Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

As Christmas gets closer, I feel the weight of the season on my spirit. "Happiest time of the year?" not in my universe. I have seen too much death in December, buried too many people in snowy cemeteries. I'll pass. Except there's not really that option, is there? The family expects Christmas to arrive with all good cheer. My church expects the same. So I go along, even though I would rather be sitting on a sunny balcony in Mexico, looking out at a calm sea and reading a very long, fat, interesting book. But I went to two services this weekend that helped me a bit, that lifted that December weight for awhile. The first was a "Blue Christmas" service at a  nearby Episcopal Church. My own parish doesn't offer this, but I think it's a wonderful tradition to start. The few in attendance sat in the choir stalls, which were abundantly supplied with boxes of tissues. The readings were consolatory, referring to the brokenness of grief and disappointm...

Yesterday we finally finished eradicating the chaos in our house that came about through having painting done and all the floors refinished. The last task was moving the two huge bookshelves out of my study and back to their home in the upper hallway. With my study restored, I should be able to get some serious work done. I don't do well outside of calm, orderly environments, which is why this autumn was a real challenge for me. In moving books back onto their shelves, I had to stop to reflect. As a medievalist, 35 years ago, I had to know a fair number of languages. Am I ever really going to open the Old French dictionary again? How about that fat Welsh dictionary -- am I going to read the Mabinogion  again? And my short detour into Russian -- what was that about? Do svidaniya! So I got out some reusable grocery bags and started filling them up. I kept all the gardening and craft books, figuring I would use them in retirement. But the dictionaries, language readers ... into th...

Advent has begun in a muted fashion for me this year.  As it's a a quasi-penitential season of waiting, this may actually be an appropriate response. Yet I'm used to a bit more in the way of anticipation. At church, we lost the dear young man I spoke of in my last post, and his funeral was wrenching and painful.  In addition, our priest broke her ankle in the middle of a move to her new home, so we have had to deal with the question of whether we can stand to do only Morning and Evening Prayer in Advent, or whether we should seek the ever-more-elusive supply priest. At home, we have had to deal with a bit of Family Drama, but it has been resolved for the present (we hope). We erected the Christmas tree in the living room, but it stands there naked, waiting for us to have time to trim it. Perhaps this weekend.  I finally remembered I had not ordered a wreath for the front door, so belatedly did that yesterday. So Advent has begun with a series of half-gestures, offha...

I am thinking a lot today about life and death, love and longing, precious memories and memories that won't ever be made. I'm trying to negotiate some understanding out of something that can never be understood. To make sense out of the senseless. I want things to be OK that can never be OK. We lost a member of our congregation early this morning, and the hole he leaves in the fabric of the parish is huge and gaping. He was 31 years old and had been  married only a year. We lost him to a virulent cancer that took him only 5 months after diagnosis. The parish (not to mention his wife and the rest of his family) is devastated. I'm also angry. As a person with a lot of my life behind me, I want to ask God what he thinks he's doing, taking a young person in the prime of life. I feel like breaking a few things, stomping my feet, and having a good cry. Actually, I had the good cry already. Did I mention that I'm angry? Well, I am. Don't worry, God can take it. R...

Our theme today, Gentle Reader, is the weather, as we apparently rush towards winter. We had rain for several days, leaving everything saturated and squishy, and the leaf-covered streets are perfect for accidents.. Not much raking has yet been done in my neighborhood, so the yards are also a carpet of no-longer-vibrant leaves. Some have curled into little dead cups, now filled with rainwater, tiny little ponds in the sun. Dark comes early now with the return to standard time. After a temporary time-change reprieve, we will soon be rising in the darkness again, as well as finishing work after the sun has set.  Doesn't one of our canticles name this the "enfolding dark"?  I don't feel enfolded. I feel benighted! And now, thanks to former-Typhoon Nuri, the weather folks are promising us a big shot of very cold air intruding behind a sagging jet stream. Thanks, it's just what I wanted! My body is already telling me, "Don't bother getting any exer...

Well, I did it. My mother always called me the "mouth on legs." I make a snarky remark in response to a good friend's facebook post (because, you see, I am the Queen of Snark), and I knew my friend would understand my point of view. And she did. But a mutual friend didn't, and took it very (very very) personally.  She took it as a personal attack on herself and her family, which it wasn't. It was a general (though pointed) comment. The original post showed a young boy with a rare albino deer he had killed. I hate guns and I hate hunting, and I wish people wouldn't teach 7-year-olds to kill innocent creatures. I believe animals have souls. I love my dogs dearly, and I don't know where you draw that line between pets and animals it's OK to kill. So I don't draw it. And of course I commented on all this in my typical blunt fashion. Well, you can try to smooth things over, but you can't unsay them. You can apologize for the tone. You can ...

But the moon was extra big and bright last night as I arrived at a friend's house to work on a project. At this, my favorite time of year, early evenings can be quiet and bright, the air clear and free of the swirling .pollen that made me sneeze all simmer. The leaves are beginning to change -- just a hint of color, but the beginning of the end for them. I'm thinking a lot of beginnings and endings right now. We are having painting done at home; now J. has started getting estimates on having the hardwood floors redone as well, since the furniture is all emptied out anyway and the house is chaotic. I love home improvement, but it can temporarily exact a toll on my love of orderliness. Yet, even anticipating how satisfying the results will be,  I realize that this.may be the last time, or close to the last time, that I will undertake a major project like this. Every beginning is an ending too, of sorts Part of the reason we can start this home renovation, of course, ...