Some perspective

From a thread on Facebook:

Deaths from Swine Flu = 200
Deaths from Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa = 41 million

(Hat tip to the great mind of Mike Kinman, founder of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation)

Yes, it is dreadful that anyone should die. If Dahveed reads this, may he know I pray for his well-being as well as that of his family and for all those who will be affected by the pandemic of fear as it strikes at the economy of Mexico and the further racism that it will evoke in the US...

... but remember, too, how many have died from malaria, caused by an insect bite. A mere $10 can provide insecticide-treated nets to protect people. Episcopal Relief and Development has raised nearly $3M for distribution of nets through NetsforLife in Sub-Saharan Africa. They hope to raise another $2M to continue their work in Latin America, the Caribbean and eventually Asia.

Every child of God is precious and God weeps at the death of anyone.

Bucket brigade

Here's a silly for a midweek morning.



Westminster Choir College in Princeton NJ decided to have an entry in the community parade.

This comes by way of the person who is rebuilding the church organ.

Specter pulls a Jeffords

Just as Jim Jeffords of Vermont turned things upside down when he became an independent, so has Arlen Specter today:

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday he would switch to the Democratic party, presenting Democrats with a possible 60th vote and the power to break Senate filibusters as they try to advance the Obama administration’s new agenda.

Stunning.

In his words:

I intend to take several concrete steps, which I hope the new president will support.

First, I intend to introduce legislation that will mandate Supreme Court review of lower court decisions in suits brought by the A.C.L.U. and others that challenge the constitutionality of the warrantless wiretapping program authorized by President Bush after September 11. While the Supreme Court generally exercises discretion on whether it will review a case, there are precedents for Congress to direct Supreme Court review on constitutional issues — including the statutes forbidding flag burning and requiring Congress to abide by federal employment laws — and I will follow those.

Second, I will reintroduce legislation to keep the courts open to suits filed against several major telephone companies that allegedly facilitated the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Although Congress granted immunity to the telephone companies in July 2008, this issue may yet be successfully revisited since the courts have not yet ruled on the legality of the immunity provision. My legislation would substitute the government as defendant in place of the telephone companies. This would allow the cases to go forward, with the government footing the bill for any damages awarded.

Further, I will reintroduce my legislation from 2006 and 2007 (the “Presidential Signing Statements Act”) to prohibit courts from relying on, or deferring to, presidential signing statements when determining the meaning of any Act of Congress. These statements, sometimes issued when the president signs a bill into law, have too often been used to undermine congressional intent. Earlier versions of my legislation went nowhere because of the obvious impossibility of obtaining two-thirds majorities in each house to override an expected veto by President Bush. Nevertheless, in the new Congress, my legislation has a better chance of mustering a majority vote and being signed into law by President Obama.

¡Qué foto!

From Tim's El Salvador blog....

I met Tony Saca (the one watching the handshake, out-going president of El Salvador, Arenero) in 2002 and Mauricio Funes (in-coming president) in 2004.

If it weren't for the inauguration taking place the day after Pentecost, I would be in El Salvador for it.

Maybe someday I will meet Barack Obama. Dream on. However, given that no president has visited Vermont in at least eight years, it is overdue (though we hardly wanted GWB to come).

[I am also amused to see that even professional photographers can't control everything and get objects sticking out of people's heads as in this photo.]

Springtime photos

The church has a memorial garden so this afternoon I spent a little time walking around in it and taking some photos. People's ashes are buried in the garden and then a small stone with their name is placed in the circle that echoes the Celtic cross at one end of the garden. The magnolia trees just came out this week and are splendid.


A black fence surrounds the garden so I took this from outside the enclosure.


Looking upward




Today was the first time I read the stones and so I was surprised to find this one. I will have to find out its history (i.e., was there someone in the congregation who lost someone on 11 September 2001... beyond the collective grief we collectively felt?).


And then I wandered around to the front of the church to get a shot of it in early springtime.

Easter 3B

The lectionary readings throw us into an unusual position of hearing over and over again events that happened within the first twenty-four hours or week of Christ’s resurrection. Though our outside world seems to have moved on to summer with our 80-degree weather yesterday, and the half-price sales of Easter candy have long disappeared, our lectionary keeps us back at that moment of wonder and bewilderment at Christ’s resurrection. It is almost as though the lectionary is telling us it is OK to experience the broad range of emotions of joy, exuberance, confusion, and doubt because, ‘Look! The disciples felt that way, too.’ It also seems as though we are being treated to an exposition of the different gospel writers’ take on the story: last week we heard from John, this week we hear from Luke, next week we will bounce back to John to a passage that happens before the passion.

Last week we thought about Thomas’ realisation that if Jesus really had risen, then the disciples had a big time task ahead of them. If Jesus’ resurrection were just a story, then the consequences would not be so drastic; they could all go back to their simple lives. But if Jesus had risen, then they would have to leave their locked hearts, leave their locked places, and enter into the world. If Jesus had risen, they could no longer avoid the mission to the world that Jesus had given them.

The reading from the gospel of Luke gets to the same message but via a different story. Nonetheless, the implications of Christ’s resurrection are clear: We are called to repentance, to a change of mind for the forgiveness of sins, and we are called to preach that message and baptise, too. Despite the doubts of the disciples, it is clear what they and we must do: Embrace and live out Christ’s mission of reconciliation to a broken world. But it takes an awful lot to get them (and us) to understand that.

There are similarities between this passage and the one we heard last week from John. Jesus greets the gathered disciples with the words, ‘Peace be with you.’ Unlike in John, here the disciples think they are seeing a ghost. There is great effort on the part of Luke to assure us that this is no ghost. Jesus has a real body (he can eat — broiled fish! — and he shows the disciples his hands and feet), indeed the same body that was crucified. As Jesus exclaims, ‘It is I myself!’

Having established with the disciples who he is, Jesus then teaches them. Immediately preceding this passage is the well-known story of Jesus’ appearance on the road to Emmaus when he teaches the two followers using passages from scripture. For the two walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, their hearts burn having heard all that is said. Here, Jesus continues to teach. He explains the things written about him in the scriptures and how they show that the Messiah had to suffer and be raised from the dead.

Then, the scene turns into a commissioning of the disciples. They are commissioned under the same scriptural imperative as the passion, death and resurrection of Christ were written. Without missing a beat, Jesus declares to the disciples: ‘Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’

We do not hear the disciples’ reaction to this command… they may be a little like Thomas, realising what the real implications of Jesus’ resurrection are, and wishing that maybe it would be better if they were facing a ghost, rather than the resurrected Christ. For, preaching repentance of sins and forgiveness and baptising in Christ’s name is dangerous stuff… not only for the disciples then but also for us.

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Being a reconciler, a person seeking forgiveness is not always easy or painless. Perhaps that is why the disciples and we keep asking for proof of Christ’s resurrection. Perhaps that is why we want to linger, not daring to step into the waters of baptism and its demands.

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One local example of extreme forgiving comes to mind —and can serve as a model of reconciliation for the rest of us.

The friends of Michelle Gardner-Quinn, the 21 year-old UVM woman murdered in 2006, started a foundation in her memory, Michelle’s Earth Foundation. One of their projects is to plant sunflowers in the neighbourhoods of post-Katrina, New Orleans, that were inundated by water filled with toxins. The sunflowers leech out the poison and restore the land to its original state. Why sunflowers and this sort of project?

Michelle was an environmental science major at UVM and this foundation, that seeks to restore the earth to a healthier state, fits well with her belief that, ‘we should understand our place in our regional ecosystems and communities, as well as pledge our allegiance to the earth as a whole.’

The website states: ‘Michelle’s Earth Foundation (MEF) was created to pay tribute to Michelle’s inner and outer beauty, her kindness, her love for nature, and most of all, to carry on her life’s ambition to continue as a dedicated environmentalist. Her life’s goal was to build a healthy and sustainable habitat on earth for generations to come—and her motto was “small actions equal big change” – an adage now adopted by our organization.’

The foundation also seeks to ‘facilitate the role of the community, especially youth and minorities who are vastly underrepresented in the sciences, in regional, national and international efforts toward creating a healthy, sustainable habitat for humans and nature.’

In their own way, her friends are working on forgiveness, I think. On reading archived reflections, forgiveness not something that happens instantly, and one can see them struggling toward forgiving — one friend lanced a double-edged sword when she wrote in 2008, ‘I forgive the despicable human being who hurt her.’ She has not totally forgiven the assailant but she is getting there slowly.

While the word or concept, ‘forgiveness’ does not appear anywhere on the website, I think forgiveness underlies its mere existence. Her friends could have spent all their energy demanding retribution for Michelle’s murder but instead, they took their sorrow and anger and turned to life-giving actions that will affect many for the good. They are providing opportunities for others that might not have them. They are reconciling the earth to itself and in that action, demonstrating forgiveness for an act that so many find impossible to pardon. Out of death comes life. Forgiveness, especially when hard-won, can bring resurrection.

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We also are called to witness the resurrection, and to action… to action as forgivers and those seeking forgiveness. We are called to be a community of reconcilers. That is part of Jesus’ commission, as we have heard it in this morning’s gospel: acting as forgivers and reconcilers is also part of our baptismal covenant.

It takes a lot of energy and effort to forgive. Forgiveness is not always something that happens overnight. Sometimes it does not happen the way we want it to, and sometimes it does not happen at all. It takes a lot of prayer, a lot of time to create an open space in one’s heart to begin the process of forgiveness. It takes bringing those places and persons in our lives where we need forgiveness and those to whom we must extend forgiveness with us every time we come to the eucharist, offering them up with our gifts of time, talent and money. It takes trust to accept that they and we will be transformed through the shared meal of the eucharist. It takes faith to struggle towards change so that someday, those places and persons that need to receive our forgiveness and from whom we ask forgiveness can be let go of. And it takes the community gathered together, working together, praying together for one another, that we might become a community of reconcilers. We have to keep trying…

For how else can we say, ‘Peace be with you,’ as Jesus said to the disciples? How else can we be witnesses to the Resurrection? How else can we live out fully our baptismal vows?

So, come and be fed at God’s table so that we can be like sunflowers, leeching out the toxins in our collective life to become fertile soil — fertile soil where God can work.

[memorial garden at church]

Easter 2B

Sometimes I wonder if I don’t engage in a form of self-punishment by reading the newspaper, particularly the letters to the editor or off-the-wall comments on blogs. What utterly amazes me is people’s certitude of what is right and what is wrong. How often have I seen a letter in which somebody declares how their religion tells them exactly what was right and what was wrong and how glad they are that their church gives them up or down answers.

As difficult as it is, I am glad that our Anglican tradition does not paint the world in broad brushstrokes of black and white. I am so thankful for our Anglican tradition of living in ambiguity and the messiness of questions. While having absolute, facile answers may be consoling—and it is to the majority of people who call themself Christian these days—such certitude eliminates or hinders the honest and true struggle with the mysteries that our faith presents us.

Doubt comes from raising questions. Questioning my second-hand beliefs. My beliefs only become first-hand if I doubt, raise questions, and do all of this as an act of faith. All of us seem to be brought up to deny these faith questions. I have had people over the years tell me that in previous churches, or with previous clergy, they were not allowed to ask questions. My heart weeps when I hear that. As a lover of Christ, I love the questions that come. And I am not afraid to ask them, nor do I want anyone here at Trinity to be afraid to ask questions. It is in asking questions that one can figure out for oneself what parts of this rich and complex faith we have been given by tradition don’t make sense or to which we absolutely cannot relate. Perhaps part of the Fifty Days of Easter is being given permission to question, because we have that Paschal candle, reminder of the resurrection, standing smack in the middle of the church, telling us that it is all right to doubt, to question the status quo so that our faith won’t be second-hand, but first-hand. To ask a question demonstrates strength.

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So here we are, a mere week after the great Easter celebration, a day when we declared with all our heart and soul, Alleluia, Christ is risen, indeed, Alleluia! And look what the gospel story presents us today: a tale of fear, doubt and faithlessness on the part of those closest to Jesus, his followers. Are we missing something here?

No. Because even two millennia later, we still struggle with those real feelings. Wisely, though, the gospel does not leave us with doubt or fear because along with the familiar story of doubting Thomas also comes the promise: Peace be with you, my spirit I leave with you.

Remember that on that first Easter, the disciples were locked in—locked in fear, dissention, confusion, pain and division. Life was not hunkey-dorey—they last saw Jesus on the cross before they fled. Only Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple and Peter had seen the empty tomb. Even when Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room, their apprehending him is not without pain: they must enter into the mystery of his wounds and suffering. At the same time they enter into that mystery, which leads to faith and belief, Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit.

When, on the cross, Jesus gives up the spirit, he gives up more than his life, though that is how we tend to take that wording. Martin Smith, formerly of SSJE, suggests that at that moment Jesus hands over the life-giving Holy Spirit to the disciples so that they will continue in his footsteps. The continuation of this handing-over takes place in the upper room on the evening of Easter when Jesus comes to the disciples and tells them, Peace be with you. In the Johannine version of Pentecost, Jesus breathes on the disciples, telling them: Receive the Holy Spirit. What do they make of this? We do not know.

All we know is Thomas was not there for the initial handing-over of the Spirit and commissioning of the disciples. Though the disciples tell him for a week they have seen the risen Christ, Thomas cannot believe. As he finds out, in order to believe, he, too, must enter into Christ’s wounds. Through his doubt comes the ability to believe. Yet even here, the gospel leaves things vague—we will never know whether Thomas actually touched the wounds—as if to remind us that we will never have certain answers. Even with the other signs Jesus does so that others may believe, always we are called to look with the eyes of faith… never with blind faith, but an active, probing faith.

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Maybe I look for the difficult in life, and maybe sometimes God hands me a challenge but I would rather wrestle with the questions and doubts because ultimately I trust that God’s voice will become clear to me. Sometimes it takes a long time to hear what God is telling me, especially when I want signs and clear evidence the way Thomas wants. Sometimes all I can hear is ‘no’, when really I should be hearing ‘yes.’ Mercifully, God is infinitely patient with me. Usually when I let go of trying to figure out with my mind what God is saying and let my heart take over, I gain a bit more clarity. But never absolute clarity. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, written after the fourth gospel, writes, ‘To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.’

I find our Anglican grace lies in having the latitude to say, as the unknown Jewish person in WWII wrote: ‘I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in G-d even when God is silent,’ and not feel condemned for doubting. Sometimes our doubt is our belief and that is the best we can muster. Doubting does not mean the end of one’s faith, rather, it indicates a desire to delve deeper into the questions. Nor does doubting mean fear. If we doubt, we do not have to withdraw from the community, as did Thomas. The community needs to hear our questions and doubts because in wrestling with them, it, too, can learn and be strengthened. The one place not to go either in questioning or doubting, though, is fear. Our faith cannot grow if it is afraid.

If I am still, I can hear where God is writing straight on the crooked lines on my life. I know through faith that what might seem like a loud ‘no’ can also be a loud ‘yes.’ I also know that there is no clear road, but that the way is made by walking.
Like Thomas, there are times when I yearn for a sign, a guide-post or marker. Like Thomas, there are times when I have tried—unsuccessfully—to bargain with God.

Those moments are when I have to remind myself that through baptism, God has already chosen me and marked me to be bearer of hope and faith. Through baptism, I have already received the life-giving gift of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus breathed the Spirit onto the disciples that scary night.

And if that isn’t about resurrection, new birth and new life, I don’t know what is.

Quote of the day

New Hampshire is going through its debate on same-sex marriage. Here's a winner of a quote:

Ronald Goodwin, of Alexandria, [NH] called the legislation "morally corrupt."

"Some of the women have been wearing their pants so long that some of the men have forgotten their identity. It's time the men put their pants back on," he said.

Uhuh.

Easter Sunday

Sermons and all the rest will follow.

I have to fly out in the morning to California for a church-related meeting so am still packing despite wanting to settle in for a long spring nap (though with the snow flurries today, I felt like it should be a long winter's nap).

Happy Easter.

Scenes from Good Friday

Here are some photographs of Good Friday in my new church.


I had the chapel and altar of repose to myself for 40 minutes this morning (8.00-9.00 — there was another person there until 8.20). The last blue votive went out while I was there.


Having all the votives was something new to the congregation here, something I took from my former place, but people seemed fine with it.


The stained glass reflections at 9.15 were glorious. The church faces N-S so the light comes in differently... one gets the good reflections first thing in the morning and early evening. The altar looks hand-made (aren't they all?) but I haven't been able to find out its history yet.


Going through the Triduum makes this place feel more like home. I simply cannot imagine having my first Sunday on Easter yet I have read some announcements of clergy who are doing just that. I thought starting out in Advent was hard enough.


Until I find out otherwise, I will think of this altar being made out of Vermont wood.


For a short time the reserve Sacrament rested on the high altar.


The marble is quarried locally.


Here is the church as we left it at 1.30 this afternoon.

It is a bit odd for me not to have participated in an evening/night liturgy, to finish up all my Good Friday duties by 3.00 in the afternoon. So I listen to Priesner's Requiem for a Friend and earlier on, to J. S. Bach's Saint John Passion.

Good Friday sermon

A collect from Morning Prayer, one that focuses on the church’s mission starts off with these words: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms on the hard wood of the cross so that all might come within the reach of your saving embrace.’ For some reason, this Good Friday my mind has returned again and again to those outstretched hands of Jesus nailed to the hard wood of the cross.

Perhaps it’s because hands have always intrigued me. I’ve loved drawing them over the years in all the millions of positions they can be, holding things, clenched together, working or open. I’ve always looked at people ’s hands because they tell so much about a person’s life, whether the skin is smooth or chapped, whether it has ground-in dirt from a life of hard work, or the skin is pristine, that so often comes with someone who has limited mobility or is paralysed. I watch the colour of a person’s fingers to see how their circulation is. I smile when the crayoned hands of a child come outstretched to the communion rail. I, too, at times have presented cut and less-than-perfect hands to God at the moment of receiving the sacrament and know that it still is OK. And I know that at the moment of receiving or giving communion, hands or fingers touch, making a connection that humans crave because human touch is crucial to love.

Perhaps hands are on my mind because I think of all the people throughout the world who have lost their hands for one reason or another, but for too, too many as a result of picking up a land mine that explodes in their hands. That fragmentation is an egregious example of humanity’s brokenness.

Of all the photographs that have come out of the war in Iraq the one that reminded me most of the cross was that of a weeping Iraqi woman holding out her bloodied bandaged hands, in a gesture of supplication, though I suspect it was one of extreme pain. Those hands looked so much like all the drawings of Christ’s hands either on or off the cross. How many other wounded hands are out there?

Jesus on the cross, with his outstretched hands, embraces the suffering of humankind. Though his suffering is particular, it is also universal. Christ is our way to God and is the person and place where God’s search for us, God’s outstretched hands, meets our outstretched hands seeking God. (The best image for that connection is, of course, Michelangelo’s depiction of God’s hand touching Adam’s found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.)

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And when have we likewise stretched out our hands in a gesture of vulnerability, pain, desolation and despair as Christ did on the cross for our behalf? Do we understand that the mystery of the incarnation not only encompasses that of a baby but of a human being who stretched out his hands in despair and love, who deeply shared our human condition of finitude?

Sebastian Moore writes in his book, The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger, that the incarnation is the mystery of a God who comes upon us and loves us beyond all the limits that come from ourselves. When Jesus came amongst us, God also did, touching us in the innermost region of the soul where sin can reside. That is the divinity of Christ, through whom God touches us, deep inside. Through the mystery of the incarnation, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, God inundates our souls, joining us in the inner chaos to restore order. That inner chaos is sin, that part of us that resists God’s love.

In the cross we see our sin transformed into the grace of God, and in it we also see our crucifixion by the forces of our desires. Moore believes that we are so afraid of death that we desperately try to escape its inevitability, instead of understanding it to be a part of the natural process that leads us back to God. When people feel that they are being crucified physically, actually their lives are being transformed from sin to grace. There is only one true cross to which all our crosses have to be conformed; and this involves not just asking Christ to help him carry his own cross but turning our cross around to conform to Christ’s. The turning around of one’s cross is changing one’s prayer to: ‘Not what I desire but what you desire’… part of that prayer that Jesus uttered in despair at the garden of Gethsemane.

Another part of conforming our lives to Christ’s, I think, is to open our hands in love, surrender and vulnerability, to admit that we really don’t have everything in control, that there is an awful lot going on right now that exhausts the soul, raises deep questions and that we desperately are seeking answers and clarity.

That love is not easy or cheap, however. Saint Francis understood when he wrote: ‘It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful. The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me to embrace God in all things.’ He prayed that God would not let him leave this earth until God promised him that he could always touch the face of anyone who suffered.

It is when we understand that the suffering of someone the next street over, or a part of this congregation or in El Salvador or on the other side of the world touches us, when we can extend our hands out, palms up, in that universal gesture of supplication, that we can begin to share in Christ’s self-giving on the cross. When we allow ourselves to be touched deeply within by God, letting God get into those hidden corners of our hearts and help us clean the cobwebs of sin from there, then we become more human and, therefore, closer to the image of God as God wished for us when God created us.

An Aboriginal woman from Australia prayed: ‘Love demands everything, Jesus. It touches the very centre of our being. Thinking of us you gave up what we cherish most. You breathed out your life in love, that we might live.’

On this Friday we call Good, may we humbly give thanks to a God who loved us so much to come amongst us, live and die with us, always embracing us in a love that defies reason. May we respond, then, to God’s love with an equal love to those around us, embracing them as well. Maybe, maybe, even we can bring about new life to this aching world.


[photos of Good Friday in another note]

Maundy Thursday

When we started our second leg of the 960-mile pilgrimage on the medieval Way of Saint James in 2005, we went to the pilgrims’ mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Le Puy, France. This Moorish-looking Romanesque church is perched on top of a geological volcanic pinnacle (a puy), meaning pilgrims climb up many, many stairs to reach it. The morning mass culminates with a blessing of the pilgrims. But I was so out of sorts by the priest’s blatant non-invitation for communion to anyone who was not Catholic that I considered not getting a blessing. ‘After all,’ I grumped, when I am at home, ‘I can stand at an altar and with the community, make eucharist. Here I can’t even partake.’

Two weeks later and some 300 kilometers west on a 35 km (22.5 mile) day, we walked midday into a small village (Lascabanes) that invited us with its pots of geraniums in the windows of its houses. The hostel there got stars in the guidebooks for its hospitality. But what brought tears to my eyes was the simple hand-written card that announced a nightly service at which there would be foot washing.

You have no idea what that meant to me. As a pilgrim walking 12-15 miles every day, my life had been somewhat reduced to the condition of my feet. I had blisters on top of blisters on my pinky toes, blisters on my heels, one or two nails were coming off, and all this was on top of calloused feet that were collapsing under my weight. The idea that at the end of the day someone else would free my feet from their boots, tenderly unbind them, and then wash them was almost more than I could bear. That this small community did this night after night for the throngs of pilgrims with their broken-down feet was almost unimaginable.

The tears also came from my realisation that in this little village church it didn’t matter if I was Catholic or not. It didn’t even matter if I was Christian or not. If I was a pilgrim walking the Way, I was welcome. Even if I wasn’t a pilgrim, I was welcome. The people who lived in the village wanted to minister in one of the most intimate ways possible and that offer was holy.

Unfortunately we were not to stay that night in the village but for the rest of the days as I walked, I thought of the day’s pilgrims arriving there and receiving the ministry of foot washing. In my spirit, I was washed and healed.

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Tonight on this first night of the Triduum, the three holy or great days, we observe both the institution of the eucharist and the mandate to love one another as Christ loved us, embodied in foot washing. There are many similarities between the institution of the eucharist and the act of foot washing:

both build community and relationships
both involve self offering and sacrifice
both are deep expressions of love
both help us to remember and recall an event
both involve forgiveness
both involve healing of hunger, and weariness
both are incredibly intimate and soothing

Jean Vanier says in The Scandal of Service: Jesus Washes Our Feet, ‘These two symbolic acts [of Jesus, washing the disciples’ feet and giving himself up in bread and wine] around the body, his own body and the body of each one of his disciples are gestures of communion and love.… Without the eucharist we cannot live out such a deep presence and communion of the heart with others.’

He continues: Jesus came to make things new. For Jesus, each person is precious, each one is loved by God, each is called to become the ‘home of God’; each has a gift to bring to others, each one should be deeply respected.

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This is what we are about tonight: celebrating the eucharist and washing one another’s feet. Most of all, we are remembering Jesus’ understanding that everyone is precious and everyone has a gift to offer the others.
When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’

As signs of love go, foot washing is one of the best!

For all of this we dare to ask you to have your feet washed, literally and figuratively. It is not easy to allow someone to wash your feet, that part of you where you feel least attractive (though I accept that my feet are those of a peasant). It was hard the very first time for the apostles. Peter said, ‘No way, Lord, you will not wash my feet.’

Washing and being washed cuts to the bone of what it means to love, and at the place that is raw, we encounter the real thing.

Jesus said to Peter, ‘If I do not wash you, you will have no part in me,’ which is to say, ‘If we do not learn the humility and the humiliation of love, we will not get it, when God tries to show us the divine, liberating love.’

Coming up to have your feet washed tonight, or remaining in your pew to think and pray about all of this, is in one sense all the same. Both can be profound; both can be a distraction.

What matters is the transformation, the opening up of our hearts so that when Jesus’ words come — ‘Do you know what I have done?’ — we will have an inkling, some sense of the immense, unspeakable transforming power of love, of that love that will not let us go, that love which will draw us to place we would never have thought of going.

So come, my friends: come to share, either quietly in your seat, or visibly up front in the chair, the memory of the time when Jesus loved his friends. Jesus still loves, still wants to help us let go of all the polite, protective, evasive ways of loving and being loved, and to open ourselves to the humbling, humiliating kinds of love which, when received and given, bring a dignity and worth we have never known.

‘Do you know what I have done to you?’

I invite you at this time, those who wish, to come forward and when it is your turn to be seated, take off your shoes and socks and, on behalf of all of us, learn of love.




The altar of repose is in the chapel. The church now is totally bare. And as I write this, there are people on watch in the chapel.

Easter message from Archbishop Martín Barahona

Go here for the 2009 Easter message from Bishop Barahona of El Salvador.

Wednesday in Holy Week

Wednesday in Holy Week always seems to mark a turning-point for me in the journey toward the cross. The readings get more difficult because they speak of the core issues that undergird the passion — abandonment, betrayal, suffering and death — all which are contrasted with God’s abiding love. No matter how hard I try to listen to these readings with an intellectual ear, they strike at the core of my heart.

Tomorrow night we will hear the account of the institution of the holy eucharist from First Corinthians. Tonight, we hear John’s description of the last supper. The accounts differ quite a bit. John’s portrayal of any form of eucharist comes much earlier on in the gospel with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. By the time John’s Jesus reaches the last supper, he has done the signs he was meant to do. What is left for him to do is use ‘the tongue of a teacher, to sustain the weary with a word.’ Unlike the Jesus of the other three gospels, John’s Jesus seems to know what is going on and what will happen. Consequently, he almost orchestrates his last hours. Part of this preparation comes in what is known as the ‘Last Supper Discourse’ which follows Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.

So much of the Last Supper Discourse focuses on the great commandment: ‘If I, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you must wash one another’s feet. I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. Everyone will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another.’

Central to the theology of the Fourth Gospel and its companion, the First Letter of John, is the theme of God abiding in us and we in God. Loving one another as God loves us becomes our way of manifesting God in the world. The First Letter of John reiterates this idea in its words, ‘God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.’ Abiding in and remaining in God’s love becomes the central mark of discipleship in John’s thought. Serving one another as disciples, washing one another’s feet, defines us as people of the Way, of Christ.

How can it be, then, that in Jesus’ glorious statement of love, two sharp and dissonant notes strike?

First, Jesus knows — even before instructing the disciples to love one another — that one of them will betray him. Even in the midst of this intimate, intense moment of communion, someone is out of place. Judas’ betrayal is so discordant that the writer of John has to add that Satan enters into Judas at the time of his receiving the morsel of bread as if to say, the action is so heinous, that it cannot come from a human’s soul but from the devil.

The other discordant note sounds in Jesus’ statement, ‘Little children, I am with you only a little while longer. You will look for me… and where I am going, you cannot come.’ Jesus softens this announcement with the term of endearment, ‘Little children,’ but it cannot soften the underlying sense of total abandonment.

So, just before instructing his disciples to love one another, Jesus raises the questions of betrayal and abandonment.

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But aren’t love, betrayal, and abandonment all mixed up together?

Given that life is not black or white, either/or, neither are we — utterly pure, utterly loving or utterly diabolical and hateful. And isn’t the people we love the most the ones we most often abandon and betray?

Jean Vanier describes betrayal as, ‘more than separation or rejection. To betray is to use the secrets of a person’s personal life, thoughts confided to a “friend,” and to turn against that person, to use their confided thoughts or words in order to hurt and defile them, to destroy a reputation.’ (1)

Facing that aspect of our hearts is always difficult, but as part of our preparation for Easter Sunday we must. We must confront those times in our relationships with our beloved family members and friends that we have abandoned them in time of need or, worse, betrayed them. Scratching a little deeper, we also must admit those times when we have betrayed God in thought, word or deed.

I often think the human heart and soul are a great mystery, why we do what we do sometimes doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is when we realise we have abandoned or betrayed the Other, and ourselves, that we seek forgiveness.

To be fair, sometimes we feel God has abandoned and betrayed us. Haven’t we all felt the need to cry out the opening lines of Psalm 22, as did Jesus: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from the cries of my distress?’ The difference is that though we may feel God has abandoned us, God is still there for us, it is we, in the words of Simone Weil, who have turned away. God is still there and always will be.

As night falls in the Passion story, let us take some quiet time to consider those places in our lives where love, betrayal and abandonment are all mixed up and remember that God is there, too in the confusion.

END NOTE
(1) Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 241.

Holy Tuesday sermon

For nearly thirty years, Laura and Guy Waterman homesteaded, in a place they called ‘Barra’ outside East Corinth. They gave up all the ‘modern conveniences’ of life that we take for granted and, instead, lead a deliberate life, eating food they grew themselves, and using no running water or electricity. It was an extreme that most of us can handle for a week or two on a camping trip but not one for thirty years.

When Laura, now a widow, moved out of their cabin into the village, she was astounded by what living with electricity meant for her. She writes in her 2005 memoir, Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage:

It felt strange—indulgent and wasteful of resources — to work after dark in a house electrically lit. Guy and I had placed only a single lamp on the table where we wrote and read in the evenings. The rest of our cabin was plunged in shadow. We each carried a flashlight, which wore holes in our pants pockets. Here at Page Hollow I kept reaching for my pocket flashlight, forgetting to turn on a light when I went up and down stairs.

That first week I became aware of something else. More subtle, and impossible to capture in an electrified house, was how Barra filled up with darkness at the close of day. I had found this crepuscular turning from day to night calming and indescribably peaceful. I had become a participant in the process myself. Electricity banished twilight and erased as well the easy connection to the night I had felt at Barra. (1)

There is darkness and there is darkness. There is this friendly darkness and then there is the darkness that brings fear and a sense of urgency. It is this latter sense of darkness, a sense of foreboding, of danger, that the reading from John’s gospel tonight depicts.

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John’s gospel is full of light and dark imagery from its opening pages with its soaring prologue that speaks so eloquently of the Word filling the world with light… but from the beginning of John’s gospel, there is also that twinge of uneasiness: The Light was in the world, but the world knew it not.

Between the reading from yesterday and tonight’s reading (which we just heard two weeks ago Sunday), Jesus has entered Jerusalem. They all are at the festival, Jew and non-Jew, believer and non-believer. It seems surprising that at this late hour some Greeks want to meet Jesus — we, as privileged listeners, know that there isn’t much time left to be with him before he dies (it is agonising to know that). Less surprising is how they have to go through a game of telephone or up the chain of command to speak with him first through Philip, the Andrew, then Phil and Andrew. However, this encounter serves a purpose, for it is at this moment finally that Jesus announces his impending death with words of glory (also prevalent in John’s gospel) and his parable of the grain of the wheat that must fall to the earth and die in order to bring about much fruit — a parable that speaks directly to what will happen to him.

Then he warns the disciples and the crowd (which presumably includes the Greeks who wanted to see him in the first place): ‘The light is with you a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’

These words always make my heart tighten up. They are all about abandonment and being left in the world’s darkness. Indeed, as the Holy Week readings progress, we arrive at that point when the sun has dropped over the mountains, but when there still is some light. We know there isn’t much time left before it gets dark and so we must hurry to accomplish those chores before nightfall.

So it is with our spiritual affairs.

Holy Week is that time of year when we must bear up to the reality that Jesus is with us for only a little while longer. It is the time of year when we must confront the darkness that resides within us and without, when we must consider our individual and communal brokenness.

With so much bad news bombarding us day in and day out, it is easy to become inured and indifferent to it. We become titillated but not touched by all the blood, gore, sadness, anger, dishonesty, hypocrisy and all the rest. But there are times when we have to let the darkness really consume us, when we have to enter into the suffering of other human beings, when we have to become that grain of wheat that must die in order to bring about much fruit. There are times we must confront with true anger the injustices, the awful things that people do to others. There are times when we have to take someone else’s hand to walk together through the darkness of the soul, whether it is individual or collective.

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How do we, as servants of Christ, of God, stay in the light when there is so much darkness around us? How do we walk with others who are trying to find and then follow Christ?

First, remember that God called you and me before we were born to be witnesses to the Light. Second, remember that God has chosen each one of us. And third, remember that each one of us has been marked and sealed as Christ’s own for ever in baptism and that Christ will be with us even to the end of the ages. With that knowledge, we can enter into the darkness and find it more friend than foe, more gentle than harsh, a place where we can pray peacefully:

O God, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at that last. Amen.

END NOTE

(1) Laura Waterman, Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage (Washington, DC: Shoemaker Hoard, 2005), 266.

[photo] candles 2006

From Vermont Freedom to Marry

Vermont's House and Senate made history today, overriding the Governor's veto of S.115 and making Vermont the first state to embrace the freedom to marry through our elected representatives without a court order. Congratulations to all of us!

The final vote in the House was 49 votes to sustain the veto, and 100 votes to override it -- an override by the slimmest of margins. We are deeply indebted to legislative leaders for recognizing the importance of our families and our rights, and to all those legislators who stood by us -- some at considerable political risk. The courage that many leaders have shown over the past several weeks is inspiring, and we've seen the best of representative democracy in action. To our supporters in the Legislature: You have stood up for us, and we will stand with you in the days to come. We urge you to write each and every legislator (House and Senate) who stood with us on the override vote. Let them know you appreciate their support, and what they've been through.

This is a proud day for Vermont and Vermonters. Throughout this three and a half week process, we have engaged with one another with as much civility and respect as possible given the intensity of the heartfelt views many of us -- across the spectrum -- brought into this debate. And in the end, we did the right thing. The forces of justice, fairness and love proved far stronger than one man's veto pen.

And along the way, we built new bridges. The debate galvanized the majority of Vermonters in the quest for fairness and inclusion, uniting the business community, clergy and ordinary folks from the four corners of our state. In our editorial pages we've seen compelling calls for justice, personal stories, and thoughtful analysis. And in communities around the state, thousands of Vermonters stepped up to the plate -- writing your legislators, coming to the Statehouse, knocking on doors, and making phone calls. Some of you have never engaged in the political process before, and some hadn't thought much about the freedom to marry until it hit the front page. But you opened your hearts, heard a better future calling, and dedicated yourself to making our world a more loving place.

And the courage of every single legislator, and the commitment of every single volunteer and donor, has made a difference. We made it over the top without a cushion. Every single one of us has truly mattered.

Your actions matter to Sandi and Bobbi, who can finally get married right here in their own home state after 42 years of committed life together -- through life-threatening sickness, job loss, and the challenges of parenting, as well as the joys of raising a child, being grandmothers, and sharing each other's company.

Your actions matter to Nina and Stacy who have spent a dozen years advocating for children of gay and lesbian parents -- including their own. It matters to their son, Seth, who deserves to grow up in a world that recognizes, respects, and protects his family as much as any other.

Your actions matter to Scott, who as an adolescent struggling with his sexuality regularly contemplated suicide because he felt less worthy than his heterosexual siblings. And to the next generation of Scotts whose load will be lighter in a world where our laws don't reinforce outdated social stigmas.

Your actions matter to kids that haven't yet been born, youngsters who don't yet realize how we made a better world for them, and soulmates yet-to-be-joined by fate or good fortune.

Vermont can serve as a beacon of hope to the kid on the playground in Indiana, bullied by his peers because he's not macho enough. To the lesbian mother in Georgia in fear of losing custody of her child because she's gay. And to the worker in Montana who is afraid to come out to his boss for fear of losing his job.

To all of you -- thank you for making this difference!

We are planning a party, to celebrate justice and thank all who made it possible. Stay tuned for details. And thanks to all for proving that, in the end, love prevails!

[These are tears of joy in the photo.]

Monday of Holy Week

Tomorrow during the eucharist at clergy day, the bishop will bless the oil of unction and chrism that will be used throughout the year in the forty-eight congregations of the diocese of Vermont. In many dioceses, this blessing takes place at the same time that clergy renew the vows they made at ordination, and on Maundy Thursday.

Immediately after the postcommunion prayer, the oil is brought forward and the bishop says these words of introduction:

Dear Friends in Christ: In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the creation; and, throughout history, God, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, has empowered God’s people to serve God. As a sign of that gift, the priests and kings of Israel were anointed with oil; and our Saviour Jesus was himself anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism as the Christ, God’s own Messiah. At baptism, Christians are likewise anointed by that same Spirit to empower them for God’s service. Let us now set apart this oil to be the sign of that anointing.

Then he blesses the oil for chrismation, the oil that is used at baptisms and for ordinations (if someone wishes to have his or her hands anointed).

After that, he blesses the oil used for unction with these words:

O Lord, holy Father, giver of health and salvation: Send your Holy Spirit to sanctify this oil; that, as your holy apostles anointed many that were sick and healed them, so may those who in faith and repentance receive this holy unction be made whole; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Oil as a symbol of healing can be traced back to the Letter of James wherein James writes: ‘Is any among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.’ But the tradition of using pure olive oil predates Christianity — pressed from beaten olives free of all foreign debris, olive oil was used centuries before Christ’s time. Oil of unction was so important to the Israelites that the Book of Exodus gives several rules for its preparation and use. It was made aromatic by adding balsam, incense and myrrh. That tradition continues to this day

Ever since I was ordained to the priesthood 15 years ago, I have always carried my little oil stock with me wherever I go. This oil stock has travelled to France and to Central America countless times. You never know when it might be needed. On one visit to El Salvador, we went to see new houses built after an earthquake, we also visited with the families who were moving into them. One family couldn’t because Alonzo, the husband, had had stomach surgery. He was too weak to move even from his bed. We started over to the temporary ranchito, a little shack made out of tin, to lay hands on him, when I remembered that my oil stock was back in the truck so I ran and got it. Offering the outward sign of oil reminding Alonzo of God’s inward healing grace seemed to make our prayer more complete, even though I know it was sufficient without the oil. Nonetheless, I knew he would smell that oil and remember that two priests had laid hands on him and prayed for him. I have anointed the nearly dead and the dead, as a sign of God’s presence with them, and as a reminder of the action that Mary performs on Jesus’ behalf before he died. Tracing a cross of olive oil and touching their foreheads at that moment is perhaps the most tender and loving action the church can offer them to help them on the journey that lies ahead of them.

Mary’s anointing Jesus is a stunning story that points toward some of the major themes of Holy Week—Jesus’ impending death, and Jesus’ love for his disciples. It looks to the cross but then beyond Holy Week to the newness that the events of Holy Week will make possible.

We find ourselves at the house of Lazarus after his resurrection. Jesus has gone to Bethany, knowing that by doing so, he is about to provoke the Pharisees who are ready to kill him. He raises Lazarus from the dead, and in doing so, looks into the tomb to see his own death.

Mary, somehow, knows that and reaches out to Jesus, ministering to him in a way that brings about criticism. Using pure nard, a sweet oil, she anoints Jesus’ feet. It is such a tender gesture of love, and care, and a gesture of preparation for burial. She offers what she has, an ordinary thing made holy by her actions, holding nothing back in expressing her love for Jesus, her love for the man who brought her brother back from the dead, and for the man who will make all things new.

Judas complains, saying her anointing Jesus is too extravagant, beyond the norms of social behaviour. She has squandered a whole year’s salary on expensive perfume. Shouldn’t she have spent it on something better? But she is responding to Jesus’ impending outpouring of his life for the rest of us.

Mary expresses her love and discipleship toward Jesus in the symbolic act of his anointing. Later in the gospel of John, at the Last Supper, Jesus will suggest another way to express this love and discipleship — and act toward one another in love — with the same extravagance that Mary embodies in her anointing of Jesus. In the later example, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.

When we love as Jesus does, we begin to experience the fullness of life that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus make possible. Mary holds nothing back; Jesus holds nothing back. It is part of our vocation as recipients of that extravagant gift to hold nothing back. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said, ‘The limit of our love for God should be to love God without limit.’ That same love of God should transfer to love of neighbour. When we exchange that love with one another, we surely shall be healed even beyond the capacities of the most extravagant oil there is. When we exchange that love with one another, life will come out of death and we will be made new.


Down cellar, under the nave, are forsythia and apple tree blossoms being forced for our garden of repose. They wait for us on Thursday.

Update on S115

The Vermont Senate is expected to concur in the House amendments to S.115 late this afternoon, and will promptly deliver the bill to the Governor. The Governor is expected to veto the bill and return it to the Senate for an override vote, likely Tuesday morning around 9:00 a.m. The bill must go to the Senate first because the Senate introduced the bill. After the Senate completes its work – and it is expected to vote to override the Governor’s anticipated veto – the bill will be messaged to the Vermont House of Representatives. The House will likely vote on the override question some time after 10:00 a.m., and most likely before lunch.

[19.49] Governor Douglas Vetoed S.115. The Vermont Senate concurred with the House on S.115 and sent the bill to the Governor, who promptly vetoed it late this afternoon. The bill will return to the Senate for an override vote at 9 a.m. tomorrow, followed by the same action in the House. The House will likely vote on the override question some time after 10:00 a.m., and most likely before lunch.

He is such an id. I tell you, help us in Vermont defeat this guy in November 2010. He is an embarrassment to this state.

And pray that there are enough votes in the House to override his veto. We need 100.

Go here and vote

Go here and vote often.

The anti-same-sex-marriage people are in the lead.

Maybe this will be out on Good Friday

Design Group works on Anglican covenant revision

Text to be discussed by Anglican Consultative Council in May

By Matthew Davies

[Episcopal News Service] The group charged with "designing" a covenant that could be used as a unifying set of principles among the provinces of the Anglican Communion met March 30-April 3 in Cambridge, England to work on a new revision of the text.

"A completed revision of the proposed covenant has been finished, along with a commentary explaining our work," the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, one of two Episcopal Church members on the Covenant Design Group, told ENS at the conclusion of the meeting. "We have taken seriously the array of responses received from the provinces and from around the communion and larger church."

The latest incarnation of the Anglican covenant, along with the design group's commentary, is expected to be "posted on the Anglican Communion website sometime next week," said Radner.

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After all, the Saint Andrew's draft emerged on Ash Wednesday.

It's hard not to be cynical: I can't help but think their logic is that by posting this document during Holy Week, its presence won't be noticed.

What the CDG did not take into consideration is that many would like the whole thing disappear back into the dustbin from whence it came.

Final Vote on S115

The Vermont House of Representatives gave FINAL approval this afternoon to S. 115, by a vote of 94-52. Two of our yes votes were absent. One representative who was absent yesterday voted yes today.

This overwhelming support for the freedom to marry shows just how far we've come.

Now if we could our Repugnican guvnuh to get on board, life would be great. But instead, we will have to deal with his veto.Vermont is being left in the dust all because of Jim Douglas. It's pitiful.

And here's the twisted logic of some opponents:

Rep. Duncan Kilmartin, R-Newport, was one of the Republicans steadfast in their opposition Thursday night. He said same-sex marriage runs counter to 5,000 years of history and tradition.

"The wellspring of our civil rights comes from Jesus Christ dying on the cross," he said.

HUH???????????

Tweets from Montpelier

Folks up at the state house/capitol building in Montpelier are busy tweeting. Here are a few of their photos.


The percentage numbers come from an annual unscientific but long-standing poll distributed by William Doyle (R, Washington County).


Ben and Jerry's heart is in the right place.


Supposedly the House will take up discussion of the bill at 4.00 PM or so. Here's a photo of the chamber. I would think the House has gone into recess when this was taken.

[6.30/18.30 EDT] Referendum failed 52-96 (that is, a vote on holding a state-wide referendum on same-sex marriages failed). GOOD.

[21.33] The bill passes 2nd reading! 95-52 on first count.

The vote will be today

but when, who knows, since the House is working on a budget.

The bill was amended in the House Judiciary which means it will have to go back to the Senate.

Meanwhile, I am sure the chamber is packed with supporters and detractors. At least the people in this photo (Bilde, Burlington Free Press), have comfortable chairs. Those chairs line the back wall, behind the speaker's podium. The call went out yesterday to get there early so people obviously did. These folk are in support of the bill as evidenced by the yellow buttons.

Reasons why we don't want a referendum in Vermont

When I got back from choir tonight, there was a message on my answering machine from some national coalition [from Virginia] to defend marriage (sorry, I deleted it because I didn't want to keep it), urging me to write my representative telling him to vote no tomorrow on S115 (same-sex marriage) to preserve the sanctity of marriage. UGH.

We already have enough trouble with crap like this infecting our fair state. We sure don't need to take on the next level, a so-called vote by the people.

As is, I had contacted my representative and he is hopeless. So come November 2010...!!!!

Meanwhile, say your prayers tomorrow because the House will vote on the bill. We need a veto-proof majority. The bill will pass, that seems sure but as to a veto-proof majority? That is less certain.

Evidently 300 Green Mountain College students challenged politely the governor today when he was on campus. Good for them. They wore rainbow buttons which read, 'Celebrate diversity.'

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According to the Burlington Free Press this call came from VA, based actually in NJ:

Several people called the Free Press last night to complain about automated calls regarding today's House vote on the gay marriage bill.

Callers said the recordings urged them to call their local legislators and urge them to vote against the bill.

The Vermonters said the calls showed this number on their caller ID: fed0309RSCH or 804-934-1092, a number in Richmond, Va.

This appears to be a lobbying effort by the National Organization for Marriage to encourage opposition to the bill. Here is the contact information for the group:

National Organization for Marriage
20 Nassau Street, Suite 242
Princeton, NJ 08542

Phone: (609) 688-0450
Fax: (888) 894-3604
Email: contact@nationformarriage.org

I wonder if it is connected at all to the Opus Dei group that took up residence across the street from Trinity Episcopal Church. I don't know if they are still there but it was a huge flap when people realised that they were moving in across the street into the house of a parishioner who had been murdered and whose family sold the house thinking it would be a good legacy to sell it to a 'church group.' Ay.

Spring in the south

Here are some photos from my visit down to my parents' house in Connecticut.


I have always taken for granted that there is a brook that runs through the backyard. If my parents were trying to build their house now and not in 1953, they wouldn't be allowed to since it is in a flood plain. We know that well! The basement has flooded on a regular basis, aided by willow tree roots.


I am not sure if my father is still the number one hammer thrower or ten-pound weight thrower in the 80+ age-bracket in the US but he has been recently. On the far side of the brook he practices on a platform he made. It's a whole other world there.


Nearby, on the other side of an old New England stone wall, back from the days when the area was given over to onion fields, lies Pixel underneath a nice piece of slate. Her grave is the only one of the cats to have such a marking; only my father knows where the other cats' remains lie.


Closer to the house, underneath the apple tree that has been there for over 50 years, is a wonderful field of crocuses. Many have naturalised and many have been moved around by critters.


My mother has taken lots and lots of photos of Pixel over the years so she put out two she had submitted into a photography show. Pixel had treed a mouse (in the right photo) and my father saw her in action.

My father said he can go for about half an hour without thinking of her.

Sigh.