Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

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,...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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!

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...