Disaster update: Jane even more exhausted, +Maya doing better and better

Dear all -- a very quick update since I need to be back in the saddle at work and am going through a mountain of e-mail here at the office.

+Maya Pavlova and I had our first good sleep in several nights last night. Mine was a little too short and I could use a week of nonstop naps and massages, but it ain't gonna happen, so we'll just try to live a healthy steady life in the midst of the transition. I am getting proper nutrition and taking my vitamins. The bathtub needs a plug so I can only take showers and I really wanted a warm bath last night, but hey, I have running water! So in the cosmic scheme of things, things are good: the bathroom is set up, the bed has been set up since we got moved in Sunday night, and yesterday a friend came over and helped unpack part of the kitchen, so that is functioning too. The radio is out, two pictures are up on the wall, as is a Russian icon of Mary (not an original, but who cares).

The rest of the house is in boxes. My image of La Virgen de Guadalupe is still at the old house, watching over things. (Note: the part of the house where she is was fine and completely unaffected. I'm just sayin'.) The disaster recovery people are at the old house, continuing to go through the rubble, but they are almost done. They did manage to recover a lot. My grandparents' bed was broken into pieces, but we did recover the headboard and it is at the new house. My grandfather's dresser, which was build to last, is fine except for the top, which will need some refinishing or something, but it was so solid that all the clothes in it were fine too. Hurrah, we have underwear, socks, and t-shirts and some sweaters.

Oh, and after nosing around for two hours, Her Grace disappeared from (Un-)Packing Central and when my friend and I went searching for her, we found her sacked out on the bed, sleeping deeply on one of my pillows. It was the first time since we moved in that she'd looked so relaxed and had such a deep sleep and also the first time she'd settled on my bed. (This surprised me, since I expected she'd sleep on it the first night. But she was busy marking her new territory, rubbing against every corner of every room and every one of about 100 boxes, or however many are stacked around the house.)

Miss Maya P. has a new perch and when I left for work, was busy watching the fauna in her new back yard. We have birds, at least one groundhog who waddles around, and the day I first looked at the house, a bunny (also a rare landing from a hawk, who was looking hard at the bunny) and lots of bugs including mosquitoes who bit me heartily during the move when the doors were open a lot. Maya has chased and caught two large bugs in the house.

Two fine friends came over for dinner and we had a feast of Chinese take-out plus one Thai dish (there is a very good Chinese plus Thai place nearby) on real chairs with Maya watching attentively. One member of the couple was the friend who helped in the afternoon and she also brought fresh fruit, milk, and ice cream, in addition to a great salad for lunch. I had told her I was craving green and crunchy food (which you don't get when you are on the run) so she brought a sandwich for herself and a fabulous salad for me.

I must go deal with work. Thanks again so much for the notes, virtual hugs, and prayers. Keep 'em coming. I am feeling quite exhausted and must keep up the school stuff. But I plan to get to bed early tonight. Tomorrow is my super long workday AND the school's Opening Convocation (not quite opening, since we started classes two and a half weeks ago). Thursday a.m. I can get up later and I had a haircut scheduled, so I will see my tasteful and very buff hairdresser and all will be well with the world.

A tree fell on my house

While I was out teaching last night, a tree fell on my house.

The good news is, thanks be to Godde, I am fine, and Her Grace, Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire, is fine. She was scared since she was in the house when the crash happened. But we slept in close quarters and she was purring this morning.

Things could be worse. We could be wet hurricane survivors. We slept in a dry place last night --the college guest house which is near my house. I am now in a bit of shock as reality is starting to sink in.

Thanks to my friend Wormwood's Doxy for getting the word out so fast. I called her not too long after all this happened.

Oddly, the rain was a soft lovely rain, not a thunderstorm (though a tornado did touch down in our county earlier yesterday) and it was not a case of the tree being hit by lightning. The first guess of the campus facilities staff was that the rain loosened the earth around the tree, which was a big live tree, not at all a dead one. I rent a house from the college where I teach and it is on the edge of the campus near the woods.

I don't know why everyone worried about earthquakes when I moved to California. The center and south of the country are really worse...

Oh, and another piece of good news: Wednesday is my longest day of work. So, after not getting enough sleep because of staying up correcting student work and prepping for my 8:30 a.m. class (I was being observed by a colleague in both my classes, the early one and the late one, for the dreaded Fourth Year Evaluation for which all materials are due September 15) and holding office hours and having lunch and going to a 1:30 thing, I found out that my 2:30 p.m. meeting was canceled, decided to blow off the 3:45 faculty meeting because it was closer to 80% required than 100% required, and headed home for a long nap so that I would be coherent for my 8 p.m. class. And a fine, restorative long nap it was. You see, I obey the four-legged one whose Canon to the Extraordinary I am and who issues such sensible pastoral directives.

So I taught half the class before staff pulled me out of it (the colleague who was observing me took over the second half) and when I got home to the crashed-in house with six men running around inspecting damage and moving furniture and a scared cat hiding in a closet, I was rested instead of exhausted and cranky. More proof of the wisdom of naps!

Though the "gee, what lovely soft sleeping-weather rain" proved to be deceptive.

I will have to move. Most likely soon. Which means looking for a place. The college is helping me with that, but since I was renting from them at a somewhat under market rate (which is why I chose to keep living on campus - big house for good rate) it will be hard for us to find a place, apartment or house, for the same amount of money for the same large space.

******

The Adorable Godson, alerted by our rector, came by as I was writing the above and we went off to find me some late lunch with protein to shore up my energy.

Everyone is being sympathetic and I have a good social network, so things should be all right. It will just take a while and interfere with my plans for a quiet weekend. Sigh.

How is Louisiana doing? I haven't had time to check and I heard last night that there might be bad weather and possible evacuations. Big shoutout and hug to Paul and Mimi down there.

More when I can. Peace out.

Friday puppy blogging

My grandmother Melanie loved animals. Cats, dogs, puppies, kittens -- I always remember her with some kind of animal in her arms or next to her. She also had a lot of children in her life: my mother and her four sibling plus hundreds of campers and former campers from the summer camp she and my grandfather founded in 1927 in Vermont. It was all boys at first and became the first private interracial camp in New England, if not the U.S. (the data are a little foggy). The camp became co-ed around the time of World War II. All of us, even my brother and I who lived overseas and couldn't come every summer, were campers and then counselors there.

I think this photo is from the 1950s, but I am not 100% sure. This is one of the ways I remember my grandmother -- full of life and with a puppy in her hands! In the later 1950s, when I first came to Vermont as a very little girl, there were two St. Bernards at camp; their names were Jack and Jill.

When my mother and her sibs were growing up, my grandmother tended to give the dogs names out of classical philosophy and mythology, e.g. Plato and Psyche.

Not sure whether this is a St. Bernard puppy; maybe one of you dog experts can tell me. Most of the other dogs in the family were smaller breeds. The cats were of all types. Most of us grandchildren, interestingly, have become cat people -- but this may have something to do with the fact that we are mostly urban, though maybe not, because one of my urban cat-people cousins has adopted a dog this last year, in middle age (he's middle aged, not the dog) and in Manhattan. Anyway, although I was terrified of dogs all through childhood and adolescence (except for the St. Bernards, who were sweet and placid) and developed allergies to cats (eventually just to some, not others, which is why Maya Pavlova and I get along fine - she is one of the others), you can see why both +Maya and I are multi-species-friendly.

And now you know where I get the dark eyes and eyebrows and prematurely white hair!

(Well, prematurely some years ago. Not any more since I am no longer pre-mature.)

My grandmother died during my first year in college, in March 1970, ten years to the day after my grandfather.

The photo was clearly taken up at camp during the summer. That's the huge camp dining hall behind my grandmother, and that's an Adirondack chair she's sitting in, wearing shorts and a summer top. I was one of the few 1950s and 1960s kids I knew who had a grandmother who wore shorts. (She also is the person who gave me my first Beatles record -- an LP from England on the Parlophone label.) During the year, my grandparents lived in Brooklyn, New York (this is why P.J. and I are sort of related), which according to my mother was almost rural during her childhood in the 1920s and 1930s. She remembers a dairy farm up the road! Times have changed. By the time I first visited Brooklyn in 1957 and then 1960, it was a big city, and as a little girl from Paris I thought it very strange. But that is a story for another day.

Aw, thanks, P.J.! Arte y Pico award

As a reward for getting up late, I have received the Arte y Pico blogger award from the snazzy, zippy, tender-hearted literata, the one and only P.J., whom Padre Mickey (another award recipient - can you tell there is mutual admiration society here?) calls "hilarious" and and "a genius." (I agree. That woman can write!)

Thank you, thank you! I am honored.* Follow-up once I have posted the self-serving post above (for the good of the world church, of course) and gotten some work done.

*******{skips off doing a little dance}

* Origins of the Premio Arte y Pico here, c/o a Uruguayan blogger.

* P.J. recognizes Acts of Hope for "sheer volume of information, abundance of goodness, and overall healing of the world. And for Ms. Maya Pavlova, too."

* Her Grace Maya Pavlova sends her literary best, as you can see to the right. (Overexposed photo but still sweet.)

Thank you, Holy Spirit

I went to bed in the late afternoon yesterday after Commencement and got fourteen hours of sleep.

Kevin Matthews preached a fine sermon today for Pentecost.

The Ave Maria Press catalog came out this week. The new paperback edition of When in Doubt, Sing will be out in October.

I have finished writing the New Preface by the Author.

The campus is empty. Soft rain is falling.

Gone writin'

Friends, I am taking some time away from both my Guilford work and my blogging to get some writing done.

There is plenty to read below (see also the archive to the right) since, as usual, I have been posting obsessively, so enjoy yourselves and please don't stop visiting. Plus, I'll be checking my home e-mail and your comments come to me there too.

Also, I would love some prayers for focus and concentration. Seriously. Thanks.

Please note the prayer request for Robyn on the post below, too.

Yes, I have read the seven senior theses and been to all those thesis defenses plus one. All I have now is a stack of final research papers, haha, and the final reflection papers which students will have handed in by Monday. Monday is also the party for students (I always throw one at the end of the semester, usually during Finals Week) and that's Monday, May 5, so of course there will be a Cinco de Mayo theme. In the food department, that is. We are also adding a little Puerto Rican to the Mexican, because my teaching assistant is half Puerto Rican and she makes rice and beans the Puerto Rican way.

Meanwhile, I am crawling into the hermit cave to meet my own writing deadlines.

Peace out. Back in a few days.

Woo hoo! Book cover for new edition of WIDS

The Production Department at Ave Maria Press says it's fine to show anyone the cover. (I guess the more shameless publicity, the better.) Thanks to Jill, who checks this blog periodically, saw my announcement of the other day, and wrote to tell me.

So, here is the shameless publicity in the form of an aesthetic experience.


Want to know more about the book? Have a look here.

Someone asked whether it would be available at the online places. Yes, of course, but also in your local independent bookstore. Not till fall, though. Stay tuned. Alleluia.

Oh, and some good news!

This week (in the middle of work schedule insanity) I got an e-mail from my publisher with a jpg of my book cover, and it's beautiful. I'm not sure whether it's legit for me to post it here yet, so I'm not. (When in doubt, keep up the boundaries.) But trust me, it is lovely, and I am thrilled.

Once the catalogue is out and Sorin Books / Ave Maria Press has launched the publicity, I'm sure I can post the picture, so watch for it on this blog.

Publication date still in the fall sometime. Stay tuned for updates.

Chag Sameach Pesach

A joyous Passover (Pesach) to those who celebrate it. We have a full week to reflect on its significance.

For now, some posts from last year, when I was with out of town friends-as-family for the beginning of Passover and had a little more time. (Whew, I posted a lot about Passover last year. What has become of me this year?)

Chronologically:

Exodus, Cargo of Hidden Stories.

This one is funny if you're Jewish... (The two-minute Haggadah)

The two-minute Haggadah was a joke, but this one's for real!

Also in today's WaPo: the ambassadors' Seder.

I promised you Miriam's Cup...

... and the orange on the Seder plate.

Pesach check-in with Velveteen Rabbi.


And always, an important reflection for Christians during Passover and the Easter season:
Jews and the death of Jesus.

Grief

Krister is still alive -- I got a note from one of his children this morning -- but near death still, in that in-between passage, and I am grieving mightily. I cried on my walk in the woods yesterday, I cried today in church, I cried at the coffee hour (and left in a hurry), I cried in the car, I cried on the phone when I called my best friend from divinity school to tell her the news and ask her prayers. It's a good thing I wasn't doing much more than being a chalice bearer today. The readings were perfectly timed, too: shepherding, breaking bread and praying in community, the Twenty-Third Psalm. Everything reminded me of what a holy and pastoral person Krister Stendahl has been for so many of us, and how much his work has built up the Body of Christ and so many of us individually, in our various ministries. May Godde have mercy on us who will survive him, and help us do for others a fraction of what he has done for us and for the kin-dom.

Rabbit

I didn't upload these test results right away when I took the test yesterday, just sent them to myself in an e-mail, so no cute solo-Rabbit-portrait here. Like many other people, I saw the test over at Elizabeth's Telling Secrets and I took it right away. Call it Pooh Procrastination.

No surprise in the results.

And I do need all that advice below in the last paragraph. It is, in fact, Made For Me.

This is definitely one of the better tests. (It is probably accurate because its questions were more complex than those in other the other internet tests.)

Rabbit was never my favorite, though. I'd rather have the others for friends. Which proves that we need people who are Not Like Us, and that if everyone were like us the world would be an Even More Terrible Place Than It Is Now. I'm not even sure I like Rabbit that much, which may be related to the fact that I tend to be Hard On Myself. Which doesn't mean I don't go around Organizing People and Sending Out Letters, because Someone has to do it. Sometimes, though, I sleep in my burrow all morning, as I did today. What you see in Rabbit is not always the whole picture.

Hippety-hop.

Rabbit
(You scored 19 Ego, 17 Anxiety, and 14 Agency!)

"It was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days.

As soon as he woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him.

It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought About It.

It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh, and saying, "Very well, then, I'll tell Piglet," and then going to Piglet, and saying, "Pooh thinks--but perhaps I'd better see Owl first."

It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said, "Yes, Rabbit " and "No, Rabbit," and waited until he had told them.

You scored as Rabbit!

ABOUT RABBIT: Rabbit is generally considered Clever by his many friends and relations. He is actually a much better reader and writer than Owl, but he doesn't consider it worth mentioning. Instead, Rabbit's real talent lies in Organizing Plans. He organizes rescue parties, makes schemes to reduce Tigger's bounciness, and goes on missions to find out what Christopher Robin does when he's not at the Hundred Acre Woods. Sometimes, however, his Plans do not always go as Planned.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are smart, practical and you plan ahead. People sometimes think that you don't stress or worry, but this is not the case. You are the kind of person who worries in a practical way. You think a) What are my anxieties about and b) What can be done about them? No useless fretting for you. You don't see the point in sitting around and waiting for things to work out, when you could actually work them out today and save yourself a lot of time and worry. Your friends tend to rely on you, because they know that they can trust you help them work things out.

You sometimes tend to be impatient with people who are less practical in their ways. You don't have much patience for idiots who moan about things but never actually DO anything about them. You have high expectations of everyone, including yourself. When you don't succeed at something, or when something goes wrong despite your best efforts to prevent it, you can get quite hard on yourself. You need to cut yourself some slack and accept that everyone has their faults, even you, and THAT IS OKAY. Let yourself be faulty, every now and then, for the sake of your own sanity.

Take it!
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/7755608336260521742/Deep-and-Meaningful-Winnie-The-Pooh-Character

Sunday afternoon: sermon, art, family, loss, nap; John O., RIP, part I

I preached a funny/serious sermon. Will post later today once I have cleaned it up a bit.

Took time to attend an exhibit opening downtown after church, a painter-engraver colleague of mine and a potter friend of his. Lovely. We really do need beauty almost as much as water.

Came home to news that one of my parents' closest friends, a sort of uncle of mine really though not a blood relative, died suddenly last night. His wife hasn't been well and just celebrated her 90th birthday and we all expected she would go first. He went very fast -- not sure what the cause was, but it doesn't matter.

It's too early for the newspaper obituaries but I found a professional bio online. What it doesn't show of course is the tall, stately man with the wide smile and deep sense of irony and humor who adored his grandchildren and who was one of the great diplomats of his generation. A diplomat on the development side -- as in, helping bring water to Gaza. Gaza which is in hell right now.

Oremus. And rest in peace, John. A life well lived.

I am going to try for a nap. Never enough sleep on Saturday nights, especially before a preaching Sunday. I am sad for my parents especially. They have been friends with this couple since before the war (World War II, that is) and John is the first of the four to die.

Maybe it was the atmospheric pressure

Or the barometric pressure. Are they the same thing? I am an adult and ought to know these things.

I have a student athlete with a bad shoulder injury and his shoulder (with pins from surgery a few months ago) hurts him when the pressure changes. He predicted yesterday's snow hours before it came, he told me. Another student, who is ultrasensitive on all sorts of emotional and mental levels, gets horrid sinus conditions when the pressure changes. He's had a hard time of it since last Sunday when the winds came.

So I'm thinking that maybe the pressure affects my mood sometimes. Of course this morning's joy in the woods might have to do with the beauty of the snow, the clear light, and the fact that we made a decision about our search yesterday. But the pressure had changed too, and I am always happier during and after precipitation (rain, snow) than before.

It was probably a combination of the search decision and the grace of Godde.

No, I can't tell you our choice, because it went to the dean and then after the dean approves she calls the candidate, and then it's the candidate's choice to say yes or no to our offer, so it's all out of our hands now. We're holding our breath.

These tenure-track searches are decisions of huge import in small liberal arts colleges like ours. Our department only has three full-time tenure-track people (there are also a couple of part-timers) right now and we often spend more time with our colleagues than we do with our spouses and partners due to the demands and practices of work, and if we all get tenure and decide to stay (we are all untenured right now -- all two of us and the person who is leaving and the person who will replace her) we could be together for a long, long time, like the crew of our predecessors who retired within a few years of each other not long ago. So it's a bit like being married to each other. For better, for worse, in sickness and in health, for long hours and many resolutions of challenges and conflicts, for decisions involving basic values, for lots of care of other humans. I don't know where I will be five years from now. I could be tenured and here, I could be refused tenure and not here, I could be in parish work again, I could be somewhere else entirely. But we could all be a little team here for many years and are assuming we may well be. And even if we are not, the decision of whom to hire in the field of religious studies will have an impact on students, and on the institution, for many years. It's not like hiring the best widget maker you can find; not that widgets aren't important.

Small talk. I am turning into a minor Samuel Pepys again with all this detail... (Speaking of which, someone has Pepys's diary on a blog!) Not very profound writing, this, but it's life right now. I did write a bit more of my New Preface by the Author in my head during my walk, and also got some thoughts (thank you, Holy Spirit and beautiful snowy woods) for my sermon of March 2. I need to put them to paper. But first I must finish proposals for the Educational Policy Committee. They were due today and I got back from class an hour ago. There are a lot of faculty members up late tonight finishing their proposals. More details of why we have to write these proposals you really don't want to know. The short version is it's not optional.

A nice Valentine's Day, though, with joyful solitude and beauty to begin the day. It made all the difference later.

And tomorrow night, on stage!

When in Doubt, Sing: a new edition!

Oh, I have been sitting on this good news for three months because I did not want to say anything in public until everyone had signed on the dotted line. Now I can tell you.

My book When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life is being re-issued in a brand new paperback edition, with New Preface by the Author (c'est moi).

The book came out in 1999 and HarperCollins let it go out of print. Never mind that the reviews were great and people said it was useful to them and I was giving workshops and retreats based on it all around the U.S. The other Harper, HarperSanFrancisco (now HarperOne) with which one must contract separately, didn't want to bring it out in paperback when I and my then- literary agent asked. Long story with a lot more in it. I will not grouse publicly about various past publishers, but I will sing the praises of my new publisher, Ave Maria Press. Yes, a Catholic publisher, based at Notre Dame University (NOT at Ave Maria University!) and and yes, they know I'm an Episcopalian (and former Roman Catholic) and they are just fine with that. Their book list is ecumenical. In fact, they contacted me about doing this reprint. Bless their hearts.

Like most writers, I like getting my deathless prose published. (This did have something to do with my starting a blog.) So I am a happy puppy. I am also deeply grateful to Ave Maria Press and its fine publisher, Tom Grady, for bringing out this book again to be of help to people in their spiritual lives.

As things stand now, When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life's new paperback edition will be out in the U.S. in the fall of this year under Ave Maria Press's imprint Sorin Books.

I'll post a reminder when I know the actual date the book will be in the stores.

Yes, the book will also be available in Canada, the U.K., Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Perhaps South Africa too. Contact me if you can't get a hold of that info locally and I will put you in touch with the publisher and the distribution people.

And yes, I am available for talks, workshops, retreats, quiet days a.k.a. days of recollection, guest sermons, adult education sessions and forums, spiritual formation programs, et al.

Bookstore talks of course are unpaid, so if your local Borders or Barnes & Noble or independent bookstore (support your local independent bookstore!) wants me, I don't get paid, but author appearances do sell books and people get to hear me read and ask me questions and get their book signed. So it pays in that sense -- and for the public, it's a nice free talk. When I post the reminder, I'll post my publicist's name. She'll be arranging bookstore appearances.

For the other appearances, like retreats and all the above, which require more preparation and expertise, the hosts do have to pay me, plus there are travel expenses.* I don't have a lecture agent at this point, it all goes through me. That may or may not change. For now, just contact me if you or your congregation, diocese, house of prayer, community action group, or other constituency have interest in my coming to visit.

****I make exceptions (from receiving an honorarium) for Catholic Worker houses, poor or very small urban and rural congregations, homeless and battered women's shelters, and prison chaplaincies. Everyone else gets to help me earn a living.

I'm going to gloat, to the greater glory of Godde of course, by reproducing this wonderful review from the Los Angeles Times by Nora Gallagher, the author of Things Seen and Unseen and Practicing Resurrection.

Los Angeles Times, Saturday, May 1, 1999
Finding the Voice to Pray

Prayer is strange. Sometimes it's akin to shouting out loud in a dark barn without any sense of who or what will reply, if anyone at all, or whether the reply will come in a language we can immediately understand. But when you reach down into the discipline of prayer, you understand that the shout itself is important, that to want to find the holy is to want to find your own soul. What begins prayer is a search and what ends it is a finding, not of the mind, not of the heart, but of the mind's heart.

Yet to pray is to invite uncertainty. And many guides to prayer are too sentimental or simplistic to provide any help. Whether Jane Redmont is gazing at icons or practicing healing prayer or "waking in the night: when you cannot pray," she provides in When in Doubt, Sing an intelligent and compassionate guide to prayer and daily practice. Her tone, her own story and her good writing infuse to book with a trustworthy authenticity: This is a woman who knows about prayer, in all its patterns, depths and turns.

Divided into 27 short chapters, which include prayers taken from such traditional and contemporary sources as the wonderful New Zealand Prayer Book, Janet Morley, Kathleen Norris and the Psalms, When in Doubt, Sing opens with "Begin where you are, not where you ought to be." From there it gets into specifics: mantras, petitions, intercessory prayer, lectio divina (reading and praying), singing and prayer, building a daily practice.

"What is prayer?" Redmont asks in her introduction. "A sentence, paragraph, or page of definition would not bring us much closer to the doing of prayer. I keep hearing Jesus' words to his would-be disciples... [when] they asked him, 'Where do you live?' 'Come and see,' he answered. Come and see."

A feminist Roman Catholic theologian, Redmont is studying for her doctorate at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She has worked as a chaplain and a social justice minister and has directed the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Born of Jewish parents, she converted to Catholicism as a young adult. [And I was raised a Unitarian; people almost always leave that one out. My "New Preface by the Author" will of course talk about my emigration to the Episcopal Church after 26 years as a R. Catholic.] Her life has not been simple, and her work reflects it.

Redmont suggests slowing down as a preamble to prayer -- "Love has its speed," she quotes a Japanese theologian, "at 3 miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed God walks." But she acknowledges that "much depends on temperament, circumstance and time of life." Redmont says she prays outdoors more and uses icons and candles, fleshly things.

Redmont's own story is woven throughout, but most poignantly in the chapter "From Where Will My Help Come? Praying During Depression." After finishing her first book, Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today, she took on a demanding job and then suffered from serious anxiety attacks and depression. "Sometimes it seemed as if the electrical wiring inside my brain was short-circuiting. No amount of deep breathing, yoga and fresh air seemed to help." One night, desperate with panic, she read the Psalms out loud, especially Psalm 6 -- "Oh, Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror."

When on a business trip to New York City, overcome with panic and increasingly suicidal thoughts, she prayed on the street to "every saint I could think of in that moment." She checked herself into a hospital for several weeks [actually, 12 days], went on antidepressants and began to slowly recover. Each phase of her illness required different kinds of prayer, and no prayer "worked" or "made everything all right," but all the prayers added up. Redmont's strongest writing is in this chapter.

"Asking for help: Again and again it came down to this. Help from therapists, from family, from God, from the local bank, from colleagues and friends. Help with the fear, help with the rent, help with employment, help with prayer." Toward the end of the book, Redmont talks more about communal prayer and prayers for justice. Prayer at its most profound is countercultural: It requires us to feel the ached in the heart for both love and justice, for the place Jesus called the kingdom. A friend of Redmont says it is "the never-ending work of trying to bring more alignment between what you hope for and how you live."

Nora Gallagher is the author of Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith.

And here's another review, this one from The National Catholic Reporter.

May 28, 1999
When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life - Review

One cannot read this book and remain the same. It is a book that stretches traditional thinking about God without discarding tradition, distilling what is salient while gentle nudging fresh ideas our way

When in Doubt, Sing is a revitalizing book, meant to be pondered slowly, perhaps in a journal or through dialogue. Redmont approaches her subject as much from personal experience as from her Ph.D. work at Graduate Theological Union. Born of Jewish parents who later became Unitarian, Redmont, a feminist theologian who studies yoga, is a Catholic practicing in an urban congregation with a penchant for gospel.

"Our whole life belongs in prayer: emotional, intellectual, physical, sexual, affective, social, economic, political in the broadest sense of the word. Our doubts and our pain, not only our wishes and our dreams. Our whole selves."

Such a premise immediately challenges conventional parameters. Yet, Redmont points out, this approach finds its approach in the life of Jesus Christ and other biblical brethren. [I used gender-inclusive language in the book and did not speak of "brethren." But her point is accurate. The book does have Buddhist meditation- and yoga-inspired parts, but I am irredeemably biblical.] For them and for us, prayer is relationship with God, encompassing our entire lives.

The 27 chapters of When in Doubt, Sing address the seasons of that relationship and offer ways for it to deepen. In each chapter Redmont shares real life anecdotes, insight from various theologians and religious texts and exercises pertinent to the subject. The topics are roughly chronological, corresponding to the maturation of a relationship. [Interesting, I didn't really think of them that way except of course in the early chapter titled "Begin Where You Are, Not Where You Ought to Be."]

Accordingly, Redmont explores ways to meet and get to know God in the beginning chapters. She stresses the words of Thomas Merton to alleviate initial hesitation or feelings of unworthiness: "Don't set limits to the mercy of God. Don't believe that because you are not pleasing to yourself you are not pleasing to God. God does not ask for results. God asks for love."

Redmont then discusses ways to related to God authentically and comfortably through forms of prayer ranging from the use of icons and rituals, meditation to singing. In these and other forms offered, Redmont consistently refers to biblical precedents.

In the chapter, "Praying With the Body," for example, Redmont points to the physicality of Jesus beyond Incarnation and Eucharist. "You will find bodiliness nearly everywhere [in the gospels]. Jesus touches eyes, ears, mouths, restoring speech and sight... Even after the Resurrection, Jesus is still dealing with bodies, breaking bread on the road to Emmaus, grilling fish on the beach, showing wounds to a doubting disciple."

The theme of this chapter resonates throughout. We know, worship and pray to God through our individual and collective bodies. Redmont stresses the two as inseparable; individual relationships take place within a living context informed by history and tradition. The baptism of a friend's son vividly captures this union while providing an unconventional example of prayer. The parents asked loved ones to send water that would be blessed by the priest and used in the baptism. They received water from the Ganges, from Walden Pond, well water, salt water and fresh.

Since Redmont couldn't attend the ceremony, she sent the boy a letter along with the water: "With all your friends and family I welcome you to the church. It's got its problems, but let me tell you two wonderful things about it. This baptism makes you related to millions of people! People from Zimbabwe and France and Brazil and New Zealand. [Actually I wrote, and the book says, Aotearoa New Zealand, but book reviewers don't much care about the Maori.] People of all different colors and shapes and sizes speaking different languages and singing different songs and eating different foods. They too are your aunties and uncles and brothers and sisters. Imagine that!

"And all of them are friends of Jesus. That's the second wonderful thing: being a friend of Jesus. He was a real person many years ago, but he's all over the place now, too. You can talk to him and listen to him and hear his stories and ask questions about him. You can hear how he was friends with everyone -- poor people and rich people, women and men, and little children like you, too; he always made room for children. He also liked very old women and men. There was always room at the table for one more person; that's the way Jesus is."

Redmont's letter eloquently and simply explains the legacy of Christianity bestowed through the ritual of baptism. The letter also expresses what is essential to any ritual; it is a way to re-member because it brings together or makes whole.

When Redmont lost a friend and could not find words of her own to grieve, she repeated the words of the Requiem Mass. Years later, she realized she had been praying for him in the plural. "I said the words, but the words were not mine. I felt the grief; grief was not mine alone. All those who mourn and all those who have died were present in the prayer. The words were not mine; but there was room for all my grief inside them."

We belong to a spiritual fellowship that spans history and geography. Redmont reminds us that we are not merely passive inheritors of something lifeless. Instead, what we have received is dynamic and calls for our participation. In human relationships, we care about the concerns of those we love; it is no different with God.

Karl Barth urges us to pray with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. One reveals who is on the heart of God: the poor, the dispossessed, the disenfranchised and the marginal; the other where to seek them. Here, too, prayer takes on a corporal form, for we attend to God's cares with our bodies and as a body of believers.

It's easy to question whether this book is really about prayer, perhaps because we approach prayer with narrow definitions that do not have room for the abundance suggested. Redmont challenges these definitions in a curative, enlightening manner, providing new perspectives on the familiar and opportunities to relate to God more intimately.

Throughout, Redmont refers to the prayers, relationships with God, modeled in the Bible. Among others, David raged, grieved, rejoiced, wept, lamented, and yes, even danced before the Lord. With gentle passion, Redmont exhorts us, "go and do likewise."

Mary Silwance is a staff writer and book reviewer for Review, a Kansas City, Mo., arts publication.

COPYRIGHT 1999 National Catholic Reporter

Here endeth the commercial.

Still sick and busy...

... but canceled yesterday's mid- evening plans (early evening plans had to stay, we had a candidate in town and took her to dinner) and most of the morning and did the sleep and heal thing. Good idea.

The mardi gras crêpes-fest is still on for this evening, though. Traditions must endure.

Onward. Thank you for your prayers for the folks in the two posts below. Peace out.

Yes, there was Friday cat blogging (and various things on illness, ordination of women, Brigid, Candlemas, et al.)

Scroll down beyond the lament post below. Mrrrrowwww.

Me, I have been sick and stressed out. (The former doubtless influenced by the latter. Stress has been there for several weeks. Sickness crept up on me a day or two ago.) Not too badly sick, but trying to fend off something coldish or lungish or fluish. I have been taking homeopathic remedies and I slept all morning. (The same morning I was supposed to spend working to meet a major writing deadline after canceling a diocesan meeting I usually chair. But first things first.)

We have three finalists coming to town for a position in our department (Religious Studies, very small department, three and a half people, the half being an adjunct, so only three full-time tenure-track people). One came this past week -- intense visit as these always are (the poor candidate has to give a talk and be interviewed by two or three groups and about six or eight individuals one on one; my colleague Eric and I remember this all too well since he is only in his 4th year here and I in my 3d) but very good. All three candates are excellent. The next arrives Sunday night. The next the following Sunday night.

The position is in Islamic Studies and Social Ethics. We are a small department and everyone does more than one thing. But we are weighting the Islam training and teaching more heavily here.

Mercifully, classes are going well, much better than last semester. I know the material much better, I'm not hopelessly behind on returning written work, and there are fewer, um, challenging students. (Don't you love it when I understate? Must stay diplomatic. I do love my students but some absorb more energy than others.) But there is too much going on and unfortunately I cannot tell any of it to go away. The closest I came to that was deferring this morning's diocesan Anti-Racism Committee meeting till later this month - but that came at a price since I don't make such decisions without my executive committee and then one has to contact people (just writing isn't enough, you have to confirm everyone got the note) and make sure they don't show up at a church in the middle of the state and find no one there, etc etc. So that all takes time, though I had some help. And then I decided to take care of myself, and there went the morning. I am better but still not a happy puppy.

I also had to stay up writing a few little things because last night at midnight was the deadline for recommendations for applications to master's degrees at Harvard Divinity School and four of our best students are applying and I'd only finished one of the recommendations. And this is not something on which one does a sloppy job since we're talking people's lives and education here. I am very proud of my little darlings - not just of these but of the ones who are headed for service projects and nonprofit work after they graduate this coming spring. We have an unusual number of altruistic students at this college, many of them in our department. Some of them, in fact, are the same applying for further study; they want to use their education to serve others. So I stayed up writing essays about how fabulous and creative these youngsters are, and fortunately these days you can upload the essays and fill in all the check-this and rate-that part online. But it's still work.

So I have been a little overwhelmed. Those of you who pray, please send a few prayers my way.

P.S. Maya Pavlova acted like a hellion this noon after I woke up and tried to apply her monthly dose of anti-flea stuff. I have the scratches to prove it.

P.P.S. Happy Candlemas! And happy Brigid Day plus one! I have fallen down on the job in the saints department. For a fine Brigid reflection, see here. Some scholars and several tellers of stories (sometimes the same people) view Brigid as an ordained bishop. Abbesses and abbots had authority often equal to that of a bishop. So either answer may be correct :-). Most recent thing I have read in this general area is by the eminent scholar (and all-around great guy) Gary Macy in his recent Santa Clara Lecture, which I just got in the mail recently. His related and latest book (from Oxford University Press, if you please) is on the ordination of women in early medieval Europe. (You read that right.) But I have to go have some herbal tea. Talk amongst yourselves.

Wulfstan of Worcester: January 19; Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Wulfstan of Worcester is the saint of the day in our Episcopal calendar today, January 19.

Wulfstan was one of the few Saxon bishops who survived, administratively speaking, after William the Conqueror showed up. He is best known for his opposition to the slave trade in Western England.

This is the 6th anniversary of my formal reception into the Episcopal Church. (I became a member of an Episcopal congregation in the second half of the previous year and had been in discernment about the move for a year before that.) For this and so much else, I give thanks.

It is also the second day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.* As an ecumenist, I love this holy coincidence.

* I just found out when looking for a link that this year is the Week's centenary celebration! Click on the link above for more info.

Most of the text of this post is taken from a group letter to friends two years ago.

A new godson!

I've just become a godmother. (Again.) No, not of a baby. Of a 22-year-old young man. We baptized him this morning, on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. He has been attending our little church/chaplaincy in Greensboro and had never been baptized, and recently he requested baptism. (I am, by the way, writing all this with his permission. I'm careful about the privacy of family, friends, and anyone I have remotely or not so remotely dealt with in pastoral care or teaching.) His partner, another young man in his twenties, is a cradle Episcopalian and they have been coming to liturgy together these last months.

My new godson is named Robbie and, as the proud godmomma, I must tell you that in addition to being a sweet and good human being, he is a budding physicist with a background in math and computer science. Like many young adults he has had his ups and downs (so have some of us middle-aged folks) and it was good to receive and celebrate the love of God, the power of the Spirit, and the support of the community of the friends of Jesus. Our Chaplain, Kevin, preached a wonderful sermon and the small congregation sang happily and with gusto, and Robbie has been glowing with a beautiful warm smile.

Baptismal sponsors (Robbie had three) aren't necessarily called godparents, but Robbie and I both want to use that term, so I am his godmother and he is my godson. I am deeply honored that he asked me to be his godmother for many reasons you can imagine and many more besides.

Pray for Robbie and rejoice that he prays with us. Rejoice in the gifts that he and his partner bring to the community of faith. It was good for all of us in the church to renew our baptismal promises today. Thanks be to Godde! Alleluia.

Yeah, I know, allegedly not blogging...

... which you'd never know from the posts below ...

... but really, I'm not all here, and just flit in and out of here for stress relief and contact with (some of) the outside world, or maybe more like contact with the inner circle! (Have I said recently how much I appreciate this lovely crowd of cyberfriends? Some of whom I also know in person.) How interesting this blogging life is. Sometime when I am out from under Three Big Projects and the beginning of the semester,* I will blog about all this ;-).

Also am taking more time for prayer (see all of the above), hence the tenor of some recent posts (more here).

* and Diocesan Convention, which is fast upon us. We're not in crisis though, just busy.

Keep me in your prayers, please.

Epiphany resolution(s)

I've been thinking about this New Year's resolution thing, mostly because people on blogs have been pondering it too.

I can't remember what my resolution was last year.

I seem to remember I decided not to make one because I didn't need the pressure (I've got some stress in my life and a lot of it has to do with being evaluated) and/or because I never kept the resolutions I made.

Also, people's resolutions (mine included) always seem to be about losing weight or becoming better at something or achieving something.

Problem with the first one: It's not a New Year thing, it's an always thing: you gotta change your eating and exercise habits. And if it's the same resolution every year, it loses its punch -- in which case it should be a New Year thing, but just once.

Problem with the second and third ones: I have so much getting-better-at and achieving and fix-this and you-gotta- in my life right now because of external circumstances (some work-related, some others) and so many internal messages about that sort of thing to begin with that those two kinds of resolutions are a really bad idea; maybe not for someone else, but for me. It would be far better for me to meditate on the grace of Godde. (No, I am not becoming a Lutheran.)

More fundamental problem: I don't really live by the calendar-year calendar. The IRS lives by the calendar-year calendar and as a citizen I comply with that. (Until such time as I have the guts to do tax resistance and stop paying for war. In which case I would still have to abide by a calendar.) The diocesan budget lives by the calendar-year calendar and I work with that. The school at which I teach lives by the academic calendar, and so, programmatically, does the chaplaincy with which I am associated. Parts of my brain will always live by the academic calendar because it has so often and so long been a part of my life.

But the true calendar by which I live and on which I (try to) run my life is the liturgical calendar, the Christian year. Truth be told, I also pay a lot of attention to the Jewish liturgical calendar, for family and other reasons, and I watch and know a lot of the other religious calendars --Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, Buddhist-- because of vocational, personal, and occupational inclinations and commitments. Still, the measure of my days is the cycle of Christian prayer, the rhythm of the church year. "Season" to me means Advent, Christmas, Epiphanytide, Lent, Easter, Pentecost as much as winter and spring.

My body, of course, keeps track of the earth's seasons, as do my heart and mind and whatever else I am made of. And here in the Northern Hemisphere many of the church feasts (and the Jewish festivals) have seasonal or earth-based or agricultural connections.

Still, the calendar by which I run my life at the most fundamental and intentional level, and which has become part of me, beyond intention, is the liturgical one.

All this to say that I am rethinking the matter of resolutions in light of Epiphany.

In Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation of Christ and the love of God and the presence of the Spirit to the whole world. From there to "this year, how can I participate in this light that shines forth?" there is only a short step.

It may be, of course, that my resolution(s) has (have) to do with something more inward: a decision to devote more time each day to contemplation, to receiving the gift of grace, to multitask less, to sit still more. None of these is a "let your light shine" kind of activity, at least in the short term. (And it would be dangerous, I think, to think of them as means to an end. Prayer and contemplation are also useless, and Dorothee Soelle talks in her book on mysticism and resistance about Meister Eckhart's sunder warumbe, "without a why or a wherefore" which is how we are called to love Godde.) But I am pondering this idea of an Epiphany resolution, or perhaps "resolution" is the wrong word. An Epiphany promise seems to fit me better, and it is a commitment I could keep.<