Of two minds

For years and years visitors to the little house in which Msr Óscar Romero lived on the grounds of Divina Providencia have seen this blood-stained shirt with a simple bullet hole through the left chest pocket. It hung in a display case alongside the alb and chasuble that San Romero was wearing at the time of his martyrdom. Intellectually, I knew the shirt was important, an artifact of a life snuffed out, a prophetic voice silenced and the hope of the Salvadoran people vanquished.

Now with the beatification of Msr Óscar Romero, now Blessed Óscar Romero, this shirt — not the alb, not the chasuble — this shirt drenched with his blood has taken on the level of relic. And with this change of status, the shirt no longer hangs in the display case for all to see but now has been carefully prepared and sewn (?) onto a pillow, which resides inside a glass-and-gilded box with a cross on its top. Said relic will travel from place to place before settling down at the cathedral (?).

In the thinking and style of Pablo Neruda in his poems on things or the French writer, Roland Barthes, who in his Mythologies takes on simple things and discusses the layers of meaning placed upon them, the object here has taken on more than its original simple essence. Thus, this grey shirt, which is a simple clergy shirt, becomes a museum piece to be further translated into an object of veneration, a relic.

I honestly struggle with the domestication of Romero's message, its appropriation, at times, by the right at the expense of the people for whom it was originally intended, the poor (one can argue that his message was also for the right and oligarchy, namely, to 'stop the repression'). And while I understand the importance of touching holy things and sites — I have done it myself countless times in helping out in burnishing the bronze mitre of Romero's third tomb — I still hesitate at the change that this shirt has undergone. That people venerate an object and that the spirit, the thoughts and the legacy of a person bothers me.

Rome's recognition of the importance of Romero is long overdue, no doubt about it. I am glad that Rome is gradually inching toward recognising what Central America and beyond have long recognised, that Romero is holy. I just wish this recognition would remember its origins — from the disenfranchised, the people in the streets, the poor, those without voice. I am not sure that such recognition is going to stick now that Rome has gotten in on the act 35 years later. I pray I am wrong.

As for me… I will not be venerating a shirt but trying in my own small way to continue to proclaim Romero's message of justice and his love for Jesus and love for his people.

What goes 'round, comes 'round

Rarely (!) do I get a bee in my bonnet, but right now a current bee has been buzzing in my head... and that is my incredible disbelief at the parents out there who refuse to vaccinate their children against severe diseases such as measles. To read that there are increasing outbreaks of the measles stupefies me.

But what really has emerged out of the whole discussion about measles has been the discovery of a whole community out there of people who, having contracted the measles as children, have been living for the past 50 years with some sort of disability, as have I. Someone in the comments on the NYT the other day wrote about her experience of having the measles and ending up deaf in one ear. She described the same nuisances with which I live — always making sure she is at the far end of a table with her 'good' ear facing everyone else, not being able to differentiate noise, not being able to determine noise from behind, which led people to say she was stuck up and so forth.

Even though I probably knew in my head a long time ago that there was a whole population out there who had suffered the same sort of life-changing event, in these recent years to read about this community has woken me up. I have brothers and sisters out there. I want to line us all up and make the parents who don't vaccinate their children look us in the eye, hear our stories and then think twice about not protecting the rest of us (herd protection) from their selfish actions.

The reason this interests me so is because the message I received growing up was basically, 'Deal with it.' Deal with it in silence. Don't acknowledge the problem. (Evidently I thought everyone had a 'good' ear and a 'bad' ear by the time I was five.) Since no one can see it, act as though it doesn't exist. That worked pretty well for my first three decades of life.

My parents ruled out stringing a hearing aid set-up that would have sound from the left ear be transmitted to the right ear. Remember, that back in the early 1960s, hearing aids were cumbersome things, a box the size of a Walkman and then big circular earbuds. My parents already realised I was the class dork with my eye glasses — it wasn't until third grade that finally someone else got glasses. They did not want to make my life any more miserable than it was. I went through school always assuming I was flying under the radar as far as my hearing loss. I figured I was sometimes put up front because of my sight or because alphabetically my name comes close to the beginning of the alphabet. It wasn't until well after I graduated from high school that my high school French teacher informed me that they all knew about my hearing loss — I was flagged as one of the kids who might need extra help. Oh? (Never mind that I have relative perfect pitch and sing quite fine, thank you.)

It was not until CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education, required of seminarians in The Episcopal Church and other denominations), when I went to the morgue with my CPE group that I began to move beyond the live-with-it-in-silence coping mechanism. Seeing the morgue drawer labelled, 'Body Parts,' all of a sudden broke open a wall that I had subconsciously built ever since the age of three, the wall of, 'No, nothing really happened to you; it is no big deal, get over it.' I realised that when someone has an amputation, he or she clearly has a visible loss, a space of air where there once was a limb. She or he has to deal with phantom pain. I know that from my father's experience, when he lost in one minute the sight of his left eye to a stroke, that the eye continued to send signals to the brain for a good year, which resulted in incredible dizziness because he was getting the overlay of the left eye signals on the right eye. He said seeing was like looking at finger prints half the time. But loss of hearing? I don't know, because it happened when I was so little. However, once I saw that drawer for body parts, I realised I had never been allowed to mourn a piece of my être that was taken away from me. I did not dwell on that realisation for too long, a day or two of spacing out, but I was glad that I finally had a chance to acknowledge the loss.

Now, later on in life, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by speaking out... after all, the older we get, the more company I have in the hearing loss department. Most important, this whole discussion about measles and its lasting effects brought on so needlessly by misguided people, has made me circle back round to something long forgotten... a parallel discussion, but not for now, is those of us who had corrective surgery for strabismus back when and how that just tackled the appearance but not the brain connections for crossed-eyed vision.

P.S.: Whenever someone cannot remember which is my deaf side, I just say, 'Go for the gold.' I figured in college that since it did not work as originally intended, my ear ought to be at least decorative.

I do like my gold earrings.

Full cycle

The last supper at the family homestead

A

A year ago yesterday we gathered for the last semi-full family dinner at my parents' house of 60 years before moving my father to his assisted living place on the 18th. Our last supper was not elegant — pizza and wine, but it was all we could muster as we gathered up my father's belongings. We all knew the change would be momentous, the end of an era, but being good stoic New Englanders, we did not really go into all that.

A year later, my father has survived the full cycle, seen the seasons and how they affect the pond outside his window, a pond that is most likely a blur. A year ago, he would ambulate, dress himself and move with relative ease. A year later, he is a prisoner in his body that is becoming increasingly rigid. He can no longer walk or dress or bathe himself — that all went within two months of his moving to his place — and he can barely feed himself. His mind, however, is as sharp as ever.

My mother is a helium balloon, rising higher and higher above the earth as her mind decreases. That is a whole other reflection.

And the house, the house. I still grieve it. The table, chairs, sideboard, a pair of candlesticks, and painting all now live with me. I don't have the wonderful black and white floor, which my mother loved because it reminded her of the 16th-century Flemish paintings. I am sure that that floor no longer exists any more than the kitchen and bathrooms we left behind. The house remains in my memory, where it is safest. One can never, ever go back.

And in that year, too, my father's cat, Pico, has come to live with me. He has settled in and my father misses him terribly.

As I have said often to others, I do not claim exceptionality in all this. Most adult children go through this same process. That said, I still feel it.

Poor neglected blog

Time to say goodbye... goodbye to this stonewall my father made over many years, goodbye to the house where I grew up, the home my parents built in 1953, before my time.

My summer and fall have been spent moving my parents, and then cleaning out a house-load of sixty years for its sale. My siblings have also been a part of this endeavour. Compa has been absolutely stellar in her efforts to clear out the house.

Consequently, this poor old blog has suffered, missing out on photos of Mission Farm in the summer, of my veggie garden, of fall foliage, of the CATS — the clowder now includes Pico, my father's cat, and is minus dear, dear Sophia, who joined Agatha in the heavenly catnip patch... Sophia died 26 July. I haven't even had a chance to mourn her.

We baby boomers are all struggling with elder care and, in those cases where they have not down-sized, their stuff. From all accounts, their generation saved stuff. A lot of stuff. Enough stuff to be equipped for Armageddon. I have heard of one case where the adult son had filled 19 twenty-yard dumpsters and was still counting. In our case, we are only on the third dumpster.

I will walk out of my parents' house for the very last time ever this Tuesday. Part of my heart still thinks I am floating in some surrealistic sort of dream. However, the sight of certain pieces of furniture in the vicarage reminds me that, no, it is not a dream, it is very real and from Tuesday forward, a major chapter of my life ends. My parents are still alive, in different places, but the house that served as our focal point and gathering place shall cease to exist for my siblings, our spouses, families and me.

Goodbye beautiful stonewall. May the people who move in appreciate it as much as I have.

Closer to fine

After the eighteen months of wandering through the desert (though having moments of hospitality), after eight discernment committee processes, I finally ended up fifteen miles from where I last served a congregation. I considered congregations in MA, CT and even Mexico. And when everything settled down, I landed at the congregation where Anne has been attending since 1994, eleven miles from our tiny house.


The preacher at the service of installation and celebration of a new season of ministry, the Rev'd Gwen Groff, a local Mennonite pastor, said eloquently:

... Which leads me to the last thing that Lee wanted us to focus on. This land. This thin place on the earth. Lee said what she is interested in is "connecting with the land and living in a thin place." The term "thin place" has been used in many ways, but I believe the phrase was originally used by the Celts, whose theology said that there are places on earth where the veil between heaven and earth is very thin, places that serve almost like a portal where you can practically reach through or step through and experience God.

Now I think of those sacred places as destinations, a place you travel to as a deliberate pilgrimage, or stumble upon unexpectedly. Lee's words, that she is interested in what it means to live in a thin place made me think of thin places a bit differently. Because if the psalmist is right, and Basil is right, that God's Holy Spirit is everywhere, then one place isn't more "thin" than another. A thin place need not be a windswept stone circle built on an energetic convergence of ley lines. A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened to God. God is always here. But in a thin place we are more open to God, we are suddenly made aware of God's constant presence, and we are more likely to take risks of listening and being transformed.

A thin place is not only a place we feel something; it's a state of being where we become more like the God we meet when our hearts are open. A thin place can be experienced in worship. This sanctuary is worn thin by the prayers that have been spoken here. And a thin place can be experienced in action, in working across differences and finding God in the other. [(c) Gwen Groff, 14 June 2013]

Church of Our Saviour, with its long history of farmer priests, its close connection to the land, and its Benedictine tradition all make for a peaceful, peace-filled spot in the Vermont Greens. COS is where the priest truly can live out relational priesthood, come back close to a vocational rather than professional priesthood, live with one foot in the 19th century when this place was founded and the 21st where it lives and reaches out to the local community.

I feel exceptionally at peace here, in a way that I have not since 2008 when I left Northfield. This sense of 'coming down' right was solidified as today I attended a wedding reception of two former parishioners. As I talked with other members of where I last served, I gave thanks again that I am no longer in that stressful place. Somehow COS seems more authentic, closer to the ground, not lost in pretense.

To my delight, I once again have a vegetable garden with potatoes (I no longer remember what types), green, purple and yellow beans, tomatoes and lots of hot peppers. The beans are sprouting as are the 'taters and the peppers and 'maters are coming along. No, I won't be Fr Dan or Fr Heminway in cassock out on a tractor (the church doesn't have one), but in a small way, I can tap into the ethos of the farmer priest which is so much a part of the history of this place.

Now... if any of you have $30K out there, it would go a long way to helping us repair the vicarage chimneys and replace the roof, and shore up a collapsing barn, all of which are on the National Historic Registry (!).

[Blogger ain't wordpress; formatting here is disastrous.]

Where is God in this all?

Last night after sending off yet another round of answers to a parish discernment committee, I had an strong sense of sadness. I needed to go back and look at like answers from 10-15 years ago when I was in other searches with congregations to pin down exactly what caused my malaise. What I saw confirmed what I felt: the preponderance of questions nowadays concern the institution, the administration and running of a congregation and no longer ask things such as: what authors do I read, who inspires me, what my core values are, what is my theological understanding of the sacraments, who is Jesus for me, and questions of that nature. Fair enough, a congregational discernment committee wants to know what sort of administrator I will be, how I will manage their finances, and how I will help the church grow (I cannot stand the current trendy phrase, 'to grow the church;' it sets my teeth on edge). I am OK with this; it is just that I miss discussion of the other things. That discussion eventually comes out in an interview if one is lucky, but as the initial introduction, the practical shows up first.

Several of the questions from the Office of Transitional Ministry focus on the doing rather than the being of a priest in community, though one certainly can weave in one's theology and core values:

Describe a moment in your recent ministry that you recognise as one of success and fulfillment.
Describe your liturgical style and practice.
How do you practice incorporating others in ministry?
How do you care for your spiritual and emotional well-being?
Describe your involvement in either the wider church or geographical community.
How do you engage in pastoral care for others?
Tell about a ministry project that exists because of your leadership. What was your role in its creation? Who are its contacts?
How are you preparing yourself for the Church of the future?
What is your personal practice of stewardship and how do you utilize it to influence your ministry in your worshipping community?
What is your experience of conflict involving the church? And what is your experience in addressing it?
What is your experience of leading/addressing change in the church? When has it gone well? When has it gone poorly? And what did you learn?

Congregations submitting their form answer this set of questions:

Describe a moment in your worshipping community's recent ministry that you recognise as one of success and fulfillment.
How are you preparing yourselves for the Church of the future?
Please provide words describing the gifts and skills essential to the future leaders of your worshipping community.
Describe your liturgical style and practice for all types of worship in your community.
How do you practice incorporating others in ministry?
As a worshipping community, how do you care for your spiritual, emotional and physical well-being?
How do you engage in pastoral care for those beyond your worshipping community?
Describe your worshipping community's involvement in either the wider church or geographical community.
Tell about a ministry that your worshipping community has initiated in the past 5 years. Who can be contacted about this project?
What is your practice of stewardship and how does it shape the life of your worshipping community?
What is your worshipping community's experience of conflict? And how have you addressed it?
What is your experience of leading/addressing change in the church? When has it gone well? When has it gone poorly? And what did you learn?

As you can see, most of the questions overlap. They are fine questions; they invite reflection and conversation since priest and congregation basically answer the same things.

But when do we get to talk about God? Jesus? The Holy Spirit working in our lives? Oh, they can and should be woven into an answer, but the focus of the question does not always permit a full exploration of these aspects of our faith.

Then parish questions follow the same line of thinking (the questions below are a composite of some of the questions I have answered in the past seventeen months):

Of the work you have done during the past year, what single thing has been the most satisfying to you, and why?
What intrigues you and what challenges you about St. Swithin’s profile, and why?
What beyond your current resume and OTM portfolio do you think is important that we know about you, and what isn’t in our profile that you would especially like to know about us when we talk?
Describe your experience in developing a multi-year plan for a church where you have been the Rector.
What is in our Profile that is of particular interest to you? Why?
Describe a recent accomplishment and a recent challenge in your ministry, and how your leadership affected the outcome?
What potential benefits and drawbacks would you anticipate in a ministry at Saint Swithin's?


What intrigues me is a focus on 'success' and 'satisfaction' with whatever ministry one has done. Should we be emphasising a notion of success in ministry? Does success overshadow service? And are success and satisfaction one and the same? If I encourage some sort of ministry, am I doing so to guarantee success or is it because I am trying to live the words of Jesus? Do we do what we do because we are trying to be faithful to the Gospel message of hope and reconciliation?

Perhaps my angst comes from knowing what life in a small congregation is compared to life in a large congregation, where ministry is more hands-on with fewer layers of committees and hierarchy. Part of it might also come from knowing that more and more congregations can no longer support a 'professionally' trained priest; that a full-time position in this part of the country is going the way of the dinosaurs. More and more of us will have to become bivocational priests, finding alternative sources of income while engaging in ministry. That, in turn, can invite more people into ministry. Perhaps some of my reaction comes from the total sense of uncertainty the institutional church faces across the denominational board. The institutional church occupies a very different place in society than it used to; we can no longer count on civic religion to carry us; we need to get back to basics, the gospel.

This post is a bit rambling because I am still trying to figure out just exactly what is triggering these thoughts. Maybe others can kibbitz and help nail it down. Am I off-base for wondering where have gone the conversations about theology, God and our love of Jesus? I ask myself what I always ask of others: 'What else is going on here?'

That answer is for another post, another time.

A month later

It now has been more than a month since Agatha died. I keep her ashes, fur, paw print, heart and candle in the gold bag in which they arrived when I picked them up from the vet. They sit on the window sill to my desk so that when I look out to the little shed, I see the bag knowing what it contains. It is not that Agatha spent time sitting in front of me, but she did sleep in the baskets that were on either side of me. To add to the collection, I have a little shrine, half serious, half silly, for her.

A friend gave me the little Saint Gertrude statue. I had no idea she was the matron saint of cats. So she watches over Agatha and the two are on a little knitted prayer rug from another friend's congregation. The photo of Agatha is when she was still feeling well (April 2009) and looking her imperious self. But, oh, we still miss her.

However, life goes on.

This is what I see most mornings: August in my face as he stands on my chest ready to lick my forehead (I think I must have an invisible 'M' that most tabby cats have) or, worse, my eyes.

This 1817 house has heaters that are just the right height for making cat nests. These two are sleeping on top of a box that still has kitchen utensils in it. No matter, under the ratty towel is a pillow and the two bask in the forced hot air heat. I suspect Aelred (Orange Guy) was there first.

The evening after August killed a vole in the kitchen, I decided to let things settle down in there so shut them out of the back part of the house (dining room and kitchen). When I came downstairs, they rushed to the door so I had pity on them and let them in. Always a stampede.

Meanwhile, I occasionally have reason to drive around Vermont. This photo shows Killington/Pico taken from Rte I-89, heading south in Randolph. I still struggle with the idea that I am going to have to leave these beloved mountains.



And here is Camels Hump taken from Rte 2 in Burlington.

Vermont got off easy with the blizzard of 2013. We got the usual 12-14 inches. The town plows create cement walls that are tough to shovel or snow blow one's way through; I did penetrate the walls on Saturday and my shoulders are still complaining.

Mission Farm Road on Saturday 9 February. It used to be Rte 4 but now is a tranquil side road, perfect for taking walks (one mile long).

The Guest House at Mission Farm and breezeway between the GH and vicarage. We cleared away a bay in the shed so I could get my car in there. It is a tight fit, only an inch on either side of the rear view mirrors and it doesn't completely protect the car but it is an improvement from having a car turned into a blob of snow. This photo was before I started working on the driveway and walkways.

I live here (loving it), now in my fifth month, but there is such provisionality to it that I haven't unpacked and am trying hard not to settle in. It has been almost a year since I moved out of the rectory. And frankly, life has not been secure since I left Northfield  in November 2008. Security is illusory, for sure, but sometimes it can seem steadier.


I occasionally have to remind myself that I am still and always will be a priest (photo taken at the cathedral before a RHE for a colleague last month). I passed my 19th anniversary two weeks ago and find myself in my 20th year still unemployed. I supply on Sundays so at least I am connected that way with an aspect of priesthood. To an outsider it probably looks as though I am doing nothing but I have been wrestling all this time with the distinction between the vocational and professional priesthood. It seems to me that as churches diminish in numbers, size and income, those who serve congregations will be forced to return to a vocational priesthood in which the main source of income no longer comes from the congregation but from another job. The priesthood, the esse, will be part of the individual but the individual will not have the luxury (or challenge depending on how one looks at it) of spending all of his or her time within the confines of the church. Twenty years ago, this sort of priest was called a tent-maker or bi-vocational priest. Call it what you may but for those of us who wish to stay in the northeast where churches are many, congregations are small, this looks like the future. My problem is age and experience... for a struggling congregation calling a priest at the top of the pay scale (my diocese's pay scale tops out at twenty years and then it is just a percentage added on) is not optimum.

So what to do? Where to go? How to live this vocation out? During this desert time of discernment, I keep trying to figure out what priesthood means to me and how I am being called to live into it. I know that a vocational call is one that is impossible, persistent, good for all and one that others see for you, and that is well and good. But what about the interior landscape? I still don't know other than the idea of leaving the only diocese I have really served (all but ten months of ordained ministry) is unappealing. However, the options truly are running out.

Sometimes the only thing I can do is meditate or, in this case, pray with the General Ordination Exam readers as we gather in community for compline.



So, things are quiet. I just don't have a lot to say. [Nor do I have the patience to figure out the oddball formatting here.]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.