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.

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.

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.

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.

Here we go again

Just as I was beginning to let myself settle in here, I have to pull up stakes and do a six-month stint in a rented house with the hope that I actually will have a job before then. It all is unreal.

Living room bookshelves are empty. It was nice having the built-in shelves. Without them I am in trouble.

Three of the four cats supervise the downstairs packing. They are not amused.

Her face says it all.

Useful advice for clergy leaving cures

From the Episcopal Diocese of New York


Relating After You Leave

Arrange for change of address and mail forwarding.

After your last day, do not return to the office to check for mail, e-mail, or phone messages.

In all cases, the responsibility belongs to clergy leaving to make clear that the pastoral relationship has ended.

Never be involved with the search process including giving names or offering opinions about candidates.

Avoid getting triangulated with members of the congregation and your successor.

Be clear that it is not appropriate for you to discuss any parish business after you leave.

Make plans to worship with another congregation.

In the absence of a rector or interim pastor, the wardens are canonically responsible for the worship, finance, property, and administration of the parish.

Remember, you have no official or canonical role in the parish you leave and your priestly, pastoral, and administrative functions end on the effective date of your retirement or resignation.

+++

Some think the separation is 'shunning' but it is necessary. Check out the related article over at the Lead.

Hands

Two totally different moments today...

Anointing two people for healing,
holding hands with eight other people
around the two who asked for prayers of healing,
looking at the wonderful weave of our hands
surrounding them,
holding them in prayer,
some hands touching them,
others connected through someone else's hands,
but all in all a tapestry of handful prayer.

Three hours later
alone in the sacristy
one of my last quiet times there,
taking the ashes of someone
who will be buried tomorrow
in the memorial garden,
gently pulling the bag out of the
cardboard box in which they arrived
at the church
so that I can put most of them
into the marble box that we
use for everyone
from which we pour the ashes
into the ground,
ashes to ashes,
dust to dust,
yet even at the grave we make our song,
Alleluia, Alleluia.

Healing.
Death.
Resurrection.

The quotidian life of a parish priest.

I am going to miss it
for this season
however long it is going to
be.

Winding down the clock

The office now looks like this.

And the exterior and interior landscapes look like this.

Pre exit interview, I burned some incense and lit candles for help. The burner will go with me; the candles can remain.

Tomorrow, the last 8.00 and 9.00 services.

Migratory furniture

The armchair came from my office and joins the Calvin Coolidge rocking chair A won in a raffle in 1998. Figure that we have a small fortune in cherry wood hand-made chairs that we won individually in raffles, costing us a total of $15. The second armchair will arrive later this week. Then I will just have my Princeton chair and Kennedy rocker to get out of the office (that's for the furniture).

Art made us the cherry wood Shaker table for our civil union eleven years ago. I was floored when he took us into the guest house at Mission Farm to show us the table that he had made. Art formerly worked for NASA on the shuttles.

All this is getting crammed into a house that is 19x19 feet. Very Salvadoran in size.

Meanwhile, I putter because in the eleven days remaining, I have:

two choir rehearsals
two Thursday morning HEs
two Sunday mornings (one with the usual track race of 8.00, 9.00 and 10.00 and one with only one service)
one last vestry meeting Thursday
exit interview Friday
meeting with the altar guild Saturday
transformational team vision summit next Thursday
wake in the chapel Friday next
funeral and interment Saturday next
saying goodbye to elders in the congregation
and whatever else might present itself

Thursday 17 November will be three years to the date that I moved out of the rectory in Northfield. It all has gone by so quickly.

Winding down into irrelevance

I was just given copies of the termination of my dental coverage policy, my health insurance policy, and contributions from the congregation to my pension. I don't even know what to say.

All I can think of is Genesis's 'Get 'Em Out By Friday' from their 1973 album, Foxtrot.

[Deleted the repeated photos... didn't remember having already put them up.]

One more chair and two boxes have left the office. Poco a poco.

Here we go again

Packing up the office first... I have to be out of it by the 21st. Books are sorted according to liturgical year. I don't need A or C; B is under the box labelled A. Commentaries that have all three years are in the box labelled A, B, C. I am trying hard to label well boxes so that if I don't see the contents for a year, I know what is in them. I have so, so far to go... in two months... to where? Dunno.

Anyone who comes into my office has to trip over the boxes. It is on purpose.

Three years ago to the date, I was in the process of moving. I wasn't anticipating really on having to move three years later, though the possibility always lurked in the back of my mind.

Am I happy? No. Are the cats happy? They don't really know yet.

[I am getting a lot of the spinnning beachball of death tonight.]

Mill River

It was such a gorgeous day today that I ignore the cold I have and the leaf peeper crowds and the packing I have to do and the sermons I have to write (tomorrow and funeral Monday) and took off for a short walk on the LT/AT. I haven't been out since I fell in the NH Whites two months ago and gave myself a huge haematoma and banged my ankle so any stamina I had had is long gone.

Clarendon Gorge and the Mill River were altered by Tropical Storm Irene. This leaf is in a dry spot that up until 28 August 2011 was underwater. The river flows with greater volume of water today than three weeks ago but it still is not the river of this summer.

This whale-like rock also was underwater; the force of the river smoothed it out to transform its shape, to soften its edges. It is now covered with fine river silt.

This living water flows far too fast and strong for any nice baptisms. It churns enough to make one dizzy watching it.

I don't know how many more times I will have to return, how long it will take until my presence will be but a shadow of memory.

Another theme song

These songs keep popping into my head.... Here is today's from Peter Gabriel (with Kate Bush):

in this proud land we grew up strong
we were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

no fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my face, I've changed my name
but no one wants you when you lose

don't give up
'cos you have friends
don't give up
you're not beaten yet
don't give up
I know you can make it good

though I saw it all around
never thought I could be affected
thought that we'd be the last to go
it is so strange the way things turn

drove the night toward my home
the place that I was born, on the lakeside
as daylight broke, I saw the earth
the trees had burned down to the ground

don't give up
you still have us
don't give up
we don't need much of anything
don't give up
'cause somewhere there's a place
where we belong

rest your head
you worry too much
it's going to be alright
when times get rough
you can fall back on us
don't give up
please don't give up

'got to walk out of here
I can't take anymore
going to stand on that bridge
keep my eyes down below
whatever may come
and whatever may go
that river's flowing
that river's flowing

moved on to another town
tried hard to settle down
for every job, so many men
so many men no-one needs

don't give up
'cause you have friends
don't give up
you're not the only one
don't give up
no reason to be ashamed
don't give up
you still have us
don't give up now
we're proud of who you are
don't give up
you know it's never been easy
don't give up
'cause I believe there's the a place
there's a place where we belong

Keeping Vigil

This week a lovingly-made sachet [the purple square with butterflies at the base of the vase] of rosemary arrived from California. It is no ordinary sachet but a holy one for interspersed with the rosemary (for remembrance) are some of Kirstin's ashes. Before the snow falls, which could be any day, a couple of us will gather to commit them to God's care in the orchard at Church of Our Saviour, Killington, VT.

Church of Our Saviour is a tiny congregation that worships in a Norman-style 1895 stone church. Located on the Killington Flats, deep in a valley, the church has long ministered to the local community. These days, it is deeply involved in reaching out to those affected by the flooding caused by Irene. Some of the worst flooding happened here, as attested to in this photo:

(The pickup still is nose down in the pavement.)

In any event, Church of Our Saviour has historic connections with Holy Cross and some of the priests who have lived there have kept to the Benedictine way of life, labour is prayer. The church has had a working farm off and on and now there is a resident baker (who makes excellent fruit tarts which are sold at Monastery Greetings), who also is the church organist and maintains a Benedictine pattern of life. The church is always open for the way-farer and since the mid-1990s has revived its guest house ministry. There are now walking trails up above the church in the hills to enhance the sojourner's time.

So it is in this context that some of Kirstin's ashes will be interred. The apple trees had a good crop this year. Her life will become part of Our Saviour's.

Meanwhile, I keep vigil, placing the sachet by the 1000 peace crane arrangement that Kirstin received from her cat-sitter a year ago. Kirstin's laughter, stability, clarity and commitment to God and God's creation help me maintain steadiness and hope in this incredibly stressful time in my life.

'I believe in the Communion of Saints....' Don't know how else I could make it.

Another theme song

this one from Howard Jones, New Song

I've been waiting for so long
To come here now and sing this song
Don't be fooled by what you see
Don't be fooled by what you hear

This is a song to all my friends
They take the challenge to their hearts
Challenging preconceived ideas
Saying goodbye to long-standing fears

Don't crack up
Bend your brain
See both sides
Throw off your mental chains

I don't wanna be hip and cool
I don't wanna play by the rules
Not under the thumb of the cynical few
Or laden down by the doom crew

My theme song these days

From Argent (1972)

And if it's bad
Don't let it get you down, you can take it
And if it hurts
Don't let them see you cry, you can take it

Hold your head up [woman], hold your head up
Hold your head up, hold your head high

And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don't let them change a thing what you're doing

Hold your head up, hold your head up
Hold your head up, hold your head high