the most famous of all messianic prophecies — speak of the irrepressible hope of the people of Israel. The prophet declares that God has shed God’s light on the people of Israel. The nation has grown; its joy has increased. Now, there is a child that is born who will free the people from want, from oppression and who will give the people an era of peace, justice and righteousness. A new king will be enthroned and this king will save the people. The prophecy of Isaiah speaks to the hope that the people have for something new.

Christian interpretation layered on top of Isaiah’s words turns the prophecy into one about the coming of Christ. The words ‘For unto us a child is born’ — words that many associate with a long ascending series of sixteenth notes in Handel’s Messiah — now are understood as suggesting the birth at Bethlehem, rather than the enthronement of a king. In the nativity, Christ comes first in great humility but this is in anticipation of his coming again in majesty and glory.

It is this point that is crucial to our understanding of Christmas. There is more to Christmas than a baby in a crib in a stable. For we stay but a moment at the crib before moving on. What happens at the nativity that we remember tonight is but the beginning of the complete coming of Christ, and the whole of God’s saving act in Christ. Christ is God turned to us in grace and salvation. We remember at the crib the cross and the resurrection as well.

Christmas calls a community back to its origins by remembering Jesus’ own beginnings as a human child, a prophet of God’s reign. What the parish celebrates during this season is not primarily a birthday, but the beginning of a decisive new phase in the tempestuous history of God’s hunger for human companions.… Christmas does not ask us to pretend we are back in Bethlehem, kneeling before a crib; it asks us to recognize that the wood of the crib became the wood of the cross.

Archbishop Oscar Romero on Christmas Eve 1977 preached: ‘On this night, as every year for twenty centuries, we recall that God’s reign is now in this world and that Christ has inaugurated the fullness of time. Christ’s birth attests that God is now marching with us in history, that we do not go alone. With Christ, God has injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God’s reign is now inaugurated in human time.’

That is an awful lot to lay on top of a small baby! But that is what this night is all about: the beginning of God’s reign in our time. There is something unspeakably wondrous about this — God-with-us, Jesus the Christ, is a holy mystery.

+

And what are the gifts that we receive from this holy birth?

Peace, completeness and hope, and the promise that divine salvation has entered the world. The hope of peace and salvation — that is what we celebrate at Christmas! The hope of peace and salvation — that is what brings us here tonight!

Humans long for peace, for justice, for a reign of divine law, for something holy, for what is far from earth’s realities, which we all can list by heart. We can have such a hope, not because we ourselves are able to construct the realm of happiness that God’s holy words proclaim but because the builder of a reign of justice, of love, and of peace is already in the midst of us. (Romero, 25.12.1977)

Walter Burghardt writes: ‘We must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today’s human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope.’

And what is this hope of which we speak?

Hope is not optimism. The optimist looks at the positive evidence and believes that all will be well. Optimism crashes and burns when things turn out badly.

Hope is a very different thing. It is rooted in trust. It is grounded in a truth much larger than the unpredictable events of our lives.

Hope, says the writer of the Book of Hebrews, is the evidence, the security of things that are not yet seen, not yet experienced, not yet in hand.

Hope is what sustains us when facing the death of one we love; when passing through dark times in our life; when trying to maintain a heart of compassion in a world of endless violence.

Hope is what gives us time and patience when we struggle to understand life, and God, and our future.

Hope is what helps us to heal, physically and spiritually, helps us to endure the time it takes to find new life.

Hope is what holds us when we have been betrayed or hurt by someone. Hope is what helps us to get up in the morning when the prospects for our life are dim and disappointing. Hope is what helps us face old age and death.

Hope is the energy that keeps us gentle and loving, reaching out far beyond our capacities with care and solidarity for others. Hope is not dependent on day-by-day experiences; rather it depends on God.

Hope is a gift. This gift is always looking for the small crack in our heart where it may find entry.

Hope is rooted in God’s never failing love, in trust and confidence that God will never, ever abandon us. People might abandon us; history might; life at times might. But not God!

Christmas, thus, is the celebration of a very human faith becoming hope. Faith-hope lies in tenderness, gratuity, play, good will, and life.

May the Christ child whom you meet tonight grace you with the faith and hope that will accompany you this Christmas-tide and always.

Marathon Day (i.e., Christmas Eve day)

Just in case people think we clergy types sit around eating bon-bons today.... (smile)

10.00 AM communion service at the assisted living place
1.00 PM home communion for a shut-in
5.00 PM early service, family service with Holy Eucharist, setting up of the crèche followed by potluck supper
11.00 PM the Christ Mass

In between all that, photocopying all the bulletins, setting up for tonight, finishing sermons for tonight, tomorrow and the 26th, and perhaps squeezing in a nap.

The driveway is glare ice, but the ramps are bare. I put out the sign this morning and so far it hasn't blown over.

More later.

[Later] Half an hour to sit down before I return here in three or four hours. Between the first and second events of the day, I bought gasoline for a transient (someone drives up, asks for gasoline and I meet them down at the gas station). Never really did get lunch though I had some cereal at 2.00 PM.


I did make the 200K last night. I don't think I am going to be able to row today so I cranked it out last night. Glad to get that done for another year.


Say a special prayer for the people of Saint Nicholas' Church in the Diocese of San Joaquin who were informed yesterday by Bishop John-David Schofield that the diocese was no longer going to pay the salary of the vicar. Jake's place has the full story. It's heart breaking.

Advent IV

No sermon today because a parishioner preached (a very nice and thought-provoking sermon).


I had round two of my open house for folks who didn't and did make it last week. The company looks a bit spartan but that's because people were in the kitchen and over at the church greening it. Our organist sat at the piano (with its cracked soundboard) and started playing 'Winter Wonderland' and folks started to sing.


Chichi, the dog, is a regular worshipper at our church. She greets everyone as they come in the door, and she attentively listens to all the readings, wags her tail at the peace, comes up for communion but doesn't receive, and super wags her tail at the end of the service. She was kept on a short leash so that she wouldn't get into the cat litter pans in the back hall off the kitchen.

Meanwhile, outside it is GRODY out there: pouring rain, slush, ook, and it's all going to freeze overnight turning the driveways into skating rinks.

And, an update on the tree we chopped down on Wednesday: it is up on its perch and it won (fell on top of Compa on the first try).

At this late hour, it's over to the office to start photocopying bulletins.

Later... 50 minutes to do 50 bulletins (the early service tomorrow night). Tedium! It's because the copier is slow, the paper jams or has to be hand-fed. It is a mongo drag. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve late (40 bulletins) and Christmas Day (20). That's along with everything else there is to do.

At 0.11, it is 48 degrees in Montpelier. Yeah, we've got a thaw.

Multi-tasking?

With everything else there is to do, I took time out to watch a home-made video of the ordination that took place at the beginning of the month. My main computer is too old and doesn't have a DVD player and the infamous laptop has a third one (given that the replacement one fried the mother board — at least that is what I will maintain). The snap of the video is at the beginning of the liturgy. [Three guesses as to the blog on the screen of the other computer.]

Despite my horror at hearing how out of tune I was (just a fraction/hair flat or sharp, depending — this is devastating because I used to have perfect relative pitch and now feel I shouldn't sing), I have enjoyed looking at the video. (I should explain that I was right next to the person filming the ordination so my voice really stood out, alas.)

When I get too involved in all the quehaceres of life and feel discouraged, I will pull out the video to remember that I once made the same set of vows that this new priest just did.

Once in a while, like today after shovelling the driveway, ramp and steps, photocopying, folding and stuffing the Christmas letter and special gift envelopes, officiating at an Advent Lessons and Carols Evensong to which three people came and we had no organist so did it a capela and only one verse per hymn, working on all the bulletins for Christmas Eve and Day, and feeling a bit discouraged overall about the low attendance and the importance or lack thereof of the church's liturgies in the lives of people at this time of year, once in a while, it is good to revisit those vows.

To accompany me as I close up the night, Ralph Vaughan William's Dona nobis pacem: IV. Dirge for Two Veterans. It's a beautiful piece… something I sang way back in 1975 with the county chorale — one of the few high school students allowed to.

Friday cat blogging

I have far more photos than time. So these three will have to suffice.


Young Guy just doesn't share food well. The three were enjoying a special treat: Kitten Chow (that came with Miss Funky Paws). I took a whole series of them wolfing it down but things deteriorated when Young Guy hissed and barked (he really does) at Orange Guy. Poor OG is looking confused and La Doyenne has already backed off.


Miss FP felt like hiding out today in the closet in the suite. It's not up against a heating duct so it can only be for security that she went in there.


I did a home visit today to the cat rescuer and her five cats. This one thinks I am the devil incarnate because every time I go over there he hides. Despite my putting on the red eye button on the camera, he still ended up with laser eyes, a green and red one to match the lights on the Christmas tree.

Bagging a Christmas tree

Padre Mickey yesterday set a pretty high bar in testing our mettle in his posting about putting up his artificial Christmas tree, but I am going to take up the challenge and show you all how we do it in Vermont.

It would seem that Compa's and my modus operandi is always to do something important at dusk, whether it's coming down from Mount Washington (in the pitch dark three years ago), or Mount Madison (not only dark but in rain) or Mount Adams (again, pushing darkness). Why shouldn't we go chop down our Christmas tree except as our eight-hour fifty-some-odd minute day is ending? Not only that, but we do it in the snow on snowshoes.

So... since it was dusk, the photos will be blurry, dark or crazy with a flash. The big snowflakes add to the ambiance.


Here is Compa scouting out a possible tree. She has already paid the $20 to the people down the road who run this tree farm.


There are so many trees from which to choose but we have to be careful not to get too tall a tree or it won't fit in our shoebox house.


We settle on this one. I stay by it while Compa gets the car and chainsaw.


Before chopping it down (usually with a bow saw), we have to get the snow off the branches so I do that.


Then the tree is felled. It takes two seconds to get it to come down. Not every tree is that compliant.


Likewise the chainsaw doesn't bind itself in the tree. Thank God for small mercies.


We then drag it to the car (a Honda CRV), hoist it up on top and tie it with a rope that I can hold from within the car.


Finally, the tree is unceremoniously dumped on the garage floor to wait coming inside.

Later, you'll get a photo of the tree in its place and fully decorated. But not until next week.

So, there you be. A bagged tree.

In the bleak midwinter

Even though we are hardly mid-winter, that's what it looks like outside. We literally have had snow upon snow. It snowed all day long, enough to leave another half inch or so of champagne snow as we call it.


Here's the view from the deck of our house, looking through the birches to the evergreens.


This is simply a long-distance view of the above.


The roof dumped (it faces west). One hears a creaking noise, then a rumble, and then a whump! As I was out clearing the deck, the last part of it let loose. In that case, I simply jump while covering my head with my hands, and duck. Compa saw me do it from her perch inside and laughed, though she would have done likewise. There's ice in those roof dumps and they could do damage.


Here's the house (WYSIWYG) with evidence of all my shovelling snow.


This stand of evergreens serves as a visual block to the road that leads to the neighbours.


This is little Plymouth, where time stopped in the 1920s, at the time of the presidential inauguration of Calvin Coolidge (30th President, 3 August 1923-3 March 1929). This is the view from the post office.


And this is the back view of the house where President Coolidge was born along with the church behind it.

Pre-Christmas crankies

It must be within a week before Christmas. The House of Bishops/Deputies list-serve is getting testy. It's almost time to fast from it in order to get through the holiday.

But today someone posted an article by Tom Ehrich about 'Giving them what they want,' and his writing made me cranky. So it must be the time of year.

In his article (which I no longer have), he says that we should give people what they want. If they want to sing Christmas carols before Christmas, why not? Why make them suffer through 'dour Advent hymns'? Why force them to go through this season if it is nothing more than tradition? 'Give them what they want.' There is more but that is the gist of his piece.

I found his commentary is as patronising as it claims we are by 'making' people observe Advent. The people at my parish love Advent for its quiet, its simplicity, it being a place to escape from the craziness of Madison Avenue. One of their favourite services is an Advent Lessons and Carols Evensong (which we will do this Saturday because of last Sunday's bad weather).

Maybe it's because we have Sarum blue vestments, we do not turn Advent into a little Lent but rather a time to reflect on the mystery of Christ's birth. Whatever, we like it here. In fact, there is a woman who shows up only for Advent and Lent.

Call me an aardvark (my euphemism for an old fogey) but Advent very much has its place in our season. If they want to sing Christmas carols, they can go to a non-liturgical church.

Grump.

[I always have an Advent blue ribbon on the wreath on the outside of my house, which I get in time for my open house. Sadly the siding has turned yellow and is filthy. I am not going to photoshop it out.]

February in December

Unlike last December where it didn't snow at all, this year we have gotten enough snow that it looks more like February. Unless we have a massive melt-down or rainfall — always possible because there always seems to be a mini-thaw at Christmas time just before we sent into negative temperatures for Feast of the Holy Name on New Year's Day — we'll at least have snow on the ground for Christmas.


With the snow also come the ice dams on the north side of the house. It's early for them so I wonder how many times the poor house will go through the ice-melt cycle. The ash tree in the foreground obscures the view of the big icicle that hangs in the el of the house. When the ice comes off the roof, it can be 200 pounds. It's enough to shake the house and the cats scatter in all directions because of the shudder. The ice always lands on those poor beaten-down trees that some bright person planted after someone else removed the porch that used to wrap around to the north side of the house (probably a prime site for leaks). I am fortunate that I haven't gotten hit with the ice when it has come down on the ramp. I have returned from a trip to the church on occasion to find huge chunks that weren't there before.


Last year, there was a lot of water damage done on the inside of the upper two windows and downstairs window from ice build up. (I hate to think of what the side wall looks like under the cheesy siding added on in the 1970s.) I used to climb out the attic window from the front of the house and shovel the snow off the back roof but ever since we raised the pitch of the roof and sealed off the attic stairs, I haven't been up there (great view of the town!). Last year, a parishioner's husband got up there and shovelled the snow/ice off. Of course it all went onto the walk that is between the house and the parish house/office so I had to clear it away.

It's back to the winter-time follies: leaks, water damage and cranky furnaces (dead church furnace on Sunday morning also has happened). And... I am just waiting for the mass of the snow on the shed roof to dump. That will be a delight to clear away because it consists of layers of snow/ice/snow.

Such is the life of a country parson in the north. Free exercise and excitement at every turn.

[Wednesday morning update: Yup, we're supposed to have rain on Sunday, a short thaw. Oh good, just enough to make everything like ice for Christmas Eve day.]

[Thursday addendum from the local meteorologist: I was looking at the Fairbanks Museum (Saint Johnsbury VT) weather records this month, and it reminded me of an interesting phenomenon that happens near Christmas. Average temperatures have been plunging all month, but from the 22nd to the 27th, the long-term temperatures rise about 2 degrees. This may not sound like much, but its persistence over the years suggests a Christmas thaw more years than not. I concur.]