May I have some peeled grapes with that, please?

We haven't had a video in a while. For your midsummer kittyfest enjoyment, here's Bali fanning Harley with his tail.

Longcat

No-Eyes

But check out those whiskers!

Temporary Insanity

During our visit in Philadelphia, Dr. Dino gave me a copy of a wonderful handout about mourner's rights from the American Academy of Family Physicians. Here's my favorite paragraph:

In some cultures, a mourner is considered legally insane for a year. The mourner is allowed to blaspheme, break promises, wake people up at night, change his or her mind repeatedly, and express emotions, including anger at the one who has died. While our culture may not provide as much grace to mourners, you should give yourself a break.

I absolutely love this. I wish I could say to all my friends, relatives, colleagues and students, "Okay, I'm going to be legally insane until next March: just deal with it." Alas, our culture indeed provides much less grace to mourners, although it does caution us not to make any important decisions for at least a year.

All of this was in the back of my mind when, several weeks ago, I suddenly became fascinated by the idea of being a living organ donor. I can't even remember what prompted this: some news story, probably, combined with the fact that Katharine's brother received a kidney from a co-worker last year. My interest struck me as bizarre even at the time. I'm very properly scared of surgery, hate pain, would have a very hard time dealing with any extended recuperation period preventing exercise -- even my measly gum graft was a challenge in that respect -- and, even if I were a perfect match for someone, would probably be ruled out for all kinds of reasons, including my age, my depression history, and prior abdominal surgeries (two laparoscopic procedures).

Nonetheless, I did enough research to learn that, for instance, while the surgical procedure for donating a kidney is slightly less strenuous than the one for donating part of a liver, the liver regenerates almost completely after the surgery, whereas once you've given up a kidney . . . well, you're down a kidney, which means you're in trouble if something happens to the one you have left. I found myself weighing these factors. I actually browsed a database of people with my blood type who need organs. I found one I'd really have been happy to donate to, and fretted about whether this person could wait until next summer, which is the soonest I could possibly have major surgery (and is, mind you, past the one-year barrier).

Am I temporarily insane yet? Yeah, I thought so too.

And then, the very next day, I learned that an acquaintance may need a new organ, and I heard myself saying, "If it comes to that, I'd be happy to be considered as a donor."

I don't think it will come to that. First of all, this person won't get to the stage of considering transplant for some time; secondly, I probably wouldn't even be a good match, and there are a lot of other people who'd no doubt volunteer, like this person's family; thirdly, I'm sure I'd ultimately be ruled out, for the reasons I've given above. (I don't even donate blood anymore, because my iron levels are too often borderline. It's not worth schlepping down there to be told I can't do it.)

I dutifully mentioned all this to my shrink, who blanched and looked very alarmed and said, "Susan! Don't do that! At least, don't do it right away. I don't think that's something you should jump into."

"They don't let you jump into it," I reminded her. (Being approved as a living donor is a very long, thorough process, and rightly so.) "Anyway, they'd probably say I couldn't do it just because I'm here in your office."

"I'd have to write a letter for you. I'd support you if you really wanted to do it. Just -- don't jump into it."

Don't worry: I wouldn't even if I could.

But isn't the timing really kinda freaky?

Today

The day went better than I feared. I got lots and lots of loving notes from folks at church, which helped, and was very busy prepping this afternoon's class, which also helped.

My sister called and said her husband had made brownies in Dad's honor; he loved chocolate. I wore a bright red scarf in his honor.

I was more tired today than I've been since starting the five-meals-a-day plan (which has had a wonderfully steadying effect on my energy level), but that's probably some combination of grief and the aquacise class I took this morning. Today's class featured barbells instead of noodles. I much prefer the barbells. I could handle them fine, and felt like I got a great workout. I hate weight/resistance training on land, but in the water, I loved it. So that was a nice discovery. And I could mostly follow all the moves today, primarily because they were simpler than last time.

After aquacise I went to work, prepped and taught my class, came home, ate dinner, did the reading for tomorrow's class, and wrote three pages of TSWP. So I was reasonably productive despite my fatigue.

Today's coolest event, though, happened during dinner. I was watching the finch feeder, where a number of very pretty little birds had congregated, when suddenly I saw a small, blurry whirring off to the right. "Omigod!" I said to Gary. "Look! It's a hummingbird! Look at that!" It zipped away again very quickly, once it realized that our finch feeder didn't contain nectar, but we both saw it.

We've never seen a hummingbird here. I saw one at my friend Ellen's house once, when I was laid up on her couch after spraining my ankle and was feeling very sorry for myself. Actually, right before the hummingbird showed up at dinner, I'd been missing Dad. So maybe they're a special "cheer up" message of some sort.

Whatever else they are, they're sure pretty!

Happy Birthday, Dad

My father would have been eighty-seven today. My sister took this photo on his birthday four years ago, when he was still living in Ocean Springs MS. I don't think I was there then; I'd gone to see him that Christmas, and I don't think I went out during the summer, too. I was there for some of his other birthdays, though.

(Have I posted this photo before? If so, please forgive me.)

Behind Dad, you can see a small portion of his beloved music collection, which was color-coded by genre and alphabetized by artist. Note the birthday candles in the cans of Ensure, a joke Dad would have appreciated, and also the plaid shirts. He loved plaids, the louder the better. Just last night, going through a bag of his things, I found his all-time favorite plaid shirt, which had once been very loud indeed but became more and more faded as the fabric grew thinner. He must have had that shirt for well over twenty years. I folded it and put it carefully in my closet.

Here's my favorite recent picture of him, taken October 18 of last year, the night he arrived in Sacramento. That was the last night of his life he wasn't on oxygen (although, in retrospect, he should have been even then). We stayed at a hotel in Sacramento that evening and drove home to Reno the next morning. As we crossed a particularly scenic section of the Sierras, Dad said happily, "Oh, I'm going to love living in the West!"

But as soon as he got out of the car in my garage, he collapsed, and Gary and I called 911, and Dad went to the hospital. Between then and March 21, when he died, he only spent two months in any space he could call his own: one month in an apartment and one in an assisted-living facility. The rest of the time, he was in hospitals or nursing homes. He always told his nurses and doctors -- in Reno, San Francisco, and Palo Alto -- "I started moving to Reno on October 18, and I'm still moving."

He routinely nagged me about my writing. "Have you finished your book yet?" Almost four months after his death, I still haven't been able to bring myself to write his obituary.

In my Tolkien class this afternoon, we'll be talking about the first two chapters of The Lord of the Rings, including the famous birthday party when Bilbo vanishes. That seems very apt, today (or, as Tolkien would put it, applicable). "I regret to announce that -- though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you -- this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!"

Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you. I'm sorry you never fully arrived here, and I hope that wherever you are now, you're at peace.

Pushes and Pulls

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that perhaps the biggest factor in my decision to withdraw from ordination to the diaconate -- aside from lack of time, changing requirements, and several lively episodes of church trauma -- was my unease with some of the promises people have to make when they're ordained, specifically the vow to "obey your bishop and other ministers who may have authority over you and your work." (My, that was a long sentence. Sorry.) I like my current bishop a lot, but bishops are as varied a bunch as anyone else, and I didn't want to take a binding oath to obey anyone who might wind up that office in the future.

That particular ordination promise was very specifically what I had in mind when I wrote all the stuff about oaths as "blank checks" in yesterday's homily. (What if some future bishop asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter?) But a few minutes after I delivered yesterday's homily, our current -- and desperate to retire -- deacon announced that the parish will be starting a new calling process for deacons, and I felt an undeniable pang: sorrow, yearning, envy of whomever will get to be ordained.

I wrestled with this mish-mash for most of the rest of the service. Again: I can't in good conscience take that oath. I also don't want to have to take the eight-hours-a-day-for-four-days General Ordination Exam or memorize liturgical trivia, and the most important aspects of the diaconate -- bringing the church into the world and reminding the church what the world needs -- are things I think I'm already doing just fine.

Then why was I still feeling the pang?

After the service, I talked to one of our priests, who said brightly, "You might be called again!"

And I said, "But nothing's changed. The requirements keep getting tougher, and that oath's not going away."

"Probably not," she agreed.

Sigh.

I may just still be in the process of grieving what didn't happen, along with all the things that did. I'm sure my sadness over Dad is bringing up all kinds of other sadnesses, the stuff I didn't have time to think about while he lived here. But the issue doesn't feel put to rest, and that annoys and troubles me. Can I please be done with this, already? Or get a clearer sense of what I'm supposed to do?

Aaaargh. Yeah, I know. In God's time (the kind where a thousand years count as a day).

On a brighter note, after church Gary and I went to Trader Joe's, and I stopped in at the bead store next door to get beads for my KangaTek zipper pulls. I'd brought four silver charms I'm especially fond of from home, and I bought four gorgeous turquoise beads to go with them, and the lady in the store assembled them into zipper pulls for me. These pics are blurry, but will give you the general idea.

I bought the fish charm during one of my summer courses in Berkeley; I'm fond of it because, even though it doesn't look like a bumper-sticker Jesus fish, it still works as a religious symbol for me. And anything acquired in Berkeley brings back happy memories.

My mother gave me this charm, which is smooth and heavy and vaguely acorn-like. I like it just because it feels good, and because it came from Mom. One advantage of these zipper pulls is that they also function as worry beads.

I bought the Celtic-cross charm in Mississippi when Dad lived there, so it always reminds me of happy times with him. I also like the cross shape, although in Reno, it tends to be mistaken as a Basque symbol. I get tired of telling people that no, I'm not Basque -- I used to wear this cross to the hospital, and had to have that conversation constantly -- but I still like the charm.

I love turtles, which are my totem animals in many ways, especially since I've always been very physically slow. (Have I told you the story of my brief ski-racing career when I was seven or eight? Terrified, I inched down a hill by planting my skis in the widest snowplow in the history of skiing -- when I wasn't falling down and getting back up, that is -- while sympathetic adults at the bottom of the hill cheered me on. I came in dead last, about an hour after the penultimate finisher. The judges gave me a consolation prize, a Canadian maple-leaf pin, which I still have somewhere. Yeah, it's a lot like the aquacise story. No coincidence!) Sea turtles are of course very fast, but I like them too. Anyway, this turtle was half of a pair of earrings I bought in Reno. The other one got lost.

So that was yesterday. Experiencing spiritual confusion and existential angst? Distract yourself with bright shiny things! Yay!

Today I start teaching my summer Tolkien course. Yay!

Tomorrow would have been Dad's eighty-seventh birthday. I know I've mentioned that before, but it's weighing on me, and on other members of the family. Please keep us in your thoughts.

Divided Loyalties

Here's this morning's homily, which required a hefty amount of historical exposition. Gary said that he couldn't make any sense of the readings until he read the homily, which means, I hope, that it works.

None of our other preachers relished the task of tackling the beheading of John the Baptist, but hey, I always love a challenge. The Gospel turned out to be the easy part, actually; figuring out Michal, poor woman, took more digging.

Luckily, the Gospel also has all kinds of current political applicability (not the beheading part, I hope, but other bits!). Gary thinks I should have mentioned Nevada's Very Own Disgraced Republican Senator, but I decided to trust my audience to figure out the subtext.

The bewildering readings are 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 and Mark 6:14-29.

*

This morning’s lessons plunge us into very complicated ancient history. In the reading from 2 Samuel, David is bringing the Ark of the Covenant in triumph to Jerusalem. It’s a joyful procession, with dancing and trumpets. There’s a sour note, though: “As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.”

In case your memory’s a bit hazy on the subject -– mine was -– Saul is the previous king. He and David began as fast friends but ended as bitter enemies. Saul’s daughter Michal fell in love with David, and Saul gave her to David as a bride, supposedly as a reward for David’s success in battle, but actually as part of a complicated scheme to have him killed. In due course, Michal found herself at the center of this conflict. Saul tried to kill David directly. Forced to choose between her father and her husband, Michal helped David escape. David vanished for years, and married other women. Michal married again, too, but then David demanded her as his wife: not out of love, but as a symbol of his political victory. The Bible tells us that her second husband followed her, weeping, until he was ordered to return home.

This very quick summary actually over-simplifies the story. If the tale hasn’t yet been made into a miniseries, I’m sure HBO is working on it. I hope the bit of background I’ve given, though, explains why Michal despised David. He was the agent of her family’s downfall. He destroyed her marriage to someone she loved, and who loved her. When she rejoined him, she discovered that she held no special place in his heart, that he had only married her out of political considerations, and that she was only one of many wives.

I’d be angry, too. The worst of it is that she once really had loved him, which must have made the betrayals all the harder to bear. In the passage after the one we heard this morning, Michal mocks David, and is mocked by him in return. The text tells us that she had no children. We don’t know if this is because she was barren or because David neglected her in favor of his other wives. We do know that she must have led a lonely life.

Michal had very little choice or power in any of this. Her great act of heroism was her private, individual decision to save David’s life, but by the time of today’s passage, any gratitude he felt for her appears to have vanished. To the men around her, in a culture that sees women primarily as property, she is an object, a pawn. She is a stark reminder that God’s purposes always play out through, and among, messy human politics, and that even at the height of joyful celebration, there will always be someone who feels left out and embittered.

Who are the Michals in our midst? People horrified by election results that have overjoyed us? People destroyed by the economic and military strategies we support? People displaced when inner-city tenements are replaced with townhomes and good schools? What is our duty to these left-out neighbors? How can we make our victory a victory for them, too?

Meanwhile, today’s Gospel features another HBO-worthy story, and also requires a history lesson. Today’s King Herod is the son of the Herod who tried to have the infant Jesus killed. This Herod has married his brother’s widow, Herodias, who has a daughter also named Herodias but better known by the name Salome, which is what the Jewish historian Josephus called her.

John the Baptist, that inconvenient prophet, tells Herod that it isn’t right for him to marry his brother’s wife. Herodias the elder doesn’t like this, and wants Herod to kill John. Herod, somewhat kinder and gentler than his father, refuses. He’s afraid of John. He knows that John is “a righteous and holy man.” Furthermore, he likes listening to John, although he has a hard time following what the guy’s saying. Prophets can be like that. Just look at how much time we spend, all these years later, trying to figure out Jesus’ parables.

Herod, however, has one great weakness: an overfondness for dancing girls. He’s hardly the first or last man of power with this particular fault, but in this case, it spells disaster. At Herod’s birthday, his stepdaughter dances for him, and for his powerful guests. He is so delighted by her performance that he solemnly swears, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it . . . even half my kingdom.” Unfortunately for John, the young woman hasn’t been yearning for a pony, shiny jewelry, or world peace. Either she genuinely doesn’t want anything for herself or she’s a crafty child of the court; in any case, she asks her mother what to ask for, and Herod finds himself, to his distress, bound by oath to deliver the head of John on a platter.

Herod, like Michal, finds himself pulled by divided loyalties. On the one hand, he’s “deeply grieved” at the idea of John’s death. But he’s also made a promise in front of his guests, including the leaders of Galilee, and he can’t go back on his word in front of them. He’s backed himself into a corner, and it’s entirely his own fault. His step-daughter would have been as powerless as Michal, if he hadn’t granted her power with his solemn, but inappropriate, oath. This is a cautionary tale about the danger of writing blank checks.

And so, when another prophet shows up, casting out demons and performing miraculous cures, Herod is stricken with guilt, and assumes that his sins have come to haunt him. “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” Notice that, whatever his other faults, he takes responsibility for his actions. He doesn’t blame his wife or his step-daughter. He knows that John’s death was his doing.

Aside from the fact that it’s a great opera plot, what are we to make of this story? I take away three lessons. The first is that, as in the story of David and Michal, salvation history cannot be untangled from human passions and politics. God’s history is also ours, and it’s often both messy and melodramatic. Whenever we find ourselves shocked by some church scandal, despairing over schisms, or embroiled in unpleasant parish politics –- not, of course, that such a thing would ever happen at St. Stephen’s –- we need to remember David and Michal, John and Herod and Herodias. If they’re all part of God’s story, we are too, even at our least saintly.

The second lesson John’s beheading teaches us is the futility of trying to silence prophets. Throughout recorded history, prophets have been stoned, beheaded, crucified, burned, hung, shot, and otherwise assassinated. Whenever one prophet goes away, another –- usually louder than the first -– rises up. God’s Word is both powerful and stubborn. Killing the Johns and the Martin Luther King Jr’s of the world only makes their message more meaningful.

And the third, and perhaps most important, lesson is the danger of divided loyalties. Jesus tells us that we cannot serve two masters. He was talking about God and money, but the principle applies in many other situations. Michal couldn’t serve both her father and her husband, not while they hated each other. Herod couldn’t keep both a clean conscience and an unwise oath. We must be very careful what promises we make, and to whom.

Today’s Epistle reminds us that we are marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. We received this seal at Baptism, when we, or our sponsors, swore solemn oaths to God. We promised to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace. But we’ve also made other promises: to our families, our employers, in some cases to our country.

If our families, employers and country ever demand of us acts that conflict with our promises to God, what will we do? If we find ourselves in a position of divided loyalties, which promise will we keep? What would we do if feeding our family required us to steal another family’s food? What would we do if keeping our job required us to defraud others of their retirements? What would we do if our country asked us to kill or torture other people, people in whom we’ve also promised to seek and serve Christ?

In our messy, muddled world, such grim tensions may be inevitable. But we can try to make sure that none of our promises automatically conflict with one another, and we can refrain from making unwise oaths, from signing those risky blank checks. We can pray, as we pray every Sunday, to be delivered from temptation, by dancing girls or anything else. And we can remember always the One to whom we belong, and order our priorities accordingly.

Amen.

KangaTek Go

Ever on the lookout for lightweight, ergonomic, and secure bags, I recently purchased a
KangaTek Go, basically a wide strap with four pockets that you wear across your body. Mine's black with a red interior, but they come in other colors.

The bag looks either really dorky or very cool, depending on your tastes. Katharine calls it my "Queen for a Day" sash, and Gary says it's feminist because it allows women to have pockets. Whatever the aesthetics, I love the thing. Like the review says, it keeps everything readily accessible -- unlike a backpack, which you have to take off to open -- and it allows me to carry more weight than I usually can in a purse without bothering my shoulders. And for me, at least, it's less of a hassle to get on and off than a fannypack would be. Oh, and it's reversible: very useful for left-handed folk.

When I'm carrying bigger stuff (netbook, books, notebooks), I use a backpack too. They work fine together, but this is the essential grab-it-and-run-out-the-door purse. I won't be wearing it to formal occasions, but it's great for everything else.

I agree with the review that the neoprene smell is annoying, but that will wear off. I plan to accessorize mine with beaded zipper-pulls, but I won't have time to do that for a while, probably.

Highly recommended, especially if you don't mind the dork factor.

Rickety Milestone

I've now volunteered 750 hours at the hospital. I can't believe it will be five years in October that I've been doing this (although of course I took a long break to take care of Dad).