Post-Irene

Here is the monthly note to the congregation:

29 August 2011

Dear Friends,

The state of Vermont woke up this morning to a new reality that turns the joke, ‘You can’t get there from here’ on its head. All of a sudden, we truly can’t get there from here. Whether it is from the south or the east or the north or west, either there are no options at all or extensive detours. The north, south and west will open up soon enough once the flood waters recede and repairs made but the eastern entry points, notably Route 4, will take much, much more time to be restored to pre-Irene status.

A few Trinitarians were around for the 1927 floods; a lot more for the 1973 floods and now there is a whole body that will be able to recall in future years what they were doing during the storm of 2011 and how the aftermath affected them. The photos up on the web are beyond incredible; they are horrible. In this super-connected world, postings on Facebook and email have brought home just what challenges lie ahead.

The change from a placid Saturday afternoon to a Sunday with driving rain back to a gorgeous dry and sunny day on Monday reminds us of how transitory life can be. A New York Times editorial spoke of what we have just went through in these terms: ‘In a tornado or hurricane, there is something roaring and visceral out there, something embodied, something approaching, a force acting on a human scale of time and amenable to a human sense of narrative’ (18 August 1999). As any Vermonter can now attest, we clearly have a sense of before, during and after Irene. Today, portions of Vermont, New England, and the Eastern Seaboard struggle to regain a sense of normalcy. Tomorrow it will be somewhere else.

Just as we will need to find new ways to get around, we will also need resiliency and patience to deal with whatever changes there might be in our normal routine. For those of us who were not greatly affected by the storm, we can reach out to those who were. The small congregation of Gethsemane, Proctorsville no longer has a parish hall — it is a pile of lumber — and the church’s foundation has been severely compromised by the floods. The bishop is gradually collecting information about other congregations and when asked for help, we can respond.

On a microlevel, people in our midst have gone through storms, be they physical, emotional or spiritual. We do not need meterological upheavals to remind us of how fragile our internal gyroscope can be. An illness can upset one’s emotional and spiritual well-being. The death of a family member or close friend can be as disorienting as a washed-out road. Any major change, whether in our families, friends, community, even our church, risks throwing everything in life out of balance. We have all gone through such changes and we will again and again. God does not throw these challenges at us to test us; rather, they are part of life. Simply put, the chances and changes in our lives remind us of our finitude and our dependence on God.

The words of Psalm 46 are even more poignant today as we contemplate a new landscape:

1 God is our refuge and strength, *

a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, *
and though the mountains be toppled into the
 depths of the sea;
3 Though its waters rage and foam, *

and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.
4 The LORD of hosts is with us; *

 the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

No matter what life throws at me, I trust that God is the solid rock on which I stand and that, even if the ground under my feet is not too stable or life is uncertain, all will be well. These words of Dame Julian of Norwich are not empty platitudes; they represent for me the faith that no matter how much upheaval there may be in life, I will find a path through somehow, even if it takes some real bushwacking, with God’s help.

May God walk with you as well as you navigate whatever challenges lie ahead.

Below are screen grabs of places I know in my beloved state of Vermont. They come from various blogs such as Vermont Today, or FB Vermont Flooding 2011, or Woodstock Early Bird and finally picture galleries at the Burlington Free Press.

Woodstock Farmers Market where we liked to shop.

Farmers Market is the furthest away on the left; next is the Vermont Standard.

Vermont Standard. Note the Macs.

Next in line is Leonards... next to it is a propane tank depot which, once flooded, unleashed 200 tanks down the river.

The White Cottage had the best hamburgers.

Another shot of the White Cottage.

Now moving to the west on Rte 4, one of the major, major east-west routes in Vermont that goes up and over Mendon Pass, going by Killington and Pico ski areas, and the Long Trail/Appalachian Trail...

The guy from whom we bought our property used to own the Back Behind at the intersection of Rtes 4 and 100.

I fear the livestock that the guy next to the gas station had (sort of a mini tourist attraction) got swept downstream: their little shed is the upside-down building. The gas station is across from the Back Behind.

UPDATE: Mosher did not lose his animals; Craig lured them to higher grounds; the donkeys baby-sat the sheep. Today the cow and bulls are out. Blackies [Irving gas station] is OK, the flood wiped out its parking lot; and tore the side el off.

During the storm looking east on the Killington Flats.

This white house had just been fixed up and was looking good; it is across the road from the previous photo.

Fortunately the house was empty.

Taken today from more or less the same spot.

Looking back up; this is the east side of Mendon Pass.

Now onto the west side of Mendon Pass... you'll see why we can't get there from here and why Mendon and Killington are cut off.

This is what the road looked like Sunday evening and even then it looked serious.

Here it is the next day.

Looking back the other way.

Now heading south on Rte 7, the other way out of Rutland.

Happily there is a way around this so we can get south and east.

Moving over to the other side of Woodstock and Killington, little Plymouth VT (Calvin Coolidge's birthplace).

The village is isolated with the Rte 4 washouts and here is one south of the village.

Skipping down to Ludlow VT, site of Okemo.

This photo does not show the real devastation which is in the centre of town.

Good 'za joint.

The next town over is tiny, tiny but home to Gethsemane Episcopal Church. These photos aren't very good because they are screen grabs from a video.

The collapsed building in the background is their parish hall.

Looks as though the church got moved sideways on its foundation.

Jumping upstate to Bethel....

I used to drive past this house all the time. People had done a nice job of fixing it up.

This house is to the right of the above house... this one belongs to a state trooper.

Moving up toward Montpelier, a swing through my former town, Northfield... site of the wonderful three covered bridges that sit one right after another. The highest bridge had a tree shoved up through its side through the roof and the road has eroded on either side but the bridge held. Lots of covered bridges got swept away.

I used to go under this bridge on my many trips into Montpelier. The RV store right next to the road was destroyed.

Finally, close to home...

My vet clinic Sunday night. I don't know how they fared. I am sure their partner clinic in Ludlow is destroyed.

Update: the clinic in Ludlow had no water; the clinic here is open but they said it was pretty bad the beginning of the week. They transferred all the animals to other vet clinics in town so no one was in danger. On Monday, they were seeing patients in the parking lot.

So there you be, a selective tour... in another note some other time, a few shots of Wilmington which I know from my childhood.

Damage at the National Cathedral

RNS
Quake-damaged National Cathedral faces millions in repairs
By LAUREN MARKOE
c. 2011 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) The iconic Washington National Cathedral, already struggling with financial problems, faces millions of dollars in repair costs from the damage inflicted by Tuesday's (Sept. 23) East Coast earthquake.

And nothing is covered by insurance, according to a church official.

Clergy and a team of architects and engineers spent the day after the magnitude 5.8 quake assessing the cathedral, and found significant damage, including fallen carved angels on the church's roof, cracks in flying buttresses, and missing finials from the pinnacles of the central tower.

"We run a very tight budget here at the cathedral and we have had our financial challenges that we've worked through very well," the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd, dean of the cathedral, said Wednesday.

"But there is nothing in our budget that would allow us to step up and do this," he said.

Joe Alonso, the cathedral's head stone mason, said it will take years to complete the repairs.

"It's going to be millions, no doubt about it. Millions," he said. "As large as this structure is, it's all hand made."

Hit hard by the recession, the Episcopal cathedral in recent years has weathered several rounds of staff layoffs and been forced to cut programming.

The charge now, Lloyd said, is to go back to those who contributed to the construction of the cathedral, which began in 1907 and was completed in 1990.

"It was built by people from across the country who believe having this space for the nation in the heart of the nation's capital is a hugely important enterprise," said Lloyd. A new feature on the cathedral's website encourages donations.

The cathedral, the second largest in the nation, will be closed through Saturday as engineers continue to assess the damage. Church officials say they hope it will be open for Sunday services.

Officially, the cathedral is the mother church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, but bills itself as a "house of prayer for all people."

The earthquake and the subsequent damage "has not been a jarring thing for our faith," Lloyd said. "What it has done it challenge us to claim our faith, to go to work to make this place be as grand as beautiful and powerful as its always been."

+++

Wondering, a bit heretical, if it would not be better not to leave the damage as a testimony to the history of the cathedral... after all, the cathedrals in Europe show their wear and tear.

Stabilise what needs support such as the buttresses, of course, but wait to repair the others.

Anyone else agree?

The indignities

Wonderful comment over at the NYT about the indignities of flying (for all our grousing, there are many who could never afford to fly; they can't even get out of their local community):

I've never enjoyed flying to start with—not because of a fear of crashing, but just because of the protracted periods spent strapped inside a metal tube with screaming babies, and food that appears to have come out of an Easy-Bake oven.

Since 9-11, I can now get from Montreal to Toronto at least an hour sooner by train than by plane, what with the traffic to and from both airports, and the ludicrous "security" measures. The prospect of enjoying a public sexual assault only put the final nail in the coffin of my flying career. That, and the fact that airlines are now slapping extra charges on everything they can think of, so that the quoted price of a ticket presupposes that you will be flying naked with no luggage.

...

I'm dreading the day when my only relative in Europe gets married; I'm currently researching the viability of kayaking to France.

A new adventure

Today I went for my first acupuncture treatment. My back has been acting up as it did last year. I don't have time to ride it out for six weeks nor do I have 166 miles ahead of me to walk it out of me. So today I went to a local acupuncturist.

I feel as though I have come out of an hour-long massage, that numbed, peaceful sense. As the acupuncturist told me, the treatment makes one focus one's energy inward rather than outward. Even though he does not know really what is going on in my life, he nailed it by taking my pulse and working on me; he was able to identify through my energy and symptoms some of the psychosomatic connections. I am impressed.

I don't know how many needles he inserted; first on my stomach around the hips and in my right foot; I could feel energy heating up on my right thigh and he said it is the meridian and the needles were tapping into that. And then he had me roll over and he put a needle in my left hand on the side and then a whole bunch on my spine (I lost count at 15), lower back and leg.

Even though my mind is going a mile a minute, it actually stopped for the hour I was treated. I am trying not to go back to the mile a minute thoughts. I want to stay in the comfortably numbed state of things.

At the end I asked him how he manages not to absorb the unhealthy energy of others (he works most of the week with palliative care at the hospital, particularly with cancer contenders) and he said that after inserting a needle, he snaps his hand as though to shake the energy away (it sounded as though he was cracking his knuckles but he said it isn't). As one who occasionally lays hands on people, I know what it is like to feel my energy flow out into the other person... and how exhausting it is to lay hands on many people.

In any event, in a couple of days I will be able to see if the treatment worked. If not, I can always go back. It was a $110 well spent.

Then, to snap me back into the here and now, my car was boxed in by an 18-wheeler but with some guidance, I was able to squeeze out.

Add your caption

Meanwhile, in the House follies, H677 passed with a whopping eight-vote margin, hardly a whopping mandate. Here is what we look like today... there is a lot of red between the coasts. How much does this mirror the church today?

Church life

This is for real in response to our sexton writing a state wildlife technician.

'Thank you for allowing me to investigate the bats you have in the Episcopal Church.'

I could stop here and leave this line standing by itself because it lends itself to all manner of absurdities. But here's the rest of the letter.

I confirmed that the guano is from Big Brown Bats. Though this species is not listed as endangered, all of Vermont's hibernating bat species have suffered great losses from white-nose syndrome so anything we can do to help them makes a big difference.

After speaking with other biologists, I can also confirm that it is not unusual to find dead bats after a particularly hot spell during a time when the young are just starting to fly for the first time. This seems consistent with what you are finding. As for the location that you are seeing these dead bats, it may be the area that they actually enter and exit the building. This could be confirmed by watching the eaves by the two walls you showed me at dusk (between 8.40 and 9PM these days) to see if bats come out. Based on what I saw today, I suspect you have a scattering of resident males living at the church, rather than a large concentrated colony of breeding females.

Thank you for your concern. I am pasting some links to exclusion techniques and bat house installation guidelines below. How does the church feel about having a few bats there?

Let me know if you have any questions and thanks again.....

Have at it.

The electronic tether

During CPE so many years ago, two decades ago mas or menos, I hated having the pager because it would beep, calling me to some emergency, usually someone dying or who had died... I never knew if it would go off; in fact, on my days of carrying it, the thing only went off once. Lo, these many years later, I probably would do better.

Nowadays there is a new sort of pager in a different context and it is called a smart phone... the old cell phone was not nearly as invasive, though it could be sometimes. The smart phone, however, can totally upset one's life no matter where one is (that is, if one is dumb enough to check email).

Yesterday, en route to the beach with my family on a two-day break to visit with my sister from the west and nephew from the big city, I happened to check my email to get a note related to work that was sufficiently problematic as to upset the emotional balance for the rest of the day. And, so, even though the day was glorious at the beach, and I enjoyed walking down the beach with my sister and nephew and then standing in the water (jellyfish so I did not swim), inside, I was totally off-kilter, worried and anxious. Said problem will not be resolved until next week at the earliest so I will continue to be in that state of flux.

And then there was talking to the canon to the ordinary as I drove down to my parents', and fielding frantic phone messages from parishioners in distress...

Lest anyone think that part-time priests don't earn their keep, let me remind them of the electronic tether.

Forty years later

My heart goes out to the people of Norway tonight as they contend with the shock that comes from having suffered an attack on their well-being and people. They, too, have entered this world of utter insanity where people shoot others because of some internal dissonance.

As I read the sad news of what transpired today in Oslo, I remember how as a 14 year-old I went to Norway with my aunt and uncle (they lived in the Netherlands and he was a travelling salesman so our trip also included Sweden and Denmark). Needless to say, as a fourteen year-old I did not know a whole lot but even then was aware of Norway being a 'neutral' country.

My aunt and I wandered around Oslo while my uncle did his business. It was all so civilised.

And, today, Norway has its sad day, 22-7-2011... I doubt the person responsible had any idea that he has sullied the Feast of Mary Magdalene.

May God have mercy on us all (even as the US Congress shows itself to be increasingly dysfunctional).

Is it or isn't it?

Even with the presidential seal smacked on the lid of the laptop, I don't think it's a Mac. Oh well.

So the President tweets. I still am not there.

A new star in heaven

Kirstin has joined the saints in heaven.

God be with Andee and all who love Kirstin in this moment.

Together we are one.

For Kirstin

Dear One,

Go forth into the world in love.

You shall be one of the stars in heaven to guide the rest of us as we walk until we meet up again... as we all shall.

Meanwhile, all will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

xo

Another rhetorical question

Why is it that, after so much banging the drum and getting on the case of the Executive Council Task Force D020 that is tracking the progress of the Anglican Covenant to release the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canon's report on said document and impugning the motives of members of the task force for not having done so immediately, there has been almost virtual silence about the contents of the SCCC report?

For the amount of sturm und drang and angst about this report not being made public, I would have expected some chatter about the implications contained in said report — which are considerable. Instead... the blogosphere has moved onto the next investigation.

Just musing.

So scary

This trio strikes fear in my heart and mind.

Dream Act

On Friday, the Obama administration issued a memo announcing that federal immigration officials do not have to deport illegal aliens if they are enrolled in any type of education program, if their family members have volunteered for U.S. military service, or even if they are pregnant or nursing.

This new policy of “prosecutorial discretion” was quietly announced on Friday afternoon, and completely ignored by the mainstream press.

Author of Arizona’s SB1070 and Kansas’ secretary of state, Kris Kobach, told the Daily Caller: “They’re pushing the [immigration] agents to be even more lax, to go further in not enforcing the law. At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and looking for work, this is more bad news coming from the Obama administration… [if the administration] really cared about putting Americans back to work, it would be vigorously enforcing the law.”

Late last year, the so-called DREAM Act which would give legal residency status to millions of illegal aliens who attend college or join the military was defeated in the Senate.

Every major poll has shown that the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to the DREAM Act as well as to any other form of amnesty.

On my mind...

My theme song...

Todo pasa y todo queda
Pero lo nuestro es pasar
Pasar haciendo camino
Camino sobre la mar

Nunca perseguí la gloria
Ni dejar la memoria
De los hombres mi canción
Yo amo los mundos sutiles
Ingrávidos y gentiles
Como pompas de jabón

Me gusta verlos pintarse
De Sol y grana volar
Bajo el cielo azul temblar
Subitamente y quebrarse
Nunca perseguí la gloria

Caminante son tus huellas el camino y nada más
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Al andar, se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás
Se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar
Caminante no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar

Hace algun tiempo en ese lugar
Donde hoy los bosques se visten de espinos
Se oyó la voz de un poeta gritar:
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso

Murió el poeta lejos del hogar
Le cubre el polvo de un país vecino
Al alejarse le vieron llorar
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso

Cuando el jilguero no puede cantar
Cuando el poeta es un peregrino
Cuando de nada nos sirve rezar
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso

Serrat Joan Manuel

Dream Team for Dems?

Doncha think, wink, wink?

You need to read this

For the few who haven't seen this from elsewhere... Kirstin and Andee need help.

You need to go visit Kirstin's blog NOW.

For Kirstin and Andee.

Another burial

It's hard not to think of all the people I have buried since arriving at Trinity... fifteen last year, two this year thus far, eight to ten the year before. A generation of The Episcopal Church is dying literally before my eyes. Of these funerals, I have actually known the deceased in four or five cases. The rest are phone calls the office gets from one of the three funeral parlors in town. In these cases, the deceased are members of the communion of saints and what I call the alumni/alumnae society — those folks who twenty-thirty years ago had a connection with the church but since then have fallen away. No matter how much I entreat the survivors to come back and check up on them, they don't. I am beginning to wonder if I should hang out in the graveyard?

In any event, today's interment was in a beautiful graveyard on a beautiful day in May before the black flies have emerged (and they will be FIERCE this year for all the rain). The cemetery is on Rte 103 in Cuttingsville; it looks across the road to Hateful Mountain (dunno why it's called that). The maple tree leaves are just about to open fully so they are wonderfully effervescent. [These photos are pulled off the web because the winter 'house' that curators put over the statue and door to the mausoleum are still up.]

What distinguishes this graveyard from others is the mausoleum at its entrance. Local tanning magnate John Porter Bowman's daughter died in 1879, the following year his wife died and two years after that he built this mausoleum complete with his statue, a grieving husband and father bringing flowers to his daughter and wife. He then built his house (now a B&B) across the road so he would not have to go far. It is reminiscent of Victor Hugo's poem, Demain dès l'aube....

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

Tomorrow, at dawn, in the hour when the countryside becomes white,
I will leave. You see, I know that you are waiting for me.
I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountain.
I cannot stay far from you any longer.

I will walk the eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing anything outside, nor hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, the back curved, the hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.

I will not look at the gold of the evening which falls,
Nor the faraway sails descending towards Harfleur.
And when I arrive, I will put on your tomb
A green bouquet of holly and flowering heather.

An empty word

The news pundits keep talking about how Osama bin Laden's death will 'bring closure' to those who lost family members on 11 September 2001 or in the war fronts following that fateful day.

The word, 'closure,' should be banned when put in terms of mourning someone's death. We so want as a society to wrap things up neatly and put them away, especially when it comes to someone's dying.

The overuse of this word in the reports and the scenes of people jumping around wrapped up in US flags and chanting USA is indicative of our culture methinks.

Meanwhile, I still try to understand it all. And I won't. So I light candles instead.

Wistful

It has been thirty years since I have been to London. My father lived there three years in the late 70s, early 80s and I would go visit whenever I could.

He lived in on the third floor of a four storey flat on Upper Devonshire Place (purple dot). From the bedroom and bathroom, one could see and hear Saint Marylebone Church... not that we ever went there, oddly. He rented the flat from the father of a colleague from work and it was all he needed: a front living room/kitchen that looked out on Upper Devonshire Place, a front hallway that led out to the stairs, and then said bedroom and bath. When I would visit, I would sleep on an inflatable mattress in the living room. He and I went out the summer he moved over there and purchased a receiver and turntable so he could listen to his music.

I no longer remember exactly how far down the street the flat was (red dot) other than it was about halfway and a long walk from the Regents Park tube station when arriving with a suitcase. While he would go off to work, I would walk all over London, miles in a day. After my first spring break there, I had done so much walking that I ended up with tendonitis in my foot.

So, to hear all the fuss about the royal wedding in a matter of just over an hour, I am wistful because I have very fond memories of my summers and March breaks in London. There are so many other places to travel that I have not gotten back there since 1981 and I wonder if I ever will. Besides, without my pied-à-terre, it won't be the same.

For sale: One useless cat

A parishioner sent me this:

Blessed Easter

Christ's tomb in Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

Lighting candles from a candle outside the edicule where Christ's tomb is located in an inner room

Both photos taken 27 February 2011

Great but sad line

'The 2012 presidential election already promises to be an exercise in bedlam...'

The rest of the article, The Mad Genius of Donald Trump is also interesting and, at times, funny.

Another nut case

From the news wires (as it were):

Jack O'Reilly Jr., the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, has written an open letter to publicity-seeking, Quran-burning Florida pastor Terry Jones, in an effort to dissuade him from protesting in front of a Dearborn mosque. In the letter, O'Reilly tells Jones it's ridiculous to believe that the city is under Sharia law: "If Dearborn practiced Sharia law, would we have three adult entertainment bars and more alcohol-licensed bars and restaurants per capita than most other cities?"

Terry Jones is becoming a lone-ranger clone of the Fred Phelps clan — totally irresponsible, clueless about the damage he is doing yet protected under the First Amendment. This is the only comment I will make about this pathetic so-called 'pastor' because to continue posting gives him the publicity he so craves.

People like him give Christianity such a bad, bad name.

Good Friday

As I washed the bare altar tonight at the close of our Maundy Thursday liturgy, I thought of the 13th station in Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. It's a large slab of marble and, as you can see, people are venerating it, placing religious articles on it (extra dollop of prayer) and praying. The photo does not really show all the votive holders strung above it. It was a madhouse the first time I saw it, perhaps because it was a Sunday. It commemorates the stone on which Jesus' body was washed after he was taken down from the cross of Golgatha (the rock on which it stood up some very narrow and steep stairs as the 12th and 13th stations, depending on whether you are of the Eastern or Western Church — such is the complicated nature of the church).

In any event, I thought of this slab as I poured wine on the horns of the altar and in the middle, letting the wine puddle on the inlaid crosses and then poured water on the wine puddles to let it all comingle before washing the altar clean and then kissing it before I leave, praying that it remain holy before we return to it.

There are moments when my heart breaks during the Maundy Thursday liturgy and this is one of them. I also am so hit by the words of institution on this night because I know that I cannot preside at the Eucharist again until the Great Vigil of Easter. We enter this barren landscape year after year. I would not have it any other way either.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem 2

For those who wish to go to Jerusalem but can't get there.

The Dome of the Rock, Islam's third most sacred place, shadows the Western Wall, Judaism's most holy place, the remnant of the Temple wall.

Looks like....

Does this look like a donkey or what?

Oh, oh, oh. It is going to be a very long 18 months. If only we would limit the electoral season to three months as other countries — El Salvador for one — do.

Palm Sunday afternoon sillies

Given that I had three back-to-back services this morning, there is not much brain power. How fitting, then, to receive an email with these sillies. Are you comfortable?