What class am I anyway?

As the politicians drone on about the 'middle class' and we see that folks in Georgetown, District of Columbia and folks on Capitol Heights, D.C. consider themselves middle class, even though the former earns on an average $140K per year and the latter $29K a year, I ask what class am I?

I was raised in an upper-middle-class family. Home life was secure and stable. My parents were able to pay for my college education. I managed to make it through a Ph.D. and M.Div. program without incurring debt thanks to scholarships.

As an Episcopal priest, when employed, my income was lower-middle class (my first position as rector when I started was $14K in stipend plus housing and benefits for a total package of $28K), though from the exterior, I probably still exude the trappings of an upper-middle-class person and I certainly have the education of one... until you start looking closely.

Now, I am decidedly lower-class with no income to speak of and, as of today, no health insurance either. I drive a nine year-old car with close to 150K miles on it, wear glasses that have one broken-off nose piece with a prescription that does not work as well as it used to. I do have plenty enough clothes to keep me going a long, long time and, for the time being, a roof over my head. Somehow I should be able to regain employment.

It is an extravagance, but I am going to El Salvador soon (booked that ticket before learning of the termination of my health insurance). Their problems are worse than mine.

I guess I am supposed to learn what it means to be on a downward-slide economically in order to have more compassion with those at the bottom of the heap (we are getting more and more numerous). It isn't fun, though.

What a year.

Gardening

A dozen or so of us
helped Eric with his garden
today.

A cookie jar
that he would take to his
wife, Elaine,
and say, 'The jar is empty,'
and she'd fill it
with wonderful home-made
cookies
sat on a shawl of hers.

Today, though,
the jar held Elaine's
ashes
and we gently and lovingly
scattered them in her
garden midst the rows
and plants now
fallow
awaiting the spring blooms.

And while some chose to
wash their hands after
scattering these holy ashes,
I did not,
preferring instead
to let them seep into my skin,
to take Elaine's spirit
into my hands
only to lift them up
to the sky
and commend her
to God.

A new place to abide... for a spell

Church of Our Saviour, Killington, VT is nestled between two ridges; it is on the Killington Flats right across from the ski resort lift, the Skyeship. The vicarage (building furthest to the left) is an 1830s house; an older one was there before. Next to it is the Guest House which the church runs and finally the church, an 1895 stone structure. The church in the past was served by a farmer priest and, indeed, in the 50s-80s, the priest cultivated some of the 170 acres that the church owns.

When the most recent vicar retired, I asked if I could move into the vicarage because 1) I wanted to get out from a landlord who nickled and dimed the lessees; 2) I thought my money would be more appreciated by the church; 3) there would be someone living in the house which is on a very-well travelled side road. The Executive Committee of the church agreed and so I moved in on 7 September.

This, again, is a stop-gap measure because they will look for a new priest and I need to find a cure somewhere else, despite it being so convenient here... for the time I reside here, I will appreciate the peace of the church, the tranquility of the valley. Kirstin's ashes are across the street from the vicarage in the church orchard and her spirit helps me, too.

Someday this past year will make sense. Right now, I know it has been ten months of unemployment and the one thing that keeps me connected to the priesthood is supplying on Sundays. Even that, though, will dry up in October.

So I drift aimlessly. At least for the time being, I am in a valley so I can't get too far off course. And the mountains are close by which provides for good walking.

Six year anniversary

Here we go again... Facebook changed its format finally so I am learning it. Now blogger has forced me to go to its up-dated version.

Six years ago I hiked up Hunger Mountain and came down and decided to create a blog. Back then blogs were all the thing. Now other forms of social media have overtaken the lowly blog and I, like so many others, have neglected this platform.

It is not time yet to delete it... it still serves an occasional use... especially for those who have chosen not to jump on the Facebook bandwagon.

No mountain climbing today... just a walk along a river and getting thwap-splashed by two beavers who did not appreciate my watching them.

Post Carpal Tunnel Release Endoscopic Surgery: Or What the Doctor Did Not Tell Me

A post for those googling 'endoscopic carpal tunnel release'.. for the rest, this probably is a bit boring.

Two weeks ago at this hour, I was a one-handed wonder, just released from my endoscopic surgery, all 45 minutes (?, I don't know because I last looked at the clock when it read 4.18, and did not wake up in the recovery room until 5.25, but I know the actual procedure is about seven minutes long) of it.

So I came home with puffy fingers...

The weird thing was the nerve block which, on the one hand (!), kept away the pain such as it was, also was unnerving (!) because my fingers felt on the inside as though they were on fire and on the outside, when I touched them, like leather or sticks. My surgery was at 4.15 (that is when they started the nerve block) and I first began to feel my fingers at 4.30 in the morning and finally at 8.30 the next day, that is 16+ hours later, I could feel all the way down to the finger tips. So, yes, the nerve block was good, but also quite weird.

My fingers remained swollen for quite a few days; it was only 12 days after surgery that I could move my rings from my pinky to my ring finger.

At three days, the pain wasn't bad, largely because my hand was wrapped up in a bandage, and swathed in cotton and resting on a bed of plaster (my 'boa paw' as I call it) so I couldn't possibly move it.

Of course I wondered what it looked like underneath. I was told I could remove the whole set-up at the third or fourth day, but my discomfort was enough that I kept it on until the fifth day (partly because I wanted to get through the peace at the Holy Eucharist with it protected).

When I unwrapped it all, I did not find much.

The purple dots are the marks the surgeon made pre-op. Bruising is at my wrist where the transverse ligament was severed. The entry-point for the endoscope is the incision in my palm and the exit is in the wrist. Both incisions were sealed with glue, rather than stitches.

I bruise easily so the top of my hand bruised from the IV used for the nerve block. Only at two weeks has that bruising finally disappeared.

I had been sent home with virtually no directions, basically, 'Wiggle your fingers,' so I did. By day five, I could French-braid my hair, albeit with discomfort. I still couldn't write or eat with my left hand, but I could move my fingers.

However, I was becoming aware of a new sort of pain that had nothing to do with the initial discomfort of nerve loss. This new pain took up residence in the heel of my hand. Prowling around on the internet, I came up with this.

Exactly. It feels like a permanent cramp. I can move my fingers fine, but when I try to touch my thumb to the knuckle of my pinky, it hurts. It hurts still to write, to hold a knife and try to cut something hard, to rest weight on the palm of my hand. When I asked my surgeon about this, she explained that things have been moved around, detached from the bones which hold the tendons down and that in time this pain will dissipate. She also said that the muscle of my thumb extended further into the ligament so she had to cut further over than usual but because I had been so good in keeping my hand elevated (which I did), the bruising and pain were less than had I not kept the hand above my heart. Hunting around on the web, I have found some massage exercises to do for the incision and the fleshy part of the palm both thumb and pinky sides.

At ten days, the incisions were healing well, but the pain was unchanged. The bruising on the top of my hand spread but finally began to fade. I saw my surgeon at ten days and she gave me some exercises for finger-bending; she was pleased with the flexibility I have. She also said I will continue to have swelling where the transversal ligament was severed and, indeed, that is true. She said in time the pillar pain (though she did not name it as such) will diminish. I will go back on 1 October, seven weeks out.

I understand the reluctance of doctors to say specifically what possible pain and inconvenience may lie ahead, but if it were not for the internet, I might have had a lot more worries about what was happening. As I said to my surgeon, 'I don't mind pain; I just like to know why I have it.'

My hand/fingers have not fallen into the dead sleep they would before surgery but they still feel a little off. In time, I guess I will be glad I had the operation. Right now, though, I am aware that I still cannot pick up heavy things, grab tightly doorknobs or make any fast motion that involves the heel of my hand (i.e., thumb and pinky). There now is a nob underneath the lower incision and I trust that will diminish as well.

I continue to massage the incision site, and the left and right sides of the heel of my hand. I can write for a short while, dice easy veggies (like onions) but need to switch off to my other hand if what I am trying to cut is tough (like serrano peppers). When I will have finished typing this entry, I will massage my hand because clearly this activity tires the hand. This said, my surgeon said the carpal tunnel problems are not solely the result of computer work but the aggregate of many factors.

So, for those prowling the internet for people who have undergone endoscopic carpal tunnel release, here are some thoughts two weeks out by one person.

Pencil seller? Grave digger?

Nine months without a job and seemingly unable to break through the brick wall that is deployment in The Episcopal Church.

I just looked at the classifieds and I am not even qualified to be a housekeeper at a local nursing home. Can't be a secretary or administrative assistant because I don't do Microsoft operating systems.

What can I do? Going back into the world with a Ph.D. in medieval French language and literature and a M.Div. doesn't cut it.

Maybe I could dig graves. That doesn't take a ton of skill, the physical work would be good and the pastoral background I have would come in handy.

364 days later

On this night, 27 August 2011, a year ago, the owner of this house went to bed, as normal, never expecting that by the end of the next day the house would look like this. The owner probably never expected that a year later, the house would still look like this as the owner awaits a settlement from FEMA.

Yesterday about eighty residents of the small town here gathered for a potluck lunch to give thanks for the first responders and the general esprit de corps that held people together in the first days post Irene. Little old Plymouth was one of the isolated thirteen towns (though it was ignored initially despite having all three ways in and out cut off and within the town borders was divided in three, like Gaul), so people had to rely on one another in the confusion of the days after Tropical Storm Irene passed through.

A local 501 c 3 has collected enough money to help the owner of this house and the other people whose homes were destroyed or properties ravaged by the flood waters.

Yesterday we took a tour of a man's property that had been surrounded by a wall of water on both sides. Remarkably the house was OK; the septic field failed when the brook bed disappeared; the little waterfall they had enjoyed disappeared in the flood. As he walked us around, showing us all the changes to his property and narrating what happened, I had a sense of déjà vu, of being with other people who had gone through disasters (notably in El Salvador), who point out what was and is no longer and, in the process of pointing out things, have an opportunity to tell their story.

Tomorrow night at 7.00PM residents of Vermont are invited to ring bells for a minute. It is a symbolic time; waters raged for several days more, but by 7.00PM on Sunday 28 August 2011, we already had realised that our state had changed vastly in the course of twelve hours.

Now, 364 days later, we pray for those in the path of Isaac, praying they will not have to go through what we went through, but knowing that already the people of Haiti have.

May God have mercy on all of us.

Who'd known?

Anne smiles after Jane has signed the marriage license.

Who'd known? Never in a hundred, thousand, million, billion years did I ever expect to have the legal status of 'married.' For 12 years, Anne and I have been legally joined in a Vermont civil union — we had our holy/civil union in August 2000, a month after civil unions, a radical act indeed, became legal in Vermont.

Time went on, other states moved to marriage equality, Vermont came on board, too, but the legislature did not automatically convert pre-existing civil unions to marriage.

So, ten days shy of our 12th anniversary of our holy/civil union and in our 23rd year of being together, we had lunch with six dear friends, talked all about General Convention, the state of the church, peace concerns (notably Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq) and just enjoyed one another's company. We all sat outside on a screened porch and one of the household cats periodically came out to try to catch bugs.

In the course of the afternoon, Jane, who presided at our holy/civil union signed our license, thereby dissolving the civil union (a bit odd, I'd say) and converting our status to being married in the eyes of the state of Vermont. And then we toasted the whole day, the twelve years, the 22 years with some Gruet champagne.

Does this change our status with the Feds? Of course not. Anne will continue to pay 20+% in taxes on any medical reimbursements I receive because in the eyes of the Feds we are not related.

But she and I know we are related and more. And we know it. To celebrate, tonight we had Bierzo, special wine that reminds us of the Camino de Santiago.

Memory lane

I guess the one good thing about moving is going through old boxes and drawers and dredging up various photos and such from the past. So, here is my graduation from Princeton University, Ph.D.: defense in November 1990, and voted on by the board of trustees in January 1991, so graduation in June 1991.

Initially I had thought that I would skip it because of how nasty the whole process had been. It was not fun having to press charges of sexual harassment against my (ex-doctoral) advisor who had a reputation that went far beyond the confines of the university. My bishop at the time even posited that I was doing so because I did not think I could finish my Ph.D. (He is also the same who said at my ordination to the transitional diaconate that my colleague and friend, also getting ordained that same day, had a 'real' Ph.D. because his was in quantum physics from MIT rather than my piddly Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton, but I digress.) But, being the Taurus woman I am, I decided ultimately that, no, no one had the right to take away from me the right I had to graduate with the whole nine yards. My mother took this photo... later she would take a photo of me with a glass of champagne in hand.

Well, also in sorting photos, I found a photo I forgot I had taken of my ex-advisor, may he rest in peace, he died in 2004. Funny, with the passage of time, he looks far less scary than he did at the time. I will always regret not having a good Ph.D. advisor, one who would challenge me to excel, someone with whom I could have exchanged ideas instead of having to listen to his fantasies that he somehow extrapolated from the medieval French texts I was reading and worry about being physically harassed (the emotional stuff was bad enough). Yes, he did terrible things and messed up a bunch of women's lives. But the man has been dead now eight years and I can only hope that he has found the peace that so evaded him in his life here. I can only pray there truly is redemption. I don't say these words lightly given the current atmosphere over the whole Sandusky matter or pedophile priests. No. But, if we say we truly are followers of Jesus, then somehow we must pray for forgiveness... one of the hardest things a follower of Jesus must practice. My spiritual companion at the time, the late Rev'd Henri Stines, who knew his share of prejudice and humanity's stupidity, gave me a huge gift by telling me that I was to pray for my ex-advisor... even if I could not say his name, offer him up to God... and in time, and lots of time, eventually I could finally offer him to God when I walked through Conques, asking for peace for this tortured soul (I presumed)... Saint Foy de Conques was a major part of my dissertation so it only seemed fitting to let go of the man and all the wrongs he had done. So, finding his photo tonight actually makes me more sad for all the wasted opportunities he had and the havoc he wreaked on so many women's lives. God forgive him. God help us.

Yeah, it is curious going through all these things as I pack up once again to do I don't know what or go I do not know where.

Continuing transition

A year ago as I was contemplating 'jumping off the cliff,' by leaving Trinity, I honestly did not think I would be unemployed a year later and having to move yet again. But that seems to be what is in the cards for me. The difference is that this time I am packing up my things without a clue to where I will move. I just know I need to leave the place where I currently am living because the rent has become prohibitive.

Any priest in The Episcopal Church knows how glacially slow parish discernment processes can be. While I may be in conversation about two, I know realistically that we are talking until late fall at this point.

Meanwhile, the state of Vermont approaches the first year of Irene when a lot of people's lives were turned upside down in ways far worse than mine. I guess we are all in it together.

Néant or drifting, take your pick

The days just drift past with little to differentiate one from the next. Occasionally I have a meeting or appointment and yesterday supplied at a church 40 miles away.

Otherwise, life up at the end of a dirt road is extremely quiet.

So I read and read. I actually like this set-up on the front doorstep. The house has a built-in planter that demanded flowers and vinca vine. And there has to be an outrageous hibiscus to complete the scene. The fish gizmo was in a snowbank when I moved in. Who knows to which tenant when it belonged? The chair desperately needs to be repainted; I sanded it down and painted it when I moved to Vermont 18 years ago. (The basket on the chair is what I use to carry my prayer book, amice, cincture, shoes and sundries when I supply.)

As for the reading? The Blue Book (digitally on my iPad), the Barefoot Sisters' account of walking the Appalachian Trail southbound and then northbound, Guy Deslisle's Jerusalem (had I known it was originally in French, I would have tracked it down), Terry Tempest Williams' latest, When Women Were Birds, and Francisco Goldman's Say Her Name... all delicious and since I have the time, I read. (I vowed I was not going to buy any more books, but just could not resist these.)

I also have been hankering to get out and walk, partly to see if the injury from last August (when I landed on a rock and banged my ankle and gave myself a humungous hematoma that still is on my calf and from which I still have edema in my ankle and foot) and mostly because I need to walk things out as I wait and wait to see if I have been called to a congregation and, if not, think about what will I do, and avoid the reality that I must move again by 15 August. Reading and hiking are good ways to escape.

So call it nothingness or drifting, in some ways they are one and the same.

But progress none the less

The new bridge opened at noon and we drove over it four and a half hours later. The sun even deigned to shine as we crossed the bridge. Everyone we saw crossing it also had a smile on their face.

To situate this bridge, it is right by the Long Trail Ale brewery. They have a terrific restaurant (good hamburgers) and obviously beer. They are sponsoring a century ride late June to raise money for Vermont Adaptive Sports. (And, no, they did not pay me for this plug.) That's a twenty-miler. Yeah, I think I could do that (slowly).

Slow progress

No one can really remember just how long this bridge has been out for repair, we think six or seven years, maybe it was to have opened last summer, but then along came Irene and knocked it sideways into the temporary bridge which meant more repairs... ironically, the fact that it was NOT finished last summer meant that we lost neither bridge.

The state could have put up a concrete span, but it wanted to replicate the old bridge which was one of the many built after the 1927 flood. They all were like this bridge.

I just got an email from someone who lives just by it; she said she drove over the new bridge today. If I weren't going in the other direction to the vet, I would also drive over it to say I crossed the Ottauquechee on the new bridge on its first day of operation. I may yet.

+++

That is how things are these days... slow, very slow. Patience rewards us from time to time, but the in-between periods seem long, very long.

Up here at the end of a dirt road, life is even slower. I am trying to have some sort of a daily rhythm, so I don't utterly lose contact with the outside world. Now that the summer is trying to arrive (don't believe it — I wore a turtleneck and sweater yesterday, and last night needed two wool blankets), I can sit out on the front entrance in a favourite funky chair and read in the morning... in the afternoon, after a walk down to the post office, if it is not raining, I can read in the hammock. And there is reading the Blue (salmon) Book for General Convention.

However, this semblance of normalcy covers up the inexorable fact that come 15 August, I have to be out of the house I am currently renting. Where I will move, I do not know. Will I have a cure? I do not know; maybe by the end of this month I will have an idea of what next.

The uncertainty colours everything. It is impossible not to have it sitting there in the pit of my stomach. Even though I try to ignore it, I know it is there. On the one hand, my mind says, 'Let this whole ball of wax be an adventure.' On the other hand, my mind asks, 'What did you do to get into this mess? Will it ever end?'

Above all, looms the possibility of having to leave my beloved Vermont... after all we have been through together, that is the worst thought. But it may be what will happen next.

So to God I say: I am all yours.

[barn at Church of Our Saviour, Killington VT]

On Marriage

Some day, some day, people will really get it.

They will understand that their concept of marriage is cultural, as in the 'wedding industry' that lures couples into spending thousands of dollars they do not have for an evening, whereas those of us who counsel said couples are more interested in five to ten years down the line.

They will understand that their concept of 'biblical' marriage is totally wrong, that this notion of one man/one woman more often than not does not show up as the norm in the bible (try Salomon and his gazillions of wives and concubines or Levite marriage).

They will understand that their concept of the actual rite involves both state and church and perhaps, it would be better to separate church from state in this case, as it is in all other rites.

They will understand that the concept of samegendermarriage is incredibly conservative and traditional and is not going to tear apart their (fragile) heterosexualmarriages.

They will understand that the sex lives of gays and lesbians are boring, and not cracked up to what their fantasies think they are, that the gays and lesbians are not out there 'doing it' all the time but actually are quite bogged down in the mundane tasks and responsibilities of daily life.

End rant.

In the meantime, the arc toward justice is incredibly long and slow.

Middle time

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO GET PARAGRAPH (HARD RETURNS) TO SHOW? EVER SINCE BLOGGER UPDATED ITS FORMATTING, NONE OF MY PARAGRAPH BREAKS SHOW UP. ARGH. DOES THIS MEAN I HAVE TO ENTER MANUALLY THE HTML CODE FOR HARD RETURNS???

I have been reading Still: Notes on a Mid-Life Faith Crisis by Lauren Winner, in which she speaks of 'middle time' — that place in between. In her reflection on the middle voice in some languages, she says: 'The middle is the language of spirituality, of devotion, the language of religious choreography. It is the middle voice that captures the strange ways activity and passivity dance together in the religious life: it is the voice that tells you that I am changed when I do these things and that there is something about me that allows these happenings to happen; and yet it is the voice that insists that there is another agent at work, another agent always vivifying the action, even when unnamed' (156-57).

That describes so well what life has been as I enter my sixth month of unemployment, and third month living up at the end of a dirt road. This is a middle time for me and I wait for that middle voice to act. As Winner writes, 'If I could make English speak middle, I would use it to say this: I wait; I doubt;as the deer yearns for a drink of water, so I yearn. I long. I praise' (ibid.).

My life has become increasingly more simple, because there is so much less to occupy it. And so it gets caught up in the small particularities of life up at the end of a dirt road.

The neighbour (who isn't around but has rented his house to a bunch of people making a film (which means they light up our pond at night and we wonder when they are going to blow out all the electricity because who knows how much energy they are drawing), who clearly are not paying attention to the livestock that comes with the rental house. The rooster and six hens have busted loose out of their barn and think that my front yard is just the place to come forage for food. The rooster has a good crow.

Today they decided to come even closer to the house. Who knows what they could find in the driveway.

Meanwhile, daffodils bloom in the ravaged yard that was underwater last year in the Irene-caused floods. There still is so much river silt and garbage that has re-emerged from the snow (such as it was). Yet, these hardy daffodils have bloomed undeterred by the destruction around them.

Life is quiet, in between, as I listen to 'what next?'

So, the six-year run on Executive Council ended last night for me. Technically, I am a member until the end of General Convention but, barring some wildly unforeseen event, my last meeting ended last night.

+ I have been so blessed to work with such an incredibly talented, wise and intelligent group of people. I know people out in Episco-land grouse and gripe about what we have done and, like General Convention, if you have been part of EC, you know there is more than what gets reported out. Perhaps the biggest missing piece is the work that goes on in the standing committees — like the legislative committees of General Convention. The plenary is far more interesting, it would seem but, really, the committee time is where it all happens.

+ Regardless, I am going to miss terribly this group of people. Prayers to the class of 2015, may you carry on wrestling with all the challenges that lie ahead, known and unknown.

+ As for me? I told the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies, 'OK, I am going to have all this time on my hands... use me, I am willing to serve.' We'll see what happens.

+ Now, off to the airport to fly back east to Vermont.

+ [The Presiding Bishop yesterday at Executive Council's last Holy Eucharist of the triennium.]

+ Blogger, what did you do? Where are my paragraph breaks?????

I am Vermont Strong redux

So, even though my fourteen year-old car is beginning to show signs of rust and the people who replaced the windshield five years ago did such a lousy job of sealing it that the seal comes loose (as it is again) and has caused rust, I still am proud to replace my front license plate with 'I am Vermont Strong.' We can use these plates for the next two years (now that the legislature changed the law to permit us). I see more and more of them as I drive around Vermont, which still has tons and tons (literally) of river silt and debris from Irene eight months ago.

And, oh, how I hope I can stay in Vermont, my adopted home. It all is so uncertain. For as long as I live here, though, I will try to be Vermont strong.

Easter Sunday evening

This is how most clergy are right now... if not in a hammock, with their feet up or asleep.

Not being in a congregation has made things different and slightly less tiring for the simple reason that I was not in charge of everything. Perhaps not being in charge made it all more difficult.

I presided and preached on Palm Sunday and Easter, and preached on Good Friday. Sermons are up on my other blog, Peripatetic Pilgrim Priest.

It has been weird. What else can I say?

Regardless, Christ has risen. The Lord has risen indeed, Alleluia.

More reflections

Yesterday's and today's reflections are up on my blog Peripatetic Pilgrim Priest.

Monday in Holy Week reflection

Go here for today's reflection.

Renewed

Some people may well think I am crazy to say that by going to El Salvador, I come back renewed, but that is always the case. Even though I may come back tired (and with a cold, thanks to flying), I am energised from the culture, the music, the food and, most of all, the people. This trip was no different from others.

Sunday the 18th, the bishop of El Salvador and I concelebrated at a congregation who was celebrating its patronal feast day of Saint Joseph. The following Sunday, I presided at the Eucharist in the small chapel in the diocesan office building. It was so restorative to be able to be a priest again in community after this long desert time.

I led a day-long Lenten retreat for the clergy and a half-day conference on Holy Week for the laity, participated in an interfaith event to commemorate Msr Oscar Romero, walked in the candlelight procession down Avenida Roosevelt from Salvador del Mundo to El Rosario (since Catedral has been occupied since 10 January with no sign of the occupiers leaving) and visited and met with my Salvadoran sisters and brothers.

One never knows whom one will meet... in this case, Gaspar Romero, Oscar Romero's brother, who spoke at an event sponsored by the Attorney General's Office on Human Rights.

Shame on Texas

From the NY Times in an article about Texas slashing funds for women's medical care

But the clinic closed in October, along with more than a dozen others in the state, after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.

Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.

In what year are we? You say 2012? Really? I'd say it is more like the 1950s or 1960s. Depressing.

A new way of being

The past

The present

On 20 February, the movers came and took all my big stuff out of the rectory and moved it (with some great difficulty getting up our icy road) to the rental house I have until July. Yesterday, on Leap Year Day, after thoroughly cleaning the rectory, I walked out of it for the last time.

Thus beginneth the new way of being.

Agatha now is in our little house by herself. She seems much happier without the other three. Our little house is 100 yards away from the rental house.

For the first time in twenty years, I do not have my La Palma angels flying over my head. Instead, I have a window which means I can look out at the stars (or snow) even as I lie there.

Aelred also can look out the window... at Anne who is snowblowing the driveway in front of my car.

Aelred and August explored the house today (poor Sophia is at the vet recovering from having her right canine extracted — she broke it years ago, missing the counter as she tried to jump up on it). Aelred seemed OK with things. August was terrified.

My wonderful Salvadoran aumbry now has a new home in my study. On the shelf below it, my amice and cincture lie ready to be used... they will be on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Easter when I supply at another Vermont Episcopal church.

It is going to take a while to dig the car out tomorrow but I must, because I have a funeral to attend and then go to Rutland to get Sophia.

The new way of being is that I do not have land line at the house; therefore, I do not have internet there. I can get the microcell signal from our house so my phone gets one bar; I am not totally cut off but working off an iPhone for the internet is tedious. So I am living a quasi retreat-like experience of dragging my laptop down to our house for the evening hours, knowing that when I go back up the hill, I am once again offline.

Now that I am fully out of the rectory and, therefore, completely finished with Trinity, it is time to start looking for a new cure. I know that will take time but I must get going.

In any event, the past two weeks have been full, very full, so full that I took a two-hour nap this afternoon... with both August and Aelred keeping me warm.

On the eve of disaster

In three days, I will no longer be typing at this desk set-up because it will be taken apart and put into storage in our garage (which now has most of my belongings). The movers come Monday morning to take the big stuff and whatever else is left over, I will still be packing.

I have been putting a lot of photos up on Facebook simply because I don't have to size them down the way I do here. The FB photo log has been a quiet but public grieving of what is facing me. The easy route would be to say it is all their fault but of course I could have done things differently, too. Nonetheless, given the reactions I have heard, it was only a few who wanted rid of me; the majority were content with what I was doing. So it is hard not to think that the whole decision on their part was horribly misguided.

It doesn't matter now. I have three nights left in the rectory and then I move into a six-month rental from where I will work assiduously to find another place that will call me.

It has almost been three months since I have been unemployed. I have missed Advent, Christmas-tide, Epiphany as a priest and preacher. It is harder than a lot might think.

My back is weary but I have boxes to go so back to packing. Just one photo to show the state of confusion in the house.... empty bookcases turned to the wall so that the cats won't tip them over when they jump onto them.

Down memory lane

Well, since I referenced my trip across the Atlantic on the QE2 and since the album of photos I took happens to be out, I snagged some shots. They are not high quality partially because the originals are not and partly because I took them with my iPhone. But they will give an idea of what it was to sail across the sea in 1977.

Comme j'étais jeune... this was the telegram that announced I had been booked passage on the ship for the student fare.

Blurry shot of the QE2, looking miniscule compared to the recent shipwrecked liner.

View of the QE2 before embarking (somewhere between 34-45th Streets, NYC).

The former WTC as we left NY harbor on 1 September 1977.

Looking toward Hoboken.

Our cabin somewhere way below. It was on the outside of the ship so we did have a porthole.

This photo makes the cabin look bigger than it was... but it was perfectly adequate for two people.

Above deck on the one sunny day.

Hoowhee, look at that exhaust.

Looking at the stern.

Somewhere inside...!

Our dinner table (we were assigned a table and ate with the same people every night). As you can see, this trip catered to the 20-something crowd.

Meanwhile, outside... this had to have been our safety drill. I do remember the watertight doors shutting behind us as we went to our muster station.

One of the better moments at sea when it was not pouring rain or going sideways.

I would go out just for the sake of going out, even though it was wet. I felt like some Hollywood movie star in this film of crossing the ocean to new adventures... and that is where the James Taylor song would come into play.

Tugboats greeted us as we approached Cherbourg, France.

All of a sudden, after five days at sea, we had disembarked and now were standing in France. My sea-legs stuck with me for several days; I was more dizzy on land than at sea.

Looking back at the good ship that had safely carried us across the Atlantic.

Last view of the QE2 before descending into la gare, and chaos.

+

Surely it is because of this trip that I so appreciated working at the Seamen's Church Institute and visiting seafarers. They are the unsung heros in all this; cruise lines tend to treat seafarers as indentured slaves — I did not know that at the time but came to learn of it when I worked at SCI. I have far greater appreciation and respect for the stewards and cabin attendants than I did at the time.

So prayers for those who lost their lives while at work on the Costa Concordia.