All Manner of Thing

The repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets

2006-11-20T18:11:00.000-05:00

Back in August, I wrote about my need to set out for something new. The something, it turns out, is graduate school in public policy or public administration, and then moving overseas for the foreseeable future, working on reconstruction, peacebuilding and development in conflict or post-conflict situations. Three to five years from now, I want to be in Beirut or Basra or Kabul, partnering with religious and tribal leaders to rebuild streets, redesign sewer systems, or create jobs: whatever is most needed and wanted by the people I'm working with. Why this, why me, why grad school first, and what it all means aren't subjects I want to dissect in a post. Suffice it to say that I'm going through a time of transition, with attendant rough edges and general edginess. I can't focus on anything other than the details of moving forward: school choices, essays, recommendations, transcripts... But when this passage from Isaiah was read on Sunday morning, I stopped and listened. Here was the prophet talking about exactly what I want to do-- repair breaches, restore streets and gardens-- and making it clear that this fast is chosen and blessed by God. I don't need to look outside its bounds for a calling or a spiritual life. I can pursue that kneeling in a church or pacing around a beaten-up, burnt-down office, with people arguing, weapons being waved, and chaos around every corner. As long as I am focused on making a space for the possibility of shalom, I think I'll be doing what I'm supposed to do.

Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and the Lord will say, 'Here I am.' If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

Restoration of Bagh-e-Babur, Kabul, 2005

The Parable of the Old Men and the Young (Wilfred Owen)

2006-11-11T23:05:00.000-05:00

The Parable of the Old Men and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

- Wilfred Owen

The Sun Rising (John Donne)

2006-10-22T17:37:00.000-05:00

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both the'Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: "All here in one bed lay."

She'is all states, and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy'as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

- John Donne

Photo is a San Francisco morning from Andrew Sullivan's series "The View from Your Window." Can't figure out how to make line indents show up in Blogger, hence the odd formatting of this poem.

Feast in Candlelight (Fadhil Al-Azzawi)

2006-10-08T23:41:00.000-05:00

Feast in Candlelight

Here is the twentieth century
in its long, dim hall
with murderers and conjurers
sitting at its table
in the flickering candlelight
of their victory,
waiting for their meal.
The waiters come out
one by one
from their hidden corners,
balancing dishes of darkness
on their heads
to serve their guests.

They will all drink from the same bottle
and watch the evening fall among the trees.
Parades of drunken soldiers
wave their bloody flags
and march down the street.

Through the window
the moon will soon shine.

When they finish their feast,
we will sit at that same table
and drink the same wine
too.

- Fadhil Al-Azzawi

On a grey, rainy 11 September

2006-09-11T22:18:00.000-05:00

A poem that I love for its ambiguity-- I've seen it used as a statement of faith in the face of everything, but today it strikes me as bleak and terrible.

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.

- W.S. Merwin

Resurrexit (Anselm Kiefer)

2006-09-09T16:07:00.000-05:00

The gallery card accompanying this painting says that the title, Resurrexit, is a melding of "resurrection" and "exit". The word is, of course, also Latin: "Christus resurrexit," we sing on Easter. But this painting doesn't fit into a morning of incense, lilies, and bells. Here, a snake slithers over flame-colored leaves, down an alley of bare trees toward a smoky sky. The stairs leading up and out are tacked onto the top, the transition from forest to indoors unclear. They resemble the stairs to the attic Kiefer was using for a studio at the time. Do exit and resurrection take place through art? Or is the painting saying that the way to resurrection/exit-- like any death, despite our hope for rebirth-- is narrow and difficult, with the end result unclear?

It's a rather bizarre juxtaposition of two quite different artists, but looking at this, I'm reminded of Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Lame Shall Enter First," in which a widowed father anxious to pursue good works does so at the expense of a relationship with his own son. The boy takes to reading the Bible and studying the stars from an attic room, and believes he has seen his dead mother in the heavens. One evening, his father has a moment of radical clarity and realizes he's neglected the one person he loves the most. He rushes up the stairs to him, throwing open the door to find the "image of his salvation" has hung himself, an act O'Connor calls his "flight into space". Who knows what kind of resurrection/exit lurks behind the door to Kiefer's attic?

The Drowned and the Saved (Primo Levi)

2006-09-09T01:08:00.000-05:00

Primo Levi's first book was published in the United States under the title Survival in Auschwitz, and everywhere else under the title If This Is a Man. (It's absolutely infuriating--this flattening and simplifying of titles for the U.S. market. For example, the film Regeneration based on Pat Barker's excellent novel of the same name is called here Behind the Lines. And Levi's second book The Truce was called here The Reawakening. Can Americans not comprehend ambiguous or allusive titles? Must we have optimism smiling up from every bookcover?)

If This Is a Man is the perfect title for Levi's account of his imprisonment in Auschwitz. He describes the stripping away of anything that resembles humanity, telling his story and those of others in spare words whose muted intensity makes them all the more compelling. He ends the book with the arrival of the Russians at Auschwitz, told in one sentence between a description of emptying the latrines and carrying out a man who had died in the night. No light at the end of the tunnel, no sense that survival was preordained in any way. It's the immediacy of the book that stands out the most for me: in his preface, Levi describes his motivation in writing as "interior liberation" and notes that the chapters were written in order of urgency, not necessarily of chronology. His direct prose reflects his need to provide a precise, honest accounting of what happened.

The Drowned and the Saved, Levi's last book, is a series of essays examining aspects of the Holocaust forty years later. While he uses himself as an example at times, Levi's concern is with the univers concentrationnaire and all its inhabitants, living and dead. He begins with the problem of memory, truth, and the many ways in which they are simultaneously unearthed and obscured: through denial and mendacity to be sure, but also through the more natural stylizing of memories on the part of those who have done things which they do not care to remember, and those who cannot bear to remember the events they have lived through.

Levi recreates step by painstaking step the stratification of the Lager and the useless violence that the camp's authorities employed, violence that seemed to serve no point but to inflict pain, "occasionally having a purpose, yet always redundant, always disproportionate to the purpose itself." Yet it seems that inflicting such extreme pain and degradation served a purpose after all: dehumanizing the victims to the point where the murderer's job is easy. And the masters of the univers concentrationnaire managed to dehumanize and murder their victims while keeping their hands clean. The acts of beating and controlling prisoners was delegated to Kapos selected from among their ranks, and gassing was carried out by special details of prisoners, Sonderkommandos, in order to underscore just how subhuman the victims were. Levi states baldly the ultimate effect this useless/useful violence has, an effect other Holocaust writers sometimes seem to ignore: ''It is naive, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system sanctifies its victims: on the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.''

Levi examines the inner workings of degraded victims: Chaim Rumkowski (head of the Judenrat in the Łódź ghetto), the prisoners who served as barracks heads, clerks, Kapos-- all people we might like to condemn for accepting favor or power from their oppressors. He probes their decisions, actions, and excuses calmly and thoroughly-- not justifying or absolving them, but allowing these men and women their unavoidable humanity. We can still judge them-- and in some cases, Levi does--but we cannot refuse to understand them. Witness his words on Rumkowski:

His folly is that of presumptuous and mortal Man as he is described by Isabella in Measure for Measure, the Man who,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured
His glassy essence, like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep.
Like Rumkowski, we too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.

Levi writes about the past, but he is writing for the present and future. The book ends with a call for the wisdom and action needed to end current violence and the threat of nuclear annihilation, dangers whose genealogy Levi traces back to the violence of Hitler's Germany in a fascinating passage (pp. 200-201.) Interestingly, this makes the book feel more dated, not less, perhaps because the threat of nuclear war and world war has faded. The world seems as much on the brink as ever, but there are many brinks and many prescriptions for action (and many blind eyes), making his language of "we" and "our" and "men of goodwill" seem like what it is, an exhortation from a different era.

In writing The Drowned and the Saved, Levi is trying to erect a dike against the trend of simplification and stereotype and the widening gap between "things as they were 'down there' and things as they are represented by the current imagination, fed by approximate books, films and myths." Levi's tone and his method of inquiry serve his efforts well: scrupulous, precise, analytical, but (and some of his critics miss this) also full of passion, compassion, and condemnation. This clear-eyed vision is what remains with the reader long after Levi’s book is put aside.

Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth

2006-09-06T22:26:00.000-05:00

Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth at the Hirshhorn is awesome, in the way the word is meant to be used. The exhibition is dominated by Kiefer's enormous canvases, with paint caked on and built up; lead and wire elements hanging from them; nuclear submarines, sunflowers, cages, window frames, skis attached. Kiefer's usual palette of blacks, browns, and greys sets a consistently somber tone, as do the now-expected lines (furrows, railroad tracks) that draw the eye up to high, dark horizons. The paintings are complemented by similarly imposing, mysterious sculptures-- a massive book with wings that's rooted to the ground, a bookshelf with its volumes crushed by meteorites, books made of lead whose pages are as tall as a man.

The show spans several decades of Kiefer's output and fits a vast array of sub-themes under its broad heading. An exhibit of Kiefer's star paintings and would be enough to delve into for hours, but they are broken up among paintings of his studio, representations of odd Godheads, palettes superimposed over landscapes, sunflowers displayed in books and ruined halls. There's so much on offer, and yet it's an incomplete picture of his art: the recurring images of charred, cracked and riven earth refer back to his earlier works on the Holocaust and post-Holocaust Germany, which are barely touched on. How does one get from the suffocating earth pictures to the evocative but mysterious heaven pictures? When did Kiefer make the leap and begin discussing the cosmos, and why? What is it exactly that he's saying about heaven? His heaven is even darker and more distant than his earth-- there is little escape there, and a lot of doom. The exhibition guide says that Kiefer's images "intertwine a complex range of sources, including alchemical treatises; Nordic, Greek, Egyptian and early Christian mythology; and mystical Jewish texts, often relating these subjects to modern history." So much is clear. But how and why he's moved from recent German history to the sweep of human history and beyond remains a mystery.

The final room has more light and buoyancy than the rest of the exhibition put together: in "Leviathan", a model of a nuclear submarine crests a purple wave on a sunny day; in "Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo", golden metal sunflowers emerge from red, white, and lead books, on which the white crests against the red clay like waves breaking over rocks. While the sea is a turbulent, destructive force in some of the other works, here one thinks of the early days of creation and the forming of the earth from the void. And yet there is no commentary on what appears to be a new mood from Kiefer. I don't mind the artist and the art being a mystery, but I do mind the curators not bothering to tease it out a bit.

All that said, I loved the chance to see all these Kiefers in one place together, as I'd seen mostly prints and those a couple at a time. I went with an artist friend, and hearing her explain his techniques and delight in them added a whole new dimension to the experience. The Hirshhorn puts on some of the best exhibitions in town: the 2002-2003 Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera is still one of my all-time favorites, the 2003 Gerhard Richter show had an intriguingly different feel from its stop at MoMa, and Gyroscope, the exhibition of pieces from the permanent collection was just a hoot.

Jerusalem (Anselm Kiefer)

2006-09-05T00:47:00.000-05:00

We Journey towards a Home

We journey towards a home not of our flesh. Its chestnut trees are not of our bones.
Its rocks are not like goats in the mountain hymn. The pebbles' eyes are not lilies.
We journey towards a home that does not halo our heads with a special sun.
Mythical women applaud us. A sea for us, a sea against us.
When water and wheat are not at hand, eat our love and drink our tears . . .
There are mourning scarves for poets. A row of marble statues will lift our voice.
And an urn to keep the dust of time away from our souls. Roses for us and against us.
You have your glory, we have ours. Of our home we see only the unseen: our mystery.
Glory is ours: a throne carried on feet torn by roads that led to every home but our own!
The soul must recognize itself in its very soul, or die here.

– Mahmoud Darwish

In which I apologize to Thomas Hardy

2006-09-05T00:09:00.000-05:00

In high school, I read and scorned The Mayor of Casterbridge and by extension its author. I don't really remember why-- maybe I wasn't in the mood for its grimness, maybe it's what the kids were doing those days. I never picked up Hardy again, even when my friend Mike of excellent and discerning taste praised him to the heavens.

Until I read Under the Greenwood Tree (admittedly a lesser Hardy) this weekend. I would like now to offer a formal retraction of my high school scorn.

Under the Greenwood Tree is lovely-- a light tale of a village church choir who are asked to cease performing in the church and make way for the new fashion of organ music, and also of a young carrier's son in love with the village schoolmistress who toys with him a bit before the inevitable happy ending. As one of Hardy's earlier works, it presages many of the themes he develops more deeply and darkly elsewhere: the profound, irreversible shifts in village life that break down old ways of relating, the way secrets corrode one from the inside, and more. Only by reading back from his famous works can we really apprehend this, though. As Simon Gattrell says in his introduction, this novel represents "the relative innocence which in his later fiction becomes blighted with knowledge" but in which we can still believe in a future "in which Tess Durbeyfield will not be violated, deserted, and hanged, and Jude Fawley will not be seduced, frustrated, and abandoned to die."

The novel runs from winter through a year to another spring, and Hardy's descriptions of nature and the natural cycles of village life confirm that, while this is a pastoral narrated for a wider and more sophisticated readership, the narrator's sympathies are fully engaged with the village and its characters. And he is keen to make clear just how good life in the country can be. Take this passage:

The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears by the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves; when the night-jar comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of one note: when the apple-trees have bloomed and the roads and orchard grass become spotted with fallen petals; when the faces of the delicate flowers are darkened and their heads weighed down by the throng of honey-bees, which increase their humming till humming is too mild a term for the all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos, blackbirds, and sparrows that have hitherto been merry and respectful neighbors become noisy and persistent intimates.

Just reading this, I feel refreshed. And motivated to read more Hardy, despite the guarantee that whatever I read next will be far more bleak. What fun it is to change one's mind on an author, and for the better.

Vermont Journal 2

2006-09-01T22:53:00.000-05:00

While in Vermont, I scribbled down a list of things I wanted to remember, things that a week or two later already seem very far away. They include:

Vermont Journal 2

Sitting on the porch of our cabin, looking across the pond at the hill on the left. Seeing loons paddle and dive and hearing their calls to each other. Shivering a bit in the breeze, clutching the coffee mug ever tighter. Watching B swim to the floating platform in the mornings and sun herself on it against the backdrop of tall hills and sky. Reading Primo Levi, Martin Buber, Michela Wrong, Rory Stewart, and the older pages in this journal, dogearing them all, mind buzzing with bits to remember and record. After writing about the need to move on to a place unknown, looking out at a tree right in front of the pond, its branches backlit in bright sun, and finding it suddenly so easy to pray: "Help me to know." "Help me to know."
Canoeing with A up to and across the beaver dams. Beating out the others, fording the dams in record time and with suitable panache. That habit of turning everything into an expedition or a deed of derring-do. Where did that come from? The family and I have been doing it as long as I remember. Paddling past water lilies and the waxy, firm yellow flowers that often accompany them. Heading into Upper Symes Pond and seeing it open up into a deep V of near green hills, distant blue ones, and wide, bright sky. Looking over into the clear rippling water at the bottom several feet below, and watching tiny fish darting everywhere. The sun hot on my back, face and shoulders. Coming back into our pond, glancing up at the sky and seeing a huge, thin cloud, fissured into fragments like clay that's been baked by the sun.
The plants along the road - goldenrod, Queen Anne's lace, black-eyed Susans, tiger lilies, day lilies, a mauve flower that looked something like a rose, an anemone, or a mallow. Blackberries and what might in a different season show themselves to be blueberries or cranberries. Fallen trees with new plants springing up around them, growing all over them. The thin white birches. Small, horn-shaped orange flowers on short bushes. Ferns everywhere.
A's excellent cooking, G's bowel-disturbing yet delicious chili, corn roasted on the cob. Breakfasts of muesli and coffee on the porch. Wine at dinner, with the candles lit. Tipsy Trivial Pursuit (may the most sober win!) Watching Rushmore, or at least trying to. Getting texts from N far away in Cambridge at midnight and six in the morning. Sitting around a wonderful fire and having absolutely nothing to say, resorting to campfire stories and dirty games.
The snatches of poetry and prose that keep coming back. "Hashivenu" running through my head at odd, frequent intervals. Hashivenu Adonai Elecha, V'na-shuvah, Chadesh yameynu K'kedem. "Turn us to you, O Lord, and we shall return. Renew us as in the ancient days."
Another half-remembered quote: this time, the psalm that begins "I shall lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help." According to the BCP, it's actually a question: "I shall lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." I do love the idea of help coming from the hills, of lifting one's eyes in expectation of assistance or blessing from these wise, ancient, lovely forms. Maybe, like the Van Doren poem, I'll keep on misremembering this one.

Poems (Mark Van Doren)

2006-08-23T23:20:00.000-05:00

A very few readers of The Seven Storey Mountain may have discovered through Thomas Merton Mark Van Doren, a professor and poet at Columbia in the middle of the last century who served as his mentor for a while. I did things the roundabout way: I discovered Thomas Merton through Mark Van Doren, discovered in turn through the movie Quiz Show, in which he's played (and played brilliantly) by Paul Scofield. I read and wrote on Van Doren for an independent study in high school, and was almost certainly the only American high schooler to be doing anything with that forgotten poet. He has some very good poems, though-- some splendid, some quietly lovely. These came to mind recently.

Sonnet XVII

When I came back to your unlifted eyes
And spoke to you, inquiring how we did,
And you looked up without the least surmise,
Then the old music, that so long was hid,
Sounded; and I knew it was to pour
Forever while we lived, with no abating.
The unskilled players were unskilled no more
And every string had sweetened by its waiting.
There will be nothing now but one clear tone,
Of which we shall not tire, and if it pauses
We shall exist upon love’s faith alone,
That knows all silence to its deepest causes,
And comprehends the ever-devious ways
I still must follow as I sing your praise.

Woman Few of Words

Lady, excellently brief
(Let me be too),
The sweet things you say
Are salt also,
For true.

It takes my very breath, the mixing,
As if I tried
To be both hot and cold
Together; lived,
And died.

As if within a summer sky
Some lightning hid;
Not to be found except
As on love's day
You did.

And then this one, which I misremembered while walking in Vermont:

O World

O world, my friend, my foe,
My deep dark stranger, doubtless
Unthinkable to know;
My many and my one,
Created when I was and doomed to go
Back into the same sun;

O world, my thought's despair,
My heart's companion, made by love
So intimate, so fair,
Stay with me till I die--
O air,
O stillness, O great sky.

Only the last lines came to mind, and those as "O world, stay with me till I die-- O fields, o stillness, O great sky," which suited my mood and environs better than the lines above!

2006-08-23T23:15:00.000-05:00

Hunt Mill Road, near Symes Pond

Vermont Journal 1

2006-08-22T23:30:00.000-05:00

I spent the week of August 12 - 19 in a little cabin on Symes Pond, a few miles outside of the tiny towns of Ryegate and Barnet in northern Vermont. I was there with four friends from college. It was a marvelous week-- relaxing and rejuvenating. I scribbled away in my casual, haphazard journal, here recorded for some sort of posterity.

Vermont Journal 1

It's really beautiful here. It's the kind of beauty that's shared with the Wisconsin Northwoods and the North Carolina Applachians-- the tall, gentle hills framing still lakes, deep woods with that wonderful smell of earth and greenness, and the flowers my mother taught me to name when I was a child.

Yesterday, we canoed down the little water passage from our pond, and intrepidly forded a beaver dam to make it into Upper Symes Pond, where A and I floated for a while in the sun. There's something just right about the pace of canoeing. It's like walking on water-- you get where you need to go soon enough, but with plenty of time to appreciate everything you pass.

I can't decide if I want to take pictures here or not. I want to remember how this place looked and felt when I'm back in Washington. But any photo I take will condense the view--perhaps too much, diminishing the memory of the quiet, peaceful expanses.

I want to remember how it feels to walk six miles down and back up the road toward the town, feeling the narrow gravel path change to one and then two lane sandy tracks, changing to pavement only just before you hit the highway. Passing five or six houses in total, two ferociously loyal and vigilant dogs, a couple of small ponds ringed with cattails and choked with waterlilies, woods on both sides of the road, except where a field or lawn has been carved out. And always the tall hills.

The breeze at every turn like a blessing on my face and shoulders. Hearing only my feet, my breath and the birds. Noting the ways my thoughts changed and changed back-- from where I ought to be going to how it felt to be walking to noticing the various flowers and trees to trying to think about what I thought I should consider (future plans, place in the world, God), only to think about whatever came to mind (work, men, spinning out possible futures, remembering poems). Realizing that walking was no longer a conscious effort-- my body was going entirely of its own accord. And then pushing up the steep hill, no time to think of anything but my breaths and putting one foot in front of the other. Turning at last toward the cabin and thinking only of the coffee and breakfast that were waiting.

Returning and setting out

2006-08-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

Many days have passed. I keep thinking I ought to update and then wondering what it is I really have to say. It's been the same with me in general: I keep thinking I ought to do something, and then wondering what it is I really ought to do. I've been working quite hard, and to balance that out, I've been reading fluff (well-written fluff to be sure, but still...), watching fluff, talking mostly fluff.

Recently, I picked up a book by Primo Levi (The Drowned and the Saved) and it was like coming back to myself. The book is wonderful, but it wasn't particularly the book: it was the invigorating rush of the mind roaring back to full speed. The book got dog-eared; the spine cracked; I have a whole passel of notes just waiting to be written up.

I used to read these sorts of books all the time. I used to read all the time. But far too often in the last years, I've worked at a computer all day, come home to a movie or the internet and then tumbled into bed. I've gone from having stacks of books going: books on religion, on ethnic violence, history, poetry, novels-- all the things that engage me the most-- to having nothing going. Lazy and ultimately corrosive behavior.

And then, over the weekend, the rush intensified as I picked up several more books (one almost finished, The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, about which more later) and thought: "It's all very well my feeling engaged and alive and fizzing along at full speed on the weekends and evenings. What about during the day?" I have to face the fact that my job is a whole lot of nothing. I do little that could not be done by someone else. Even the original initiatives I've spearheaded are only exciting in the context of my job and my office's operations; they're not empirically important. I'm not using my full range of abilities and passions and expertise. And yes, this is the case the world over and yes, I'm lucky to have a job. Yes to all of that.

But it hasn't always been that way for me. I have great difficulty separating what I do from who I am. I'm happiest when the two are completely merged-- when I take as much pleasure in my job as I do in my non-working hours (this usually results in the latter being few and far between) and when my occupation is clearly aligned with my vocation. I'm still figuring out what the latter is, but I know when something fits me and feels right, and I know when it doesn't. And this doesn't. Religion, reconciliation, ethnic violence, the great world out there-- these are all concepts, much too general to be a vocation, but they're what I return to again and again. Nearly everything that falls under these ridiculously broad headings fascinates me-- they're my intellectual home.

So what next? I don't know. I do know that, as Rachel says, it's time to make teshuvah, to align myself in the right direction again. And to do that, I need to set out-- away from all-too-quickly-established patterns and out into something else. I'm starting to feel settled in Washington, and that's unsettling me.

This next step needs to be a bigger one than before: a move overseas, a graduate degree in another city, etc. Such a step has been rattling around in my brain for a while, and I don't know if I've been too timid in not flinging myself into the void, or if there are simply too many enticing voids out there. Both. Neither.

To stay in place is getting more and more uncomfortable. The idea of setting out feels right. It feels like coming home. A step away is a step towards a return.

Where do you stand?

2006-06-11T19:41:00.000-05:00

No, this is not one of those awful doctrinal litmus-test posts, nor is it a "Choose your own religion/denomination/worship style/heresy" quiz. Rather, I've been thinking about what a visual person I am-- everything I read or think about unspools like a movie behind my eyes. I place myself at a certain angle or in a certain role in a scene and my response to it is shaped accordingly.

A friend said something interesting when we were having wine and meze a couple of months ago. We were talking of Lent, I think, and the more intense experience of faith that often comes with it. She said that for her, faith is often an intellectual exercise (she's getting a doctorate in theology) more than a direct experience of God. And that's hard for her. In fact, she said, one of her few points of personal identification with the scriptures is with Jesus as he's nailed to the cross, looking out and crying "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

It had never occurred to me to identify with Jesus at that moment. Instead, as I said to her, when those words hit me in the gut and pull me toward the man crying out on the cross, it's as one of those at the foot of the cross--mother, sister, apostle, friend-- standing there longing to rush forward, to pull out those nails and hold that bleeding body, telling him that I at least have not forsaken him, that all might still be well.

This may sound a bit overwrought and medieval mystic-like. I don't mean it that way. But I do think it's interesting that the two of us placed ourselves in such different roles in that scene. Is that common? And what does my reaction say about me?

all's well

2006-05-18T08:13:00.000-05:00

All's well with me. (Thanks for asking, Sophia!) Work has been a bit crazy, all my other commitments have been adding up, I've been out of town... hence no posting.

I actually have a few blog entries written in my journal, but haven't had the chance to type them up and post them. I'm off for a week's holiday today, but will hopefully have something to say and time to say it when I get back.

Annunciation

2006-03-28T00:41:00.000-05:00

The Annunciation is a fascinating and difficult feast in my book. It's given rise to a jaunty hymn or two "...Most highly favored lady, Gloria..." and countless tranquil paintings of a serene woman listening to an equally serene angel, both in beautiful robes. And what, in retrospect, could be better news than that God was about to come into our world and be with us?

But Mary didn't initially see it that way. She was greatly troubled at the angel's greeting, even before he announced what was to be. And it was an announcement, not a request. As Dissonant Bible points out, Mary may agree, but she's not asked what she thinks, nor does she have the chance to give permission. After Gabriel tells Mary what is going to happen to her, she can only acquiesce. I've always imagined a deep bow along with her words, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word."

Is this joyful agreement, the "yes" of Mary that we like to think was necessary for the Word to become incarnate? Or does it take her the long journey to Elizabeth's house to come to terms with what has happened to her and praise the One who has done it?

I believe God loves our individuality. But does he always respect it? The right of a man or woman to self-determination seems time and again to carry little water with God. And yet I try to constrain God with that right. I drive bargains, I set timetables, I figure I can handle my end of the relationship all by myself. I want to say yes to God only when I know I can do so standing on my own two feet, looking God square in the face. But God often doesn't wait for a yes, doesn't wait at all, just sweeps in like a whirlwind, scattering all our sureties and catching us up in her tumult. And following, saying yes after the fact, is then the only choice left to us.

And so, in the tumult of my late night thoughts, the Annunciation and Mary's blessed (whether timely or belated) openness to God's imperative are juxtaposed with blessed John Donne, whose feast it is on Friday. Perhaps my only hope is to have all my barriers overthrown at once, to be broken, blown, burned and then made new.

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

- John Donne

Notes: More books recommended by my spiritual director

2006-02-21T21:53:00.000-05:00

Now to get around to reading any of these... I've started The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill and like it, but need to make time to sit with it.

The Prophetic Imagination - Walter Brueggeman
Hearing God's Call - Ben Campbell Johnson

Trumpets, cymbals, rejoicing

2005-12-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

By Jove, I think I've got it! The job, that is.

I've had an unofficial notification, a call about salary requirements, and a promise of a final offer in my inbox tomorrow. More details to follow once things are firmed up and it feels real.

Most of all, I am inexpressibly thankful. I plan to start work the day I stop getting paid at my current job. To have that seamless a transition, and furthermore, to be going to a job that will push me and develop my skills in all the right ways are blessings indeed.

Yiddish BCP

2005-12-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

From Anglicans Online, a link to Morning and Evening Prayer in Yiddish from 1893. How unnecessary, mind-boggling, and delightful!

I will be puzzling over this with my limited German and my very, very, very limited Yiddish, but I think I've found a key phrase already:

Ehre zey dem fater, und dem zohne, und des heyliges geyste (ruach hakodesh)
Vi es var im anfange, zo izt em yettst, und virr tseyn fun evigkeyt. Amen.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Amen.

I've been thinking of offering to lead Morning Prayer at my church several times a week. What are the chances I could get permission to do it in Yiddish?

Notes: Books recommended by my spiritual director

2005-12-07T15:14:00.000-05:00

I need to keep track of things in a form not requiring little bits of paper, which inevitably end up stashed around the apartment and forgotten.

So, books recommended by my spiritual director at our first meeting:

The Study of Anglicanism
The Study of Liturgy
The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill
The Practice of Prayer by Margaret Guenther
Rumi
The New Church Teaching Series

There's got to be a word for this

2005-12-06T17:48:00.000-05:00

What's the word for when something is beautiful and sad, and the two aspects are inextricably intertwined? If there isn't such a word, let's make one. There's got to be one in German, even if it's eight miles long.

Why do I need such a word? To describe stories like this: Gay Wedding Man Dies of Cancer.

From Reuters:

A terminally ill gay British man given just days to live became the first on Monday to take advantage of a new law giving same-sex couples legal status...Cancer patient Matthew Roche, 46, was given special dispensation to waive the waiting period and tie the knot with his partner of seven years Christopher Cramp, 37, because he was not expected to live long enough.

"We are extremely happy and feel a great sense of achievement," Roche said after the ceremony at St Barnabas Hospice in Worthing on England's south coast.

He died the next day.

Thank God for faithful, patient love. Rest in peace, Matthew Roche.

I will explain later, but...

2005-12-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

Could I ask for prayers for tomorrow? I have two to three job interviews tomorrow afternoon with an organization I am ridiculously excited about joining. It's been a longish interview process, and it sounds now like I'll be hearing by the end of the week whether it's yea or nay.

Please pray with me that I'll be prepared, composed, ready to really listen and respond to the interviewers' thoughts and questions and ready to offer my own. And, you know, that I'll get the job God wants me to have, whether it's this one or another one.

And I'll explain why I'm looking for a new job once it's appropriate to do so!

Prayer moment

2005-12-03T23:40:00.000-05:00

(Eesh, it's been a month. What a delinquent I am.)

I was praying tonight for cats' son, and somehow, I got around to praying that, whatever his awareness of his illness, that he would know now and in the future that God finds him perfect.

And then I was suddenly overwhelmed by the conviction that, in God's eyes, I am perfect. It was rather staggering. I started crying.

I spend so much time trying to hide my faults or brazen them out. And yet God sees every aspect of who I am and loves me perfectly. In his eyes, by his love, through his grace, I am perfect.

I don't want to work all this out right now. I'm just jotting this moment down so I can come back to it when I need to, remember, and give thanks.

For all the saints

2005-11-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

Happy All Saints Day to all you saints! I love this day. When I think of church, I first and always think of the communion of saints, in the pews, across the world, in past centuries and the years to come. How wonderful to have a day in which you and I are counted among the greats like Blessed Julian, Saint Benedict, Saint Francis, Richard Hooker, Saint Teresa of Avila...

I went to church this morning for the Eucharist. Turned out there were only two saints there: the priest and me. That ended up being a special blessing. When you're the only one saying the responses, you remember that the service can't happen without a layperson there and realize you're creating the liturgy just as much as the celebrant. My priest and I chatted a little in between the elements of the service, which made for a lovely coming-together of the sacred and the ordinary, reminding me that the liturgy is, in a sense, conversation between those of us in the community and between the community and God.

And then I came home tonight and found some more All Saints Day riches here.

Yes, I know Ecclesiasticus is patriarchally incorrect, but just hear the glory of these words:

Let us now praise famous men,
And our fathers in their generations.
The Lord apportioned to them great glory,
his majesty from the beginning.
There were those who ruled in their kingdoms,
and were men renowned for their power,
giving counsel by their understanding,
and proclaiming prophecies;
leaders of the people in their deliberations
and in understanding of learning for the people,
wise in their words of instruction;
those who composed musical tunes,
and set forth verses in writing;
rich men furnished with resources,
living peaceably in their habitations --
all these were honored in their generations,
and were the glory of their times.

And then this litany of all the saints, which brought chills to my spine and tears to my eyes:

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be for ever blessed.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones present at our beginnings:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Abraham and Sarah,
Isaac and Rebecca,
Jacob and Rachel and Leah,
makers of the covenant, forebears of our race:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Elizabeth and Simeon,
Joseph, Monica and Helen,
exemplars in the love and care of children:
Stand Here Beside Us!

John the baptizer, map-maker of the Lord's coming:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might:
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, the one true Light.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who showed the good news to be the way of life:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Thomas the doubter;
Augustine of Canterbury;
Francis Xavier;
Samuel Joseph Schereschewsky;
all travelers who carried the Gospel to distant places:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Bernard and Dominic;
Catherine of Siena, the scourge of popes;
John and Charles Wesley, preachers in the streets;
all whose power of speaking gave life to the written word:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Benedict of Nursia,
Teresa of Avila;
Nicholas Ferrar;
Elizabeth Ann Seton;
Richard Meux Benson;
Charles de Foucauld;
all founders of communities:
Stand Here Beside Us!

O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win, with them, the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who gave their lives to the care of others:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Louis, king of France;
Margaret, queen of Scotland;
Gandhi the mahatma, reproach to the churches;
Dag Hammarskjold the bureaucrat;
all who made governance an act of faith:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Peter of the keys, denier of the Lord;
Ambrose of Milan, who answered the Church's summons;
Hilda, abbess at Whitby;
Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, protector of the Jews;
Jean-Baptiste Vianney, cure d' Ars,
Patient hearer of catalogues of sins;
All faithful shepherds of the Master's flock:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Mary Magdalen, anointer of the Lord's feet;
Luke the physician;
Francis who kissed the leper;
Florence Nightingale;
Albert Schweitzer;
all who brought to the sick and suffering the hands of healing:
Stand Here Beside Us!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who made the proclaiming of God's love a work of art:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Pierluigi da Palestrina;
John Merbecke;
Johann Sebastian Bach;
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
Benjamin Britten;
Duke Ellington;
all who sang the Creator's praises in the language of the soul:
Stand Here Beside Us!

David and the Psalmists;
Caedmon;
John Milton, sketcher of Paradise;
William Blake, builder of Jerusalem;
John Mason Neale, preserver of the past;
all poets of the celestial vision:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Zaccheus the tree-climber;
Brother Lawrence;
Therese of Lisieux, the little flower;
Andrew of Glasshampton;
all cultivators of holy simplicity:
Stand Here Beside Us!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones haunted by the justice and mercy of God:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Amos of Tekoa, who held up the plumbline;
John Wycliffe, who brought the Scripture to the common folk;
John Hus and Menno Simons, generals in the Lamb's war;
Martin Luther, who could do no other;
George Fox, foe of steeple-houses;
all who kept the Church ever-reforming:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Paul the apostle, transfixed by noonday light;
Augustine of Hippo, God's city planner;
Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, architects of the divine;
Charles Williams, teacher of coinherence;
Karl Barth, knower of the unknowable;
all who saw God at work and wrote down what they saw:
Stand Here Beside Us!

John, the seer of Patmos;
Anthony of the desert;
Julian, the anchoress of Norwich;
Hildegarde, the sybil of the Rhine;
Meister Eckardt;
Bernadette of Lourdes;
all who were called to see the Master's face:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Joachim of Fiora, prophet of the new age;
Johnny Appleseed, mad planter of Eden;
Sojourner Truth, pilgrim of justice;
Benedict Joseph Labre, priest and panhandler;
all whose love for God was beyond containment:
Stand Here Beside Us!

The golden evening brightens in the West;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who died in witness to the Christ:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Stephen the deacon, the first martyr, stoned in Jerusalem:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Justin, Ignatius and Polycarp, who refused the incense to Caesar:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Perpetua and Felicity, torn by beasts in the arena at Carthage:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley,
Burned in Oxford:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, put to death at Auschwitz:
Stand Here Beside Us!

James Reeb, Jonathan Daniels, Michael Schwerner,
Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, shot in the South:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Martin Luther King, shot in Memphis:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Janani Luwum, shot in Kampala:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Oscar Romero, shot in San Salvador:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Martyrs of Rome, of Lyons, of Japan, of Eastern Equatorial
Africa, of Uganda, of Melanesia,
martyrs of everywhere:
Stand Here Beside Us!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of Glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones of every time and place:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Glorious company of heaven:
Stand Here Beside Us!

All climbers of the ladder of Paradise:
Stand Here Beside Us!

All runners of the celestial race:
Stand Here Beside Us!

[The people may call out saints' names]

Great cloud of witnesses:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Mary most holy, chief of the saints:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Mary most holy, yes-sayer to God:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Mary most holy, unmarried mother:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Mary most holy, gate of heaven and ark of the covenant:
Stand Here Beside Us!

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, alleluia!

Jesus our liberator, creator of all:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Jesus our liberator, redeemer of all:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Jesus our liberator, sanctifier of all:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Jesus our liberator, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and
the end:
Stand Here Beside Us!

Amen, amen.

The Friday Five

2005-10-28T21:09:00.000-05:00

1) Favorite Halloween Candy
Mad nostalgic affection for candy corn.

2) Least Favorite Halloween Candy
Anything "fun-size". "Fun-size" should be big, not small!

3) Best Costume Ever
My family didn't celebrate Halloween. We did get All Saints' Day candy, but we didn't necessarily dress up. So my Best Costume Ever is from college and the "Screw Your Roommate" dance when you get set up by your friends. Everyone met their dates by dressing up, wandering around the cafeteria, and looking for the person who matched.

Junior year, I was told to dress up like the Virgin Mary and find my Joseph. Remembering far too many Serious Christmas Pageants when I was a kid, I subverted the dominant paradigm by pinning a blue sheet to my head, wrapping myself in red velvet, and stuffing enough pillows up the velvet to look 9 months pregnant. And then I shouted for Joseph all through the cafeteria, saying I needed to ride his ass all the way to Bethlehem.

4) Worst Costume Ever
N/A

5) A Saint I Treasure
My deacon growing up, Jeannine Mahon. She was kind and warm and ministered to everybody in a church and community that didn't always want to do that. Whenever I came home from college, we'd have breakfast and talk about life and God and the church. I talked to her about being a priest and shared my worry about the fact that my parents don't think women should be priests. She listened, nodded, and then said "Oh, honey, when you're ordained, that won't matter. They will be so proud of you." (She also told a visiting bishop I was going to be a bishop one day!)

I'd never known someone so encouraging, genuine, and obviously loving to everyone. She died quite suddenly one summer. It was the first time someone close to me had died. I was so glad to be home, though, and to sing with the choir at her funeral. Even now, when I sing "Abide With Me", "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" or "I Sat Down Under His Shadow" (Bairstow), I think about her funeral, and then about Jeannine and how blessed I was by knowing her.

I did a rather scary thing

2005-10-20T10:31:00.000-05:00

I told my rector this morning that indeed I might want to be a priest.

I'm now supposed to get a spiritual director (which I've been meaning to do, so this is a good kick in the pants) and meet with my priest once a month. She's scoping out the diocesan discernment process, which is currently being revised.

This is all a bit frightening, but I love and trust my priest and my parish, so I'm quite relaxed at the thought of going through this with them. And I'm in no rush, which helps. I'll be vaguely disappointed if at the end of my life, I was never called to the priesthood, but I don't need to have a vocation confirmed right now. If I'm ever supposed to, I think God and the Church will make it quite clear in their own time.

Still. Eek.

Monday Five

2005-10-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

So I'm doing the RevGal Monday Five on Thursday. Ah well. Let it never be said I spend all my time blogging-- I wish I could do it more often.

1. What is your favorite word?
This morning? Coffee. In terms of what I think and talk about, hmm. Probably community. A word I never use but love: mistral. It's such a lovely and temperate-sounding name for a freezing, blustery wind.

2. What is your least favorite word?
It's a phrase: "That's a nice idea, but..."

3. What turns you on, creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Laughter. Snarky comments. Big unexpected grins. People willing to find the humor lurking in nearly situation.

4. What turns you off?
Self-importance and pomposity.

5. What is your favorite curse word?
Fuck. The sharp K at the end lets you channel all sorts of emotions through it. I'd never say "Fuck you", but I do love a good "Fuck" now and then.

6. What sound or noise do you love?
Right now I'm on a massive Arvo Part kick.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?
Cheney's motorcade going underneath my window, morning and evening, EVERY DAMN DAY.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Ballerina, astronaut, president. Oh, seriously? I'd like to try my hand at war reporting.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
Corporate law.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant" will suit me fine, as long as I get a little wink to show me God knows who I am!

Word verification

2005-10-10T17:55:00.000-05:00

I've turned on word verification in the comments. I thought three comments in the time it took me to edit my last post was too good to be true!

Budding liturgists

2005-10-10T16:50:00.000-05:00

(I've been such a punk about updating. Work's taken a lot out of me this past month, but I hope get back to thinking and posting soon.)

Yesterday I led the Rite-13 class at my church. St. Margaret's has just started the Journey to Adulthood program in earnest this year, and our group of Rite-13ers is a great one-- thoughtful, smart, energetic, talkative. This Sunday, I had planned out a lesson on collective prayer. And we got to it, eventually.

As soon as the kids walked in, one who had been to the early service said "I don't get the Gospel today. It's weird." Well, it was. Forget collective prayer, we had to address Jesus' weird parable first. Luckily I'd read Dylan's blog entry before heading over to church. I borrowed (and cited!) her point about wedding garments being designed to bring good fortune on the marriage, making the larger point that parables are often obscure to us because they reference customs of 2000 years ago. Then my co-teacher and I had to make the less comfortable point that some of Jesus' parables seem to have been obscure to his listeners 2000 years ago. That we don't get The Gospels, Exhaustively Annotated by J. Christ. Every sermon I've heard on this parable ends up taking a different line on it, which means Jesus' point isn't clear. We'll never know exactly what he was saying.

Well, the kid who'd brought it up didn't like that one bit. He said "But I like everything to be clear! I want to know exactly what it means." And my wise co-teacher said, "If you learn one thing in this course, and that's that we'll never be able to know what everything means, you'll have learned a lot." So true.

I found myself in complete sympathy with that boy. I love to find the point of things, whittling down obscure phrases until they have one crystal clear meaning. I've been drafting legal documents at work, and while I'd never want to be a lawyer, there's something immensely satisfying about writing something that can be construed one and only one way. I have to find a way to balance that intellectual curiosity with an acceptance and welcome of mystery, and do that in a way that doesn't just become laziness: "Oh, I'll never understand everything anyway, so why don't I just bask in the mystery?"

Why do I think this will be a lifelong challenge?

Anyway, back to the kids. After talking a bit about common prayer as the cornerstone of what it means to be Episcopalian/Anglican (and a tiny bit about what the Anglican communion is and a how we're praying together with people across the world and across the centuries), we looked at collects. We broke the structure of collects down:

Address: "O Lord,"
Ascription: "Ooh, you are so big, so absolutely huge. Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You."
Request: "Forgive us for this our dreadful toadying."
Consequence: Monty Python's chaplain didn't really get that far!
Doxology: "Through Jesus Christ our Lord....AMEN."

The kids read the collect from the service, translated it into their own words, and pinpointed each component. I read them another one on angels, broke it down again, and we talked a bit about the language we use in church: why it's formal, how it needs to reflect the entire congregation and communion, how it's a way for us to talk to God and also to remind ourselves of God's nature, our relationship with him, and how we ought to live in that relationship. (Collects really pack a punch.)

And then we wrote our own. I'm so proud of the kids. They did a great job of coming up with topics, so much so that I had to promise we'd write a new collect each month! They needed only a little help to grasp that a collect could and should address a specific issue/need, but with language general enough that all could pray it. They settled on writing a collect for schoolwork. At first they started off saying "We should pray that we can get our schoolwork done fast so we don't have to worry about it and so we can get good grades, go to college and make a lot of money." My co-teacher helped steer them back to the larger points of education, and then there was no stopping them. Here's what we came up with:

"Dear God (1),you created wisdom and knowledge (2), give us focus and concentration to do our schoolwork well, so we can further explore the world we've been given (3) and do the work you have given us to do (4), through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN."

If we write a few of more general relevance, I'm going to ask if we can slip one into the service. Wouldn't that be a great way of underscoring our youth's importance to our church life?

(1) "Let's make it like we're talking to him", said one girl. Which we were.
(2) I'll cop to this being the teacher's suggestion.
(3) This was the final version of one student saying he did well in his schoolwork so he could go on a mission to Mars!
(4) "Let's put in that bit from the service about the work you have given us to do", said the other boy, pointing out it covered schoolwork, their future careers, the lot. See? Smart.

Catching up

2005-09-18T20:07:00.000-05:00

Don't worry, Kathryn, everything's okay. Well, things are a little...fraught. But okay.

I loved meeting you in August! Ladies and gentlemen, I can report that Kathryn's a good egg-- all the way through, not just in parts. We spent a day in Coventry together at the Cathedral. In the new Cathedral, we even (shh-- it's not really allowed) got to go up above the wood canopy on the catwalk to look straight across at the face of Jesus on the tapestry. It was amazing. He looks so austere from below, but when you're twenty feet away at eye level, his eyes are warm and kind. And looking straight down at the "Light of Christ" Piper window on the way to the tapestry is also pretty impressive.

K, thanks so much for the expedition and the good conversation. I forgot to mention then that I read Peter Abelard because of the quote you posted long ago from the book. It was fantastic-- a new favorite-- and I'm not ashamed to admit I was crying buckets for the last third of the book.

So yes, I've been away. I spent most of August in Istanbul and London, travelling with friends from college. I've never taken a long holiday before; I never had the money while in college or the time at my former job. It was so great to be away from my town and my job for a few weeks. I need to make this a yearly thing!

And I need to move to London. I love London. I played the tourist far less there than I did in Istanbul-- taking almost no pictures, visiting only one or two museums, taking in just a couple of shows-- because I was trying to fool myself into thinking I lived there. And it worked so well that back in Washington, I feel just the tiniest bit like a stranger.

Highlights of the trip, just because I'm stressed and need to think about happy things:

- Just being in the city-- going to coffee shops, seeing movies, running errands, finding good restaurants, walking around.
- Seeing the new version of Schiller's Mary Stuart at the Donmar Warehouse. I am a huge Elizabeth I fan and Harriet Walter was breathtakingly good playing her.
- Shopping at Liberty. I got Fiori di Capri and a lovely Liberty scarf. And I felt tremendously cultured just wandering around.
- The Imperial War Museum. Much better at showing the ambiguities of war than I would have expected. And having finally finished Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy this year, seeing Siegfried Sassoon's medical report from Craiglockhart was a particularly nice intersection of life and literature.
- The War Rooms, the subterranean hive where Churchill and his top people spent some of the war. My favorite bit was the world's first hot line to the White House, disguised as a restroom off-limits to all but Churchill. There's even a little "Engaged" sign.
- Sunday morning church at St. Martin-in-the-Fields and Choral Evensong at Westminster.
- Hampstead Heath. We stayed nearby and had a couple of picnics and rambles up there.
- Finally almost understanding cricket! I had three different people explain it to me and watched the fourth series of the Ashes. Now the cricket passage in Murder Must Advertise makes sense.
- Berry-picking and lots of cappucinos in outdoor cafes over the Bank Holiday weekend.

I'm homesick for a place I've never lived. But I know I'll go back before too long.

Hardly surprising...

2005-09-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

You are Julian of Norwich! It's all about God, to
you. You're convinced that the world has a
happy ending. Everyone else is convinced that
you're a closet hippie, but you love them
anyway.

Which Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Whew! It'd be kind of embarrassing to get anyone else, really. Although I wouldn't mind St. Benedict, if he's an option.

Substantive post to come soon. I've been away for a month on holiday and for work.

to the RevGalBlogPals

2005-08-07T22:39:00.000-05:00

So, I've joined the RevGalBlogPals. Hurrah! Frankly, I feel privileged to be read alongside women who post far more frequently and profoundly than I do.

You all have been a real blessing ever since I found you. I love seeing how much you post and comment back and forth, and how overwhelmingly supportive you are of each other. And I've been blessed when you stop by here.

I keep up with Episcopalian/Anglican news (usually a depressing endeavour) and on the site I read most, comments are on a spectrum from partisan to adversarial to vitriolic. This is Thinking Anglicans, whose editors are hardly firebrands, and the situation's clearly gone downhill recently-- the archives aren't nearly as bad. Reading what people have to say over there, I'm frustrated, angry, afraid. What is my church coming to, when all anyone can say to his fellow Anglican is "Get thee behind me, Satan"?

And then I venture one or two links up in my Favorites and hit the RevGals. You all are a breath of fresh air that clears my head and heart.

It's good to be reminded after yet another "he said, he said" story (and I will just note that it is nearly always "he") that life and faith go on. There are funerals to be taken, baptisms to perform, stories of cooking and hiking and child-rearing, and lots of puzzling over and celebrating God's place in our lives. Thanks for being such grounded, wise, women. Thanks for helping keep me real.

Rough week

2005-08-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

It's been a rough week.

I need to say that, to remind myself that not every week is like this and that next week will probably be a lot better. Of course it will be better-- next week I set off on holiday with college friends. We're doing a week in Istanbul and a week in London, and then I'm sticking around in the UK for work for another week and a half! Hurray! I cannot wait.

But anticipating next week doesn't make this one easier. It's been a week of goodbyes. Good friends are moving away from Washington, including my sister, my closest church friend, and a guy I'm interested in. (Whose emails have slackened off over the last couple of weeks. Not that I'm overanalyzing. Argh.) I live and work on my own, so friends are especially important to me. And I'm losing five this fall. I know we'll remain close, but I really want them here.

I'm tired of flying solo. Usually, I love my independent life and value my time on my own. It's all about balance, though, and right now things are out of whack. That will hopefully start to change soon-- I'm taking a course at VTS this fall, helping start a 20s/30s group at my church, and inching closer to having colleagues in my office here.

But I know I can't get everything I need through dint of planning. I have to pray for good friends and good love to come my way. They can't be scheduled in as I deem them necessary.

So, yeah. This week I feel terribly alone. I've been needing to have a heart-to-heart on life, faith and love, and I don't have someone nearby with whom I can let it all out. My priest, who's awesome at these sorts of things, is on sabbatical and there's no one else I can imagine crying in front of. So... what's up, blog o' mine?

Edited to say: I think I may have to join the RevGalBlogPals. I'm certainly a pal, if not a RevGal. Susie's Henri Nouwen post which I found through the Gals has been a great help this week.

Where charity abides

2005-07-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

Emily of Hazelnut Reflections (hurray for Julian-inspired blogs!) has a wonderful post about an Evensong encounter in Canterbury several years ago.

When I was ten, my family was living in Bucharest for a year, and my mom was pregnant. That was right after the stories of the AIDS babies in Romanian orphanages broke, and our family went to Vienna, Austria to have the baby. This was in February 1991, during the first Gulf War. One afternoon, we went to the Naschmarkt. As we kids were staring wide-eyed at the vast array of stalls (especially after the scarcity and queues in just-post-Revolution Bucharest), a man behind a butcher counter heard us speaking English and asked if we were British.

"No, American," my dad replied. "Ah," the butcher replied. "I'm Iraqi." I remember I froze, preparing to close my ears against an onslaught of insults, to hurry my brother and sisters away as quickly as we could go.

"Well," the butcher said, after a moment. "Our countries may be at war, but we can be friends, no?" And he reached out his hand for my father to shake. Then he wrapped up several kinds of meat and sent them home with us. (We didn't want to spoil the moment by telling him we were vegetarian!)

The whole thing took less than five minutes. The Iraqi butcher probably forgot all about it a week later, when more customers came. But for 10-year-old me, it was a defining moment. The man was only an enemy in my mind. His instinct was for friendship and mine was for distrust.

Emily's post got me thinking about that Iraqi butcher and what a blessing it is when someone sees you as the person you are, not the person they're afraid of.

Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!

2005-07-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

Everything and everyone. Karen over at Kinesis has a lovely post about finding her voice liturgically and personally. And Kathryn has posted about the music for her first Eucharist. She's absolutely right about a lively choir being able to shape teenage faith, as is her commenter that theology sticks with us more through music than through sermons. It's abundantly clear in classrooms that students retain more through participation in their own learning than they do from sitting and listening to lectures, so why wouldn't it be the same in church?

Whenever I think about great services that, if it pleases God, might be lurking in my future-- a wedding, baptism of my children, ordinations, funerals-- I think about the music. At this point, my wedding will be 4 hours long! Do I really have to choose between Byrd's Great Service (or Taverner's Western Wind Mass), Bairstow's "I Sat Down Under His Shadow", "Set Me as a Seal Upon Thy Heart", "O Taste and See", Verdi's "Laudi Alla Vergine Maria", and lots of hymns-- "Be Thou My Vision", "Immortal, Invisible", "Let All Mortal Flesh", "O Day of Peace" ("Jerusalem" for peaceniks)-- and of course, the really long "St. Patrick's Breastplate"? (On a day when two people are binding themselves together, I love the idea that they'd also be binding themselves to God and all creation.)

Nope, I'll just make sure there are cushions on the pews and cupholders for coffee mugs and tell the congregation to park it for a while. (I'm kidding. Or am I??)

Hip hip hurray!

2005-07-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to begin removing "the legal obstacles to the ordination of women to the episcopate." British women will soon be bishops! So exciting, and so long overdue.

I was talking with an English priest about vocation and seminary and all that craziness, and he suggested that if I do pursue the priesthood, I go train in England. My heart leapt and suddenly, I became convinced that not only did I have a vocation, but I was meant to take off for the UK right then and there. (I may not be blessed/afflicted with a vocation, but I came down with rampant Anglophilia years ago.) But I don't know if I could join a church where I couldn't be a bishop. Not because I'm lusting for positions of power, but the thought of being regarded as secondary/lesser/junior/what have you to male counterparts... Grrr.

I hope my British sisters haven't been made to feel that way. I'm rather in awe of those who've gone ahead and answered the call to priesthood without the way being fully open. That must have taken a great deal of faith, and a great deal of surrendering one's self to God's call.

So many, many congrats today. However difficult the road has been, I'm confident that before long, some of the wonderful women linked on the right will be blogging bishops.

England, England

2005-07-07T20:29:00.000-05:00

Kathryn over at Good in Parts has been making me cry with her last few posts about her ordination. Her language is poetic and yet concrete; her stories so full of God's presence. I often find myself longing for that palpable sense of blessing, longing to know that what I believe in and what I worship is real-- for God to turn up, as she puts it.

And tonight she has me crying again (please, Kathryn, start posting about knitting or casseroles or head colds!) with a passage from Peter Abelard: A Novel that she's offering in light of the attacks in London this morning. Who knew that the pain of the world could be explained so simply, with a dead rabbit and a fallen tree?

God as fellow sufferer doesn't always make sense to me. If God is greater than us, why can't she stop pain and death and evil in their tracks? But a suffering God makes more sense than a God who doesn't suffer, who doesn't stop our suffering because it doesn't touch her.

Just as I have to believe in God, I have to believe God's mourning with the world tonight over all its aches and griefs. Even though she feels so very far away.

"priest voice"

2005-06-28T14:30:00.000-05:00

I went to a noon Eucharist at the National Cathedral recently, and would have enjoyed the service, were it not for the visiting celebrant's "priest voice". You know, the tone of "I am taking this all very very seriously, as should you." It's all very well-intentioned-- they want to share their enthusiasm for God with you and/or ensure that you have a spiritual experience during this particular service, but boy, does it backfire!

Priests with "priest voice" will helpfully stress any word they find important, often in a crescendo as if they're shoving you towards God. "Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you NO SECRETS ARE HID..." At which point, I think "then it's no secret from God that I seriously need to giggle."

Chill, people. I'm not going to have a mountaintop experience if you're trying to push me uphill all the way. Just speak the prayers and blessings as you'd speak them in a serious conversation, not facetiously and not pretentiously. They'll open the doors of the heart all on their own.

About me

2005-06-24T09:08:00.000-05:00

I'm an almost-cradle Episcopalian. I was born in North Carolina and moved to Wheaton, Illinois when I was eight. Wheaton has been called the Vatican City of evangelical Protestantism, and I spent most of my formative years there (for good and ill!) with the exception of a year abroad in Bucharest, Romania when I was ten. As you'd imagine, I remember that year more vividly than any other in my childhood. I went to the Anglican Church in Bucharest with my family, where I heard lessons from "I-Zy-Ah" not "I-Zay-Ah", giggled at the lyrics for God Save the Queen-- "confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks-- and drank nasty-but-oh-so-good-to-a-10-year-old Tang that was served after each service.

Back to Wheaton after Romania, where my family went (and still go) to an evangelical, moderately high-church Episcopal parish. I sang in the choir under an Anglophile choirmaster-- he called England the Holy Land. Not surprisingly, I became a church music snob. None of this happy clappy stuff for me! I'm only now getting better about it. Most of my friends went to non-denominational churches with huge youth groups. I didn't care for what seemed like pre-packaged "cool" worship, devotions, and activities, but not participating in praise bands and pasta-throwing food fights meant not participating in any ongoing program of Christian formation. My church certainly didn't have anything to offer. So I remember my adolescence as mostly muddling along spiritually on my own. I picked up all sorts of intended and unintended lessons from parents, friends, priests, and peer groups that I really only started working through in college.

I got the hell out of Dodge for college and went to Swarthmore, where I studied comparative religion (mostly Eastern) and comparative politics (mostly Western). While there, I stopped going to church regularly, just because I could. I studied in Prague for a semester and went to church regularly then, both to worship and to be part of an English-speaking community.

At college, I wrestled with what I thought I was supposed to believe about God from having grown up in Wheaton, and what I wanted to believe about God from personal reflection and academic study. I still wrestle with that. I was attracted to other religions, which seemed uniformly fascinating and full of potential. But I knew that was because I wasn't living in those traditions, and I never seriously thought about converting. Christianity may be a hard slog sometimes, but it's my hard slog.

I worked on Capitol Hill for a couple of years after graduation. I really didn't like my job or my boss, although my colleagues were great. That experience helped me realize that for most people, their job isn't their identity. When I was a student, that was my occupation and my calling. It was never my calling to be a legislative correspondent for a self-important backbencher. And I couldn't divorce myself from my job that way. I hated not being able to feel proud and excited about my work.

So now I work in Washington for a reconciliation organization and have ties with several Episcopal and Anglican communities. Much better! I'm absolutely in the right place, doing the right work, with the right people, even if it isn't all rainbows and happy trees all the time. What job is? My work is quite a blessing. I won't be talking about it on this blog, but what I do shapes my beliefs and affects how I think about my spiritual life, my membership in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, and a host of other issues.

And I'm a member of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, a church I love because it's warm and welcoming and completely unpretentious. Day to day, week to week, it just gets on with the messy business of being a community of God's people.

More soon.

the name of the blog

2005-05-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting until I had time to make a grand intro post, full of profound spiritual observations, but time and focus have eluded me. Whatever the date on this post says, it's actually June 20th - a month and a half after I set this thing up. So here goes. Expect brief posts until I get my feet wet enough to feel comfortable wading into deeper waters.

The name of the blog, obviously, is from Dame Julian. I love Julian of Norwich although I readily admit I don't always understand her.

Julian's writings contain two of my very favorite spiritual observations: her famous vision of a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, containing all that is made and existing only through God's love, and her revelation that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." The latter is quoted all the time--I heard it two sermons in a row this spring (granted, two different people were preaching.) It can sound bubbly and facile, if used in the wrong context. Got problems? Hey, all manner of thing shall be well!

But Julian has this revelation in the context of wrestling with the reality of sin, suffering, and ignorance. How can they coexist with the absolute love of God?

It seemed to me that if there had been no sin, we should all have been pure and as like our Lord as he created us. And so in my folly before this time I often wondered why, through the great prescient wisdom of God, the beginning of sin was not prevented. For then it seemed to me that all would have been well.

The answer she receives is reassuring, but mysterious:

Sin is necessary, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing will be well.

I sometimes find myself asking similar questions, and like Julian, receiving no direct answer (and no visions, either!) Her revelation is, like God himself, both comfort and yet more mystery. And I believe it to be true.