Wulfstan of Worcester

Who is he???

Wulfstan of Worcester is the saint of the day in our Episcopal calendar today, January 19. (I know, this year the feast of Confession of Peter was moved to this day, but Wulfstan is still there as well.)

Wulfstan was the only Saxon bishop who survived, administratively speaking, after William the Conqueror showed up.

He is also known for his opposition to the slave trade in Western England.

He was a Benedictine monk.

Today, January 19, is the 7th anniversary of my formal reception into the Episcopal Church.

It is also the second day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which begins the day of the Confession of Peter and ends the day of the Conversion of Paul. (See also here for more info on the Week.) As an ecumenist, I love this holy coincidence.

We are, of course, still in Epiphanytide, so Wulfstan is an Epiphany saint, though we do not always make that connection and "work it."

Thanks be to Godde, and thank you to all those who continue to be witnesses to me and to accompany me as sisters and brothers in faith.


You can see Wulfstan's crypt and some explanatory notes at Worcester Cathedral here.

A bit more on Saint Wulfstan here. Note the foodie episode with the roast goose and the resolution about vegetarianism.

I used to wonder why this 11th century Saxon guy ended up as my patron saint, but the more I read about him, the more inspiring I find him. Not least among his interesting traits is his political and ecclesiastical survival among a powerful majority of clerics (and others) who were culturally alien to him. And of course there is "the simplicity, earnestness, and incessant labour of Wulfstan's pastoral life."


The Wulfstan birth-millennium website is here. Lots of bio about him on one of the site's pages here.

Perhaps one of our English friends can try the St. Wulfstan Ale for me.

I love my deacon-to-be students!

Did I mention that I love my deacon postulant (just one postulant) and candidates? I had my last theology class with them yesterday, a double session, and we had presentations, on which they did a fantastic job. The sole woman in the class, not a person you'd immediately think of as theatrical, dressed up as Hild of Whitby and brought props of all kinds and informed us of all manner of history, theology, and early medieval English culture. These are adult students who are not in seminary and will not go to seminary: they are in a special diocesan formation program for vocational (permanent) deacons. Another student gave a kick-ass presentation on William Stringfellow, about which and about whom more this week. We also had fine visits from the spirits and words of Julian of Norwich, F.D. Maurice, and Vida Dutton Scudder. [I'll add links to info about these various people on Monday or Tuesday.] We began the class by reflecting on Guadalupe and Juan Diego and their feast, which was Friday, and getting a little introduction to Mexican and Mexican-American spirituality and theology.

Last month we read works by thinkers/doers from the African diaspora and Africa: Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu (sermons and essays from the apartheid era which most folks don't get to read, including the oration at Steve Biko's funeral), and Pauli Murray, the first African American woman to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, who was from these parts in North Carolina and who was also a jurist and a poet.

The students are from a variety of backgrounds and are involved in a variety of ministries. One does hospital chaplaincy; another works with farm laborers (and is a former scientist who is involved in a bit of farming himself); another is involved in parish work and, I just discovered, is a stylist (as in salon and spa); another is a lawyer who has done poverty and housing law. The wife of one of the students is an oblate in the Order of Julian of Norwich and he was the person who helped us learn about Julian and her life and theology and spirituality.

The students gave me a thank-you present at the end of the session, a low, broad vase in which to make flower arrangements -- or, I'm thinking, an arrangement of evergrees for this season, and a lovely card with "they who sing pray twice" on it. I was very moved. I am glad to have a lighter schedule in the coming months, but I was thrilled to be back in theological and ministerial education, even on this very very part-time basis, and I will miss our conversations.

The deacon candidates will be ordained in June. The postulant is a year behind them. Celebrations to anticipate!

Story on last year's national deacons' conference here.

Blog of Ormonde Plater, our friend the deacon in New Orleans and a mentor to many, here.

Greensboro book party (and a cat blogging bonus)

I should have posted this before today, but between Finals Week and everything else including waiting for books to arrive (thank you, Publicist of Acts of Hope who chased down errant UPS for two days), I neglected to do so. At least I got invitations out to all of you who are in the area, at least I hope so. If I did not, write me at widsauthor at earthlink dot net: it's time for the Greensboro Book Party for When in Doubt, Sing!

The party is this Sunday evening, December 14 and it is a joint party with a member of my congregation, Sarah Lindsay, who also has a book out. She is a very good poet and we are holding the party at our church (or rather, our church is hosting the party, thank you, church) and thought it would be fun to have our respective crews of friends and colleagues be in the same place. Sarah will read some of her poetry, I will read bits of the book on prayer, and we will sell and sign books when asked (that's why I needed to get 50 books here pronto) and generally eat, drink, and be merry.

Grades are due first thing in the morning Monday (I'm aiming for sooner, but as usual, good luck to me) and I teach the deacon candidates a double session tomorrow an hour away from here. On Monday things slow down. We hope.

Again, please let me know if you are interested in attending the book event. You don't have to be bookish to show up.


+Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire, will not be present. She has other things to do and much as I tried to interest her in the book the day the first copy arrived (when I took these photos), she only wanted to groom herself. Her Grace has her priorities.


Bird? What bird? I only pay attention to the real thing.

A truly virtuous bishop, not swayed by the lure of literary fame.

The smell of snow

We have had a few days of cold, crisp weather here. Last night as I was shutting down the computer I glanced at the weather information on the side of my Yahoo page, in the place where I have all "my" cities, and Greensboro, at the top, said "partly overcast."

I went out to the car around 11:00 p.m. to retrieve a bag of books and papers I had brought in from the office. Although the sky was indeed a little overcast, the air was still crisp. There was a smell in the air that brought me straight back to winters in the Alps, as surely as Proust's madeleine triggered his childhood memories. I thought to myself "it smells like snow" and breathed deeply, wondering how this smell and feel had come to North Carolina in November.

Around 6:45 a.m. I got up, started padding around the house, and looked out the window, and lo, there was snow.

There is not even an inch, but the ground is covered, and the trees, and the car, on November 21 in Greensboro.

I felt impossibly happy, as if winter vacation at age ten or a northern New England weekend in my thirties or forties had returned.

Who needs meteorologists? The smell was in the air.

Election Day morning

Chicago was unusually warm and clear. Here in the Southland, we awoke to grey, chilly, wet weather. One of the trees in the yard to the side of my house, at the border of my neighbor's yard, is tipped in golden yellow, the leaves closest to the trunk still green. The leaves and branches are moving: there is also wind today. The fig tree outside the window of my study is nearly bare.

I am still tired from the conference and the trip, but it was good to be in my own bed last night.

Today in the cool weather I will wear a wool sweater knit for my father when he was a Marine in World War II, probably when he returned from the Marshall Islands with a wound in his foot and was in hospital in Hawaii. My father is taller and bigger than I but the sweater has shrunk from washings over the years and just fits me. The wool is tight and warm, a very dark navy blue with a small turtleneck. There is still a bit of the Red Cross label on the neck. A woman whose name we will never know knit this sweater, and perhaps others, for men she would never meet. My father recovered well and has, if I remember correctly, a 10% disability. His automobile license plate has a purple heart on it. He is proud of his service in the war. He has also been, for years, a supporter of peace, speaking out against our current wars in the local high school and giving the young 'uns his "war is hell" speech. In a memoir he wrote nearly two decades ago, he writes that you never forget the smell of death.

Father of Acts of Hope turns 90 this coming weekend, and Godde willing, I will be up in Boston with him and Mother of Acts of Hope, celebrating quietly. Today my parents are voting. My brother is watching the election from overseas. In less than an hour I will go to my neighborhood Get Out the Vote gathering, at 9 a.m. in someone's home, under the leadership of a young Obama-Biden campaign staffer, wearing my father's sweater, knit by a Red Cross volunteer whose name we will never know.

Election Day.

Brought to you by your daily ¡Sí, se puede!

Activated till the polls close on November 4.

Friday cat blogging: Maya in the new place

We are having a somewhat gloomy day at Acts of Hope, weather-wise and otherwise. The resident human, being the queen of delayed reactions, has finally been feeling the impact of the last couple of months with the Great Tree Disaster, the precipitous move, the unceasing onslaught of work, the gazillions of boxes to unpack (remember they were packed in haste -albeit by the moving company- so the chaos factor was high and the labeling accuracy low), six nearly simultaneous deadlines (four of which the aforementioned human did not meet and still has hanging over her increasingly grey head), and several other stressors. There is also the advent of shorter days. Seasonal Affective Disorder, anyone? (Try this. I'm serious.)

The resident feline, on the other hand, is cheery, with the occasional trace of post-traumatic reaction when someone moves furniture or shuffle boxes around. Her Grace does have her favorite napping spots, though, set up by her Canon to the Extraordinary.

When we first moved, she headed for the Canon's pillow every day and sometimes every night. Here she is either opening her eyes from a nap because of the sound of the camera or still freaked out by the move. Behind her is the headboard to the Canon's grandparents' bed, which the tree disaster broke into bits. But it's easy to lean the rescued headboard against the wall and make a plain ol' cheap bed look fancy. We have saved the pieces of the old bed and maybe some day we can have it fixed. We're not holding our breath.


Now Her Grace has migrated and has found other soft spots. She has a perch in the bedroom and another in the living room. Here's the bedroom one. The piece of furniture is the landlady's and instead of having it in a corner, we have it in front of the window. The windows here are much higher up than the windows in the old place. With this particular perch Miss Maya can be up against the window as she likes to be, thanks to these nice open shelves. At first she napped on the bare shelf, quite happily, but now there is an old mattress pad, nice and soft, for her leisure. It's not pretty but it's comfy.


Here's the living room one. The Canon is going to have to move the cushions, one of which belongs elsewhere, but she has held off in the interests of feline episcopal stability, and for about a month this has been the main episcopal seat in the house. Note the sage napping pose.


This is an all-purpose cathedra (bishop's seat). It is good for napping and also for watching kitty tv, of which there is plenty: birds, squirrels, rain, and now a few falling leaves.

It is also good for keeping a lookout for the Canon when she returns home.

Next to the Feline Bishop Extraordinaire is a makeshift curtain of Indian print with elephants on it. We think the Canon to the Extraordinary has had this piece of material since college, but we're not sure. For now, it works to give the living room some privacy.

We took down the landlady's curtains for a variety of aesthetic reasons. The windows are, as they say, butt-ugly, and we are going to get new window treatments, we just haven't yet. (One more thing on the list.) But the old window treatments had to go.

This window is not much of one since it is where the air conditioner lives (the old place had central air conditioning and big picture windows) but it does provide a great place for +Maya Pavlova to jump onto, and sometimes when she is up there, once she has finished looking out at the leaves and the bugs and the birds,

she poses.


She wants you to see both profiles. Aren't they handsome? Is this not the most regal feline bishop you have ever seen, even on top of an air conditioner in a butt-ugly window? Not for nothing is Maya Pavlova the Right Reverend AND Right Honorable.

Here you can see she can still look a little freaked out. Bishops are human, er, feline too, you know. Remember your bishops are breathing feeling animals.


Mostly though, she's okay.

Click on the photos to enlarge them. Especially this last one.

Be prepared...

... be prepared, always, to be part of God's answer to your own prayers ...

That beautiful piece of wisdom is from MikeF at The Mercy Blog. It comes toward the end of his post for Blog Action Day, a bloggers' day on world poverty. FranIAm has also posted for this action.

I am a little low-energy today and looking at four (or is it five?) unfinished projects, none of them optional, so I am re-learning the lesson of the Body of Christ, and remembering to be grateful for my friends whose prayers carry me and who also act when I cannot.

As I write, I am especially grateful for Mike's wisdom.

By the way, Mike just made his Life Profession as a Third Order Franciscan. Read about the fine day at Hifield Friary here, and if you want to know more about what it means to be a Tertiary as opposed to a Brother, don't be afraid to ask Mike! P.S. Mike is also a grandfather and a cat person. +Maya wanted me to write that.


Art: "Communion of Saints," by Ira Thomas. Tip of the fedora to ConcordPastor. (Fran, note, I just found this via a Web search for art on the Communion of Saints!)

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!