a poem I couldn't resist sharing, an echo from my previous life

Did I Miss Anything?

Tom Wayman
From: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

___________________________


Tom Wayman's works copyright © to the author.

another day.

Nothing accelerates housecleaning like the imminent prospect of house-guests, I think.

Brother Unit arrives tomorrow evening, and all, but ALL, tomorrow morning is taken up with a para-academic meeting--a bit difficult at this point to believe it will be worth the time it will take, but there it is.

So it's going to be an intense weekend...as I'm preaching and presiding at St. Curious on Sunday, with a parish lunch group scheduled for the noon time -- and have already arranged with Offspring to blitz the remaining belongings still back at MH & U on Sunday afternoon, with their help and temporary use of a suitable TRUCK. I hope that a couple of hours will allow us to vanish permanently into the middle distance, leaving not a wrack behind or at least, if we do leave a wrack behind, it will be a wrack belonging to MH & U, not belonging to me. I also have -- hurray -- a nice little cache of gift cards for Adjacent Steakhouse so am prepared to feed the office movers sumptuously Saturday evening...

Today is cleaning day and sermon day. Last load of laundry is in the washer. Have moved nearly all the bags and boxes of books off the entrance landing and stairs.

Part of the housework project at this point is dealing with the semi-perpetual Miserable Nuisances that have never been just quite nuisance enough to be dealt with yet. So this morning I found a tube of appropriately Savage Glue, and re-attached the magnet latch to the medicine cabinet door, clamped it with a clothespin until the glue dried, and voila, the medicine cabinet door now actually CLOSES. Civilization! wonderful!

Still on the list, serious application of vacuum cleaner to the premises and some mopping of hard floors. Bathroom and kitchen need intense cleaning too... and there should be a trip to the recycle depot.

I have added three elderly bowlfuls of pot-pourri to the compost bin, and am washing the bowls. (Pause to lie down and have the vapours...) It's been a considerable time since there was any "sniff" in any of them. (Note that the Rambler is now open to receive new consignments of roses for the concoction of new pot-pourri, sigh).

Got the bills paid and the car washed earlier in the week...led the third section of the evening course I'm doing on the Passion Gospels. Buoyed by a re-reading of Isaiah 55 from Sunday's lectionary, the group seemed a little more persuaded by the analogy between lectio divina and the eating of rich things like chocolate.

And for my bedtime reading I am midway through Finding Beauty in a Broken World, by Terry Tempest Williams...the making of mosaics, prairie dogs in Bryce Canyon, and now, ossuaries in Rwanda...

Back to finding a little beauty in my excessively messy world!

the status quo

At this point in the Rambler's world...

...the new Sanctuary Lamp has battled through new-candle colic and is burning brightly and cleanly and redly above the altar. Happiness all around.

...visiting music student is moving into her fifth consecutive hour of intensive piano practice just next door in the nave. I don't recognize most of what she's working on, but I think Scarlatti went by a little while ago.

...survived a gathering of the ordained earlier this week without getting myself arrested. Thank goodness for knitting. And for a perception that not all the worst of the nonsense was going by altogether unchallenged -- huzza!

,,,weather has been unseasonably warm for the last week and we are still in sandals sans panty-hose, oh double huzza!!!

...next week will wrap up double-ended short course on the theology of +++Rowan -- we've looked at his theology of peace, of childhood and adulthood, his engagement with Russian Orthodox theologians and Dostoevsky, and next Tuesday/Wednesday -- "The Issue" (ominous chords, offstage). The +++ABC website has been a treasure. And, having heedlessly given away my copy of Charles Hefling's anthology Ourselves, Our Souls and Bodies, I was luckily able to find a website with a good printable text of the essay "The Body's Grace." This course is a shared project with a young ordained woman serving as chaplain at Colourful U -- and holding the fort in a badly disheveled but gallant parish on the edge of campus. We are having a good time with our project -- we do an evening session at Most Holy and Undivided, and repeat the session the next morning at St. Theophrastus.

...reflecting with friends that the civic myth of the self-evident truth, political or philosophical, may not be the very best foundation ever for theological debate... just sayin'.

...and our friend Lucy is out of ICU and about to begin very extensive rehab...thank you for all your kind prayers.

...went to an academic oversight group meeting this morning -- well, for all morning and the beginning of the afternoon. Despite years of conscientious therapy and Personal Work, the Rambler continues to exhibit a degree of Personal Rigidity and this group -- it meets quarterly -- is not a happy habitat for that...The kind of group characterized by Implacable Tolerance and Inclusivity, you know? So there is some tooth-grinding and interior mutters of "Here I am stuck on the floating island of Laputa, and where o where is Jonathan Swift when I really need him???"
But happily there were identifiable persons present who weren't thrilled with the Amiable Fluff either. One of whom, a new acquaintance, fetched his tuna-fish sandwich and couscous salad over to the Rambler's corner of the table at lunch time. And we found a comforting number of shared opinions.

...the problem of automotive drabness seems to be abating, or maybe I'm noticing more. But there seem to be a lot more genuine blue vehicles about -- and even a fair range of greens -- not all "Look-Mom-when-I-hold-my-breath-I'm-a-Jaguar" green. Anything to push back "il grigio."

...and the Daughter Unit, against whom no amount of "il grigio" has ever prevailed, has a birthday next week...she and her spouse are -- both!!! -- Michaelmas babies. Big-time festivity this weekend.

and that is all.

words to live by

About four years ago I encountered an organization that I'd never heard of before. At the end of the day on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul I was in the Trastevere district of Rome to attend the Evening Prayer service of the Community of Sant'Egidio, which you can read more about HERE. It was an amazing evening for a great many reasons, and I've checked into the Community website from time to time since then.

Last winter sometime I found a wonderful phrase cited as the slogan for one of the Community projects (I think it was an art show): "Abbasso il grigio!" Or, anglice, "Down with gray!"

It has stuck with me.

Not just in terms of my own feeling about the colours of cars, as I was mumbling about yesterday, but about a great many other things.

And one of those other things is liturgy.

The topic comes bubbling up in this locality, generally, when we have had a particularly ornate diocesan service such as an ordination. "Too fancy, too long, too elaborate, (occasionally, too much smoke), too much music, too many vestments..."

It's hard not to hear, in these complaints, "too beautiful" -- "not gray enough."

I recall vesting in close proximity to a colleague who expressed intense bitterness, sotto voce, at the splendour of some of the vestments. I think it was the Canons' and Archdeacons' copes that set him off specifically.

"I just hate all this fanciness and dressing up," he said, "because after all I'm just a Humble Pastor, myself."

I couldn't think of a single civil reply. What I'd have said if I could, would have been, "And what's the point of all that humility, eh, Reverend Heep, if NOBODY SEES AND ADMIRES IT???

But that might have been construed as unkind. Because it would have been.

The usual somewhat diffident defence for "fancy and beautiful" in our celebrations goes something like this, "well at least I suppose it shows people that we think the things we are doing are important." And then the special celebrations are compared, not always to their advantage, with the "humdrum everyday" realities of parish ministry -- including, I think, parish worship. In other words, "il grigio."

And I think this is a profound error. I would argue that "fancy and beautiful and complicated and impressive" is not a misrepresentation of the reality of what we do in ministry but a reminder of the reality of what we do in ministry and of what we ARE in ministry. Or of what we will be (which does not yet, as we are told, appear). Because those realities truly perceived are all splendour.

And that if I am prone to being struck dumb with awe at the sight of Archdeacon Stoopnagel's Sunday-best cope, or at the sound of the cathedral choir giving Wm. Byrd a run for his money, then that is a happy foretaste of how the good Archdeacon will look to everyone, and the cathedral choir will sound, sub specie aeternitatis. I say "Fie" (I do, too) on a professed humility which is no more than carnal envy and spiritual pride and probably acedia as well, all in sneaking and slinking mode.

So let's dial up the "hue" of what we do.

"Abbasso il grigio!" You -- possibly! -- heard it here first.

reflections on teaching, and "Can you spell VOCATION?"

We are rejoicing -- or maybe just exhibiting reprehensible smugness -- at MH & U these days over our NINE, count'em, confirmands. Each provided with a mentor, too; and none of the mentors likely to cause harm of any sort to their charges.

This is all good! The young people are mostly boys, just a couple of girls, ranging in age from a very mature 9 to 16.

This means lots of adult males involved in the mentoring, also good.

I also have a handful of wee ones interested in first-communion instruction and/or baptismal instruction.

The issue here is that we welcome whole families with a range of ages and a range of theological backgrounds including the Anabaptist, so there are anomalies in the ages at which our children do things for the first time.

I thought I might economize on effort and energy by teaching the whole mob (the little ones are 6 or 7 years old) through the most basic "Life in the Eucharist" work and then get stuck into William Willimon's material on "Making Disciples" for the balance of the confirmation instruction.

And so on Sunday I found myself in the nave of the church with about 8 of the confirmands, and mentors according, and two bright-eyed church-oriented little girls, and a small crowd of parents, various.

We had spent some time last Sunday on the ante-communion part of the liturgy.

So I moved a small table to the head of the aisle, set it with my travelling communion kit, including wafers, wine, and water, and called the little girls to me, because I thought that doing the teaching "fishbowl" style might be best -- two participants and the rest observers... this seemed to be OK for the group.

I borrowed the two long white brocade bookmarks from the altar-book and put them on the little girls like stoles...and then encouraged them to see what happens at communion time from where the priest sees it...we counted out wafers, poured water, poured wine, washed little hands with the lavabo bowl...we recalled the story of the Last Supper which we tell every Good Friday as part of the children's Way of the Cross.

and I asked them to wonder how many of the roughly-a-dozen of young people there might find themselves doing this work as their life's work. (Actually, I said, "I'll just bet that at least one of you, someday...")

I had NO IDEA how that thought would go over, at all. But it did seem to me that a way to pull them through their confirmation instruction might be by applying the superior magnetic effect of ordination...I still don't know with any confidence whether that's legitimate, or inspired, or unscrupulously manipulative, or what.

But they were MIGHTY thoughtful. The little girls meanwhile were INTO IT...surreptitiously stroking their stoles, and -- one of them -- extending a very small forefinger to touch the wafers in the paten.

So we wrapped up the lesson with some discussion of ways that communion is shared in different churches and in different situations, and they all went home.

But I had feedback...indirectly, from the parents of the little girl who isn't yet baptized. At home with her parents, she told them, "THAT WAS THE MOST MOST SPECIAL THING THAT I HAVE EVER DONE."

And I think that is, after all, what I wanted them to feel about the Eucharist.