Sermon for Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Luke 23:50-56
Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.
On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.


I’ve been doing CPE this summer, at Children’s Hospital in Washington. I spend much of my time in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, where tiny babies, some only days old, undergo open-heart surgery to repair congenital defects. It is a place of great hope, and sometimes great sadness.

One of our sickest babies died recently. Cassie was born with many medical problems, and in her ten months of life underwent a number of surgeries. She finally could hold on no longer. In the last few weeks of Cassie’s life, her mother often said to me, “I just want to hold her in my arms.” There were so many tubes and wires connected to that tiny body that it was impossible in those many weeks for her to be lifted off the bed and into her mother’s embrace. So at the end, the nurses undid most of the wires and tubes, and let her lay in her mother's arms. In death, finally, Cassie’s mother got her wish. The parents sat quietly with her for a long time, and after the last few pieces of equipment were unhooked, they bathed her and dressed her and continued to hold her in their arms.

This is a ritual that often happens in this unit when a baby dies - and babies do die here frequently because we do the most radical of surgeries, the true last-ditch efforts. The parents stay with the baby, bathe their child, and spend time quietly holding their little one. They are waiting. Waiting before they let go.

I wonder about these rituals of washing and waiting. Our Scripture reading this evening speaks of them after Jesus' death on the cross. Joseph of Arimathea collects Jesus' body, lays it in the tomb, and the women come to prepare the materials to wash and anoint the body. It sounds remarkably like the scene I described in the hospital. These actions are in sharp contrast to the responses of others to what has happened to Jesus on the cross. Luke Timothy Johnson highlights these different responses in analyzing this passage and the one that immediately precedes it: at Christ’s death, the centurion reacts by identifying Jesus as an innocent man. The people watching the crucifixion, presumably originally as a form of entertainment, turn away and head for home, beating their breasts in an act of contrition. Jesus’ followers watch, frightened, from a distance. These are expressions, in a way, of the mind: seeing, speaking, regretting, grieving. But Joseph and the women respond with expressions of the body, by doing something active: securing Christ’s body and beginning the ritual preparations for His burial. They are doing something concrete and tactile. Why the different response? Why the washing and waiting, in the hospital or in Joseph’s newly hewn tomb?

I believe that some of it is to lend tactile truth to the death. When you have touched a dead person, child or adult, before the body even goes cold, you know they are dead. You can feel there is no life in them. Some of it, too, is an honoring of the person by washing them, anointing them, preparing them to step away from this world and into the next. It is the last gentle act of love you can do.

There is another element to this kind of ritual. In our shock and grief, sometimes we can only do the housekeeping tasks to keep going. I remember when my mother had her first heart attack. I was fifteen years old. It was a bad heart attack; she was not expected to live. I went home from the hospital that afternoon in a fog of confusion. What was I to do? So I washed windows and cleaned the floors. It seemed a needful thing to do at the time. All I could manage was something tactile, something finite, something that I could control in a time of no control.

So, too, at the moment of death, we wait with the one who has died in a liminal space between the stilling of the heart and the uplifting of the soul to God. We hold them in this sacred moment, not just in our hearts, but in our hands. Before we can rest on the Sabbath, according to the commandment, we must do this work of our hands.

This ritual of washing and waiting is very old. Jewish scholar Ruth Langer describes it thus: “From the point that a person dies, not only the immediate family, but also the community collectively, has a responsibility to ensure that that person is buried properly, showing the greatest respect to the body which had housed life. In most communities today (and this has been true for many centuries), this is the task of a special voluntary burial society, the hevra kaddisha (holy society). Although today they usually perform their tasks at a funeral home, the rituals were designed to take place in the home of the deceased. [W]ith maximum concern for the deceased’s modesty, they first wash the body, and then ritually purify it by pouring over it quantities of water, dress it in white shrouds (and prayer shawl for a man), place it in a plain wooden coffin (if any coffin is used) and close the coffin. During the entire tahara (purification), the only words spoken are a few brief prayers and appropriate biblical verses. This relative silence developed from a sense that the deceased’s soul has not yet left the body entirely and can hear — and be grieved — by words spoken in its presence. The family and community also supply shomerim, watchers, who sit with the body from the time of death until the funeral begins, quietly reciting Psalms — maintaining a focused silence.”

They are waiting.

In this description of the rituals, we can see the details behind the very brief picture Luke sketches out in the Gospel. Joseph and the women were in that liminal space. They had no idea of the glory of the Resurrection to come. They were deeply grieving, only knowing they had lost their dear teacher in a horrific way. The only comfort they had was to use their hands to do the housekeeping tasks: to follow the traditions, the ritual, and wash Him and anoint Him and lay Him in the tomb. The only gift they could give Him was the work of their hands: to wash Him and anoint Him and lay Him in the tomb. They could not know yet of the rolling back of the stone, of the light of a new morning of the risen Christ.

I used to think that rituals like wakes were barbaric. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and the wakes were something out of James Joyce. I can still smell the cigars in the smokers’ parlor, and the Bushmill’s and the beer on the breath of the men. I can’t count the number of times I heard someone say at the side of the casket, "Doesn't she look good? Didn’t they do a great job on her?" Spending time sitting with a body? Having the dead person made up and dressed up and laid out for all to see? Awful!

And yet…and yet…

Now I start to see the wisdom of ritual to lend reality to what has happened, although the making up of dead bodies still seems wrong to me. I wonder if we can visualize a going up to heaven without the rituals that bid the person, or at least the person's mortal body, farewell. In our grief, we cannot yet see the rolling back of the stone.

These rituals, in that liminal place, shut the door of the past, of the living of this person who has died, and open another door to the glorious place where all pain is gone, all suffering, all limitations end, and new life begins. It allows the possibility of joy, even in our grief.

To comprehend that joy, the vast expanse of it, may be beyond us. But our faith in it can be incarnate, on the eve of the Sabbath, in the wisdom of the body, in the work of our hands, in the gift of love.

Amen.

Moi, A La Meyers Briggs

I took the Meyers Briggs Personality Test some 20 years ago. Seeing my buddy Cheesehead had just done it, I was tempted: would it be the same or different after so long? I'd heard one's results could evolve over time. No such luck. I'm exactly the same classification I was back then. What's an INTJ like? See below:

"...approach reality as they would a giant chess board, always seeking strategies that have a high payoff, and always devising contingency plans in case of error or adversity." - The Portrait of the Mastermind Rational (iNTj) (Keirsey)

"...observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private... does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things..." - Jung Type Descriptions (INTJ) similarminds.com)

"To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how." - INTJ Profile (TypeLogic)

"At work, INTJs use their conceptual strengths to analyze situations and then develop models to understand and anticipate through relentlessly to reach their goals. They will continue on with their plans, even in the face of adversity and data that might suggest to other more practical types that their goals are no longer feasible. By nature, INTJs are independent individualists." - INTJ - The Free-Thinker (Lifexplore)

"INTJs are natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the background until they see a real need to take over the lead. When they are in leadership roles, they are quite effective, because they are able to objectively see the reality of a situation, and are adaptable enough to change things which aren't working well. They are the supreme strategists - always scanning available ideas and concepts and weighing them against their current strategy, to plan for every conceivable contingency. " - Portrait of an INTJ (The Personality Page)


I suspect that my CPE peers would agree with much of this. I think it makes me sound more more strategic than I think I am, but who knows? Just call me Macchiavellian Mama.

ADDED ON: Now I've taken the multiple intelligences test, too. No surprises there : musical, verbal/liguistic/naturalist. Glad to know my suspicions about myself are confirmed.

Open Heart Surgery

Today, instead of our regular CPE duties (our supervisor is out of town for three days), I got to sit in on open heart surgery. For those in the know about such things, it was a Fontan procedure. The big daddy cardio-thoracic surgeon did it (actually he did part of it - more about that later). The patient came from halfway around the world for the surgery, which is actually the third in a sequence. This was a very chubby two year old, who was very unhappy with the world when wheeled into the OR, but silent shortly thereafter when the anesthetic kicked in.

Two other surgeons started the operation. Because of the past surgeries, there were a lot of adhesions connecting the lungs to the pericardium (at least I think that's what I saw) and they had to dissect them so that big daddy could do his thing. Took them over an hour with the scalpel, electric saw to the sternum, electro-cautery, and various other tools including a zillion clamps and retractors, to get the patient ready.

I'm not squeamish. That's a good thing, because this kind of surgery seems a cross between a butcher shop and plumbing work.

Big daddy surgeon came in after the initial prep work, finished separating out the artery that needed to be re-routed, got the kid on heart-lung bypass, stopped the heart with potassium (never realized how comfortable I'd become with the beep-beep of the heart monitor until it was silent), did the graft with a length of Gore-Tex flex tubing, put in pacemaker leads, reconnected all the appropriate arteries that had been sidetracked to the bypass machinery, and then unclamped. The blood started in to the repaired heart, and it started beating, slowly at first, then faster as the child was warmed up. When he determined that there were no bleeders, big daddy surgeon left the room so the two assistant surgeons could wire the sternum back together and stitch the muscles and skin. Unlike our newborns who undergo open-heart surgery, the patient's chest was big enough to accomodate the heart, even though it was swollen, so they could close her immediately.

Remarkable that the human heart can undergo such manhandling and holes and stitches, and come back, beating stronger than before. This child's future is still uncertain, but may be a lot better than it was before this surgery. It will be a trip to follow the patient in the CICU in a couple of days, and know I've seen that little heart, beating under halogen lights, bravely chugging along.

Metaphors abound.

Assorted Stuff

I'm on call through tomorrow morning, so my day consisted of various short errands close to home so I could dash to the hospital if need be. I intended to visit a dear friend who has terminal pancreatic cancer, but she had had a bad night, was waiting for the hospice doctor to come, and was not up to company. Please keep her in your prayers.

So the morning was a trip to the farmer's market for good local produce and cheese, a trip to Costco for large quantities of coffee (locally roasted!), cat food, and shrimp and scallops, allergy medicine for PH, and dishwasher soap, then off to the regular supermarket for the rest of the "normal" stuff we need to survive the week. Yes, I know. More than you wanted to know.

I got home and, after putting the groceries away and making a marinade for the mozzarella balls, plopped down on the couch to finish off Harry Potter.

I didn't get off the couch for the remaining 500 pages.

Great book...the woman knows how to spin a tale.

PH is off at a dinner party with friends from his MK days. Unfortunately, the home at which the party is being held is out in the 'burbs a ways, too far from the hospital to get there in the requisite 30 minutes should I get called in, so I'm having a solitary evening, which isn't really a bad thing. I finished another book that I'd started earlier this week, and the second load of wash is in the dryer. I may go to Blockbuster and pick up a movie...but then again, that would require I get up from the couch. Accio DVD!

Monday morning I'm supposed to observe heart surgery. The nurses in my cardiac unit said nothing was scheduled for Monday morning, so I may get in there Monday morning and have nothing to do, but sometimes things get scheduled at the last minute, so who knows? Our supervisor is out of town for three days, and we aren't supposed to see patients when she is not there to supervise us, so outside of the surgery, I've got three days off. Bliss. I've got a presentation on child abuse and our responsibilities as clergy in congregations on Thursday, so I'm not entirely without work to do, but being able to sleep in for Tues and Weds is a luxury. Monday, though, I've got to get into the hospital by 7 a.m.

Just twelve more days of CPE to survive. The last two days will be evaluations and such, so it's really more like ten days. I can do this...

CPE Related Notes

The car is fixed, so if I get called in while I'm on call, I can use my own vehicle. It turned out that I didn't spear the oil pan with a random stick - said stick merely shredded the serpentine belt, which then whacked the whoozis out of the oil lines. The resultant mess required a new serpentine belt and oil lines, but no new oil pan. It did require a spa treatment to get all the oil off the Saab's engine, but now it's clean and well-moisturized.

In our group work today I accomplished something major for me - I told someone they were exasperating me. Shocking, aren't I?

Still not breaking through in conversation with the teen AIDS patient. If I were the patient, I'm not sure I'd feel much like talking with anyone either. It may be clinical depression. Slow going.

I'm leading a prayer and meditation service on thankfulness tomorrow. Once that's done, I have a presentation to make on child abuse in the congregational setting and one more verbatim to write. Remarkable it's almost all done.

Time to go upstairs and read Harry Potter. Don't know if I'll get through the full 100 pages I've been allowing myself nightly, since I'm pretty tired. Gosh, it's a good book! My daytime reading is Harriet Lerner's "The Dance of Anger." I'm getting in touch with my inner exasperatedness...

No matter how challenging the day has been, I still am so high over the birth of the grandbaby, nothing can get me down!

And it's Ben!

Herewith, grandbaby #4, who arrived yesterday, all 9 lbs 2 oz of him! To GrandM's eyes, he looks brilliant, alert, and ready to play linebacker for the Redskins.

God is good!

Random Dots of CPE - 16 Days to Go

...not that I'm counting.

Much.

• I'm on call this week. This was complicated by the fact that my car died in a dramatic way on Saturday. The shop called today and the good news was that it wasn't the most expensive problem, or the moderately expensive one, just the modestly expensive one. I'm hoping it will be done by tomorrow afternoon, so I can pick it up. Thus far this week, I've been holding my breath hoping I wouldn't be called in to the hospital until PH got home and I could use his car.
• I did get called in tonight (just as PH was finishing up grilling the burgers), to baptize a baby who will be operated on tomorrow morning. I'm told the survival rate for the surgery is less than 10 percent. Makes you look at the baptism in a different way.
• Being on call, and getting called in, has gotten so much less stressful. Having survived working in the ER and being on call before, I was surprised to discover that I was feeling grateful to be able to provide this support as I was driving in tonight. The first week on call, I was simply a basket case of nerves the whole time. Maybe I'm learning.
• I've given up on feeling personally attacked by the prickly member of our group. It's her problem if she misreads me and doesn't ask me what's up. Of course, when I notice her acting funny, I always have the option of checking it out with her as well. It took me a while to figure out that I don't have to stop being who I am just because I don't do things in her style. Old dogs can learn new tricks.
• A baby whom we didn't expect to live (multiple congenital birth anomalies) has opened her eyes and is looking at us, is being weaned off the ventilator, and may leave the intensive care unit to go to a step-down unit on Friday. For a kid one of the nurses said was as good as dead, this is pretty darned close to being a miracle for me.
• We have a new baby on the unit who was born with active leukemia. She is two days old and on chemo. Sheesh.
• I'm working with a teen AIDS patient. Hardest work I've ever done, even harder than with dying babies. It makes me wish for miracles and/or magic wands. Expelliarmus!

It was good having family visiting this weekend. I feel back in touch with my own world, rather than just focusing on the hospital. My house got clean, I ate and cooked good food, enjoyed conversation about things other than diseases and accidents and death. Next Monday I get to observe open heart surgery, and yes I am looking forward to it. Then I have Tuesday and Wednesday off - a mini-vacation. I am sooooo ready for a break. Actually, I am soooo ready for this to be over, but I can hang in there for the remaining days.

Oh, and I'm preaching a week from tomorrow. Just to keep the pressure up a little bit more...don't want to lose the edge, dontcha know...

Processing

...attending the death of the little one I mentioned in yesterday's blog. It was my midday's work. It was heartbreakingly sad, and I was so privileged to be able to support the young mother in her grief. At the last, when it was done, the little one looked so at peace, and so very far away. Of course, he was far away; only his tiny (2.5 lb) body was still with us, a sweet boy at the last.

Of course, the chaplain then has to find a way to process it all.

My solution (one I've used since I was a teenager) was to clean the house when I got home. I'm a lousy housekeeper the rest of the time - my dust bunnies are unto the second and third generation by now - but when my heart aches, I clean.

Doing something tactile and finite seems somewhat Zen-like. It is something I can actually know I did, and completed, or something like that. And I used the real mop, not the Swiffer. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. I just can't think of it right now.

Tears do a good job of washing a kitchen floor.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Probably a Good Idea...

...to share something OTHER than just peeing and moaning.

I spent time today doing a commendation for a little one from whom care is being withdrawn tonight. He never had a chance, although he's undergone three surgeries since his birth two weeks ago. I spent a long time at his bedside, just stroking his head. He has been in an isolation room because he has been so ill and is (frankly) a little scary looking. I was thinking as I was saying the prayers of commendation how little I've seen anyone touching him, not prodding or poking, but touching him the way babies need to be touched. So I stayed, and held his hand, and stroked his tiny head, and thought a lot about the meaning of such a tiny, brief life, just a flash of a shooting star across the sky. I truly believe he is going to a better place. This work is such a privilege.

I also visited a youngster who has suffered brain-damage from lack of oxygen after a near-drowning. The family is hoping for complete cure. It seems unlikely. So today we prayed for a hundred little miracles, like him gripping his grandpa's hands, or moving his legs a bit, or appearing to looking meaningfully at his brother. We also talked about how God's time is not our time, as much as we'd prefer the big bolt of lightning that fixes everything right now, and how we also need to pray for patience.

I'm thinking a lot these days about how, when one of our children is desperately ill, we become children ourselves, petitioning our Father God for a parental fix. We think as a child. At some point, if it is an extended recovery, or less than hopeful prognosis, we become grown, and we put away childish wishes. Our interactions with God seem to change.

Another mother and her child (who is HIV positive) are struggling to balance hope with reality, and the child's kidneys are failing. The miracle talk has shifted into simple requests for strength.

Neither is good or bad, or right or wrong. It's just an evolution as we process the suffering.

Four babies have died on the intensive care unit in the past two weeks. My heart aches.

Extremely Crabby

I'm having a major-league problem with another group member in CPE. Can't talk about it - that would be a violation of the group covenant, but I'm crabby. I guess I'll have to address it during our next group session on Friday. Not fun to deal with someone who's unreasonable and extraordinarily prickly.

Damn.

A Bit of Harry Potter Silliness..Which Potter Alter Ego Are You?

You scored as Hermione Granger, You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out. Hermione Granger 75% Albus Dumbledore 75% Harry Potter 75% Remus Lupin 65% Ron Weasley 60% Ginny Weasley 55% Sirius Black 50% Severus Snape 45% Draco Malfoy 35% Lord Voldemort 35% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

Yes, it's silly. but it was a long day in CPE, with a movie on racism and a presentation of one of my most challenging and frustrating verbatims...

I find it odd that my answers yielded the same percentage for Hermione, Dumbledore and Harry; that certainly says something about the scientific nature fo the survey!

Besides, the book arrives on Saturday!

Random Dots of Counting Down

• 23 more days of CPE. Not that I'm counting down the days or anything...
• lovely in-laws are coming for the weekend next weekend. Although I should be stressed about getting the house clean etc., I'm just so happy to have them here, I'm not worried about the state of the house (at least not much).
• I survived mid-unit CPE review. The perception of the group seems to be that I'm some great energetic mamma bear. My own image of myself is one of the Israelites murmuring in the wilderness and complaining about the manna.
• it was a blessed relief to go someplace different for church this morning and not have to answer questions about CPE. PH preached at a church I've never been to before (he was serving as supply clergy) and it was great to just be quiet and listen.
• I'm preaching at Big Old Seminary - we have Wednesday night Eucharist during the summer - on August 1st. First time I've preached there. It's the passage from Luke about Joseph of Arimethea retrieving Christ's body, putting it in the tomb, and the women anointing the body. I think I'll do a reflection on the way the ritual of the handling of the body is dealt with by the hospital when a child dies, and the power of ritual in that liminal space between death and the reuniting of the soul with God. Nothing like something heavy...the key will be the pivot into that joyful moment when the mortal body is left behind and the soul is with God. Don't want everyone to be going from the Eucharist to the post-Eucharist cook-out in tears.
• I'm also preparing a seminar for my CPE group on child abuse and how we address it in our parishes/congregations. If any of you out there in the blogosphere can recommend some good resources, I'd appreciate it.

So let's see, I've dealt with two deaths of babies this week, I've presided over an interfaith service on children who were victims of violence, I'm preaching on death rituals in two weeks, I'm teaching a class on child abuse. The upside of all this is that I'll be so cheerful when it's all over, the start of school (with Systematics, Homiletics, Church History, and Pastoral Theology) will seem like lots of happy talk!

Words fail me...

The little one I baptized a few days ago died last night. It shouldn't have been a surprise - she had many physical problems - but she had seemed better. I had seen her with her mom at her bedside yesterday at 5 pm.

This has been a bad week on the unit, with two babies who were in beds right alongside each other dying within a day of each other. Teen Mom (see below) whose little baby girl is still in many ways a medical mystery to the docs with her many congenital problems, didn't come in to sit by her child's bedside, as she usually does. I fear she's been shocked and horrified by the two deaths, and it is finally dawning on her how sick her baby is. I hope she'll be there on Monday so we can talk.

I've been assigned an additional unit, since one member of my CPE group has dropped out for medical reasons. I'm picking up the Respiratory Care unit (think asthma, cystic fibrosis, that sort of problem). Sick kids, usually past the baby stage so I can have some conversations with them, not so acute as the babies downstairs. Different challenges that will be good for me.

As much as I'm learning, I will be glad when these last five weeks are over. Poor PH is patient with my every-night tears, but I feel badly that his wife dumps all her emotions on him over dinner.

The cure? I had frozen custard after dinner tonight. I'm much better, even though my jeans are tighter.

Tod und Verklarung

One of our sickest babies died last night. She was born with many congenital defects, and in her ten months of life underwent a number of surgeries to try and help her. She finally could hold on no longer, and as she was about to be coded, her mother stepped to the bedside and said, "enough." So they undid the many tubes, and let her lay in her mother's arms. The pacer wires were still attached, so her heart kept beating. After a while, her mother said to remove the pacer wires. Her heart stopped immediately. They sat quietly with her for a long time, and after the last of the various pieces of equipment was unhooked, they bathed her and dressed her and continued to hold her in their arms. It was a moment of terrible poignancy.

This is a ritual that often happens in this unit when a baby dies - and babies do die here frequently because we do the most radical of surgeries, the true last-ditch efforts - that the parents stay with the baby, bathe the child, and spend time quietly holding their little one.

In the case of the baby that died last night, for the past few weeks, the mother had often said, "I just want to be able to hold her." There were so many tubes and wires it was impossible for her to be lifted off the bed and into her mother's embrace. Last night, finally, she got her wish.

I wonder about these rituals of washing and waiting. Certainly Scripture speaks of them after Jesus' death on the cross. Joseph of Arimethea collects Jesus' body, lays it in the tomb, and the women come to wash and anoint the body.

I belive that some of it is to lend tactile truth to the death. When you have touched a dead person, child or adult, you know they are dead. You can feel there is no life in them. Some of it, too, is an honoring of the person by washing them, anointing them, preparing them to step away from this world and into the next. It is the last gentle act of love you can do.

I used to think that rituals like wakes (I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and the wakes were Joycean) were barbaric. The number of times I heard someone say at the side of the casket, "Doesn't she look good?" is more than I wish to count. Spending time sitting with a body? Having the dead person dressed up and laid out for all to see? Awful!

Now I start to see the wisdom of ritual to lend reality to what has happened, although the embalming and making up of dead bodies still seems wrong to me. I wonder if we can visualize a going up to heaven without the rituals that bid the person, or at least the person's mortal body, farewell.

I believe in another place after this one, a place of peace and rest. I don't know what it is like - none of us do - but I know it's there. When I die, I hope my loved ones can bid my body farewell as gracefully as these parents did, knowing that I am well and truly gone from them, and know, too, that the "I" of me is gone on to that other mystery for which there are no words.

Rest in peace, little M. Rest in peace in that mystery place for which there are no words.

Whoa!

So Friday the CICU was rockin' - lots of sick babies plus a couple of sick adults with congenital heart defects. I had spent some time with new anchor mom (the beautiful, fully made up one) and we talked about grieving the perfect birth and homecoming she had planned for her little boy. When you're a master (or mistress) of the universe, you think everything's going to go your way, and when it doesn't, it's a shock. A long and interesting conversation, and she was able to cry about it, which was a very good thing. The good news is that her son's problem is very fixable, and although the start of his life was not what she hoped for, the rest of his life most likely will be. On the other hand, mye xperience with my own children tells me that they tend to do follow their own path, not the one I laid out for them. Nevertheless, she is fortunate.

Then the social worker came to find me and said "We need you to do a baptism NOW." It was a baby I had prayed with before - the family is Catholic and Hispanic, and mom speaks very little English. I suggested she might prefer to have the Catholic priest come down...and was told that the baby was crashing and they were about to rush her up to the OR to try and fix what they believed was the problem (the baby had already had several heart surgeries and was recovering from her latest) and there was no time to page the priest. So I baptized the little one (who had every square inch of her body covered with tubes, leads, etc) reaching past the four nurses who were packing her up with all her equipment to go to surgery. Even with all the work they had to do, they stepped aside for a moment to give me access, and a few said some of the prayers with us. One of the nurses said to me, as I was by the crib, "You better do some extra prayers for this one. It's really a long shot." Nothing like a little pressure. We had an interpreter translate as I baptized the baby, and they recited the Lord's Prayer in Spanish as I did it in English. Then we brought in the two siblings, aged ten and six, to kiss their baby sister before they took her up. We had to gown and glove the brother and sister, which they thought was great fun. The only thing they could reach to kiss was her little foot.

Suffice to say it blew me away, and I had to step out after they took the baby up to compose myself.

An hour later, she came back down from surgery. The problem was not as acute as they feared, and was fixable. The baby still has a long road ahead of her, but she got through this one. I'd like to believe the Lord (and my clumsy baptism) helped. At the very least, it was a comfort to the mother and to the staff who (remarkably) thank me when I pray with a baby.

Intense.

The other biggie: the newborn baby of a teen mother (both baby and mom have a raft of problems) was taken up for surgery unexpectedly - we thought she would be waiting until next week for her repairs. She was in surgery for twelve hours, on heart bypass for over five. She will still need more surgery down the road. It's miraculous that they're able to do these repairs, but it raises a number of ethical questions as well. Teen Mom has been leaning on me (as has her mother, a grandmother at 36) so it has been a challenging week. I expect this family will be with me for the rest of my time in CPE this summer, and I already feel very close to them. I don't know whether their reliance on me is a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm certainly learning a lot in the midst of it.

Plus we have a preemie who has just had his first heart surgery despite the fact that he weighs under three pounds.

Whoa, indeed!

Six more weeks.

Movie Recommendation

If you love to cook, or love to eat, or love general good-hearted silliness, may I recommend you go see the new animated picture "Ratatouille?" Beautiful animation, charming story with a good message, and lots of good stuff for the foodies amongst you. Ian Holm as an evil chef, Peter O'Toole as a mean-spirited critic, Brian Dennehy as the ghost of a famous and big-hearted chef. It's my understanding that the writers and animators spent a great deal of time with renowned chef Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, Bouchon, and Per Se, and it shows. Not for under 7-year-olds, I think, even with the G rating, but otherwise even your Great-Aunt Sadie would find nothing objectionable.

I'm still smiling...

CPE Random Dots - Week Four +

Today was a short day - I had a funeral of an elderly friend this afternoon. I spent the morning doing clinical visitation. I've got tomorrow off, too - a blessed relief.

Here's what's happening:

• more very sick babies on my acute unit. We are all braced for the inevitable sadness with a few of them. It affects the whole unit.
• I am getting a rep as a "baby whisperer," good at calming down fussy little ones. I claim to have grandma hands, and I can sing a whole bunch of lullabies. And yes, I do pray a lot with them.
• the dad of one of our babies is a news anchor, and he and his wife are too gorgeous for words (the baby was born less than a week ago, and she is back into her original jeans, and shows up on the unit in full makeup - the only sign of recent birth is a luxurious bosom, which makes her hips and tummy even tinier). We all feel like schlumps in comparison. On the other hand, they're not surgeons or nurses or repiratory therapists or baby whisperers, so I guess even in our schlumpiness, we're useful.
• a baby with (literally) half a brain, can still look in your eyes and you can feel the connection.
• I'm getting better at talking desperate parents off the ledge when things are getting really rough. And I'm getting braver at asking the hard questions (do you understand your baby is really sick and may die? kind of questions) plus the follow-up hard questions (what's happening in your relationship with God with all that's going on?). No one has smacked me literally or figuratively yet.
• anointing a sick child is the most transcendent thing I've ever done.
• teen moms are not necessarily immature. Mothers of teen moms are not necessarily mature. No generalizations, just an observation.
• some of the staffers are so goal-oriented, they forget they're working with people.
• if I trust my instincts, I'm generally okay. If I worry about what someone else thinks, I'm generally not.

Tomorrow should be a quiet Fourth. PH is going on a long bike ride with his buddies, I'm going to attempt to sleep in, and we're going to see "Ratatouille" in the afternoon, then grill some steaks on the Weber. I should do my ethics project, but somehow I think I need a completely non-CPE day. Gosh, this is exhausting work.

CPE Random Dots: Week 3.5

• Sometimes the smallest babies are so fierce - they fight the nurses who are trying to give them various kinds of treatments. Food, however, is NEVER refused. It may be spit up, but it's never refused.
• Not having any Spanish is really frustrating for me. I have to use the interpreters and one of the other chaplain interns to translate. As a mother, I know what the Hispanic moms are asking by their body language and where they're pointing, but I am unable to respond. Bah!
• Parents telegraph their anxiety to their kids, and it makes it harder on everyone. I wonder how much I did that when my own kids were in the hospital for one thing or another. One dad is worried his child isn't get enough attention, and gets pretty hostile with the staff. His wife is sitting there, and is giving off a vibe that says, "Please don't punish my child just because my husband is out of control right now." I wish there really was a "chill pill" we could give them to calm their fears, but all I can do is pray and be a calm presence.
• I'm grateful I've been assigned a less acute unit in addition to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. It's a relief to go talk with families where the kids are getting better rapidly after spending time with ones where the kids are dreadfully sick and will probably only get marginally better.
• I will really need a vacation when this is over.

Hot Time, Summer in the City

Yes, summer has arrived here in your nation's Capitol.

One of my trauma pages at two in the morning was for a child whose injury was identified as GSW: gunshot wound.

Usually GSWs go to the Grownup Hospital Center next door, which has (sadly) ample experience with them, but since children are not just small adults, my assumption is that this victim of violence was under 14.

Jesus weeps.

CPE: Random Dots at the end of Week Three

• I now know more about congenital heart defects and the surgical procedures used to try to repair them than I ever would have thought possible.
• I'm getting better at extemporaneous prayer, but when I'm feeling sketchy, I revert to the little green "Ministry to the Sick" prayer book. Thank you, Church Publishing!
• At the end of a very sad week, one of the little ones who is recovering from surgery was awake, sitting up, bouncing a little despite IVs and EKG leads and such. My heart unfolded with joy. Even the mother of another child who had suffered serious reverses this week came to her bedside to smile at her. She gave us all some hope on Friday, waking up as she did the day before her first birthday. I'm hoping her mother got her wish to give the little one a bit of birthday cupcake today.
• Seeing a baby's heart , no bigger than a small apricot, beating through an open incision while the heart recovers from surgery is awesome, in every sense of the word. I think of Dame Julian of Norwich: "And in this the Lord showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. . .In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it."
• Baby's hearts aren't the only broken hearts in a children's hospital. This is hard work, every day.
• I'm on call until Monday. I haven't gotten called in yet. Today the pager beeped for a number of traumas that were brought into the ER via helicopter or ambulance, but they didn't page me, which means no one thought their child needed baptism or was in imminent danger of death, thus needing the prayers and support of a chaplain. I'm embarrassed to say I'm grateful I wasn't called in. Of course, the pager may well bid me come tonight or tomorrow. Part of me says I'm glad I wasn't called because it means no one is in that bad shape, but the cowardly part of me says it's because I'm afraid I'll be found wanting if I am called in. Yes, I trust God will equip me, but still...

I love this work, but it felt really good to chill out at home today and putz around the house and do some cooking. We're going to a friend's house for a Caribbean dinner this evening (can't have a foo-foo drink since I'm on call) and we'll see if I can stay for the whole thing or if I get paged to go to the hospital. Once this on-call thing ends on Monday, I'll be so grateful to get a solid night's sleep without the pager announcing the traumas and such. There were enough of them that the battery on the pager started dying last night (at 2 a.m.) and I had to get up and replace it - thank goodness I had a AAA battery in the kitchen. I should have another short stint of on-call before CPE ends in mid-August, maybe four more days, but the seven day thing has worn me out. The only comforting thing is that the young people in my group are just as exhausted during on-call as we ancient crones are.

Shockingly Small World

So PH and I went to a military retirement party for a friend who will start seminary this August with me. I don't know him really well, but he's part of my postulancy group so we've become casual friends.

In the course of the evening we talked with friends from his church, a couple who are about 10 years older than me. We were all sitting in the living room and my buddy's wife told how his British mother ended up in El Paso (WWII bride). PH asked me to tell how my parents met in France - both in the Army in WWII, both from the same home town, but had never dated there - they started dating in Alsace and married after 6 dates after they were both discharged from the Army. Some details came out in the conversation, and suddenly the woman of the older couple paled visibly and said," Where in [home town] was your house?" I replied, "It was xxx Avenue, across from Lincoln Park." She said, "I earned my Child Care badge in Girl Scouts babysitting you when you were four." We both burst into tears and hugged. It was sort of like finding one's long-lost big sister. We compared notes about some of the wacky neighbors and who was still alive and who was dead - sadly, most were dead - and it felt like fifty years had just fallen away. I told her husband, "I've known your wife longer than you have!" We all laughed uproariously. An amazing moment.

One of the other guests said that if I were a mathematician, I could calculate the odds of our meeting. I said I was a theologian, so I didn't have to do any calculation - it was all about the Spirit working in mysterious ways. For me, that's a much more satisfying explanation.

For someone like me, whose family of origin is pretty much all gone, it was bittersweet. It would have been nice to be able to call my mother and say, "You'll never guess who I met at a party last night." Somewhere, though, I think she's smiling.

CPE:Random Dots Week 2.5

• being able to say "asalaam aleikum" to a mother of a patient from the Middle East opened the doors to a very rich and unexpected conversation
• if you give your students unclear directions, telling them you're "disappointed" in them when they misconstrue what you said doesn't help
• on the other hand, if you're willing to say you overreacted, you're a grown-up
• "hoping for a miracle" is sometimes the saddest phrase in the world, when a baby is being kept alive by artificial means and has never known the bliss of sleeping in its mother's arms
• a child that's sick and a child that's dying look very different
• grandparents who are doctors sometimes slow things down when a child is being treated in the trauma bay...because they can always imagine the worst case scenario
• twelve hour days are tiring for all, young and middle aged alike
• the tiniest, sickest babies sometimes show the most extraordinary personalities, as when a little guy was unhappy because the nurse was seven minutes late for his feeding. One angry little dude!
• this work is a privilege. God guides my words when my own feeble attempts fall short.

Thursday CPE Dots

• Going on rounds with the docs is interesting, even though I only understand about five pct of what they say. They are very patient with me tagging along.

• Sometimes people just don't want to talk with you.

• Some sick kids are not going to get well. That rots.

• I can handle just about any kind of trauma except third-degree burns.

• Having a glass or two of wine and conversation with a dear friend that makes my bedtime 11 pm is not good (as much as I've missed talking with said dear friend) when I need to catch the 7 am bus the next day.

• CPE group conversations where we're reminded we're inherently racist somehow don't seem helpful to me.

• If I have to listen to much more New Age mediocre music for Prayer and Meditation Time I may trash the boombox. Yes, I'm a music snob. I suppose I should be glad it's not "Jesus is my boyfriend" praise music.

• I better lose some weight quick - my clothing choices are very limited right now, and it really stinks.

• My favorite 7 year old prophet and his little bro (the patient) may be going home tomorrow. Some day I'll tell you the story in a way that protects their privacy.

• When it's 90 plus degrees out when I come home at 7 pm, I'm not exercising. Just don't have it in me. So if I'm not as thin as a sylph by September, suddenly I just don't give a flying wazoo.

CPE Week One

It has been a busy three days since I started CPE. Most of the time has been spent in lectures, plus a couple of tours. Next week we'll begin clinical visitations. I've been assigned the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, the Emergency Room, and the Short Stay Unit. I can only assume that I appear to be a "non-anxious presence."

At Children's, their philosophy is to have family members be able to watch what's going on when a child is being treated in the ER - there are observation rooms with a glass wall alongside the treatment bays. I was a little surprised by this, but the logic of having people see how hard the staff is working on their child does make sense. I asked if they triage these cases, but they don't. It's the family's choice whether they want to observe treatment.

I'm looking forward to actually doing the work, getting out of the classroom.

The days are long - with the bus, the Metro (changing from the Yellow line to the Red line) and the shuttle from the Metro to the Hospital, it's between and hour and an hour and a half in each direction for the commute. Makes for a long day. All part of the learning.

The good news is that I'm slowly continuing to lose weight and I'm exercising each evening. The bad news is that it's hard to stay awake long enough to spend time with PH in the evening when he comes home from work. Oh, well, we'll figure it out.

Speaking of PH, he's down in Historic Rockefeller Town, having finished the first day of the two-day MS 150 bicycle race. He and his buddy rode the long route (100 miles instead of 75) from The Capitol of the Confederacy today and felt quite good about it, and were headed into the massage tent when he called to check in. He'll do another 75 miles tomorrow, then drive two hours back here. Remarkably, that's his idea of a fun weekend.

It's always strange when he's not here in the house with me.

On the other hand, I rented "Memoirs of a Geisha" from Blockbuster, so I think I'll mosey on downstairs and stretch out and watch it, and try to stay conscious...

CPE Day One - Random Dots

• taking a bus and the metro (switching trains once) takes about an hour.
• driving takes about 45 minutes, but is infinitely more stressful, particularly if there is a traffic jam in the 395 tunnel. I think the public transportation, besides being more enviro-friendly, will be the sane choice.
• having a diverse (age, ethnicity, gender, denomination) group of CPE interns is good, except we all have different terminology around certain things. It'll take a while to get that straightened out.
• cafeteria food is equally mediocre in hospitals and in seminaries.
• lectures after lunch are never a good idea.
• whoever designs hospitals has a thing for mazes.
• hospital PA announcements are about as clear as train station PA announcements.
• comfortable shoes are a necessity. I'm trying the Crocs MaryJanes tomorrow. Definitely no high heels!

Body Language

I may have mentioned recently that I've started another diet. This time, it's LA Weight Loss, mostly because it's relatively inexpensive, and the center is 1.5 miles from our house. I don't really NEED to sign up for such a program. I know exactly what I need to do (eat less, eat the right stuff, exercise, drink lots of water). It's just that I don't do it unless the weekly weigh-in by a disinterested third party, and the attendant shame if I don't lose some poundage, is part of the package.

I gained 25 pounds this year. It would be easy to blame it on refectory food, although there's always a salad bar available. It's more reasonable to tie the gain to my lack of self-control around sweets and on my lack of discipline in exercising.

So now it's time to address that.

I'll be starting CPE on Wednesday, and something tells me I need to do some exercising to deal with the stress anyway. I've been walking or using the elliptical several times a week over the past few weeks (since I came back from Colorado). I'm up to an hour's walk up and down the hills of my neighborhood. After CPE starts, I'll do it when I get home. I may try to do some yoga stretches and/or weights early in the morning before I leave.

Insofar as the diet is concerned, I'll just keep plugging away following the food plan. I've lost 6.5 pounds so far - I presume this early loss is water weight, but it's nice to see the scale move regardless of its source.

I'm only moderately body-conscious...most of this is about trying to fit into my clothes so I don't have to buy more...but a funny side note ties my weight woes with my MS.

I take a shot of Copaxone every day for the MS. Great stuff, except I occasionally get injection site reactions. One of these is induration: the meds kill off the fat cells in that area. As a result my upper arms and the fronts of my thighs have dents in them. Sort of like lipo done by a five-year-old. Would that I could manage to get the induration to be evenly distributed over the whole fatty area of my upper arms (what turns into what a friend of mine refers to as the "helens" that flap back and forth when we become old women) and my thighs, which even in my youth were on the large side. So at least one part of me is getting skinnier, after a fashion, while the rest of me struggles to follow suit.

I guess I'm not going to be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition anytime soon.

PB Thoughts

The Presiding Bishop came to Big Old Seminary today to speak to VA clergy on the eve of the consecration of our new Bishop coadjutor. She is very much the scientist in her speaking style. Careful, precise, clear. I wished for a little more passion, but right now in our church clarity is more needed than florid language. No one can call her a lightweight, that's for sure. I found her theology congruent with my own, and that was wonderful. She refused to be drawn into an armwrestle about Peter Akinola; she's made of stronger stuff than I am.

And that's why I'm glad she's Presiding Bishop, and why I never will be...

Wood has been sighted

...on the top of my desk. First time since last fall. I went through the files, shredding bunches of stuff that I normally dispose of in January. I went through the piles of paper on top of the desk, disposing of that which (in its 5 months on top fo the desk, had become outdated or irrelevant.

It's actually a lovely very large desk, but I haven't been using it for my school work because of all the aforementioned piles, and the business computer, monitor and printer that are on top of it. When I stop my part-time work for the bank (sometime between this August and December) the equipment will all go away and I'll have a nice big space again to do school work, assuming I don't have too many piles of school-related paper on it. Old habits die hard.

Tomorrow I get to hear our wonderful Presiding Bishop who is in town to consecrate our new Bishop Coadjutor, and I get to have lunch with her as well. She will be speaking to the clergy (and to-be-clergy like me) for 2 hours, and will then have lunch with us at the refectory of Big Old Seminary. It should be amazing - I am so psyched.

I am feeling rather lost in space without schookwork and reading. I got four chapters into the Church History text for next year. Yes, I'm a dweeb.

The End is Near

Hebrew final this morning at 10 a.m. I'm praying he puts more emphasis on translation than on vocab and verb paradigms...I am pretty sure I'll pass. anything else is gravy.

progressing

StrongOpinions will return to Cheesehead Country tomorrow, reasonably well recovered from her illness. I will (finally) take my Hebrew final tomorrow after dropping her at the airport. I have studied a bit for it, not as intensively as I probably should have, but at this point, a B will suffice. I had an A average thus far, so I've got some wiggle room.

A week to go before CPE starts. I have a dozen things I should do around the house, but my attitude is whatever gets done, gets done. What doesn't, didn't really need to get done. The Health Department probably won't be knocking at my door.

I started a diet, because I've gained the Freshman 15 and then some this year, and I can't fit into too many of my respectable clothes. Lost 6 pounds in the first couple of days (which is an idicator of how much I need to lose). Yes, it's water weight, but it's nice to see the scale move downward. Only about 25 to go.

StrongOpinion's illness (and the flights back and forth between here, Denver, and Madison) were expenses we didn't plan on. I'm still hoping we'll be able to take some vacation time after CPE in August. It would be a bummer if we couldn't manage it. We shall see.

It's disconcerting not having classes and papers and reading and such. And I miss my classmates!

Home again

StrongOpinions and I got back here at midnight last night. It's good to be back home. She is feeling well enough to have her friend take her out for a haircut, though not ready to drive herself.

Thank the Lord for her returning health!

What I Did on my Colorado Vacation

1. spent three days with StrongOpinions in the hospital.
2. spent two days with StrongOpinions at the home of dear relatives, the Ds.
3. watched an inordinate amount of bad television.
4. ate reasonably well - I didn't bury my face in chocolate, as appealing as the thought was.
5. spent a little time reviewing Hebrew - for some reason, I couldn't concentrate very well.

We drove out to Boulder today to see SO's rental house for the coming school year. Very much a college kid house. Only slightly funkier than my seminary townhouse, so I can't look down my nose at it. SO felt tolerably well for most of the trip, but was pretty uncomfortable (back and head) by the time we got back. I'm thinking it's a spinal tap headache, since it happens when she sits up. She improved a lot from yesterday to today. I'm hoping for the same amount of improvement tomorrow, so the flight home tomorrow night won't be too hard on her.

Speaking of the flight, I called the airline to book our flight. I explained the situation as to why I didn't return home as originally booked - daughter in hospital writhing in pain - and they decided to give me a "compassion discount"...



wait for it...


$25 on a $425 fare.

I'm just all aglow from all that compassion on the part of Useless Air.

Mother's Day

I'm having a strange Mother's Day.

StrongOpinions called last night from CO, very sick. She went to Urgent Care and still had some major problems, so now she's in the hospital in Denver. High fever and major muscle pain. Still no diagnosis. I flew out here early this morning. Thank goodness PH has relatives who are medical folks in the area.

Please say a prayer for her, and for us, as we try to figure out what kind of bug she's got.

RM's Extremely Tardy Friday Five

1. Mac? or PC?

PC. Yes, I know the Macs are ever so much cooler, but I go with what I know. Besides, all my seminary buddies who have Macs are always complaining that they're broken.

With a PC, you take it as a given that something's always broken. Much simpler.

2. Pizza: Chicago style luscious hearty goodness, or New York floppy and flaccid?

I grew up in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, so NY Style - thin enough to fold lengthwise - is my personal comort food. Being married to a Chicago guy, I have grown attached to Lou Malnati's deep dish. There is no such thing as too much cheese.

3. Brownies/fudge containing nuts:a) Good. I like the variation in texture.b) An abomination unto the Lord. The nuts take up valuable chocolate space.

I have to admit that I'm not much of a fudge person, but insofar as brownies are concerned, I love 'em all. In large quantities. Except for my X-rated brownies (which have both nuts and dried cherries, so they're like a grown-up Chunky bar), which are so rich I can only eat a couple at a time...

4. Do you hang your toilet paper so that the “tail” hangs flush with the wall, or over the top of the roll like normal people do?

Over the top. Just like me.

5. Toothpaste: Do you squeeze the tube wantonly in the middle, or squeeze from the bottom and flatten as you go just like the tube instructs?

Does the tube instruct us in this? Isn't that rather like reading the manual? Reading a toothpaste tube seems a bit, well, excessive to me. Must be why my toothpaste tube is always a mess.

Oy

Survived the Old Testament exam. I now only have the Hebrew final ahead of me (Tuesday morning). StrongOpinions is trying to get from boyrfriend-land out to her college town to get her stuff stashed until she returns for summer classes. Her trip has been a series of disasters, starting with the fact that her roommate told her the stuff needed to be out of the apartment by noon tomorrow, and it was actually today...and her flight is now delayed sufficiently that she will be unable to take a shuttle bus to campus (30 miles from airport) but will need to take a cab...you get the picture.

The good news is that she was only mildly aggravated instead of hysterical. She realizes that I can't do magic half way across the country. She must be growing up, while I am simply growing grayer.

Not a good time

to take a business trip, but I have to leave for Windy City tomorrow after my last class for a 2 day conference. It pays the rent. Friday will be the OT exam and the following Tuesday will be Hebrew. I'm sure I will do adequately on both - though I am taking my notes with me to study in between conference sessions - but I will be much happier when they're both done.

Got back my final paper from one of my 3rd quarter classes, a favorite class because the professor is such a masterful teacher. I was pleased to have aced the paper, since it's on a topic that is central to what I think my ministry will be, namely, conflict resolution.

Going to this conference is interesting, since I feel so removed from that world. I don't know how much longer the employer is going to pay me for part-time work. I like being able to continue my health insurance, for obvious reasons, but I think I'm pretty much ready to be done with that part of my life. The paycheck is nice, though. Venal, aren't I?

Are We There Yet?

I finished two more papers over the past three days. One more to go. Still facing one enormous OT exam and the final Hebrew exam, which shouldn't be scary but is. Classes end next Tuesday, and my exams are on the 11th and the 15th. It is hard to believe this year's almost over. Even harder to believe that my friends in the senior class won't be here next year. Even harder still that we juniors will be the experienced, wise middlers to the new junior class come August term.

I'm feeling like I now can "read" my professors - what they like in terms of writing style, how they evaluate us, what they mean in their assignments. Not perfectly, to be sure, but I feel much less disoriented than I did ten months ago. Of course, that sense of disorientation will start anew with CPE, and Field Ed, and a new batch of classes in September.

But now I know where to get a cup of coffee, and that the snacks they sell in the bookstore are half the price of the ones in the vending machine.

Living the High Life

PH is away at a conference (he'll be home tomorrow morning), so I'm enjoying some mother-daughter time with Strong Opinions. She will be going back to Rocky Mountain state in June to participate in her college's writing program. She'll be double-majoring in writing and environmental studies (at least that's the plan this week). She pulled a 3.9 GPA in her first semester. I'm proud of her, to say the least.

So today (after I got back from a 3 hour choir rehearsal in anticipation of our concert tomorrow afternoon) we hit the farmer's market, got our eyebrows waxed, stopped for coffee at a local shop with amazing baked goods, went to the bird seed store, went to the cookware store, and came home. I did get my Hebrew homework done, then I made a vegetarian Indian meal: curried lentils, smothered cabbage, brown rice, paratha. Yum.

Lots of good conversation - I wish she were here for longer than a weekend, but that is the way of young adults. She'll be 19 in a week and a half. Remarkable how time has flown.

Why I Have Gray Hair

Stonemason competing this season. Great air = gray hair. This is why I like it when springtime comes, and he doesn't. Mothering this kid has always been an adventure.

Friday Five: what am I...

1. Wearing:
Light blue sweater set, in honor of our forum on ecological/theological/political issues of water at Big Old Seminary today. Tan skirt. Tan Merrill clogs. Bifocals. A slightly stressed expression.

2. Pondering:
Will I get my act together and get any schoolwork done this weekend? With StrongOpinions home for the weekend, plus a concert to perform this Sunday, it doesn't seem likely. Dang. Three papers to write.

3. Reading:
A lot of catch-up reading so I can get my papers done, the book of Ruth in Hebrew, and about three pages per night of Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth.

4. Dreaming:
That presumes one sleeps, doesn't it?

5. Eating:
While PH is out of town at a conference, it's pretty sketchy. we had a dinner thing at school last night, so they fed me, but tonight it was Lean Cuisine because I had so much paperwork to slog through. I'll cook starting tomorrow for StrongOpinions, and PH will be home Sunday morning. Since their birthdays fall within a week of each other, maybe we'll go out to dinner Sunday night.

Food. It's a good thing.

Focus

I should go to bed and get some sleep, but I'm still wired from a chir rehearsal this evening. We're doing a concert of "B's" :Bach, Byrd, Buxtehude, Britten, Biebl, Busto. From the very familiar to the very ... erm... unusual. I'm singing a bunch of solos. They're getting as much out of me as possible before I disappear for field ed next year. I am tired tonight.

The year is winding down. Three more lectures in most classes, two in others. I've got a couple of short papers to finish off, and two exams. I'm feeling sort of flat and tired, and am trying to just push my way through the last of it all.

I was approached by a classmate who wanted to chat about another very troubled classmate. Interesting that people ask me about this stuff, as if I could fix it. I agreed that the classmate had problems and suggested the first classmate go talk to the dean. Isn't my bailiwick. Then another classmate emailed me and asked me to run for class president or vice-president. Sweet of her to think me a good candidate, but my plate is already full.

I'm wondering if I have "sucker" or "saint" stenciled on my forehead.

Simple pleasure of the day: babysitting the one-year-old daughter of one of our professors, newly adopted from China. The first time I sat for her, she cried as if I were torturing her by my very presence. She's decided I'm tolerable now, and I actually got a smile out of her a couple of times. Progress. She took her nap sleeping on my chest for an hour.

Tell me, is there anything quite so soft as the lobe of a baby's ear? Or so warming as a baby's sleeping body on your chest?

All of this is in contrast to yesterday, when I spent much of my day downtown at a Big Conference from my past life. I still do some lobbying work on a part time basis for my old employer, and this one was part of the deal. It was good to see some old friends, but it's getting harder and harder to expend energy on that life.

I suppose I should try and do a bit of reading, but it isn't going to happen tonight.

Sleep well, all.

Feet

I have a new addiction.

Crocs.

Yes, those incredibly ugly but amazingly comfy rubber shoes.

I know PeaceBang wouldn't approve, but I swear I'll wear them every day to CPE, when I've got long hospital halls to go up and down. If I wear fancy shoes, I sometimes have foot aches and pains, and it takes very little for me to get a blister. Wussy feet. Crocs solve that problem.

My present pair are a tasteful sage green, but since I'll be working at a children's hospital, I think a pair in purple or hot pink or bright orange might be in order. And they're inexpensive enough that I won't feel guilty buying them...

Plus, they're non-caloric!

CPE Preparation

No, it's not reading.

No, it's not praying.

It's my measles-mumps-rubella titer, to see if I need an MMR shot prior to my work.

Plus it's not one but two TB tests, within the month before I start CPE (that's chaplaincy training for the uninitiated).

Plus I have to swear whether or not I've had chicken pox. And my primary care physician has to say I won't fall over or anything while in CPE.

Yes, yes, I understand I'll be working with very sick kids who would be compromised by any nasty germ I brought in the door, and even many of the relatively benign ones). I understand that I must protect them from what I can.

Doesn't mean I can't be annoyed about all this.

Now if the preparation involved chocolate...

Writing in Seminary

I went to Catholic schools, and for all their flaws, one skill that was drilled into us was expository writing. We dallied with creative writing as well, but Sister Mary Malachi and Sister Leonard Marie (the two who had the greatest energy around this) were both fiends for clarity and logic and appropriateness in our writing.

This has served me well professionally, and now serves me well in seminary, although sometimes I suspect my profs find me a bit too...well, too whatever, but they universally compliment me, saying things like "clear and engaging." It feeds my ego, and sends me down imagination-roads of publishing. PH, who was formerly married to a professional writer, shudders whenever I mumble things like that.

The food that built my writing muscles was vast quantities of reading. I find myself referencing a wide variety of authors in my writing (Albert Camus on travel for my paper on Qatar, for example), and model my style on others when I've been warned that some professors favor one style over another (Hemingway over Faulkner, say, for a professor who hates run-on sentences).

I'm saddened by the lack of engagement among some of my fellow students on the art of writing. They are busy churning out the dozens of pages we are required to produce. There seems little grace, in any sense of the word, in what they produce.

Sad, because crafting an elegantly crisp phrase, or unwinding a looping sentence that places you in time and space like a gavotte, is such sheer pleasure.

I may be stubborn, but I refuse to relinquish that pleasure even in the brief pieces I will write.

Virginia Tech

The numbers of the dead and injured continue to rise is the horrific reports of the mass murders at Virginia Tech this morning. 31 dead so far, and over fifty wounded. There have been many phone calls amongst those of us who have college-age kids - are their friends who went to Tech okay? So far, as far as we're able to tell, the local kids and their friends are okay, but the information is very confused thus far.

For many other parents, the news is not so good.

God our deliverer, gather our horror and pity for the death of these, your children into the compass of your wisdom and strength, that through the night we may seek and do what is right, and when morning comes trust ourselves to your cleansing justice and new life; through Christ our Savior.

Lord of life, you trampled death under your feet so that we might come alive in your eternal light. We remember before you those shot today at Virginia Tech. In our anger and confusion, we need your help to find our way. When your own child, Jesus, suffered violent death, you acted through it to redeem the world. Help us live into that knowledge as we remember that these victims now live because of that great gift of your love. Help us release them to you. Show us that your hand has dried their tears, and let us glimpse their joy in your face. Grant us strength and the spirit of healing and peace so that we may labor for your just and peaceable kingdom, where all your children live in safety and fulfillment, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I am the Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life, even though he die.
And everyone who has life,
and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die forever.

Yes!!!!

So my last class on Friday afternoons is Liturgics Practicum, when we get to pretend we're actually doing the services of the church. Today was my day to do a wedding. It's hard to avoid giggling a little bit when two utterly mismatched but charming classmates are serving as bride and groom, but I held it together.

Nice discovery: I'm good at this stuff. I stay calm, I have a good speaking voice that I know how to use, I am intentional in my choices, I know how to use my hands and why.

Gratifying to find something practical that I'm good at (besides baking bread).

Of course, the true high point of the class was when one of my other classmates was to preside, and since our other guy in the class was out sick(there are only four of us in this practicum group, two males, two females), he had to preside over a same-sex faux-wedding. Even in jest, he (a somewhat conservative guy) found it a tad uncomfortable. Nancy and I, on the other hand, had a blast.

It was good for him.

Friday Five: Dental Edition

friday five: dental edition
1. Are you a regular patron of dentists’ offices? Or, do you go
a) faithfully, as long as you have insurance, or
b) every few years or so, whether you need it or not, or
c) dentist? what is this “dentist” thing you speak of?

I'm definitely (a). Had bad teeth as a child, and have various and sundry issues these days. I go because I fear that if I don't, the issues will become major instead of just annoying. Bah.

2. Whatever became of your wisdom teeth?
Two out in college, two out in grad school. Not pleasant, but not intolerable. Actually had the first two out with local anesthesia, which I would not recommend. The noises are hard to listen to.

3. Favorite thing to eat that’s BAAAAAD for your teeth.

As with RM, all things sugary. I got a sugar jones, for sure.

4. Ever had oral surgery? Commiserate with me.

Teeth pulled. Wisdom teeth removed. Tissue grafts.

5. “I’d rather have a root canal than _________________.”

...liposuction? Simply because the lipo would take a whole heck of a lot longer, and would cost more, and wouldn't be paid for by insurance.

Bonus: Does your dentist recommend Trident?
Never asked. I'm not a big chewing gum person anyway. On the other hand, I KNOW she wouldn't recommend marshmallow Peeps. Dang.

Out of the Closet

So I let people know at Big Old Seminary that I have MS. It was something I was in the closet about for a while, since I wanted my classmates to learn to deal with me as mibi, not as a medical case. I'm fortunate. My disabilities are very minor and virtually invisible to the world, and for the time being my MS is well-managed with disease-modifying drugs.

I came out of the closet by soliciting their contributions to PH's MS150 bike ride from the Capitol of the Confederacy to Rockefeller's Imitation Colonial City and back.

Reactions have been interesting. A couple of folks said, "Boy, that's a surprise." One person asked an interesting question: what am I most afraid of? I said it was losing my sight again. I had a bout of optic neuritis and lost most of my vision, which - fortunately - mostly came back with treatment with IV steroids. One person, a very wise femme d'une certain age like me, said, "I wonder how many people in this place have some medical issue they're not telling about." I wonder, too. I hope my talking about my thing will make others feel safe.

Most folks are silent. Either it's a non-issue for them (I'm still the same old mibi), and that's fine with me, or they don't know what to say, and so say nothing.

If it's the latter, and they want to be clergy, they'd better learn how to figure that one out. A heartfelt "gee whiz" would do.

In any case, I'm sure glad to sweep that secret out of the closet. There be monsters!

Easter Monday

The Powers That Be have given us today off. Part of it is mercy on those students who are in Field Ed, who worked continuously since last Thursday, part is mercy on those faculty members who serve as priest associates and who have also been working continuously through the various Holy week activities.

Though I'm not in Field Ed this year, I also had a steady stream of church commitments from here to next year's Field Ed placement 35 miles away over the past several days. Plus we had dinner for PH and me, PH's cousins, and a seminarian buddy, AKA Master Dishwasher.

By 8: 30 everyone had gone home, the house was cleaned up, the dishwasher was running and I was in my jammies reading a book (Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which will definitely put you off your Big Macs and Eggo waffles). The phone rang, and it was Stepson # 2, father of the Cowboy Prince and the Little Master of the Universe, just calling to say happy Easter, to thank me for the birthday coffee we had sent him (he turned 30!), and to see what we were up to. He apologized for calling so late (8:30??!!?? What kind of old poop does he think I am??!!??). Also talked to Strong Opinions and conveyed recipes - she's become quite the cook, and left messages for StoneMason, who was probably at his girlfriend's house, and Litigator, who was on a plane headed back to LaLaLand and school. By 9:30 I was asleep, which proves I really am an old poop.

So this morning, I'm procrastinating about writing the OT exegesis. At lunchtime I'll go to the movies to see "Reign Over Me." I never would see anything with Adam Sandler in it, but it's a class requirement. Ah well, I'll comfort myself with the fact that the brilliant Don Cheadle is in it.

..can..procrastinate...no...longer.....

Good Friday

I spent part of this morning singing the Vittoria "Improperia" in a quartet of wonderful singers in our Seminary chapel. This series of reproaches for what was done to Christ this day alternates lines of chant with brief choral settings of the Trisagion and the Populi Mei. Performing a piece like this is very intense - no room for error, though some minor twitches are inevitable. We sang from the balcony, and it was good, twitches and all.

It causes me to meditate a bit on the "performance" nature of what we do as clergy, especially in an emotionally fraught time such as Holy Week. I suspect all of us have a bit of the performer in us; why else would we participate in such work? Yes, yes, I know it's not about the performance, but to some extent we must be aware of that aspect, to preside over a service that gives the most to those who attend.

I think of my one of my profs, who struggles with a terrible stammer, but when he lectures and preaches, he prepares intensely, and delivers his words smoothly and beautifully. Is that a form of performance? Perhaps.

Can we create meaningful worship without an awareness of this element? I'd like to believe that we can be inspired by God's Word and that will carry it through. I've been to an awful lot of uninspired services, though. Was the presider uninspired, or was the preparation inadequate? In contrast, I've been to some over-emoted, painfully self-conscious services. Where is the middle ground?

How much do we get by tapping into our hearts and souls, and how much is preparatory work that recognizes the need for performance in the celebration of God's word?

Just asking...

Remind me there's a Resurrection coming...

I'm sitting on the couch feeling like cwap because I overdid it exercising (doing too much in the heat when you've got MS is a no-no, but it was such a beautiful afternoon).

In Liturgics today, we discussed the Rite of Marriage, and the church's response to remarriage for people who were divorced, and it seemed to me that some of the young single people and young marrieds were being very quick to judge those who were remarrying after divorce. Yes, those of us who have been divorced and remarried DO understand what the vows say, and we DON'T enter into marriage lightly, and sometimes ugliness happens that is beyond our control (like a husband who strays, not once but repeatedly, or a husband who beats his wife)...don't sit there all pious and say that marriage is forever when you haven't lived in the real world. Yes, it's forever, and that's what we all try for and hope for and pray for. But sometimes the bad stuff happens, and then what a person needs is not judgment but pastoral counseling and support and recognition that God forgives and loves us. Sometimes God also gives us someone worthy to try and love again. And that is a great gift of grace.

Alright, I'll get down off my soapbox now.

Deeply sad because a dear friend just a couple of years older than me has just been diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. She's got young adult triplets and a daughter who's a senior in college. She and her husband just bought a vacation/possible retirement home that they have been fixing up over the past few months.

This. Sucks.

I've got papers that I have to gear up for, but tonight, I just don't feel up to it.

I'm looking ahead to Wednesday, when a wonderful preacher will be at Big Old Seminary to celebrate MLK Jr's birthday; Friday morning, when I get to sing with a heavenly quartet, doing the Vittoria Improperia for our Good Friday service; and Friday night, when I'll be a ringer in the choir for my Field Ed parish, doing a Tenebrae service at a senior citizen community. I need music right now. When I have trouble praying, I sing.

I need a little spiritual edification right now. I know the Resurrection is coming. I'm just facing Good Friday a little early tonight.

Oh, and the Nats tanked on Opening Day...

Back to School

I'm having New Testament withdrawal. After three quarters of intensive NT twice a week, with some great lectures, it seems odd to be without them. Still haven't gotten the final exegesis paper from him, though. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

Fourth quarter Hebrew, despite being advertised as a reading course, will be half a reading course, half a finish-the-textbook and memorize more vocab course. Bah.

Lesson learned in another course: do not take a new course the first time it is offered. It's like buying a car in its first model year: they haven't shaken the kinks out yet. My grousing is around an assignment that fully half the class missed the mark on. Pedagogical hiccup, anyone? I love this prof but, as a dear friend said tonight, he can be rather opaque. Yoda-like.

Tomorrow in OT we get to take a newspaper article of our choice and turn it into a prophetic oracle...that's one way to teach us the form. I'm already thinking about the second exegesis paper for her, but I think I may only do some preliminary work until I get the first one back. No point in going all the way down the wrong path if I didn't do what she wanted in the first one.

I've got six more weeks of classes and then my first year in seminary is done. That's a shocking thought. I'm feeling rather like a horse a few miles from the stable, and I'm trying to resist the urge to race toward the stable door, and savor the experience a bit. Some days I feel more savory than others, though. Today I'm mildly salty, I think.

It will be StoneMason's 21st birthday this week. How did this happen? Where did 21 years go?

Looks Like Our Prayers Have Been Answered

We just heard that my father-in-law has just boarded a plane at the airport in Kinshasa and should be back in the States at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. He has nothing but his passport (his suitcase preceded him to the airport nad we don't know if it made it out or was stolen, and his wallet and its contents were taken by militia) but he has his life, and for that we're grateful for God's protection. He says his hearing has been affected by the close gunfire and mortar fire, and he's pretty dirty from spending a night lying out in the dirt of the road, but otherwise fine.

God is faithful. Praise God!

I'll post when he's gotten home (my sister-in-law is planning on confiscating his passport the moment he lands, so he doesn't travel anymore!)

Many thanks for your prayers. We are all so grateful.

Prayers, Please

My father-in-law, a surgeon who spent most of his life in Congo as a medical missionary, recently went back with a team to do hospital assessments. They are stuck right now in Kinshasa, in the midst of fighting between forces loyal to President Kabila and forces supporting his opponent, Bemba. They are in a safe place right now, after a hair-raising night, but we don't know when and how they will get out. They haven't been able to get a response from the local UN office yet, nor, I believe, the US Embassy.

Please keep R, the rest of the team, and the families of all in your prayers.

Break Time Rocks

I probably should have been more diligent about doing stuff during my spring break, but somehow doing nonlinear fun and creative things seemed more necessary.

I did a presentation on icons at a RevGal's church. Great fun and very responsive attendees!

I cooked a monster dinner for some friends from old church and from seminary. Laughed, drank some amazing wine, ate way too much. Remarkably, the house was clean for this adventure.

Drove four hours north to visit with dear L, who is pastoring a church in the lovely exurbs. I miss her! Not good having her so far away!

Had a lovely get-together with an incoming seminarian, another second-career person. She will be a great addition to the community.

Got one of the sleeves done for my green sweater (the first I've knitted for myself in two decades).

Went on a bead-hunting and yarn-hunting expedition with two classmates who are so much fun.

Made an Anglican Rosary with the results of the bead-hunting trip.

Cooked a bunch of Indian food. Yum! It's all gone now. Drat!

Slept a lot.

Got through Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, and Ezekiel.

So this afternoon I will take the Spooky-cat to have her anal glands expressed (yes, I know, TMI) and tonight I'll go rehearse with the choir from my next-year Field Ed site. They're doing a Tenebrae service at the SeniorWorld community nearby to them, and are in need of sopranos.

Tomorrow is doctor day: neurologist at 8:30 am (I'm having a little problem that we hope is not another MS flare-up) and oral surgeon at 11 (the biopsy didn't show lichen planus, although it looks like lichen planus, so now we've got to go to plan B, since the problem is still there). Then off to the airport to pick up a classmate.

Since RevGal's church was so generous with the honorarium for the icon class, PH and I will go out to dinner this weekend. All in all, a proper spring break!

Friday Five: Whatcha Doin'

Here's what's been done:

1. Hebrew final exam
2. Served as lector for eucharist at noon
3. Liturgics final exam
4. Library pilgrimage (see below)
5. Dinner

Here's what's left to be done:
6. Luxurious bath
7. Reading and/or sleep

There should be something in there about cleaning up my house, but tomorrow's another day.

It Is Finished

At the risk of being blasphemous, I quote the Gospel of John in the title. It's in honor of the New Testament final, which focused primarily on Hebrews and the Johannine corpus.

All three exams are done. I already know my grade on the Hebrew one, since our Hebrew prof is an adjunct and doesn't have the pathological inability to get papers back to us in a timely fashion that the tenured folk do. It was a good grade. He was generous. I am grateful.

I think I did reasonably well on the other two, plus the courses that had papers in lieu of exams, but I probably won't find out for a while.

I did my usual thing when I was done, in anticipation of a week's break...

I went to the library and got an armload of non-school books:

The Best Seat in the House: How I Woke Up One Tuesday and was Paralyzed for Life
A new translation of Teresa of Avila's The Book of My Life
Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid
Prisoners: A Muslim and Jew Across the Middle East Divide

plus I've got two books sitting alongside the bed waiting to be finished:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Wizard of the Crow, by Ngugi Wa Thiongo.

What a pleasure to read non-school books for a few days!

I'm going to see my friend L on Monday, and got the OT Prophets on CD, so I can get ahead on my OT reading in the car 4 hours up and four hours back.

We were going top go out for an end-of-quarter dinner, PH and I, but we are in the midst of an icy, sleety, icky storm, and when we stepped outside the house, we dang near slipped on our hinders. Sanity reigned, we stayed home, and PH cooked me a dinner of Swedish pancakes (plattar, with an umlaut over the first "a") with lingonberries.

Exams finished, non-school books to read, and Swedish pancakes.

Life is good.

Procrastinating

Anything but study for the Hebrew final that will occur tomorrow morning.

NT was fine, I think. I was satisfied with what I did on the essay and on the "hot quotes" section.

Two more exams and I'm done for a week.

My brain is full...and Towanda, I haven't got my act together on infinitives yet... maybe I'll get lucky as you did and the prof won't include them.

Just want to sleep and eat chocolate. I have promised myself a "Gray's Anatomy" break at 9 pm, so I'd better get back to work.

Slowly she turns...

Spring Fever

It's something like 75 degrees outside, maybe warmer, and the air is redolent with new growth and the hint of flowers.

Since I have 3 exams over the next couple of days, I don't get to enjoy it. Studying trumps sniffing the air.

I had a get-together with my NT study group - a bunch of extraordinary women with minds like steel traps, a major ability to laugh out loud (esp. at ourselves), and a sense of God amongst us. What a joy! Nice to have a group of friends with whom I can be thoroughly myself. It kept me sane today. I know I will pass the exam, it's just a question of whether I will sound like a seminarian or a fourth-grader.

I'm about to throw up my hands in despair over the Hebrew exam. It seems as soon as I learn a new conjugation or a passel of new words, the old stuff falls out of my brain. Again, I expect to pass, I would just like to feel more of a sense of mastery.

The third exam is liturgics, and I've reviewed the relevant pastoral rites and some of the writing on them. It's open book (the books being the Book of Common Prayer, the Book of Occasional Services, and Enrishing Our Worship2) and there will be some factual stuff plus an essay on the theology of something therein. Not really something one can study for, but I think I'll be fine.

Then...a week off! Or at least sort of. I'll be editing a paper for submission to a publication, so it won't all be fun.

Dinner with friends and a performance of "Joseph and the Amazing etc. etc." at home church with 80 plus kids over the weekend, a trip north to see dear L whom I miss terribly now that she's working 3 hours away, various lunches and get-togethers with friends.

Somewhere in there I really should clean the house. I figure once a semester, whether it needs it or not.

Now if I could only get my danged exams out of the way!

I want to take a nap.

Tired

Nine pages into the ten page Adult Ed paper. If I count the excel spreadsheet of curricula, it gets to ten, but that doesn't feel legit. I know I've got some more footnoting to do. If I had another month to work on it, I'd be able to do it right. It's material I'm really jazzed by, so I wish I could. For now, I'll just have to settle for just getting it done. Bah.

I survived the Hebrew quiz (60 new words). I forgot one word, and got one of the extra-credit parsings half-wrong. I guess I'll stick out the fourth quarter, even though I'm so very tired of memorizing 60 words a week. I think my ego may be getting the better of me, or else I'm just so bonded to my fellow Hebrew warriors in the class that I can't let them go, or I'm hoping the flame will alight on my head and I'll suddenly get it.

Every now and then, we get a transcendent moment in one of my classes. The lecture on ministry to the sick in Liturgics today was one of those moments. That's what happens when you've got a prof whose PhD is in English, but whose theology is equally deep and thoughtful. I've got intellectual chops envy.

Three exams this week: Hebrew, New Testament, Liturgics. I'd be scared if I weren't so dang tired.

Oh.

It's 10:30, almost.

I can go to sleep now.

G'night. (Only a few days til Spring Break. Can't you tell?)

Wading Through

So today I finished the OT exegesis paper. PH read it and helped me make it make sense (sort of). It's not exactly an exciting piece of verbiage, but I think it will do.

I spent the morning
first getting the car through its emissions exam (it passed),
then to the Center for the Ministry of Teaching to go through a bunch of curricula for my Adult Ed paper that's due on Thursday.
Then I came home,
did an accounting for my grant for the Qatar trip,
did a load of laundry,
did five chapters of Hebrew glossary,
made dinner and
am now baking raspberry squares for Coffee Hour tomorrow.

I think I'm overcommitted.

If I survive this week (one paper and three exams), I get to have a week off...but for a presentation for RM's Adult Ed class next Sunday, which will be sheer pleasure.

Then I get to have a week off...but for the editing of the Qatar paper for submission for publication.

Of course, one of my classmates has just finished his doctoral dissertation in another subject area (doing an MDiv while finishing a dissertation must be a sign of insanity). The mighty document, a thing of beauty, is over 900 pages long.

Suddenly, I feel like a slacker.

Humility. It's a good thing.

I'm rehearsing...

,,,for those times when I have to preach on a lectionary text that doesn't light me up at all. Or when I'm so dry that nothing is happening on the page.

The exercise is an Old Testment exegesis paper that's due next week.

It's a passage I know well and love dearly (II Kings 2.1-15), and I've done a bunch of work on it (word study, historical analysis, literary analysis, reading commentaries). I've got a dozen pages of notes and disjointed draft paragraphs in the laptop, but everything I write reads like a Jif peanut butter ad.

So now I'm waiting for the Holy Spirit to drop some great ideas on my sorry head.

Sometime before the paper is due would be nice.

I wonder what kind of grade I'd get for a Jif peanut butter ad?

How Many Trees Were Sacrificed for this Moment?

I should be working on my OT exegesis paper, which, at this point, is a jumble of notes and word study with no discernible theological thought. I should be reading for my Adult Ed paper, on curricula and other tools for congregations relating to conflict and change. That one's a pile of notes right now, too. Both papers are due at the end of next week.

I could also be memorizing the 60 new Hebrew words Mark assigned for next week, or working on my Hebrew glossary of all the words in our textbook. I could also be reading the enormous quantities of Scripture and commentaries our profs have assigned.

Instead, I'm copying stuff. To be precise, I'm making copies of my 20+ page paper on the Qatar trip to give to the committee at St P's (which kindly gave me a nice check to help cover the costs of the trip), and will soon drive over there (25 minutes away) to give a ten minute presentation on what I did on my January vaca...oops, mission trip. So many trees will die whilst I make about 150 pages worth of stuff that may or may not be read, but I guess it's a reasonable thing for me to meet with them...

...despite the fact that I made a 45-minute Adult Forum presentation (complete with pictures) a week ago to a larger group which included the folks who will be there tonight.

Oh well, it's only trees. And it's only time.

Thanks. I feel better. I'll stop whining now.

And the Answer Is...

Seems like many of us in ECUSA are arguing over the "homosexual question." Arguing over whether those whose sexual orientation is toward a partner of the same sex means they are "fundamentally disordered." Arguing over whether to consecrate gay bishops, or ordain gay priests, or only ordain celibate gay priests, or whether gay people need reparative therapy to change back to "normal," whatever that is.

It's really very simple. We go back to Christ, who said, "Love one another."

We seem to have forgotten that.

To me, healthy, normative relationships aren't defined by genitalia.

They are defined by maturity, mutual respect, equal partnership, care through good times and bad.

I've seen good and bad gay relationships and good and bad straight relationships. Why are we being so childish about all this?

Could it, at its heart, be about fear, or power, or money?

I wonder.

Friday Five: Artsy Craftsy

A day late, but...
1. Would you call yourself “creative”? Why or why not?
Somewhat. I'm a musician, but I don't write my own music, I simply perform what others have written. I'm an iconographer, but that's not a form that calls for creativity, it's one that calls for accuracy in copying and praying about what I'm copying. I'm a wanna-be writer, but I doubt I'm breaking any new ground. I have fun with interior design on a miserable budget, and knitting from other folks' patterns.
2. Share a creative or artistic pursuit you currently do that you’d like to develop further.
I'd like to write more, design some of the knitting projects, and write more. It will all have to wait until I graduate from seminary, or retire from ministry, or something.
3. Share a creative or artistic pursuit you have never done but would like to try.
When?
4. Complete this sentence: “I am in awe of RM's writing, Irena's icons, StrongOpinions' sculptures and blown glass and charcoal drawings, my sister-in-law L's quilts.”
5. Share about a person who has encouraged your creativity, who has “called you to your best self.” (I’m pretty sure that’s from the Gospel of Oprah.)
Oh, definitely PH, who cheers me on no matter what I try, and only winces occasionally.

Of course, as I mentioned above, my time for creative endeavors is limited by my hours of classwork these days. PH asked me last night if I had done any creative writing on my time in Qatar. Um, no. The 20 page paper sort of took it all out of me. I did get a wee bit creative on my NT exegesis paper on Luke 14: 15-24 (The Parable of the Great Banquet). Got on a riff about call-and-response music and the call and response motif in the invitation and refusal/accpetance of the invitation to the eschatological banquet. Of course, my NT prof will probably just raise his eyebrows. Maybe that's the limit of my creaitivity these days.