Home Again

Sorry I've been among the missing for the past week. The virus turned into a scary drop in my blood counts (platelets went down to 4) and I've been in the hospital for the past seven days, including a stint in ICU. I'm home now, and although I'm pretty weak, I'm feeling better than I have in quite some time. I'll post more later, when I've got a bit more energy.

Today's Announcement from the Dean (slightly edited to keep at least some anonymity)

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Preaching well is a real challenge. We have a fine tradition of cultivating preaching excellence here at Virginia Theological Seminary. The quality of preaching at our weekday Eucharist is outstanding. Under the careful supervision of our outstanding team in homiletics (namely Professors Judith McDaniel and Ruthanna Hooke), we are ensuring that countless congregations in the future will be fed by the effective preaching of the Word.So I am pleased to announce today that Patrick P and Mary T have accepted our nomination to participate in the David H. C. Read Preacher/Scholar Award. This is the most prestigious preaching award for seminarians in the United States. They have both agreed to do the work necessary to represent the Seminary at this event. So today we congratulate Patrick and Mary and wish them all the best as they represent VTS at this event.

The Very Rev Ian Markham
Dean and President


...yes, this is me. At some point I'll be over this darned flu and will actually enjoy this.

Bah, Pt II

Spent most of last night in the ER. The good news: no heart problems, no pneumonia, just another truly nasty viral thing. Since I can ill afford to be sick right now, I covet your prayers that I get over this quickly, and that the ITP does not flare up again.

Others suffer so much more than me...I'm trying to offer this to God as a Lenten discipline, but I'm slipping into the pity party mode. Kick me in the hindquarters, Lord, and remind me that this is nothing.

Bah

Some sort of medical problem has reasserted itself. Feels like the flu - miserable joint pain, some nausea, dizziness when I try to move around. Low-grade temp. It's hard to imagine I've got flu again since I had it in January, but it's possible.

Internist thinks my electrolytes may be screwed up, so I'm off to the doctor tomorrow. This stinks.

Busy Weekend

It is Big Old Seminary's Conference on Ministry, where prospective students and their significant others come to the campus for a few days to see what we're all about. It's a lovely blend of the sublime and the ridiculous. There was community dinner last night (I wish the refectory folks gave us such lovely food during the regular weekdays) followed by a community Eucharist. It was something of a coming-out party for the reconstituted choir, which our new Church Music professor has really revitalized. Great stuff, and a good sermon from our Dean. A friend from my home parish is queued up to come here next year, and it was great seeing her at the event and know she'll carry on the St P's tradition (whatever that is) by following me in here.

I went to Fat Club this morning and got weighed in. My loss was 3.6 pounds, ten percent of what I should lose. Would that it would keep coming off at that rate, but I know that's not the way weight loss works, so I'm grateful for the good start but braced for the long haul.

Today is Off-Campus Housing Tours (I'm co-chair of that one), icon writing, rehearsal for the Middler Class Skit for tonight's variety show (the ridiculous stuff mentioned above), dinner with some of our guests at another seminarian's house, then the Variety Show. I get a pass on going to Saint Middle School for tonight's service, but will have to get up bright and early for tomorrow's service.

Thank goodness we've got Monday off, so I can catch up on schoolwork, or a nap or something.

Way Busy, even on Valentine's Day

I haven't been blogging much of late, because school is really intense right now. Since I have five days of classes and spend Saturday evening and most of Sunday at Field Ed, there is little time to breathe. Add to that the MS fatigue, and some days are hard. The good news is that I got a medication from the neurologist that helps me sustain my energy level through the day. I'm taking a very low dose, so I don't get jittery or anything. Since I started taking it, I've finally been able to get back to doing some exercise. That will help the Fat Club business along.

The busy-ness has been added to by a couple of very wonderful and exciting things that I can't talk about quite yet. Soon, I hope, I can talk about this stuff...

I'm trying to stay focused to get some of my papers started for this quarter, since the end of the quarter will come very quickly. I may spend part of President's Day working on that...then again, I may spend it sleeping. I got done with my last class at 3:30 pm, then ran over to Costco to buy cat food, cat litter, vitamins, etc. etc. and then stopped at a couple of "little stores" for a few things for tonight (I'm cooking a nice steak dinner for PH). It took longer than I expected, but I still managed to get some time in on the elliptical.

Too much reading, too much writing, not enough fun time, but I'll survive. At least I've got wonderful PH to smile at across the dinner table, with glasses of wine in our hands...

So what are you doing for Valentine's Day?

Book Meme

My friend Mary Beth tagged me for this delightful little meme. I'm afraid my responses are going to be pretty boring.

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)

I'm sitting on the couch, my favorite workspace (I really tried to work on my desk upstairs, but the couch is so darned comfortable) and the nearest book is A History of the Episcopal Church by my CH prof, Robert Prichard. No exciting books within reach...unless you consider some of the internecine battles of my denomination exciting. Prof. Prichard does.

Find Page 123 and Find the first 5 sentences.

"A generous donor, leaving funds for a general seminary in New York, solved the problem. The two institutions had to combine to receive the gift. Hobart gained two important concessions.His own assistant was to be the first professor of ecclesiastical polity (thereby guaranteeing a proper stress on the episcopacy that separated the Episcopal Church from other Protestant denominations), and his diocese was to receive representation on the board of trustees proportionate to contributions. General Seminary, while an institution of the church at large, became a successful proponent of Hobartian high church doctrine."

...don't say I didn't warn you....

Post the next 3 sentences.

...you sure you want me to do this?

"Meade and Wilmer and a host of others founded a seminary near Alexandria, Virginia, that accorded better with their evangelical understanding of the church. As at General Seminary, the students at Virginia used texts from the list prepared by Bishop White, but Wilmer, who served as the first professor of the school, took a very different apologetic stance from his counterparts at General. He stressed the similarities, rahter than the differences, between Episcopalians and other Protestants."

Thus you have something of the story of my seminary, presuming you're still awake.

Tag 5 people.

Okay, I'll tag reverendmother, cheesehead, preacher-blogger-procrastinator, kathryn at good in parts, and lorna at see-through-faith. Forgive me!

Sunday This'n'That

I preached this morning (see below). It went well. I'm relaxing more and more, really engaging with folks, and I'm so enjoying the process of writing and delivering the sermons. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

A little group of us have joined what my blogpal Cheesehead affectionately calls "Fat Club." It is, of course, that place which has meetings rather akin to AA ("Hello, my name is Mibi and I've lost 2 pounds this week.") with the program that requires you to count points. The upside is that there is no food that is truly illegal, but the yummies carry more points, so if you play by having something like a slice of bittersweet chocolate torte, you pay by not having much points for anything except a whole lotta salad with a little tuna on top. All so one is not overly embarrassed by the number on the scale each Saturday morning. I think I will not weigh myself between Fat Club visits. It will feel less like a diet if I don't obsess about the scale each morning. Just eat right, do the exercise, and let the chips (or the hips) fall where they may.

The purpose of this, of course, is to get my weight back down to where I can fit into my business suits by this time next year, when I'll have to be interviewing for jobs. Given my up-and-down weight over the past thirty years, trying every diet under the sun, and my various and sundry medical issues, I don't know if this will be doable. But I'm darned well gonna try.

Today's Sermon - Fully Human

Sermon: Matt 4:1-11
Sunday February 10, 2008, Saint Gabriel’s Episcopal Church

Sometimes you only think of what you should have said long after the fact. You know how it works: you get into an argument with someone, they say something sharp, and you stand there, just feeling stupid. No quick retort, just something like, “well…ummmm…ermmmm…yeah.” And then you go home, stewing about it the whole way. And you go to bed that night, cranky and feeling small and beaten. And at two o’clock in the morning, you suddenly think of the smart reply you SHOULD have made, but didn’t.

Then you hear this gospel. Jesus, saying exactly what was necessary to respond to the devil. We wish we had a little of that. In our moment of weakness, to have a calm knowledge of how to respond, not to win the battle, but to end it…we wish we had a little of that. This gospel is an object lesson in how to overcome, even our moments of weakness, with grace.

It’s been an interesting sequence of stories over the past couple of weeks. John has baptized Jesus. The Transfiguration has occurred. And now Jesus has gone off into the desert, and has had a shout-down with the devil.

It’s the Gospel of Matthew, of course, so the focus of these stories, as our sermon series says, is all about who Jesus is.

John names who Jesus is, and God confirms it: “This is my son.”

Then Jesus gathers up a few disciples by the Sea of Galilee.

And last week, Jesus and the disciples are up on the mountain, and suddenly Jesus’ face changes – it’s almost unbearably bright, and Moses and Elijah are standing with him.
Peter, as usual, gets it all wrong…he wants to pitch some tents. But the booming voice of God comes again: “This is my son”.

All this is good, and it’s typical Matthew: he wants to remind the Jewish Christians who Jesus is, and how his coming is a fulfillment of the prophesies. That question, who is Jesus, is answered time and time again in Matthew’s story.

But here we are now in Lent, and in this story, we go deeper into the question and into the answer..

In this passage, for the first time, Jesus owns who He is. It is a beginning for Him.

Many cultures have rites of initiation for young men beginning their journey to manhood. For Native Americans, it may be a vision quest. For some tribes in Africa, it is a solo hunt with little more than a spear to kill a lion. Aboriginal youth in Australia go alone into the outback, on walkabout. More often than not, the young man is sent out into the wilderness, with limited resources, to prove his ability to stand up to the elements, to conquer something within himself and outside himself. Sometimes, the young man has visions. He comes back from the experience fundamentally transformed. It is viewed as a spiritual quest.

In some ways, Jesus’ trip out into the desert has the feel of a rite of initiation. He goes to the desert to think and pray and prepare himself for his active ministry. And as the young men on their vision quest have some very strange things happen to them, so too does Jesus. Instead of hallucinations, he sees something much more terrible. It is the evil one, the deceiver, Satan.

For the first time, Jesus says who He is. In each of his responses to the devil, He says who He is. Not quite “I am the Son of God,” but pretty close. He’s the one quoting the Scripture. He’s the one who answers the devil’s questions, those teasing questions that start out with “IF you are the son of God…”

The Evil One wants to derail Jesus’ ministry. And what better way than to try to tear apart Jesus when he is at his weakest, after being alone without food in the wilderness for forty days? What better way than to dare him to prove who he is?

I don’t know about you, but I’m most vulnerable when I’m tired, when I’m angry, when I’m lonely, when I’ve missed breakfast and lunch and can feel my stomach growling. It’s when I am physically weakest, when I am at my most human, that someone can pick an argument with me most easily. And make no mistake about it, after forty days in the desert, Jesus is most human. He’s tired and hungry and lonely and achy.

The Evil One knows that. So he does what my kids would call the “Double Dog Dare .”

“If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.”

There it is. The double dog dare. Prove it. Because if you don’t, we won’t believe you. And you don’t want that, do you?

And it would be ever so easy for Jesus to do it. He’s got the power. But he doesn’t use that kind of power. He simply reminds the devil that bread isn’t the most important thing, that there are other things that are more important.

So the devil ups the ante. Now it’s not just about hunger, it’s about proving His value to God, to the angels. Throw yourself off the Temple. Show me how the angels will catch you. Prove that you’re worth it, that you are who you say you are.
And it would be so easy for Jesus to do it. He knows that the angels would catch him, and then he could shut up this aggravating devil. But he doesn’t. Once again, he quotes Scripture: Don’t test God.

Now the Evil One is really frustrated. How to torment this Jesus? Play to his ego, maybe? He takes Jesus to the top of a mountain and promises him the world, if Jesus will honor the devil. After forty days of fasting alone in the desert, with his body exhausted, what will he do? Will he take the devil up on the offer? Not a chance. Jesus fights back, but his weapon is words, is scripture. God is the only one to be worshipped. Not a mere devil. He brushes him off like so much lint on his garment. The devil skulks off, and then the angels come and care for Jesus.
Jesus could have done each of those things the devil challenged him to do. He had the power. He is God. He could have turned stones into bread, just by thinking of it. He could have leapt off the pinnacle of the temple, and called the angels to catch him, and they would have done it. He could have used the overwhelming powers of his divinity to smack down that devil.

But he didn’t. He wrestled with the devil not with divine power, but with his vulnerability, his humanity. An extraordinary thing, for Jesus to be so fully human and to respond to temptation with his humanity…and to succeed. What a gift to us, that he showed us that even in weakness there can be strength! That’s the message here: Jesus shows us that we don’t have to be God to defeat the devil! We’ve got tools! We can turn to scripture, we can own our vulnerability, we can rely on God to help us through. Jesus defeated the devil by following the covenant that had been agreed upon between God and His people Israel. With each temptation, when He quoted the Scripture, He reminded the devil of that covenant: God’s words count most of all. God should not be tested. Worship only God. He put on the armor of the covenant, and He defeated the Evil One, more surely than if He had driven a sword through his dark heart.

Jesus told us precisely who He was in the Gospel, not by what the theologian Johann Metz described as “the empty shell of power,” using His divine power like it was a circus trick, but by his very humanity, and by his willingness to trust and to live the covenant. He overcame the devil as a man, so we would see that we, too, could overcome evil even in our weakness by living that covenant.

That’s the marvelous gift Jesus gives us here. It is easy to use the excuse of our weakness, to say we aren’t strong enough, when we are tempted. But Jesus reminds us that we can do it, we can fight back against the evil one, with the power of God’s word, with the humility that we do it with Jesus at our side, even when we doubt we have the strength.

Lent is forty days. This is our time in the wilderness, our vision quest, as we prepare for the resurrection by praying, and fasting, and meditating, and wondering how best we can fulfill the covenant. Know that each one of us is alone on this quest, and yet we are not alone. We have the Word, we have the love of Christ, we have each other, and we have the sure knowledge of the coming Resurrection. What more do we need to overcome evil?

Amen.

Still Here

...but busy like everyone else.

I've been asked to be TA (teaching assistant) for the Church Music prof and to function as his music assistant,which is a gas and an honor and it pays, so life is good. I doubt it would take more than ten hours a week, so it should be quite manageable.

Today was Quiet Day at Big Old Seminary, with silence and imposition of ashes and eucharist and meditations from my bishop. Midday I went over to the dr's to get my platelet count checked, and it is now back to normal range. Thank you, Jesus! I was a bit anemic, which explains why I feel sort of tired, but I was so happy to get the good news about the platelets.

At 5:30, I drove out to Saint Middle School to assist at their Ash Wednesday service. I imposed the ashes on the vicar, my first time doing that - it was a moving moment. The service was lovely, although we are experiencing shockingly warm weather here (got up to 73 deg F today) and it was brutal and sweaty wearing a cassock and surplice and being under the lights. I felt like a giant ThermaCare heat wrap. Got home about 9:45 pm, and I am so ready to sleep now.

Litigator, newly graduated from college, is coming tomorrow for a couple of days' visit. Life is good!

Back in the Saddle

Classes have begun. I am already feeling a bit swamped, but I'm determined to not get majorly behind this semester. It will be a challenge, since I've got several intensive reading and writing classes (Systematics, Ethics, Church History). Ah, I'll survive.

Health is close to back to normal, thank God. I just need another 6 hours in every day. Friday is a light day, for which I'm grateful. First paper is due on Tuesday. Dang. Hittin the ground running, or back in the saddle, or some other metaphor to be named later...

Ends and Starts and Hiccoughs

So this day marked the end of January Term - I made it over to school for registration and for lunch with friends, and then I came home to crash for a couple of hours. I had grand plans of finishing the paper for my Jan-term class, but I fear I just didn't have the energy. Perhaps tomorrow after lunch.

Spring semester classes start tomorrow. A blessing - I only have one class tomorrow, plus community eucharist. I'm hoping for more energy.

Yes, I'm still coughing, despite my new inhaler. It's somewhere between a cough and a hiccup, thus the traditional spelling "hiccough" which seems an apt description.

My troubles are nothing compared with those of my classmates from Kenya. One has lost her house, all have heard frightening stories of families and friends under fire. My classmates are both Luo and Kikiyu, but they are supporting each other through this horror. Pray for them please, and for peace in that beautiful country.

Ultimate Irony

After the challenges (!) of last week's Do-It-Yourself home infusion, this morning I packed up the infusion pump in the mail-it-back box they left with me, and called UPS to have it picked up...

and UPS charged me $5 to pick it up.

Grinding my teeth.

Today's Sermon: The Art of Figuring It Out

Matthew 4:12-23

I had dinner with my friend Karen the other day. She’s an impressive person, a graduate of UVA and Harvard Law School, a litigator who recently left one of the fanciest law firms on K Street. I was curious to hear what had brought her to abandon her partnership and the concomitant income.

“Well, Mary,” she said, “I feel like God’s calling me to do something, and I’m just not sure what it is. I’m praying and thinking and taking classes, but I’m just not hearing yet, you know?” Karen is one of those folks who can power her way through any problem, any question, and it was clear to me that she was frustrated that her usual techniques weren’t getting her anywhere. She was struggling to figure it out.

Some of us are slow to figure things out. It’s not a slam on our intelligence, it just takes us a while. We don’t get the direct call from God to drop the nets and start fishing for people. We may get the more subtle call, and because we’re used to thinking of the world in a particular way, and because we’re more than a little stubborn, it takes us a while to figure it out. It certainly sounds like that’s what is going on in the church of Corinth, inspiring that letter from the Corinthian church’s founder, the apostle Paul. Paul knows all too well how people can misunderstand the message, and his letter is essentially one big “What were you thinking?” By the way, I love that he mentions that he’s heard from Chloe’s people about this problem. Chloe, a woman, is the leader of one of the house churches in Corinth. Some folks like to think that Paul is anti-woman…this passage says it’s not as simple as all that. But I digress…back in Corinth, people are trying to align themselves based on who baptized them. They’ve heard a call, and they’ve responded. They’ve been baptized, a risky business in those days. But then they get confused about what they’re supposed to do next. They think it matters who baptized them. They’re dividing up into armed camps – Apollos’ people, Cephas’ people, Paul’s people, as if there really was a difference, since they are all supposed to be followers of Christ. They get confused as they try to interpret what God is calling them to do. They get halfway there, and then get off track.

It’s a sharp contrast between that scene and what happens in the Gospel. Jesus walks up to Peter and Andrew and the Zebedee boys by the Sea of Galilee, tells them to drop their nets and follow Him, and they do. Simple as that. “C’mon. Drop the nets. Come with me. I’ve got a job for you.” And they go, not even asking what the job is, and he starts to preach and teach and heal, and they are forever transformed.

For most of us, our call is a little closer to Corinth than Galilee. It’s rare to hear God whispering in our ear saying “C’mon. Drop the nets. Come with me. I’ve got a job for you.” More often, we start off alright, but then it’s all about trying to figure out the next step, getting confused, doing something silly, and hearing “what were you thinking?” More often, it’s like my friend Karen, struggling with the question. We start off alright, but then we hit a wall. We’re doing all the things we usually do to solve a problem and none of it is working.

Some people do get the gift of God whispering clearly into their ear. But it certainly didn’t work that way for me. I was a Corinthian all the way. I was baptized as an infant. But for a brief flirtation with mission work when I was a teenager, I was a pretty conventional Christian, going to church, doing the kinds of work in the church that was expected of me, maybe a little bit more here and there. I was living my conventional life, working my way up the professional ladder just as my friend Karen did, marrying, having children, raising them, dealing with the struggles of life. But somewhere along the way, like the tune you can’t get out of your head, there was something happening inside me. God was calling. I chose not to listen, or to understand the tune, or to respond to it. I chose to ignore it, because it was a frightening song. I ignored it because it was safer, easier to ignore it. I knew it was in there, but I didn’t want to face it. My life, after many ups and downs, was happy, settled, comfortable. But now there was a tug, an inexorable pull, to do something entirely different, and it terrified me. What would this thing mean to my husband, my children, my life? It would be impossible. It would mean too many changes. So I ignored it. And the pull became stronger. I might turn away, but God would not. “Drop the nets. Come follow me. I have a job for you.” Slowly I began to understand that this wasn’t going away, and I started to entertain the idea. For a time, I couldn’t say the words aloud “I believe I am being called to the priesthood.” I had a conversation with my priest where I asked about it, without saying that phrase. He was a wise man, and he knew what I was asking. He respected my fears, and gave me wise guidance. “Pray, and listen for God’s voice. Be patient. You’ll figure it out.” I got to the point where I could say the words, but not without bursting into tears. It was too big, and I was too unworthy. My spiritual director reminded me that God picked all sorts of unlikely folks to do his work – just look at Christ’s genealogy – so what made me think I was any worse than they were? And didn’t I believe that the Spirit could equip me? God equips the chosen, He doesn’t choose the equipped. All those confused people in Corinth – they were going through the same thing – what am I supposed to do? How is this supposed to work? What is God calling me to do? The questions were the same.

I didn’t have Paul to send me a letter, but I had some wise spiritual guides who talked me through what I was struggling with, who prayed and laughed and challenged and sat with me in silence. It was the Art of Figuring It Out, and I was a beginner at it.

The Art of Figuring It Out may start with hearing the first voice, the first words of love, of being one with God in the rite of Baptism. Or it may be a hearing of a call to start working, without much detail about what that work might be. It may be sitting in the pew and feeling drawn to some kind of work, without knowing quite why. But it may be more opaque than that.

In that case, The Art of Figuring It Out may start in silence – listening for God’s voice. Prayer is not always about talking – much of the time, it’s about listening. Listening is an art, a learned art. Our society militates against silence, against listening. We’re supposed to find our voice, use our voice, make ourselves heard. We’re not supposed to hide our light under a bushel basket, Silence is deafening. Silence = death. Silence is something to be broken. And yet silence may be our best chance to figure out what God wants us to do.

The Art of Figuring It Out involves asking for help. It seems counterintuitive that we should ask for help – aren’t we supposed to go into ourselves to find these answers? Not necessarily – in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a character says “For the eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other thing.” We have to ask for help, for others to walk on this road with us, to be both mirror and challenger.

The Art of Figuring It Out involves patience. Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet, says it: ...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Can we love the questions themselves? Can we be patient enough to live into the answer?

The Art of Figuring It Out recognizes that we poor human beings, impatient as we are, don’t necessarily understand that these things happen in God’s time, which is entirely different than our time.

And the Art of Figuring It Out is not about us – it is about God, and God’s work, and what we can do to contribute to God’s Kingdom. Paul says it best: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel… For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

There is work waiting for us. The Lord’s graciousness is so very vast that he includes us in the process of making His kingdom. We are reborn when we hear His voice, asking us to drop the nets, come follow Him. We have a job to do.

Amen.

Saturday Night Lite

Dodged the meeting about Saturday night service at Saint Middle School because I'm still feeling a little punk. I completed the second infusion yesterday more efficiently than the first one, thank goodness - it only took between 9:30 in the morning to 5 pm. I'm just not feeling back to normal yet - woke up with a wicked headache, but I had committed to going to our Diocesan Council to help out, so I had to get my sorry self up and out. It was great to go - saw a lot of old friends and did the networking thing. Went home, had a little lunch and crashed for an hour, then went to rehearsal for our "Sing Me a Love Song" concert tomorrow afternoon. Remarkably, I sang well.

Home in my jammies eating a little macaroni for supper (PH is out of town for a conference - he just got elected VP of his professional association, and will eventually move up to the presidency - I'm so proud of him) and chillin' with Prairie Home Companion.

So it's a "lite" night for me. Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel better. If not, I'll be putting a lot of makeup on for the concert!

Yesterday

An interesting experience. Past infusions were in a hospital setting as an outpatient, with a nurse right there for the whole thing. This experience began with the stuff being delivered the night before (14 bottles of the infusion mixture take up a large part of a small refrigerator), and the nurse showing up in the morning, starting everything, then leaving. That would have been okay, except the line clogged up mid-afternoon, and again in the evening and I had to flush the line and put new tubing into the system. When I called the company to ask for help with the problem, they didn't send the nurse back over, they gave me DIY directions over the phone..and sounded somewhat annoyed that I had disturbed them with the call. Even after replacing the tubing and flushing the line, it ran slowly, so I didn't get done until 1 a.m. I had been told it would be done between 3 and 4 pm in the afternoon, so it was a definite downer. Thank goodness for PH, who was there all evening and night, putting up with me whining about how sick of it I was. And thank goodness for my friend K who sat with me most of the afternoon, and L who brought dinner. I am blessed.

Hopefully, today will be easier. We won't have the bottles, just one big IV bag, so that sould make it a little bit less of a pain. I hope there's a way to improve the flow so it doesn't take so darned long. PH will be with me for some of the day, then C will come over and hang out, and W, who's a nurse, will come over to take out the IV.

No, the infusion company doesn't send the nurse back to take out the IV...bizarre. I don't think I'll do it this way again. Better yet, I'd like to never have to do it again, period.

The good news is, though tired, I feel pretty good. Thank you, Lord.

Updates

Yes, I'm still around. No major changes. I'm just sittin' here, waiting for my IVig infusions tomorrow and Friday. I actually ventured out this morning to have a meeting with the rector of the church just a couple of miles down the road where I'll do my summer internship. He is a delight and, as they say, willing to let me play with his toys, so it should be a really wonderful opportunity to stretch and do all sorts of stuff.

Then I did the critically important stuff: got the car washed (it was FILTHY), stopped by school to see if any of last semester's papers had been returned yet (of course not - what was I thinking?), picked up PH's pants from the dry cleaners (it was on the way), and went to the library (if I'm gonna be stuck on the sofa with an IV, I want some trashy reading).

So instead of doing school reading, or something useful and edifying like the three new books of poems (Mary Karr and 2 Mary Olivers) that Amazon just delivered, I will be reading...(drum roll, please)

Last Rituals, a murder mystery by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an Icelandic author
The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown
Not That You Asked: Rants Exploits and Obsessions by Steve Almond
Right Livelihoods, a collection of novellas by the incomparable Rick Moody
Chronicler of the Winds, another murder mystery, by Henning Mankell
and (I'm embarrassed to say)
Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon.

If I'm going to be in fantasyland, I may as well REALLY be in fantasyland. And I just finished Elizabeth Strout's Abide with Me, which is one of the most transcendent bits of writing I've had the pleasure of reading in the past few months, so I figure I can get away with reading some semi-trashy stuff before school re-starts.

And there is a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the cookie tin, and I will make apple crisp tonight - carefully - so I won't starve. Wonderful L has insisted on bringing dinner Thursday night and , knowing her, chocolate will be involved in some form. There's a batch of beef stew in the freezer. And I get to spend two whole days sitting around in my jammies.

It isn't all that bad.

Not a Good Day

The platelet count is down to 15 (normal is 150-450). I'm waiting to hear if we can get a nurse to come to my home to give me the IViG infusions. They are also concerned that I'm still hacking and coughing, so I had to get a chest x-ray, to rule out walking pneumonia.

This stinks. Your prayers would be greatly appreciated.

Updates

Go see "Atonement." It is a powerful movie, beautifully filmed and acted. If anyone has doubts about the horror of war and the intensity of love, this is the story to hear. Vanessa Redgrave. Still the best actress on the planet. Saoirse Ronan, who looks to be about 12 years old, may turn out to be one of the best actresses of the next generation. Not your usual Hollywood film. Keep your eye out for the brilliant director Anthony Minghella (of "The English Patient") as an interviewer.

My platelet count appears to be worse. More petechiae (little red dots indicating bleeding under the skin) on my arms as well as my legs. I went for a blood test this morning (draw from the back of my hand - blecchhh!) and am awaiting the results from the doc. I'm hoping to avoid a hospitalization. Autoimmune diseases stink.

Dreaming of a trip to the Greek Isles, sitting on the sunny beach with a big straw hat, a cold drink, and a pile of good books. Instead I'm sitting on my couch with tea and no hat and a pile of work I should do (like finishing the Post-Apartheid Reconciliation paper and writing my sermon for next week). Oh, well...a girl can dream.

Ups and downs

I started off the day babysitting for the dear 21 month old son of my Homiletics professor. He was still asleep when I got to the house, which was a good thing, because I suddenly felt pretty awful (sweats, nausea, dizziness). Fortunately, it passed. I am presuming it was from some cough medicine I took before leaving my house. I sure wish this malaise would leave. I have to revisit the hematologist on Tuesday (after the annual mammosquish) and hope the news will be good. Anyway, His Nibs was his usual charming self, with a couple of new words (camel and zebra) to share with me. Sitting for him is a substitute for spending time with my grandbabies who live so far away, and is a pleasure.

Then it was off to lunch at a nice restaurant with a lobbyist friend from my past life. Many restaurants in the area of Your Nation's Capital participate in Restaurant Week, when you can try different venues that have a prix-fixe menu (lunch is three courses for $20.08, dinner is three courses for $30.08). Suffice to say you couldn't normally eat this kind of grub for such a price, and it was a delight being treated by my old friend and having a fun conversation with him about matters political, theological, parental and marital.

I swung by the seminary on my way home to pick up a paper from my Pastoral Care and Counseling course - I knew it had finally been graded and was waiting in my box. The prof had written to me a couple of days ago, asking if she could use a redacted version of it as a sample for future students, a lovely compliment. When I picked it up today, I saw she had written "one of the best papers I've seen in my teaching career in terms of its comprehensibility, writing, solid research and pastoral grasp." Gee whiz! Of course, next week I'll probably get some other papers back in other courses that decry my inability to articulate a theme, my clumsy use of language, my thin research and lack of pastoral understanding, so my head is staying firmly its normal size, and not swelled up. Still it's nice to get an A+ and such kind words.

Tonight PH and I will go to the movies to see "Atonement"- the rest of the weekend will be quite busy with icon-writing on Saturday midday, contemporary service at Saint Middle School Saturday night, regular services at Saint Middle School Sunday Morning, lay committee meeting after church, rehearsal at St P's for our "Sing Me a Love Song concert,"and (I hope) the wrap-up of my paper on Post-Apartheid Reconciliation in the late afternoon and evening. PH has a congregational meeting Sunday evening, so it seems we will be ships passing in the night or something. I may get a silly video for Sunday night, since it seems we don't have any good "Mystery!" stuff on PBS lately. I miss my Inspector Lynley Mysteries, although the new Helen is nowhere near as interesting as old Helen.

So much for a restful week. I babysat 14 hours, had a lunch and a dinner out with friends, and dealt with the aggravation of medical issues.

Next week should start out light, but ends with diocesan council on Friday and Saturday. At least this year it's only 30 miles away from home instead of 100.

I think I'll go have a drink.