Slogging towards Easter

I went to noon Eucharist today, led the choir, sang a solo verse and descant...and now I'm resting on the couch at home. It seems like I can only do things in 90 minute chunks, and then I've got to seriously rest. So be it.

Easter is coming up so fast, and there is much to do between now and then, and I may not get much of it done. I'm trying to be at peace with that, but have very mixed feelings.

Someone sent me an e-mail talking about God's power of healing, which of course I believe in and have witnessed, and in the email they talked about a young woman cured of ovarian cancer, who had participated at some prayer services, then passed the tumors like grapes from her body. It reminds me too much, I think, of some of the televangelists who used to pretend to cure cancer by seemingly pulling what turned out to be chicken guts from the body of sick person. In that case, it was all about power and money, and not much about the Lord.

I do believe in God's healing power. I've seen it in my own life, for which I am exceedingly grateful. I've seen it in my children, a couple of whom seemed to be on a downward spiral but have come to a place of peace and healing. I've seen it in the baby who was born with many congenital defects and who was not expected to live, but who is now a year old and as perky as can be.But I wonder about the motives of those who promoted themselves in the story. And if this woman was healed, why not my dear friend M, a devout and faithful Christian who died this past summer, too young, of pancreatic cancer? And why not little Meg, an angel who died of multiple systems failure before she could get a liver transplant at 9 months of age? We prayed long and hard for both of them...and they died. And I'm at peace with that, because I know they are at the heavenly banquet table. But I have a hard time with an approach that says that one kind of praying brings miracles, and if the miracle doesn't occur, you weren't part of the right prayer team.

So am I condemned to damnation? Or am I just on too many different medications?

Long Slog

So I went to two classes yesterday, which was probably one too many. I came home, promptly spiked a fever and got a msierable headache. I spent the morning back at the doctor's getting more tests and another scrip for an antibiotic, Levaquin.

I think this is going to take longer to get over than I had thought. Drat. Thank God for Netflix instant view and the cats.

C.P.E. (Cat Pastoral Energies)

Reasons why cats are good pastoral caregivers:

1) they are warm as they sit on your lap
2) they have no expectations of interaction
3) they don't sit and talk at you for thirty minutes, say "you must be tired" and then continue to talk for another twenty minutes
4) they've got the "non-anxious presence" thing down
5) they don't have Netflix movie preferences that conflict with your own
6) they know that the Great One is in control, not you, not them.

The downside, unfortunately, is that they smell like cat food.

Home Again

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

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

Thursday, February 21, 2008

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

The Very Rev Ian Markham
Dean and President


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

Bah, Pt II

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

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

Bah

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

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

Busy Weekend

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

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

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

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

Way Busy, even on Valentine's Day

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

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

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

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

So what are you doing for Valentine's Day?

Book Meme

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

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

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

Find Page 123 and Find the first 5 sentences.

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

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

Post the next 3 sentences.

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

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

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

Tag 5 people.

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

Sunday This'n'That

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

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

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

Today's Sermon - Fully Human

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Still Here

...but busy like everyone else.

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

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

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

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

Back in the Saddle

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

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

Ends and Starts and Hiccoughs

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

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

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

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

Ultimate Irony

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

and UPS charged me $5 to pick it up.

Grinding my teeth.

Today's Sermon: The Art of Figuring It Out

Matthew 4:12-23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Saturday Night Lite

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

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

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

Yesterday

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

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

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

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

Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

It isn't all that bad.

Not a Good Day

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

This stinks. Your prayers would be greatly appreciated.

Updates

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

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

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

Ups and downs

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think I'll go have a drink.

Prayers, Please

I'm having a recurrence of a blood problem (ITP, for those who care about such things) that has been in remission for a couple of years. I noticed a lot of bruising and little red dots called petechiae on my legs and arms over the weekend, and when I had my blood tested, the platelet count was quite low. So now we're watching and waiting for a week - if it doesn't resolve itself (which it has sometimes in the past), it means a couple of days of being hooked up to an infusion pump and getting major drugs pumped into me.

Suffice to say, I'd like to avoid the infusion if possible. The funny thing is that I feel fine, except for the remnants of the cold in the form of a dry cough. Ah, well, stuff happens.

On a lighter note, I had lunch with the rector of my sponsoring parish today...yummy Indian food. Lots of hard-core theological conversation (he has a doctorate in theology and ethics), and it was fun to be able to have such a conversation and be able to hold my own in it. Guess I'm learning something after all.

Off to organize my closet and drawers!

Today's Sermon

Despite still feeling under the weather, I went to my home parish, St. P's, and preached for the first time. Here it is:

It’s good to be here with you, but I must admit it is rather odd standing up here, preaching. The preaching itself isn’t new: I’ve been preaching at least once a month at my field education site, Saint Middle School, since I started there in the fall. But this is the first time I’ve preached for YOU, and it is a very different thing preaching for my church family than it is to preach there. When I began to attend Saint P’s in 1995, I couldn’t have imagined standing here, and preaching the Gospel.

So this is a beginning of sorts, coming back here to preach. It is a redefining of our relationship, you and I. I am no longer Mibi who sings in choir, or Mibi who was Senior Warden, or Mibi who likes to cook. Now I am Mibi, on the road to becoming a priest. A beginning.

Beginnings are wonderful and frightening things, fraught with possibilities. When I began seminary, I had ideas about what it might be like, the work, the opportunity to pray in community so often throughout the day, the chance to study Scripture in depth. My ideas were uniformly wrong. The work was more intense than I expected. I needed to change my style of writing to an academic style I hadn’t used in thirty years. There wasn’t enough time to read everything that was assigned. There wasn’t enough time to truly digest all that I was given in my Scripture classes.

There were many joys, though. And in the midst of it all, I found a deeper, more spiritually mature relationship with God.

But make no mistake about it, beginnings are scary, even as they are exciting.

Our Gospel today is another beginning story, full of things that don’t turn out as expected. Just as I couldn’t have imagined preaching here a dozen years ago, neither did John the Baptist imagine that the Messiah would come to him and ask to be baptized. Think about this passage, and where it is in Matthew’s story: just before this, John has been telling off the Pharisees and Sadducees who came down to the Jordan to see what he was up to: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Harsh words. So John sets up a vision of the coming Messiah as someone powerful and even frightening. But now John is standing with this man, his own cousin, and he knows somehow who he is. Jesus quietly asks him for baptism in the River Jordan. John protests: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus is firm, saying it is necessary, “proper to fulfill all righteousness.” So John goes ahead as Jesus has asked.

And an unexpected thing happens, not the thing that normally happens when John baptizes people. The skies open, the spirit descends like a dove, the voice of God speaks. God, confirming who this is: His SON, in whom God is well-pleased. John may perform the act of baptism, but it is the spirit who anoints Jesus and God Himself who proclaims Jesus’ identity. “This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” A Son of God, sent from God, beloved of God, made man.

This is not the baptism that John expected. It is something entirely different, a new kind of washing and anointing, the beginning of a new relationship between God and humanity, because God has sent his Son to be one of us.

It might be useful to take a moment to think about baptism at that time. Remember that ritual baths for cleansing – the mikvah - were a common part of the religion of the Jews. Very Orthodox Jews still use the mikvah as a melding of spiritual and physical cleansing. And in that time, when Gentiles were converted to Judaism, such a ritual bath would be part of the rite to affirm their new faith. So washing one’s body and one’s soul in the waters was a familiar image to them, and John’s act of baptizing would be seen as such a cleansing. Remember John’s words “I baptize with water for repentance.”

Think too about where this is happening: It’s the river Jordan. It’s the very water that Joshua led the Israelites through to the Promised Land. You may recall that when the feet of the priests touched the river waters, God parted those waters so the Israelites could cross, much as God parted the Red Sea when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. It was a beginning when the Israelites crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, a fulfillment of God’s covenant to deliver them from the Egyptians. This River Jordan is a marker of new beginnings for the Jews. And it is a marker of new beginnings for Jesus, too, for this act of baptism is the first act of Christ’s active ministry, it is the first step on a long journey to Jerusalem, and to the cross.
If you were a Jew who was listening to this Gospel in the time that Matthew wrote it, you would have been give enough information to know exactly what was going on here. The location at the River Jordan, the reiteration of the quote from Isaiah, even the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, all would have established that Jesus was the Messiah. That would have been the central question to those listeners at that time.

But what of us? We are twenty-first century Christians. How do we hear it? When we hear this story, our likely question is the same as John’s. Why does Jesus need to be baptized? Isn’t he without sin? He doesn’t need cleansing.

Jesus says he should be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness.” These are words that aren’t common parlance for us. What does righteousness mean? Nowadays we’d say it means virtue, morality, justice, honesty. All those are good synonyms for righteousness in our time, in our culture. But perhaps we need to hear it as those first century Jews did. It is a word heard over and over again in the Hebrew Bible, and in that context, it means honoring the covenant. It means keeping one’s part of the contract, in this case the contract between God and his people.

All those prophecies of one who is to come, all those words about God keeping His promise: these are fulfilled in Jesus. He is the covenant. He is God keeping his promise that he will not forsake his people who believe in him. And this act, this anointing, this washing, is not only the act that identifies Jesus as God’s fulfillment of the covenant, it is the sanctification of that act itself, of that water, for us, too, to be blessed, to be one with the Son of God who was himself the fulfillment of the promise. Jesus Christ became man to save us, and in solidarity with humanity, he too stepped into the water of new beginnings, sanctifying it forevermore so that we might have a new beginning, washed clean in that holy water.

And here is the wonderful tension between the old and the new in this great story. This is a new beginning, a new story, a new covenant. But it is also a fulfillment of the original covenant between God and his people. Just as our baptism is a new story, a new contract, it also fulfills the original covenant. Think of the words of the Thanksgiving over the Water in our Service of Baptism: “We thank you for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of Creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the Land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.” It is a reiteration of the old promise even as it is a covenant of the new promise. And as my relationship with you all is an affirmation of all that has gone before, it, too is transformed into something new, a road that you all put me on.

We have put away the Christmas decorations, vacuumed up the pine needles, started our New Year’s diet, and begun a new year. But the calendar and the clock are not the only markers of new beginnings. The water is, too. In our baptism in that sanctified water, we have the opportunity to rewrite our own story, in faithfulness to our baptismal covenant, with God’s help. We can make the choices that reflect God’s priorities, not our own. We can reflect on our relationship with God, and what it might be, if we are willing to fulfill all righteousness. Christ has done it first. We need only make a new beginning, to step in His footsteps.

Amen.

Strange Weather

Yesterday, it made it all the way up to 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Today, it's 63. One would hope that it would have baked this nasty cold out of me, but it is not so. Still have a nasty cough.

I'm taking a Jan term course this week, "Reconciliation and Transformation in a Post-Apartheid Culture" with the woman who runs the Spirals Trust in South Africa, which does a lot of work in helping people heal in that world. Difficult issues, difficult conversations. Taking this class from 6:45 to 9:45 at night is exhausting. The class is a good mix of seminary students and laity. Ages run from 24 to somewhere around 75. A diverse group in every way. It has really gotten me chewing on the differences between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is something I give someone else, because at the heart of it, it is healing for me to do that. Reconciliation is a reciprocal act, and requires the person who wounds to acknowledge their act, repent of it, and ask to reconstruct a broken relationship. It is not a quick process.

So much of what we seem to focus on these days is the quick fix in a crisis situation. We tell the little child who has struck her playmate "Tell her you're sorry." And she does, but we can tell from the tone of her voice that she doesn't mean it, doesn't understand it. I wonder if it leads to a mechanical "I'm sorry" with no heart behind it that we use for the rest of our lives.

If we can't look into ourselves and see what we have done, when we have done wrong, how can we look into the eyes of someone we've hurt and ask if it is possible to rebuild the relationship?

Christmas is over

StrongOpinions is back in the shadow of the Flatiron Range, the decorations are off the Christmas tree (but the tree hasn't been put out back yet), and the cold is starting to fade, thank goodness. I'm passing on church tomorrow, for fear of giving others this cold, but will go later in the evening to a soup party at L's house with all the folks from school who are in town, mostly GOE-takers. They finished their ordeal today. Blessings on them all.

They had gotten a letter from our Bishop prior to the exam, telling them not to worry - that he viewed GOEs as diagnostic rather than something that would block someone from ordination. So what are the prescriptions that follow a bad grade on one of the sections? Usually a paper of some sort. Some folks are bad test-takers, so doing a paper is a more comfortable thing. I just keep wondering what the true purpose of these exams are. Since all Episcopal seminarians either attend an Episcopal seminary for all three years, or get an MDiv from another seminary and then spend a year doing what is referred to as an "Anglican year" getting Anglican Church History and litugics and such, and since the curricula amongst the various schools is pretty consistent, the product the church gets - we seminarians - is as consistent as it could be, assuming our grades are honest representations of our work. And if our passing or failing these exams has no bearing on whether we are ordained, why take them? If there is a major failing in a particular area, a paper won't solve the problem.

It seems we should either take these tests seriously or eliminate them. The stress - and it IS stressful taking these tests, regardless of the comfort of the Bishop's letter - seems unnecessary. The questions seem directed toward academic interests (one this year was "Do you believe there is such a thing as an intrinsically evil act?" and one was expected to answer it with a three page paper in three and a half hours...heaven help us) rather than the practical problems of the parish.

Just wondering why we do this. I will take them next year and will do adequately on them, I hope. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Seems more like a hazing stunt than a useful measure of our readiness for the priesthood.

Foggy thoughts

I'm a bit foggy from all the cold meds, which only partially treat the symptoms of this catarrh that has me in its clutches. Nonetheless, I've gotten some good things done today. I got up early and went over to school to make sure my volunteers had gotten the GOE hospitality all set up. I ran over at lunchtime and a merry band was there, playing Hearts and applauding each senior as they came in from the rigors of exam-taking. Tomorrow my co-leader in this project will be back from Texas and can finish things up. Tomorrow is a light day anyway - they only have one exam section, in the afternoon.

I got about halfway through the sermon for 1/13, at my home parish. It's a very intellectual crowd, and it will be a challenge coming up with something that will be fresh for them. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to preaching there.

I made dinner this evening for my best friend L and her family - roast chicken, roasted new potatoes, green beans amandine and fresh chocolate chip cookies. Strong Opinions and I brought it over to her. She looks so happy to be past the halfway point of GOEs.

So I'm back on the couch getting up my energy to make dinner for PH and StrongOpinions - roast salmon, mashed potatoes, asparagus. And the other half of the batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Life - even in the midst of a bad cold - is good.

Snort, snort, Cough, cough, ick.

Colds are nasty things. Mine is wandering around various body parts, trying to decide if it will migrate to my chest and become bronchitis, or simply stay in my head, making it well nigh impossible to breathe in bed at night. I usually get one bad old cold a year, and this is it. I'm hoping that this time next year, when I'll be taking the GOEs, I will not have this cold, or any other cold.

Speaking of GOEs, they started today. My lovely crew of GOE hospitality folks did a good job, with very little work on my part, providing the goodies that helped our seniors survive the first two sections of the exams. The reactions of the seniors reinforced my belief that GOEs cannot be studied for, one can only organize one's reference materials and pray.

StrongOpinions is home from the Big Apple, which she adored. I think she'll sleep for another day to fully recover. She may apply to a few schools there, transferring from her present tiny college in the shadow of the Flatiron Range. That'll be a culture shock. She'd only be two and a half hours away from us by Acela, as opposed to five hours by plane. I'd like that, although when she said her friend's neighborhood looked like a set from Law and Order, I had second thoughts.

Parenting is hard work.

Today is Litigator's 24th birthday. Holy cow - how did that creep up on me?

You're Never Too Old

...to sit on Santa's Lap.

Herewith, my dear father-in-law and I getting our gifts from Santa out in Windy City. Santa must have very strong quads. Father-in-law is wearing the sweater I knit for him a couple of Christmases ago - it portrays noble Norse birkebeiners saving the baby king Haakon from the bad guys. Yet another thing I don't have enough time for anymore.

Miserable with the cold. I'm hoping it fades fast, because I'm in charge of hospitality for our seniors who are taking their General Ordination Exams starting on Wednesday. Heaven forbid any of them should catch this icky thing in the midst of four days of exams!

News on the children front: Litigator passed all of his courses last semester, so he is now done with college. Hallelujah! Took him 5 and a half years and a change of major, but he hung in there and got it done. He will "officially" graduate in May, but he is done. He is a screenwriting major, and they're still on strike, so it seems he'll be working at Chili's for a bit longer. Ah, well.

StrongOpinions is spending New Years in the Big Apple, where she is contemplating transferring to complete college. It would be nice having her closer than a five hour plane flight. We shall see what happens.

Time to squirt some more nasal spray...what a lovely, romantic New Year's Eve!

Cold

The temp, and my health...

Preached this a.m. at Cool Presby Church. It was well-received.

The good thing about it was that I was feeling too awful to worry. Dear friend LL from Big Old Seminary was there, as well as PH's cousins (B & D, and B's daugher S and her husband F). Bless them for coming to lend moral support. We went out for brunch afterwards, and I kept my game face on because they are all so sweet, but I'm happy to be home now on the sofa, with my fleece robe and warm slippers. We're supposed to go to the home of Saint Middle School's vicar for a post-Christmas party. I'll see how I feel in a couple of hours, whether we'll drive the hour it takes to get out there...

Back from Windy City

...and here's the sermon for tomorrow morning at cool Presbyterian Church in Gen-X neighborhood:


Sermon: December 30, 2007
Text: Matthew 2: 13-23

You know the feeling.

You sit up straight in bed in a cold sweat. It’s two in the morning, and you’re wide awake. A dream has shaken you out of a sound sleep, and now your heart is racing and your head is aching.

So it is with Joseph in this story in today’s gospel.

We can picture it. He’s sitting up in that cold sweat. He looks toward the heavens.
“Again with the dreams, God? This is you again, isn’t it? The last time, you sent an angel to tell me I should go ahead and marry her, pregnant as she was, despite the fact that the child wasn’t mine, because….because why? Because the child was from the Holy Spirit? It was a strange dream then, but I obeyed it, because when You send a messenger, we’re supposed to obey.

So now I have another strange dream, a frightening dream, and I’m supposed to pack her up and the baby and travel quickly to Egypt – no easy trip, mind you, with a wife who has just given birth and a newborn. Yes. Yes, I’ll go…but what is this you’ve gotten me into now?”

Yes, we can picture it, his confusion, his fear. Herod had a reputation for doing bad things. He was worse than his Roman masters. The Lord warning Joseph that Herod wanted to kill this child, well, it was a strange thing that Herod would take notice of Jesus, but strange things had been happening to Joseph lately, so he took heed and took them to Egypt. In the aftermath of that escape, a generation of Bethlehem’s infant sons was killed at Herod’s command. Then it was quiet, except for the weeping of the grieving mothers. Herod assumed he had solved his problem, this problem child whom he feared would challenge his throne.
A few years passed. It was quiet. Herod died. Joseph and Mary and Jesus were living under the radar screen in Egypt. And once again, Joseph’s sleep was disturbed by a dream. God’s voice, once again: "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." That familiar voice, once again commanding him. And all the gospel tells us is that he didn’t question, didn’t negotiate…he just did as he was told…but he was afraid. He had heard that Herod’s son, just as frightening as his father, had taken the throne. So God gave Joseph another dream, and Joseph took his little family to Galilee.

Kind of makes you wonder about Joseph, when you hear about all those dreams, and how each time, Joseph obeyed, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you want to question God at least a little? At least say “Why me, God?”

Because above all, Joseph was an ordinary man. Extraordinary things didn’t happen to him. He was just a carpenter, an older guy, lived simply. He just wanted a wife and family, and he got…this. A pregnant wife who wasn’t pregnant by him. A child who came from some sort of action of God, he wasn’t sure how to explain it. And dreams. Dream after dream, ruining his sleep, making his life so much more complicated than he wanted it to be. He was an ordinary man, and God called him to be extraordinary.

There’s a picture at the National Gallery. It is small, just a pencil sketch, really, by Rembrandt. It is later in Jesus’ life. Remember when Jesus was twelve and got separated from his parents after the Passover feast and he started teaching in the Temple? This picture tells the tale of the three of them, reunited again, heading for home. A mother, a preteen boy, the family dog, and dad. And let me tell you, dad is mightily ticked off. The expression on his face, his strong carpenter’s hand gripping his son’s wrist like a vise, his hat squashed down over his grumpy face. The tension is so high in this little sketch that even the dog is cringing, running alongside them, looking like he’s afraid he might get whacked with Joseph’s walking stick. This is not a handsome older gentleman who is distant from Mary and Jesus, this is an angry workman whose son got lost, whose wife had been a basket case for the past three days, who is wondering, for perhaps the thousandth time since the first dream, what he had gotten himself into and why he kept saying “yes” to the God who had put him there. His face is an ordinary father’s face. This ordinary, faithful man who loved a child who in the sketch is staring up to the sky as if he wants to commune with his heavenly father. This ordinary man with an extraordinary child.

And that’s the most remarkable thing of all. In Matthew’s gospel, Joseph is given only a hint of what is to come. He knows from the beginning that this is a special child, from God, destined to “save the people from their sins.” This is a child to fulfill the prophecies of old. Joseph knew his Isaiah, that passage that was read this morning. He knew that there was to be a savior, and God told him that this little child was it. But how was this to play out? Was this to be a military leader? A king? Joseph knew they were from the line of David, but it was beyond all comprehension, what this all would mean. And yet, although he did not know the whole story, he followed God’s directions. He acted on faith. This ordinary man who just wanted a family of his own ended up with something very different, but he didn’t shrink away from the task. He stayed with Mary, and he raised Jesus as his own.

The gospels don’t tell us anything about Joseph after the incident at the Temple, but I picture him as an ordinary father, letting his toddler son play with blocks of wood in the shop, while keeping the sharp tools out of his reach, I picture him asking the boy if he had said his prayers in the evening, telling him to help his mother with that heavy bucket of water from the well, showing him how to throw a ball. I imagine him wondering what the future held for this boy, who in childhood seemed like any other little boy. His boy, and yet not. Not his boy, and yet utterly his. An ordinary man, with a child who held the promise of us all.

Sometimes we are shaken by what God seems to be asking us to do. When I realized I was being called to ordained ministry, I said no for several years, before I was brave enough to say yes. It frightened me. I was just an ordinary woman, wanting to live my life in a way that was good for my family and was faithful to God. But God asked me to do something I didn’t expect. I sat up in bed, shaking, in a cold sweat. I was frightened, even though what God was asking of me was a great deal less than what he asked of Joseph. But Joseph was my teacher.
What did Joseph do, in those moments of his dreams? When God was asking him to do the unexpected thing, something he felt was beyond him? He said yes. And his yes was a deeply moving one.

When Jesus was born, Matthew tells us that Joseph named him. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s more significant than that brief phrase suggests. Scholars tell us that by giving Jesus his name, Joseph was identifying him in that society, in that time, as his own son. He was adopting him as his own.

There may have been whispers about Jesus’ paternity in those days; the town was small and there was little privacy. The gospel doesn’t tell us. But if there were, those whispers would have been shut down by this act, this naming. It protected both Mary and Jesus. It was a first act of love toward a child who was a mystery to him. The name, too was an act of faith. The name he gave him was Jesus, or Yeshua – God saves. An act of faith, in that name, an act of belief in the God of his dreams. And the subsequent acts of love, of protecting, of teaching, were the same beautiful acts of a caring father, an ordinary man who did the extraordinary. Why? Because this ordinary man was extraordinary in his faith, in his righteousness, in his love of his God.

So this day, after the glory and angel songs of Christ’s birth, when the presents are unwrapped and some toys are already broken, when we’re thinking we really should take down the decorations and put the tree out on the curb, when we begin to move back into the humdrum of short winter days, we remember an ordinary man who listened to what God told him in his dreams and who said yes, and yes again.

We are ordinary people. God may not ask us the big things. But there may a thousand little extraordinary ways in which we can be faithful in our days, even in these short, dark, winter days, that will make the light shine and the angels sing once again,

Amen.

Post Christmas Post

Yesterday was quiet and delightful. PH and I slept in a bit (anything past 6 is sleeping in for us), had coffee in bed, came down and opened the stockings, then had breakfast and opened the rest fo the gifts. My big present was a Palm PDA - PH's was software and cabling that allows him to convert his LPs into MP3 or CD format. We spent much of the day playing with our toys...it never gets old, does it?

I talked to StrongOpinions, who is up north with her dad, and Litigator and StoneMason, who were working during this busy season in CA and VT. StoneMason and StrongOpinions will be here for their second Christmas in a couple of days - Litigator won't make it east until Feb. We are waiting for him to get his grades back from this past semester. If he passes everything, he will (finally) graduate from college. I think we all willl be relieved and grateful when that happens. College was not intellectually difficult for him, but he had some growing up to do.

Dinner was rack of lamb, sauteed brussels sprouts, roasted new potatoes, carrots, a bit of red wine, and German chocolate cake. Today the diet starts again.

I also got to talk by phone to the grandbabies. The Princess was very taken with the American Girl colonial dress I got for her AG doll. There is a lady at the Old Town Farmer's Market who makes them by hand - appropriate in a town that prides itself on its colonial roots - and they are precious. D-I-L wondered if I had made it myself. There was a time when I did do such things - StrongOpinions had mom-made outfits of all kinds for her AG dolls, and I also made her princess costumes and her dress-up-go-to-church clothes when she was a sprout - but I fear I no longer have the time for such lovely pursuits. Hard to believe a student has less time than a lobbyist, but that's the truth!

On this last day before we fly to Windy City for a couple of days with PH's family, I think I'll clean the house and organize my very messy closet.

Or I may just read and knit on a pair of socks...

What are YOU doing in the aftermath?

A Peaceful Christmas Eve

PH and I slept in (for us) all the way to 7 a.m. A leisurely breakfast of Swedish pancakes with lingonberries, then a drive to Annapolis to wander through shops and have crabcakes. We came home, I wrote the sermon for 12/30, I cooked us dinner (steak, pureed cauliflower, zucchini sauteed with garlic, dishes of fresh raspberries with whipped cream, red wine) and rewrote the sermon for 12/30. I suspect it will go through at least one more rewrite before it's done.

In 90 minutes we'll drive to St P's, my home parish, to sing with the choir for the 11 pm service. Candles, a packed house, a lot of familiar carols and a few unfamiliar ones, hugs with friends, then home by 1 a.m.

StrongOpinions is up north at her dad's, Litigator and StoneMason are working through the holidays.

The quiet is good.

Tomorrow we may actually sleep until 8 a.m. A blessed Christmas in so many ways to each and every one of you!



(P.S. - for Lorraine - the high tea was fabulous. Little open-faced sandwiches with cucumber and shrimp, egg salad, chicken mousse. Scones with clotted cream, lemon curd, raspberry spread. Mini-pastries with chocolate mousse, raspberry tarts, pine nut and candied fruit tarts. A glass of champagne. At least a dozen teas to choose from. Plus great conversation. We've decided that this will be a tradition amongst us. Life is good!)

Friday Five: It's Almost Christmas!

What was one of your favorite childhood gifts that you gave?

It has to be a warm nightgown I gave my mother. Daddy gave me the money, but I picked it out myself, for the first time. I think I was seven or eight. Mom loved it.

What is one of your favorite Christmas recipes? Bonus points if you share the recipe with us.

Buche de Noel. A chocolate Yule Log cake made like a jellyroll, with delicate chocolate sponge cake surrounding either whipped cream or mocha ganache (rich chocolate and espresso buttercream), frosted with dark chocolate ganache. You slice a bit off the end at an angle, and attach it to the side of the main log to make a branch. You use the tines of a fork to make a bark pattern on the frosting. My kids always called it "Log" after the faux ad on "Ren and Stimpy" - remember the song? "It's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good!"

What is a tradition that your family can't do without? (And by family, I mean family of origin, family of adulthood, or that bunch of cool people that just feel like family.)

This is one from PH's Swedish family - it's a Christmas smorgasbord, with sil (pickled herring), potato salad, korv (a pork and potato sausage), crispbread, pickles, rice pudding with lingonberries, limpa (Swedish rye bread)...an amazing feast.

Pastors and other church folk often have very strange traditions dictated by the "work" of the holidays. What happens at your place?

Because our big Christmas services are the night before (including a service that finishes at midnight), we usually come home, have a drink of some suitable libation, and open one present. The other gifts are opened after the Christmas morning service.

If you could just ditch all the traditions and do something unexpected... what would it be?

One of my friends from seminary will be winging his way to a January term in South Africa at Christmastime, so he is flying to Paris for Christmas Eve, staying at a lovely hotel, having a fine dinner, going to Notre Dame for midnight Mass, and spending part of the next day relaxing and walking around Paris before he heads to the airport and his flight to Johannesburg. Sounds like a wonderful trip, doesn't it?

Almost there...

The ST exam was fine. At least I think it was fine. She posed a series of practical questions that someone might ask us in a congregational setting. We were to compose our answers drawing on a couple of the several theologians we had read in each topic area. I know I passed, the question is just whether it was a B or a B+. I doubt it was A material. I'm just glad it is over.

The ST paper is essentially done. I want to do some final edits tomorrow and will drop it off. Then I can breathe. It is a sign, however, of the fact that I am almost done that I actually baked StrongOpinions' favorite cookies this evening.

Today I dropped off the Church History Christian Ed project - it ran to 100 pages of materials plus two CDs - and tomorrow I will drop off the St paper. Then I can truly say I am halfway through seminary.

Wow.

Then it's time to start writing the three sermons I am preaching between now and the end of January.

Update:

8:32 a.m. on Thursday - ST paper is done. Life is good!

Functioning, Barely

The husband of dear friend L lent me a power cord, so I have a functional laptop. After speaking to Dell folks in Mumbai and Texas, another power cord is winging its way to me, but won't arrive until after the ST exam, so I am doubly grateful for the lent cord.

A dear friend is leaving seminary to take some time to heal his heart and soul. Peace to him.

The Systematics exam looms tomorrow. I am given to understand that the prof is very gracious in her grading. May it be so. My brain is mush.

The long paper for her class is now over 10 pages and is still not done. I think it will clock in at 13 or 14. I hope to finish it tomorrow afternoon.

Several of us are going to tea on Friday afternoon at the Ritz. We can probably ill afford it financially, but we can most definitely use the pampering after this semester. Several of us will be celebrating the mid-point of our life at seminary, two will celebrate heading into their last semester, two will celebrate surviving their first semester. These measures are not reflective of the depth of the feelings we have about all this, and the length of the journey we are all on.

Thank God for the time to step away from our studies and immerse ourselves in this season of hope and family.

Humbug!

The power adapter on my laptop has died. A major project and a major paper are on the laptop, which has no power...the battery has no juice either. I'm on the phone with Dell support to get a replacement power adapter which won't get here until tomorrow, after the Systematics final. The project is due tomorrow. I've got an earlier version of it on my flash drive, but it would mean a few hours of reconstruction to get it back up to speed.

This stinks.

Progress Report

The Church History final is now done - I just sent it off via email to the prof. I think I did a B+ job on it, but the TA is grading it, and he's a harder grader than the professor, so we'll see. He did it like a General Ordination Exam question. Timed, with a fairly complex question that drew on familiar and unfamiliar sources. In a strange way, it was fun.

The Church History team project is 3/4 of the way done. Just waiting on the last set of materials from the third person on our team. It will take me another hour or two to integrate her pieces, then it gets a final proof-reading, and it's ready for delivery.

I'm still procrastinating on the ST paper. I really only have one more section to write, maybe expanding a little in the other parts, but it's really close. I don't know whether I'll get it done tomorrow morning or Tuesday, but I'm determined to get it out of my hands and into the prof's mailbox.

That leaves only the ST exam. Daunting but manageable, I think. A study session tomorrow afternoon, maybe one more on Tuesday, then the exam Wednesday morning. I will be very happy to have it over with.

Friday

Two momentous things:

I am now at the halfway point at Big Old Seminary. One more paper to wrap up and two more exams to complete for the semester to be truly over, but this is manageable.

I am now officially retired from the bank. I continued working part-time doing government relations work for them for the past year and a half. It has been hard to balance competing interests, but the bank has been quite flexible and the income has been a blessing. It will be good to have all the bank stuff off my desk, making room for more school stuff. I unplugged the computer and printer and BlackBerry and such this afternoon. It felt very cathartic.

Now I am truly on the way to a new life! I will celebrate by going to a party tonight.

Countdown

524 days until graduation.

Not that I'm counting or anything.

Rainy Thursday, Too

It's gray and cool and damp, but it's okay. The Systematics paper isn't done yet, but it's okay. I'm not done studying yet for my two exams, but it's okay. Dinner isn't ready yet, but it's okay.

Somehow, that stuff doesn't really matter.

Christmas is coming. Christ is coming.

I had to remind myself of that when I heard of some troubling news from one friend, and some sad news from another. Nothing world-shattering or fatal, just the sort of thing that makes you shake your head and sigh.

People around Big Old Seminary are getting a bit antsy with exam week coming up. For some reason, I'm not feeling that way. I know I'll at least pass the tests, and the paper will get done in time, and will be at least adequate. Those things are not the point of what I'm doing.

If I keep praying, then I'll be able to do the real work of this time of my life. And prayer is something I do know how to do. Thank you, Jesus.

Rainy Days and Mondays

So very tired, and the gray damp weather isn't helping.

The preaching went well on Sunday morning, and the singing went surprisingly well Sunday night. I guess when you're singing the Messiah and you have to go to the bathroom through the whole dang thing, and you're thinking about that, you don't have the bandwidth to worry about the singing.

Not enough hours to sleep and do all the reading, so I think I'll opt for sleep. StrongOpinions has been ill, and there have been several tearful phone calls, so I'm short on sleep right now.

Spiritual direction was a real blessing today. An hour of lectio divina wasn't nearly enough, but it helped. I am so ready for this semester to be over.

On a positive note (one should always end on a positive note, right?) I found some really cool music (check it out: http://www.savae.org/echoes1.html) for my Church History Christian Ed project. Very wild stuff, very Middle Eastern. If that doesn't make students feel they're in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, I don't know what would.

I got my three parishes to check out for my summer internship. Interviewing with two of them on Thursday, and hoping to hear from the third tomorrow. It's hard to have energy about it right now, but the sooner that gets decided, the better.

Sorry I don't sound more enthusiastic. I think I need a vacation.

Sermon for Sunday, December 9, 2007

“Shall We Gather At the River?”
Advent II, Year A, RCL. Isaiah 11:1-10, Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 , Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12.

What was truly shocking, the view that took their breath away, were the sheer numbers.

It looked like hundreds, maybe thousands, of people clustered all along the rocky riverbank, waiting for their turn to go into that unsavory water. They looked hungry for it, these people, who had come not only from the city, from Jerusalem, but from the four corners of Judea. Their faces spoke of need, of a desire for cleanliness, of a wanting of washing in this water that seemed so unlikely to clean anyone.

And then there was the man himself. He had first been spotted wandering around the wilderness, crying out “Repent!” Word had gotten out about his message, one that resonated with people. What did this mean, “The kingdom of heaven is coming near?” Was he saying that the Messiah was coming? He certainly didn’t look like a herald of a king. He was wearing animal hides, strapped around him with a thong of leather. His skin was as leathery and brown as the thong, bespeaking a man who lived rough, in the outdoors. His hair and beard were matted into dreadlocks. He smelled bad. There were rumors that he just ate whatever he could grab, insects, wild honey, weeds, whatever was available to one living in the wild. Would they be rendered unclean by moving closer to him?

It was a risk, but perhaps worth it. His words were compelling. They had to find out what this was all about, this washing in the river. The people who were coming out of the river now were almost glowing. Hard to imagine anyone coming out of that silty water looking refreshed, but there it was. They looked clean. How could it be?

And yet this seemed contrary to the Law, whether you believed the rules of the Pharisees or the rules of the Sadducees. No, no stepping into the water for them.

Ah, but the temptation was there. The curiosity, what this might feel like, besides just being wet and muddy. And they were there, right at the edge, with the water lapping at their toes. It would only take a step…

But then he spotted them. This brown and wild-eyed man who played a prophet, or was a prophet. Who knew?

And he was ripping into these men, these Pharisees and Sadducees, calling them vipers, calling them pompous, evil fools, calling them barren and useless. What was this? A life spent in dedication to the law, and this is how they were treated, and by this madman?

But what was he saying now? Something about another who was to come, one even more powerful than he? Oh, there’s a thought, someone even more crazy than this one. This new one sounded like he might be violent. Winnowing forks…fire…

Advocating overthrow of the law? Of the government? Such talk was dangerous.

No, they wouldn’t stand there and be insulted by this madman. They would step back from the river’s edge, step back from whatever strange thing was happening here. This was too dangerous.

The old hymn we sang this morning tells it all: Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod? Shall we respond to that invitation to come to the water and be washed clean?
So much of our story as the people of God is about water. The water of baptism, the water of the Flood, the water out of the side of the crucified Jesus. This story, too, is about water, but it is also about that brief moment before we touch the water. We are at a decision-making point. Do we step in? Do we step back? We can only guess at what might happen if we do step in, and that’s a frightening proposition. It reminds me of the game my children and I used to play at the little beach near our house.

It was a cove, a lovely little protected beach. The waves were gentle, just right for three children and their overworked mom. We’d run down to the water’s edge, where the water turned the sand from shifting softness to cool hardness. As the leading edge of the little waves would run up the beach, we’d run backward, then as the wave ebbed, we’d run forward, teasing our toes with the bubbly water. Eventually, of course, we’d get our feet wet, and then our ankles, and then our legs, until we were wet all over, and laughing madly as we swam in the cove. Our fear of the cold water washed away as we moved from the edge deeper and deeper. It didn’t seem so cold any more.

Our Pharisees and Sadducees couldn’t bring themselves to get over their fear. They stepped back from the water’s edge; they didn’t even test the waters. And with that decision, they lost their great chance.

But can you imagine what it might have been like if they had not been afraid, if they had taken that risk? Let’s put ourselves back in the scene again, gathered at the river. Let’s go back there again:

What is truly shocking, the view that takes our breath away, are the sheer numbers. It looks like hundreds, maybe thousands, of people clustered all along the rocky riverbank, waiting for their turn to go into that unsavory water. They look hungry for it. Their faces speak of need, of a desire for cleanliness, and we too have that hunger. We know something is missing from our lives. Our curiosity has drawn us to this place.

And now we see the man himself. He had first been spotted wandering around the wilderness, crying out “Repent!” Word had gotten out about his message, one that resonated with people. It resonated with us, even as we struggled to grasp its meaning. So we came here, hoping to learn more. What does this mean, “The kingdom of heaven is coming near?” Is he saying that the Messiah was coming? We have been waiting so very long, and things are getting worse, not better. Could it be? Could the Messiah be coming, heralded by this dirty crazy man? If we step closer to him, will we be rendered unclean? Somehow, it no longer matters.

It is a risk, but perhaps worth it. His words are compelling. We have to find out what this is all about, this washing in the river. The people coming out of the river now are almost glowing. Hard to imagine anyone coming out of that silty water looking refreshed, but there it is. They look clean. We long for that glow, that inner cleanliness. It has been so long since we have felt the Law was clean, that we were clean.

And yet this is frightening. It seems contrary to the Law. What if this is all fakery? What if we step in and nothing happens? We’d look like fools. No, no stepping into the water for us.

Ah, but the temptation is there. The curiosity, what this might feel like, besides just being wet and muddy. And we are right there, right at the edge, with the water lapping at our toes. It would only take a step…

But then he spots us. This brown and wild-eyed man, this erstwhile prophet.

And he rips into us, calling us vipers, calling us pompous, evil fools, calling us barren and useless. What is this? A life spent in dedication to the law, and this is how we are treated? The realization washes over us. We are convicted by his words.

And now he speaks of another who is to come, one even more powerful than he, using words that frighten us. Is this Messiah a God of violence? Winnowing forks…fire…

Advocating overthrow of the law? Of the government? Such talk is dangerous.

But despite this dangerous talk, we cannot bring ourselves to step back from the river’s edge, step back from whatever strange and wondrous thing is happening here. Yes, this is dangerous, but there is something irresistible, a pull toward the water. We know that whatever happens, it will be good. We will be transformed. We must step off the riverbank, into the water, into a new way of being.

And you? Is it too dangerous for you? Can you feel the pull? Will you gather with me at the river? Are you willing to take my hand, and step into the murky water, and be washed clean, in preparation for the One who is to come?

Amen.

Is there anything

...quite as delicious as the smell of a Christmas tree? PH picked our tree and wreath up at our old parish - they bring up a truckload from South Carolina as a fundraiser for the church every year and these trees are fresh and wonderful - and we set it up this evening.

Oh, that smell is Christmas for me!

Yes, I know they shed needles as the weeks go on, and the cats think they are jungle gyms, but it's worth it for that sweet aroma whenever I open the front door and walk in. Those pre-lit plastic trees aren't for me. I need the real deal.

I went shopping briefly this evening at the Mall of Many Ethnicities. Big Old Seminary is doing one of those gift things for poor and homeless families. I got some "church" dresses for a three year old girl - a fun thing, although many of the dresses in the modestly priced store for these little girls look more like Bratz and Baby Ho's than sweet little three year olds. What are these manufacturers thinking? I also got a nice purse for a mom. Moments like this, I count my blessings in a major way.

I also looked at the polar fleece PJs, and was sorely tempted but did not buy. I was wondering if I should regret that when I came home and the house was freezing. The pilot had gone out in the furnace. Thank goodness PH is handy about such things. Thank goodness a match was all that was required to fix it. Thank goodness we have a roof over our heads...

Let's say a prayer for all those who don't, like the folks for whom I got a few meager presents, and like all the homeless who sleep on steam grates over in Your Nation's Capital on frigid, 15 degree nights like this.

Status Report

The Pastoral Theology paper is done and turned in.

The Church History paper is done and printed out and will be turned in tomorrow morning.

The study guides for Aquinas and Barth are done and distributed to my study group.

The short sermon for Homiletics was very well received (probably better than it deserved, but I'll take it).

The Advent Lessons and Carols (I sang a solo and also sang with two different choirs) went well. Incense! At Big Old Seminary (historically a bastion of low-church Episcopalians)! Will wonders never cease? The evening was made even more lovely by our first snowfall of the season. Driving home afterwards was a bit slippery, but there was very little traffic, so I just drove gently with all the trees and bushes and streets and houses glazed with snow. Good to be home, though.

More work tomorrow, but it seems like it's slowly getting done. I've got to wrap up the Church History Christian Ed project (maybe I'll get that done tomorrow) and then hunker down to finish the Systematics paper. The dear prof sent around sample questions for her final. Scared the bejabbers out of me. Ah, well, come Holy Spirit come and all that.

It will get done.

The Revised List

Still to do:
the bibliography of the ten-page Pastoral Theology paper - yes, I got it in under 11 pages!
the second half of the Church History/Christian Ed project lecture
the outline of the second lecture
the five-page Church History paper
the ten page Systematics paper.

I have one of two study guides I am responsible for in Systematics done (Aquinas) - the other is Barth and it's 95% done.

The good news is that several major things are behind me. Tomorrow is the five-minute sermon#5 for Homiletics (written and ready to go) and Sunday is the Advent II sermon (written and ready to go).

Other things on the agenda:
Tomorrow is Lessons and Carols at Big Old Seminary, and I've got a solo - not overly stressful
Friday night is dress rehearsal for the new contemporary Saturday Night service at Saint Middle School - it will launch on 12/15
Saturday night is a party at our new neighbors' house
Sunday is Messiah sing-a-long - once again I will sing "Rejoice Greatly" and I haven't had time to practice at all. Drat.
The sing-a-long is preceded by two different parties at which I must make an appearance. Double drat.

Somehow it will get done - not sure how, but it will.

A prayer please for StrongOpinions, who had to visit the ER this morning after being sick all night with the flu. She's back in her apartment, but still feeling pretty bad. It is not fun to try to care for one's daughter 2000 miles away.

Too cute!

The B-man and Princess...I love being a grandmother!

Sundays are not necessarily a time for Sabbath Rest

A great Advent I at Saint Middle School, with an all-time high number of attendees, 126! New families, some of whom have already pledged. This is real progress for us. We'd need to be over 200 per week to be able to build -we already have the land - maybe someday soon! The Alternative Gift Fair is going very well. People make donations to local charities in honor of a family member or friend and get gift cards they can give the honored person. Already well over $10K and we may make it to $40K when we're done.

It was one of those mornings when the junior acolytes were antsy, the senior acolyte seemed of the verge of total meltdown because she didn't know when to ring the bells, I messed up one of the page turns in the altar book, but somehow we got through it all. The Vicar's sermon was lovely, and a nice set-up for my sermon next week (thanks, Vicar!) and people were talking at coffee hour. I had a several minute pastoral conversation with someone I hadn't yet talked to - feels like they do see me as a pastor-type.

Then we had my Lay Committee meeting - this is my support team who talk about things like how things are going, how they can support me, what they think about my sermon, ideas and suggestions for the teen sunday school class...lovely people, and interesting conversation.

Got home at 3:15 pm, in time to clean up and cook. The third load of wash is in right now. A classmate, a dear young man who is interested in doing further work in pastoral counseling, is coming for dinner. I wanted to get him together with PH, who is of course a pastoral counselor, to talk about programs and particular interests and such. I should be writing my papers, but it feels like this is more important, for him, and especially for me, since I need to feel like a human and not a student, and do something I know how to do well, like cooking and drinking wine.

The menu is roast pork stuffed with dried fruit, red cabbage, sauteed zucchini, hasselback potatoes (shout-out to Nigella Lawson!), French bread, homemade apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Wine. life is good, if not very restful right now.

Papers can wait.

Various Updates

The icon of Saint Matthew is finally finished. My teacher has taken it home with her to varnish it. Saint Gabriel is next. Next in the queue after that is either a Sophia or a Saint Paul, then Christ Pantokrator. Assuming, of course, that I can find the time to continue the icon-writing class. I'll post a picture of the Saint Matthew when it comes back to me.

The presentation for Pastoral Theology is ready to go, and the accompanying ten page paper is about 2/3s done. It probably will go slightly over ten pages, and I hope the prof doesn't ding me for that, but it's a big subject (pastoral care and suicide).

The Church History paper is still an utter mystery. It's only five pages, but a thesis statement hasn't jumped out at me yet. On the other hand, I pretty much know what I want to do for the Christian Ed project for Church History - it's just a matter of sitting down and actually churning the thing out. I'm really trying to clear the decks so I can concentrate solely on the Systematics paper...maybe in a few days, I hope.

Five minute sermon for Homiletics class (Advent IV) is done.

Sermon for Saint Middle School for Advent II is done.

Oh, and some of the Christmas shopping is done. Not enough, but some.

I could use a few more hours of consciousness in each day...