Whither goest blog?

It has been months since I have written here... many times I have thought of posting something, but life just gets in the way...

The things I would have written in the three months I have been silent:

-- how Ezekiel 37 ('Dem dry bones) so spoke to me this Easter Vigil as I came out of 18 months of unemployment and re-entered parish life, that what had been a personal disaster, a desert time, was finally resurrected with the knowledge that once again I was back in parish ministry... at Church of Our Saviour, Killington, where I have been living since 7 September 2012, but now it is official that we are partners in ministry...

-- my utter awe and gratitude to wake up every morning in such a gorgeous place, knowing how blessed I am to live here for how ever long...

-- dealing with elderly cats and parents...

So there I am... so much, too much to the point of being on overload.

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.]

Dear, dear Agatha

Dear Miss Agatha Birch Funky Paws of many other names departed this life for the greater life on Thursday 3 January 2013 at 6.00PM in the presence of her loving human can openers, a respectful vet tech and gentle vet. She is now fully once again her feisty, imperious, opinionated self, ready to put any young whippersnapper into shape.

Saying goodbye is always heartbreaking, especially when the one to whom you are saying goodbye is so utterly trusting. But I think the Grey Lady was worn out and had a sense that it was time. She did not put up any fight and went peacefully.

So, goodbye, little one. This is one of the last photos I took of us together before we made the final trip.

I am sure this little kitty is more handsome than this photograph... the day that Agatha left us, a friend in El Salvador adopted her first kitteh and asked if she could name him in honour of Agatha. Knowing that agata in Spanish is 'agate' or 'marble,' I said certainly. This little six month-old Siamese's name is AGATHO. When I get a better photo, I will post it.

It has only been six days.

My heart still aches.

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?????