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Showing posts from 2013

A time of quiet and peace

Christmas week off is one of the "soft" benefits of working for a college or university. As much as I despair during the frenzy as Christmas approaches, I greatly love the quiet descending after Christmas  has passed.  Once I have gotten past the temptation to sleep late every morning, I begin to get up early, so as to say the morning office in peace, drink my coffee, and gaze out my study window to the view of treetops. Any goals I hope to achieve today can come later. The sun is up, the frost is upon the grass, and the luxury of an entire day awaits. Is it a measure of the frenzy of our culture that we so jealously, greedily clutch at our free time? I know every day should have this quiet, contemplative space built in, but I do not always achieve it. Tasks call to me.  But I don't have to do them now. Not yet. Let the quiet continue for a bit longer.  This is the day The Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it 

St. Mary's, full of grace

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Here, in the third week of Advent, I want to tell you a resurrection story. OK, I know it's the wrong season. Bear with me. This won't wait until Easter. Besides, we're in a time of expectation, a time of hope. Our Hebrew scripture reading for the third Sunday in Advent was Isaiah 35:1-10, one of my favorites. But this part stood out. Pardon my ellipses: 1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice  and blossom, like the crocus;  2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing ...   6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;  7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes ...    9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the rede

Advent: What are you avoiding this year?

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I did a little Christmas-shopping over the weekend. This year, due to spousal unemployment, we're giving very practical gifts: clothing, sheets, and other boring necessities (yawn). Actually, J. grew up getting necessities -- he recalls getting snow tires for Christmas one year. His family was very practical, a point of pride for them. So I ended up in a long line in Bed, Bath & Beyond, the emporium of all earthly delights (honestly, I could browse there for days !). Ahead of me was a woman who seemed to be bringing home all those earthly delights -- every single one! She had two shopping carts filled with merchandise. Not only does this create a steering problem when you're the mistress of two carts, but it vastly increases checkout time for the humble souls behind you in line.  It also doesn't help when you feel the need to dispute the price of nearly every sale item. But I digress. I'm not criticizing this woman's shopping strategy -- maybe she has 25 g

Anyone remember candy toys?

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To the left is a bag of candy toys. This is a blast from my childhood. I haven't seen any since I've been an adult. I found them on my first visit today to an Amish farmers' market in Mullica Hill, NJ. Candy toys were a Christmas season staple in our home. Mine came from Woolworth's (long gone too, I think), where they appeared after Thanksgiving in a large bin, behind glass, and were sold by the pound. Once they reached our house, they disappeared into a Secure Location. I was offered one from time to time as dessert. One, and only one! To this day, I have no idea where my mother hid them. Those I bought today are in the china closet (to keep them away from the dogs, or at least that's my excuse), in an anonymous white paper bag. Not that they're a secret, or anything.

That gray November day

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I think it was a gray, misty day in Delaware: November 22, 1963. We lived near the Delaware River in the area known as Edgemoor, north of the city of Wilmington, and fog on the river was a typical autumn occurrence. Maybe I'm lost in the fog of memory, but I seem to remember a mistiness in the air, a dank chill. Or perhaps that's the "pathetic fallacy," a literary device which depicts nature as a mirror for our moods (see the storm on the heath in King Lear ). In any event, in my recollection of that day, fog overlay the familiar landscape. On the day President Kennedy was killed, I was in the 5th grade at Edgemoor School -- but I wasn't in school that day. I have forgotten why not. I was not ill, since I was able to run errands with my mother. We were at the Merchandise Mart, a nearby shopping center, and Mom had taken me into the Bank of Delaware, where she wanted to check on an item in her safe-deposit box (we always called it the "safety-deposit box&q

Adsum

“Adsum,” which means “I am present,” is nearly the only Latin I remember from college and grad school. But it’s a phrase that’s often popped into my mind of late. Being there, being truly present to a situation, problem, or a moment of distress, is sometimes all we can do. At our house, we have had our share of Family Drama lately. No need to elaborate -- anyone with children, either small or grown, knows about Family Drama.  With adult children come situations beyond a parent's control. We sympathize (most of the time), we offer emotional support, we try to wait patiently until the crisis passes. We bite our tongues and sit on our hands. We live with uncertainty, and with the knowledge that there are no guarantees in life. Problems may not be resolved as we would have them resolve.  And now and then, they are not resolvable.  It is a hard fear to live with. At times, all we can do is be present and wait. Adsum. As a hospice volunteer with the frail elderly, I have learne

Honoring my inner Druid

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Happy Samhain! Happy Halloween! The New York Times has a great article today about the Druid celebration of Samhain, from which our observances of Halloween derive. There are about 29,000 Druids in the U.S., according to this article. Check it out here . Samhain is a festival occurring approximately halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. It's one of the 8 great feast days in the Pagan calendar. Samhain and the two solstices are some of my favorite days of the year. No, I'm not a practicing Druid, but I do have strong "leanings" in the direction of some of the earth-based observances. I think it's important to honor the earth, and to mark the passing of time: the cycle of the seasons, the "dying" and "rebirth" of the sun, and the other rhythms of death and rebirth we see all around us. I think it's also important to remember those we love who have gone before us into the Great Silence -- in church, we remember

Things I can't change

Sometimes I fret. I fret over all the things I can't fix, but would like to. You too? Life is full of these unfixable things, and they increase in number as we age. At the moment, for example, both my adult kids are having difficult adjustments to independence. I could give advice, but I'd be interfering. My husband is also going through a prolonged and exhausting job search, which has resulted only in anger and frustration. I could advise him to step back from the process, to take a good, long look at the way he has invested so much of his self-esteem in this zero-sum game of finding a job at 58. But he's not ready to hear that.  Oh, did I mention that I now seem to have osteoporosis? Yippee-ki-yay! Now I have to get that shot that rots your jawbone. Can't wait.  I hoped lots of dairy products and calcium pills would prevent this. But no.  So, in the face of things you can't change, what do you do? Back in the day, I'd have drowned my troubles i

Dreamwork: little black dogs

I have a dear friend whose dog, a small, black dog named Andy, is very ill, and we're all grieving in advance along with her. Few things are as hard as the impending loss of a beloved animal companion. Little black dogs touch my heart, as do dogs in general. But my own little black dog was Sparky. Sparky was a toy poodle who belonged to my Mom and Dad. After my Mom died, late in 1995, Sparky was Dad's closest companion when I couldn't be there. We all know the magic of companion animals: they love us unconditionally, help to raise our spirits, snuggle with us for warmth and comfort. Knowing how my parents loved Sparky, I naturally brought him to live with my family after Dad died unexpectedly in early 1997. I had young children who adored him, and he became my 10-year-old daughter's bed companion from that moment until she went off to college. Sparky grew old in our home, and brought me constant reminders of Mom and Dad. When he died in 2006, at the ripe age o

Peace in the upper balcony

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Amid ongoing family drama and "wars and rumors of wars," I was blessed to be able to attend a talk given by the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, last Saturday, in New York City. I hadn't been to New York in decades -- cities aren't really for me, and are not usually my destination of choice. I am such a provincial! Going to New York is, for me, like a Gaulish tribesman's arrival in Ancient Rome. But with my husband and a dear friend to guide me, I made it to the upper West Side and took my place in the upper balcony of the Beacon Theater. Prior to the actual teaching, there was music and group song, led by monks with violin, cello and drum. The audience stood and bowed when the teacher arrived onstage. What an experience! Nhat Hanh, or "Thay" (as his students call him -- it actually means "Teacher") was small and far-away when seen from my perch. Seated in front of his accompanying group of monks and nuns, all nearly indistin

Wondering about Martin Manley

I spent some time this past weekend taking a look at Martin Manley's blog. Manley was a Kansas City sportswriter and sports statistician. He took his own life by firearm on the morning of his 60th birthday, August 15th, 2013. You can read the elaborate suicide blog he spent a year writing at this link . It was originally posted on Yahoo, and Manley paid for it to stay there for five years. Yahoo took it down, after learning of Manley's death. The link above is to a mirror site hosted by the hacktivist group, Anonymous, who felt the content was worth saving. I guess Yahoo feared it would inspire other people to commit suicide. It won't, I think. But you should read it and decide. I'm a little upset by Manley's death, not because I knew him (and because I don't follow sports, I didn't even know of him), but because he was, on the day he died, only six days older than I am. Turning 60 was, he felt, the end of his productive life. I understand that aging

Entering my New Crone Age

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Tomorrow I will turn 60. At 9:00 in the morning, I will wake up to cronehood! I plan to spend the day with my husband in Cape May, strolling on the beach (will I be old enough to avoid a beach tag?), wading in the surf, collecting stones and shells for a small cairn in my study, and enjoying a meal by the ocean. I live no more than an hour from the closest beach, but I never seem to get there. That must change! My mother hated this 60 year milestone. In her mind, turning 60 represented the beginning of the end: encroaching ill health, weakness, depression, isolation. She had seen this happen to her own mother, and she went down the same path. This was a typical path for quite a few of our mothers. For every woman who saw the "golden years" as an opportunity to be free of the workplace or the responsibilities of family and to pursue other interests, I knew as many (or more) in my mom's generation who saw not the interesting features on the road ahead but only the thund

Just call me Spud

Chaos, chaos everywhere, and I no longer even drink (to paraphrase Coleridge -- badly). All my family members are going through transitional times -- all, hopefully, leading to fruitful outcomes, but change is still stressful, especially when it comes all at once, and when you can do nothing to affect any of it except offer support (financial and emotional) and unflagging encouragement. I feel like the calm eye of a small hurricane. To use a more common, kitchen metaphor,  I am a tiny little potato, bouncing around in the family stew, tossed around by the boil. Just call me "Spud." I now understand why some of my friends feel family life is a lot more stressful once the kids are adults. Five or ten years ago, I'd have laughed at that. A friend, the parent of two, said to me recently, "I've been parenting for 42 years! Enough already!" I think Spud will go to the yoga center and meditate for a good, long while tonight.

In search of my inner Martha

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"My God," my mother said generously, "You're the worst housekeeper I've ever seen." That comment resounded in my head during today's Gospel reading about Mary and Martha.  Martha is the housekeeper, the practical, capable one. Mary is the mystic, the student, the dreamer. Mom's comment was made during my first, short-lived marriage, which took such a rapid downturn that cleaning hardly seemed a real priority. I was young, I was a college student, I was ... hardly in the mood to scrub. I should explain that my mom was a real fan of cleanliness, and she took a dim view of anyone who wasn't. She cleaned relentlessly. Spring and fall housecleaning were real in my childhood home, not the vague memory that they have become in my own. Mom took down the venetian blinds once or twice a year and scrubbed them in the bathtub, then carried them out to the clothesline, where they flapped helplessly until dry. I never saw a dish in mom's sink; I t

Smacked-down by a new "-ism"

I grew up surrounded by prejudice. Race, socioeconomic status, education -- it was all there, a judgement just waiting to happen. Prejudice was, in a sense, a generational thing, and though both my parents overcame it to an extent in later life, some of their fixed, negative ideas lingered to the end. Not me. As a child of the sixties, I had been convinced in recent years that all prejudice was dead or dying. Working for 30+ years in a liberal university environment, I had pretty much convinced myself that prejudice, at least along the enlightened East Coast, had become a dark shadow from the past.  I work with all kinds of folks: people of all colors, faiths, educational levels, and political opinions. All seem to blend pretty well in the educational melting pot. We make a stronger whole because of our differences, which are mostly superficial. In a similar fashion, J. had colleagues of all varieties in his IT job.  He has a wide circle of friends and tennis buddies from diverse

A little chaos is good for the soul ... right?

The evening started off wrong, and got worse. The commuter train, normally so reliable, had a thirty-minute delay due to a fire of unspecified source and location. It's so annoying when you never find out what really, really happened! We want all the details, and we never get them. But that's fine. After a looooong wait on the platform, I did manage to squeeze onto a train, with several hundred other people, where I stood with my face practically jammed into a large man's sweaty armpit.  Ah, the disadvantages of being short. At home, it was a lively scene. Somehow our wireless router, as well as our four laptops, had all been hacked. I assume this is unrelated to the train fire, haha.  Family members clutched their cellphones, in various stages of having credit cards canceled and bank accounts checked. Microsoft charged us several hundred dollars to clear everything up. It was a costly security lesson. Then I went into the kitchen. There, in a shoebox on the counter,

Time for the desert?

Next week I will be heading out to Wisconsin, for the Order of Julian's annual affiliates' retreat and JulianFest weekend. Nearly three days will be spent in silence before our festive weekend begins. Despite the retreat center's beautiful location on Lake Oconomowoc, I think of this retreat as my annual time in the desert. I look forward to the silence. And so I have begun to develop piles of items to pack. Among these are:       Books       Journals I need to read       Candles (the battery-powered type)       Music for meditation       Needlework        My journal        My laptop       Materials for planning a haiku retreat.         Hmmm. God? Where did I put him? Is he in one of the piles? Am I going to have time to listen to him, or will I be totally occupied with "stuff"? This is a real danger with me: that I will leave no real time to listen for anything the Holy Spirit may wish to say. Lord, give me the patience, the stilln

Shock, awe, sadness, and shelters

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I'll be the first to admit that I'm a weather geek. In many ways, I think I missed my calling. I watch the Weather Channel the way a lot of people watch sports: I love the science, and I want to know what's going on. My dream vacation would be two weeks of storm-chasing: riding around in a van with other crazy people who love weather. This is never going to happen, says my husband. We'll see. I have a problem with authority.   I have been fascinated with weather since I was a small child, and in fact, many of my childhood memories involve weather events. The ice storm of 1958 features in one of my earliest memories, that of my mother hanging a blanket between the living room and the dining room to conserve heat. I also recall the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962, a brutal March storm that destroyed the coastal summer home of one of my childhood friends, as well as much of the beach towns I knew as a child. In my mid-teens, a dramatic microburst struck my Delaware neighbo

Shadows

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I'm making a pilgrimage tonight, with some friends, to the Tenebrae service at a big-city church. I had never heard of this service, or attended one, until a few years ago. But how appropriate it seems to be for Holy Wednesday, as the creeping darkness of Holy Week begins to descend on us. You can read all about Tenebrae here . The church is candle-lit, and the candles are extinguished one by one as readings proceed.  At the end, the final shining candle is obscured from view, often placed beneath the altar. The comes the strepitus -- a loud noise symbolizing the earthquake Scripture tells us followed the Crucifixion. If done properly, the strepitus makes you feel as if all hell is breaking loose -- as it is, I guess. But that's not the last word. After the hellish noise, the single burning candle is placed upon the altar, the light of Christ for all the people to see, as they depart in silence.

Kvetching about spring

I'd like to report that the spring equinox arrived safely at my home this morning. Immediately, my plants began complaining. They do this every year. They are just not patient . They are the only two large potted plants I have left, and they are excessively worried about their health. They get six months on the porch every year, but the rest of the time all they do is kvetch. I wanna go outside , the Norfolk Island pine complained as I finished my watering duties. It's spring . Look at me! I look like crap in this dry, forced-air heat. I'm becoming straggly. My needles are dropping. The jade plant, sitting nearby, chimed in (the jade never misses an opportunity to complain). You? Look at me! I'm straining toward the light. I'm leaning all to one side. She never bothers to rotate me. "You can't go out yet, ladies," I said cheerfully, misting the pine with warm water, and hoping it would shut up. "It's 38 degrees out there. You want to shr

Cold and raw

Well, so much for the warm March we were anticipating. The weather has been rainy, cold, and raw, with stiff winds. My fur-hooded parka is longing for the closet -- or I am longing to send it there. Still no jobs are on the horizon for J. or our son. Both had a flutter of activity early in their searches, but early hope and enthusiasm have petered out. Our home is crying out for painting, decluttering, new furniture, and rearrangement. But that's not happening. Not soon, anyway. There is disorder everywhere I glance. We find ourselves in a rather gray place, without definition, and colorless. Easter is trundling toward us, but even I seem unable to anticipate it. If it would warm up, just a little, I think we would all feel better!

No comment (for a change)!

One of my Lenten practices for this year has been to "sign off" Facebook until after Easter. I sent a little farewell message to all my friends, wished them a Holy Lent, and moved my little Facebook icon to the last screen on my cell phone, where, theoretically, I will forget to look at it.  I unpinned Facebook from my taskbar. I am now Facebookless. Don't get me wrong: I adore Facebook. I love the interaction with people I don't see often -- or ever -- (as well as with people I do). But, for me, it had become a terrible time-waster, and a distraction from other things that need doing. What's more, it kept my mind too busy all the time. I "had" to catch up with postings; I "had" to share lots of posts; and, worst of all, I "had" to have an opinion on everything I saw. I got tired of having an opinion.  And, let's face it, my (predictably liberal) opinions are a surprise to no one, especially to me. I got tired of the noise

Candlemas, and other suburban fantasies

Although I admit to being a bookworm, most of the books I had during my undergrad and graduate-school years eventually found their way into the public library's book sale (because am I ever going to read Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon again? Seriously, I could hardly read it the first time). One of the few books I've saved is called English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century , by George C. Homans. I love this book, and I actually do refer to it, usually every time I find myself craving a simpler life in a more bucolic setting than the suburbs. There's something reassuring in the recurring feasts, fasts, and labors of the medieval agricultural year, and it comforts me to read about mead-making (or whatever) whilst riding on the commuter train listening to a woman yelling at her truculent teenager on her cell phone.  Was it really simpler in the old days? I have no idea, but that's my fantasy - rising early to watch the sun rise, drinking coffee on the porch at first cock-crow

After reading Denise Levertov

And from the cross he finds me, his gaze glassy, dimming (I'm crouching, hiding myself behind a nearby scrubby hillock), and says, words catching in his throat (and after a raspy, rattling inhale, one of his last?): "No words are needed. Feed my sheep."

Maxfield Parrish sky

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I had a flash of grace tonight as I stepped out of the commuter train onto the platform. Usually, by Friday night, I'm in a vegetative state. Things are very unsettled at work -- we're in the midst of major changes in personnel and workflows, and many people are anxious about the changes they sense are coming. One staff member is retiring at the end of the month; two others have gone on leave for various reasons; yet another is hoping to retire in a few months.None of the retiring people, unfortunately, are me. But I digress.  After days of wind, low clouds and cold fog, when the train pulled away I had a breathtaking sunset view to the west: the lucid, clear turquoise sky, still illuminated against bare trees in the foreground. It was a blaze of blue that I wasn't expecting at the end of a trying week, and  a shade of blue that always reminds me of a Maxfield Parrish sky, as in the painting at left.  Maxfield Parrish was a 20th-century Philadelphia artist and illust

Earth in the broiler ...

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No surprise, this. NOAA announced today that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the U.S., and one of the two top years for extremes of weather.  Read about it here . And now we seem all set to have another very mild winter, at least here in the Northeast.  Temperatures will climb all week, heading to a crescendo of 63 degrees on Sunday. That will be ...let's see ...January 13th. Looks like the hoodie is coming out again. Last winter, I wore my parka only 4 or 5 times. The height of the woodpile is still the same as last year. I have had only one fire, and that was on Christmas Day (for somewhat Dickensian, sentimental reasons). I feel really foolish lighting a fire and then opening the windows. Anyway, it's probably just as well, since I know my fireplace puts fine particulates into the air. The air is sufficiently screwed up already. I also saw pictures of the Mississippi River last week, along with the speculation that barge traffic would have to be stopped on port

New year, new start ...

I woke up on January 1st feeling absurdly cheerful -- despite the fact that my winter break from work was virtually over, and the other externals of my life have not changed since the last time I posted.  Nothing is different. Everything is different. And this feeling of over-the-top optimism has lasted (at least, it is lasting for now). Probably one source of it is my sheer relief that the holidays are over (I'm an "Easter person," not a "Christmas person"), and I do fight depression as the days grow shorter, and the pre-Christmas pace of life becomes frantic. And, perhaps it was only in my head, but the late afternoon light seemed to me to have a different slant as I left work yesterday. A couple extra minutes of light! I'll take it. I did make some New Year's resolutions: more meditation, more study, less whining. We'll see how long they last.  Let's take a cleansing breath and get started.