Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

With all due respect to the hardships suffered by the folks in upstate New York ... I am hoping and waiting for a snowstorm. Not that I want 100 inches of snow! Not at all! Two feet would be plenty! My husband and I would not have to go to work, and could sit home by the fire, surrounded by dogs. This is pretty much a picture of heaven for me. We have a chance of snow tomorrow night into Wednesday -- the first real storm of this rather feeble winter. My fingers are crossed!

There's lots of excitement this week at the Church on the Pike! The J2A (Journey to Adulthood) group moved into new, larger digs, where they can have a sofa and other soft seating, plus a TV with a DVD player. This was a great move for them and me! What they left behind is a basement room which the Rector said we could refit as a meditation chapel (we have a large chapel on the main floor, but people pass through it on the way to the kitchen and the bathrooms -- not very conducive to quiet prayer). Now, this basement room in itself is nothing to write home about. It's 8.5 feet wide and 40 feet long, and is illuminated by blindingly bright fluorescent lights (we are determined to find softer lighting). The blue carpet is elderly and stained. But the kids did paint it nicely when they vacated, and at one end we have placed the altar that used to be used for Sunday School chapel services. Bingo! Instant chapel! Now we just have to work on the fine points. I have lots of wonderful

Over the weekend the cold descended with a muffled thump, and I spent a lot of time in front of the fire finishing Story of a Soul , by St. Therese of Lisieux. Now, there's something wrong with this picture: there I was, all tucked up on my cosy couch, the fire roaring in the fireplace, a cup of chamomile tea next to me, and the head of my oldest dog resting on my lap. Now, Therese suffered gladly for Jesus. Therese begged Jesus for more suffering, so that she could endure it to His glory. Therese endured a really horrific two-day death agony from tuberculosis, without complaint. So, as a corollary, Therese should perhaps be read: --in the cold garage, in the dark, by flashlight --at the bus stop, in the wind and rain --on a dark and lonely road, waiting for the tow-truck --at a campsite in the lonely woods, when your food has run out, the campfire is dying, and some undoubtedly large, hungry beast is

Seems like the firewood I have piled on my porch won't go to waste after all, now that real winter has come at last. The mercury is likely to stay low for awhile, so tonight I plan to have a roaring fire. Snow or no snow, I like it cold. Even with the mild weather we've been having, it does seem like a kind of "dead" time of year. With Martin Luther King Day over, we now have no more time off till Memorial Day. It's a stretch till then! And everyone is sick. I ride public transit at my peril. I guess January and February are the time to hunker down. And I'm good at hunkering!

And so a new year begins. We are just back from a three-day visit to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, in rural central New York State. This is one of my favorite places on earth, and it always does me good being there. There's an expansiveness there that the suburbs simply lack. The hills were (for the first time in winter that I can recall) totally brown and bare of snow. In fact, we saw no snow in the Poconos either, which must be giving ski-slope operators fits. But the distant hills with their copses of bare, black trees looked like wrinkled brown velvet, and I could not get enough of looking at them. Speaking of looking at things, I took a good look at myself in the bathroom mirror on New Year's Day. I had washed my hair but left it to dry by itself, and it had sorted itself into long, loose waves. Right then and there, it occurred to me that I very much resemble a middle-aged cocker spaniel with glasses. I suppose it could be worse! I guess I could make a resolution to