Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

A cold front has come through and we are enjoying a welcome break from early-fall warmth and humidity. The low tonight is predicted to be in the low 40s -- time to haul out a light blanket, at least. I'm too cheap to turn on the furnace for AT LEAST another two weeks! Fall is my favorite time of year. I love the colors, the scents, the crisp air. And it always seems like a new beginning -- I guess because I am still somewhat in tune with the academic year, and with church programming, which follows largely the same pattern. And I need a new beginning very badly. I've been in a slump; you could call it a time of aridity. My house is a mess, my prayer life is laborious, and my "exercise program" has become a myth. Actually, it's usually a myth! So this time is as good as any to try to get things in order. The whole weekend lies ahead, with nothing much planned (it's a miracle!). Time to get going.

At the end of last week it became clear to me, through items which arrived in the mail, that someone has been using my name to attempt to open credit card accounts! Yesterday morning, in examining my credit report, I learned with some bemusement that seven such attempts have been made in this month alone!! Someone has been very busy pretending to be me! (I wonder if he or she also wants to be middle-aged, short and plump? I'm a package deal.) Now that I have set up security alerts with all the credit reporting agencies, this type of attempt won't be successful (I hope). I tried not to lose much sleep over it all, in any case. And yet -- this event did bring home to me the fact that my reputation for reliability, reflected in my good credit record, is very important to me. Despite all we hear at the Church on the Pike about how infinitely precious we are to God, just as we are and with all our wrinkles unsmoothed, apparently I also care quite a bit about my "good name&quo

This past week I've been reading Henri Nouwen's The Genesee Diary , which he wrote during the period June-December, 1974, when he was on retreat in a Trappist abbey in New York State. This is something I would love to do, even if only for a month. Actually, a week would suffice! Now that I've been back at work for a few days, I can barely recall that I was on retreat at all. Clearly this is something I should do a few times a year. What I like best about Nouwen's diary is the essential humanity of the man that is evident no matter where you open the book! He writes about his own, most human, foibles, which he has brought with him even into this holy place: hurt feelings, petty jealousies, aggravation when assigned unfulfilling work; and about the niggling worry, as the term of the retreat passes, about whether what he has learned about God and about himself can be taken back and demonstrated in his normal daily life. One passage I find particularly appealing deals with

At 53, I finally have my own desk! Break out the camcorder! OK, I guess it's not a big deal. But for years, I've been conducting household business, journaling, etc., on a cramped, narrow little table that we bought years ago for the kids to do their homework on (they never used it, of course; they preferred their bedroom floor, when they did homework at all). It has two tiny, shallow drawers, not nearly enough room for all the junk accumulated in running a household, and a little wooden chair that's painful to sit on if you have arthritic hips. So when my husband and I stumbled across the discontinued rolltop desk in an unfinished furniture store, we got it as my birthday present. It's monstrous, and takes up a whole wall of my little study. It has every nook and cranny that I could possibly desire: little drawers for stamps and paper clips, little doors that open to reveal secret cubbies, and three big drawers down each side of the knee-hole ... it's heaven! I kn

I've just returned home from our parish's first-ever retreat, held in Atlantic Canada on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. Some of us elected to fly there, some to drive; I was among the drivers, which probably accounts for the fact that I returned home somewhat worn down. Flying would have been a better option. The spot was beautiful. We had 4 housekeeping cabins, among which were distributed 11 people. Right out our front door was the cliff-edge, and below it, at low tide, was a rock-strewn beach great for beachcombing. I love beach-glass and little, odd-looking rocks, and came home with so many that I haven't had time to sort them out yet. So, what I learned: living in community is HARD WORK, not to be undertaken lightly. My two cabin-mates got into a (relatively minor, in retrospect) fracas the first full day of retreat, and there I was, stuck in the middle, eyes wide as a saucer, wishing to be invisible. Later on, we all got along just fine, but I found myself w

I'm halfway through Francis Schaeffer's True Spirituality , and I have to say it's been awhile since a book has affected me quite so much. There was no chance of falling asleep while reading this one! The emphasis so far has been on the sequential facts of Jesus's life: that he was rejected, slain, and raised, in that order, and that Christians must not neglect that order. That there is always a crucifixion in our lives before a resurrection -- that we die to self in baptism, and are raised with Christ; that we must reject the values of the world before we can walk with Him. Now that's powerful enough -- and Schaeffer is a very good writer -- but when he elaborates this theme, the reality comes pounding home. When we are baptized, we actually die, in God's view. So that, in living our lives, we are to live as if we have really died, have been to heaven, and have been raised again . We are to live resurrection lives. The reason this blows me away is that this is

Blogging is a scary idea for me. I have kept a journal for several years -- it now runs to five of those little journal notebooks you get from Levenger's -- and I'm sure I'm an odd sight, pulling it out of my bag before work or at lunch, scribbling madly for a few minutes before tucking the journal away again and (reluctantly) going back to my normal activities. I have been known to "journal" almost anywhere: in the courtyard of the building where I work, on a plane, in a hotel room when I travel for business. The journal is never far from me. My family knows it exists, but has never read it. I began the journal after thinking one day, just before I turned fifty, that my life was probably two-thirds done (cheerful thought!), and I should probably begin to sort myself out for the remaining third. I wanted to leave my children something besides a few shares of stock and a house crammed full of stuff that they'd have to auction off or give away. The journal seem