Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

I get around round get around I get around, I get around (ooh--OOH--ooh) I get around .... I'm dating myself, of course, but nobody says this like the Beach Boys. And that's not my car in the picture, either, just one I stole from Google Images. I'm more the humble Honda type than the Mustang type. Well, the New Seminary has kept this Olde Seminarian on the move. In addition to a lot  of writing, first-year students are charged with observing, or participating in, varying types of religious services. Though I was a bit intimidated by this at first (I am Episcopalian, after all!), I've come to love worshiping with people of different faiths. My first forays were in traditions close to my own Christian tradition, which let me put a toe into familiar waters. My initial experience was attending a service at Union Church in the Wilderness. They aren't kidding about the wilderness -- the way there took me a long way down an unmarked, dark country road tha

It's been gray and dark here, last weekend especially. The skies hovered close above my house, while the rain poured down. It was so dark, even near the noon hour, that my electric window candles in the living room remained lit. Then the rain ceased for a while, and the skies lightened. I ventured outside, because it was unusually warm. The light is different in winter, I think, especially on a gray day. Trees' branches stand out sharply, black skeletons against the sky, and their every movement in the wind is visible. The lawns are bare of leaves now, and the grass dormant, yet every tuft of grass stands out in sharp relief, every undulation in the lawn is now visible. These details are not so easy to see during the riotous growing season, when all my lawn becomes a mass of seething green. Looking around, I saw squirrels' nests in a couple of trees. If the trees were in leaf, I would not have seen them. And then I saw it, in a neighbor's tree, about three house

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, offhandedly