Gary's Gorgeous Hike

One of the fabulous things about living in Reno is easy access to amazing hiking. Gary hikes for three or four hours every other day on Peavine, the mountain across the street, which is definitely a high-desert mountain with very few trees.

I used to do some hiking with Gary, but it was always problematic because he's much faster than I am. He'd get frustrated at having to go slowly, and I often wound up getting injured because I'd try to push myself and would fall. And these days, my knee simply isn't up to any steep trails. So I content myself with swimming and level walking, and let him be the mountain goat in the family.

We're also an hour from Lake Tahoe, and occasionally Gary gets to enjoy some of those trails, especially with visitors. On Monday, he and Jim and Ellen Meadors -- Katharine's friends from Boston, with whom we went to Kauai two years ago -- hiked up Mt. Rose, a popular skiing area which affords views both of the Truckee Meadows and of Tahoe. They report that there are also bountiful wildflowers right now, thanks to our very wet spring.

From the top of Mount Rose, you can also see Slide Mountain, a striking but more barren nearby peak. (By the way, the hike Gary and Jim and Ellen did starts at 8,900 feet and climbs to 10,000-something, so they didn't have to walk all the way up the mountain! Even so, it took them six hours roundtrip, although that included many stops to look at wildflowers.)

The good news for me is that two miles into the five-mile hike, where the trail's still level, there's a beautiful waterfall. Gary's suggested that we go there sometime, and that sounds like a walk I can manage. I've loved waterfalls ever since our first trip to Maui, although I probably won't be swimming in this one! I also won't have time for it anytime soon, but that's okay. It's something to look forward to.

As always, click on any thumbnail to enlarge.

Good Docs

Yesterday was a very bad day, the kind of day that involves emergency services and insurance companies. (I'm fine. I'll post about this in more detail when doing so seems prudent.) Today, thank God, was better.

The big event was going to the rheumatologist. He and his resident, between them, spent ninety minutes with me. Can you imagine? I mean, yeah, I'm a new patient, but still! Not only did they take a detailed history and do more of an actual physical than I've had for ages now, manipulating various joints, but we talked about medical education and narrative medicine and the doc's underwater photos hanging on the office wall. He dives, so I told him about Steve's family, and talked about how even though I can't do SCUBA because of sinus issues, I love to snorkel and have swum with sea turtles off Maui.

Medically, I left them puzzled. I always do this to doctors. I'm the Queen of Inconclusive Symptoms. According to the doc, the arthritis in my knee isn't connected to the positive ANA, but I don't have symptoms that would suggest what's causing the positive ANA; furthermore, everything else in my bloodwork (specifically sed rate and rheumatoid factor) is normal. He says there's no such thing as a "false positive" ANA; a positive is a positive, although some people are positive and normal otherwise. He's rechecking the ANA -- especially since the previous lab didn't give numbers, which are important -- and is also testing for antibodies specific to Sjogren's Syndrome, since I have a number of symptoms that fit with that diagnosis (but also fit with other things, like living in the driest state in the country).

It would be pretty funny if I had Sjogren's, since Gary's mom has it. Yet more proof that men marry their mothers! I don't think I have Sjogren's, though.

Anyway, we'll see what the bloodwork shows. If the antibodies aren't there and the ANA titer's low, we figure I'm fine; if antibodies are there and/or the titer's high, I've got something. I'm pretty sure I'm fine, though, except for the blasted knee.

I started having trouble with the knee about fifteen years ago, when he says I was too young for osteoarthritis, although I definitely have that now. (I've got some fluid on the knee, although only a bit.) He's put me on a new anti-inflammatory, Relafen, for the knee pain. Relafen's easier on the stomach than ibuprofen, but it's a generic and only costs $5/month, versus the $100/month the pharmacies want for Celebrex.

I'll be very happy if this stuff works. In the meantime, I'm very happy to have met two nice doctors.

I also wrote today, and knit a little, although I neither swam nor walked. Still, a much better day than yesterday!

Making Peace With God

Note: I first posted this piece almost two years ago, but I'm reposting it, because I think the issues it discusses are increasingly urgent. I know not everyone will agree with my opinions, but I hope you'll at least find food for thought.

Thank you for reading.

*

Quite a while ago now, one of my hospital patients, an older gentleman, looked up at me from his gurney and laughed when I told him I was a volunteer chaplain. "Young lady, I made my peace with God before you were born."

"Good for you," I said. "How did you do that?"

So he told me.

He'd worked for the OSS in WWII. He got dropped behind enemy lines to assassinate people. "I was very young. The work sounded exciting before I started. I had no idea what it would do to me. You can't imagine what it's like to kill another human being, until you've done it.

"When I came home, I made a vow to God that I would never again intentionally hurt another person. And I never have."

Last spring, Gary and I went to Maui with friends. I'd read about breadfruit and wanted to try it, so one day we stopped at a fruit stand. The man who ran the place had long hair, lots of hemp jewelry, and a dreamy look in his eyes. He looked like a walking stereotype of a New Age flower child.

I admired a wooden cross he was wearing. He smiled and said, "Thank you. One of my patients gave it to me. It's from Africa."

"One of your patients? Are you a doctor or nurse?"

"I'm a spiritual healer," he told us. And then he told us that a long time ago, he'd been Special Forces, until he became disillusioned with the work and started to question what he was doing, and why. His loss of faith in the U.S. government was so profound that he left the country for a while, living in exile. When he came back home, it was to work as a healer.

When we went back to the car with our breadfruit, I said, "Special Forces? Aren't they the people who learn, like, seven ways to kill somebody with one finger?"

"Yeah," Gary said, and shook his head. "That guy went from being a spiritual killer to being a spiritual healer."

I thought immediately of my OSS patient. Both of these men made their peace with God by making peace with other people. I wonder how many other former military personnel have done the same thing.

I've met a lot of scarred veterans at the hospital, and other places. They're haunted by what they've seen and by what they've done, even when they did those things for reasons they believed were just. I think a lot of us don't want to think about what we ask of our military when we ask them to kill for us. We don't want to acknowledge the cost. We want to believe that if someone deems a death necessary, that death won't hurt the person charged with making it happen.

Some of us also want to believe that people who've killed for reasons we don't consider just can't be forgiven, can't change, can't be redeemed. These people, many of us believe, deserve to die: but the people charged with making those deaths happen must, of course, be exempt from any ill effects, because their actions are just.

Here's a New Yorker article about the trauma experienced by soldiers in Iraq who've taken lives. Here's a link to "Witness to an Execution," an NPR story about the prison employees who work on Death Row in Huntsville, Texas. These people believe in what they're doing. It still takes a toll on them.

"You can't imagine what it's like to kill another human being, until you've done it." The good news is that people who've killed can heal, and heal others: they can get better. They can make their peace with God. At least two of them have.

Surely others can, too. But surely our military and prison personnel would be better off if they didn't have to. And surely our death-row inmates -- and the prison staff who care for them -- would be better off if we acknowledged that at least some of them, too, can change.

I'm not quite able to label myself a pacifist; I'm a reluctant adherant of just-war theory. (I also believe that very few conflicts meet the stringent definition of a just war.) I imagine that my OSS patient and the Special-Forces spiritual healer might be, too, although we didn't discuss it. Returning combat veterans need our love and support and prayers. They need our help as they seek healing.

We can begin to help them by making our own vow: a promise never to forget the magnitude of what we've asked of them.

Excellent Xmas

Christmas was quite wonderful this year, after several years when it was emotionally difficult.

My homily went very well, thank goodness. I hadn't been conscious of being unduly nervous about it; nonetheless, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. yesterday after a night of intense anxiety dreams. But many people, including our bishop-elect, told me that they enjoyed the homily very much, and its metaphors wound up being knit throughout the rest of the service. Our deacon prefaced the Prayers of the People by asking us to pray for those who are disconnected from the fabric of society; Bishop-elect Dan, before beginning the Eucharistic Prayer, talked about how the eucharist is one way the infinite God takes intimate form. When it was time for the blessing, he discarded the traditional Christmas blessing and instead offered an extemporaneous (and quite rhetorically dazzling) wish that all of us discover how tightly we are knit to God, each other and our own depths. This man knows how to take an image and run with it!

I think a few people thought the homily was merely cute; nevertheless, I didn't embarrass myself or my parish, which was what I'd been worried about.

I also got a great deal of really wonderful Christmas loot from Gary, including a gorgeous set of interchangeable circular knitting needles from Knitpicks. The needle tips are multicolored, laminated birch, inspired by multicolored wooden cooking spoons. They look beautiful and feel fabulous, very smooth. They also join very smoothly to the cable, which has almost no memory and thus stays nice and straight right out of the case: no dipping in hot water to try to get the coils out! I love working with these needles, and since I now have every tip size from 4-11, I'm sure this set will serve me for many years. The only drawback, noted in other reviews I've seen, is that the length and size aren't printed directly on the cables and needles. This isn't an insurmountable problem, but it is annoying.

Gary also got me the DVD of that 1980 cult classic, Flash Gordon. This is the unbelievably campy one with the Queen soundtrack, newly rereleased and subtitled, "Saviour of the Universe edition." I have especially fond memories of this movie because I wrote a paper about it for my "Bible and Literature" class in college, and the professor gave me an A+. Rewatching it last night, I caught scriptural echoes I hadn't been aware of the first time; turns out I also could have used it in the paper I wrote about Milton's Paradise Regained in grad school, although that professor was somewhat less enchanted than the first one with pop culture. (His comment on that paper was, "This is a great sermon, but only a so-so essay." At the time, I was devastated. Now I realize that he was talking about formal, generic issues; he would doubtless be amused by the fact that these days, I write more homilies than pieces of academic literary criticism.)

I was equally delighted to get more lavendar products from Ali'i Kula Lavendar in Maui: a new container of their wonderful body butter creme, since I was almost out, as well as some bath soap and liquid hand soap. This is truly yummy stuff. There's a lavendar store in Reno, quite close to our house, but while I love their dried lavendar and their hand balm, their bath products aren't as nice as Ali'i Kula's. And anyway, I love anything that reminds me of Maui!

Beginning with my last birthday, when he gave me a stethoscope, Gary seems to have started a tradition of giving me a medical gift every holiday. This Christmas, it was the Merck/Merial Manual for Pet Health, so that if I'm fretting about a kitty symptom, I can look it up. This edition was designed for pet owners rather than veterinarians, which means it's in everyday language.

I've been using Gary's wall calendar to track the progress of knitting projects, so he got me my own, a beautiful Nevada Wilderness Calendar. I can't seem to find an image online, but trust me, the photographs are stunning! Also: Leo Kottke's "best of" album, since I love his music, and a new pair of flannel PJs, since some of my old ones are literally threadbare.

Thanks, Gary! And I hope everyone reading this had a wonderful holiday!

The Harrowing of Hell

Here's my homily for the Great Vigil this evening. I'd started doing something completely different, and discovered last night that it wasn't working, so this version got written in a rush this morning. To my immense relief, Gary loves it, although he's not even remotely religious.

The Great Vigil is absolutely gorgeous, the most beautiful and mysterious service of the year, as far as I'm concerned. If you've never been to one, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Part of my writer's block on this was the fact that a few years ago, I preached a homily at the Great Vigil that had much of the congregation in tears, and I was trying to hold myself to that standard -- and freezing up, of course. I'll probably post that older homily tomorrow, just for the sake of completeness.

The Gospel is Luke 24:1-10, not that it particularly matters in this case.

May all of you have a blessed Easter!

*

On this, the most beautiful and terrifying night of the church year, we have come together with all who witness Christ’s resurrection. Like the women at the tomb, we tremble at what we do not understand, but find ourselves comforted. Like the apostles who scattered after Jesus’ arrest, we flee from God in our moments of hopelessness, but find ourselves greeted by the risen Christ, who breaks bread with us and claims us as his own. Like the two messengers in their dazzling garments, we find ourselves charged with the task of proclaiming to the world that Christ is risen, even when those to whom we speak run from us.

For on this most blessed of nights, there is nowhere we can run and not encounter God. The tomb is empty, but Christ has risen from even deeper depths. The Easter Vigil is the church’s most ancient liturgy, and tonight we bow before the mystery of one of its most ancient doctrines: that when he died, Christ descended to hell and freed the souls imprisoned there.

The Harrowing of Hell was a favorite theme of medieval art and drama, and surely we can see why. In contrast to the scandal of the cross, where Jesus refused to save himself, the Harrowing of Hell gives us an energetic savior: Jesus as superhero in the greatest prison-break drama ever written. If Mel Gibson turned this story into a film, Jesus would surely be played by Daniel Craig or Vin Diesel. There would be thundering music and lots of special effects. Things would blow up, and Jesus, muscles bulging under his spandex superhero costume, would emerge in a blaze of light, triumphantly leading a train of former captives.

And what would Hell look like, in this movie? Some sort of industrial wasteland, most likely, the air blighted by smokestacks belching toxic fumes, the ground pocked by bubbling pools of green sewage. Think of Mordor in Peter Jackson’s film version of The Lord of the Rings. Think of Chernobyl. Think of the grimmer stretches of the New Jersey Turnpike. If you’ve read Dante’s Inferno, you know that the tradition of Hell as environmental supersite is very old, although not as old as the tradition of Christ’s descent into Hell. Dante, among other people, locates Hell elsewhere: somewhere we have to travel to reach, somewhere we fervently pray we will never see. None of us would willingly go there for a visit, much less to live, but luckily, we can avoid this place if we love God and follow Christ, as we are commanded to do.

But if discipleship means following Christ, aren’t we also called to follow him into Hell, to free the captives there? If so, how do we go about booking our tickets to this least appealing of tourist destinations?

The medieval world located Hell Elsewhere. But against Dante’s view, we can set Milton’s. In Paradise Lost, Satan escapes from the geographical confines of Hell, only to discover, in one of his most famous speeches, that he has not really escaped at all: “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.” The line quotes Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus; more indirectly, it echoes the Gospel. “The Kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus says. Surely Hell is within us as well.

All of us have spent time there. Hell is the place where we are loneliest, most hurt, most hopeless. Hell is the place from which we cannot even imagine being rescued, because we cannot imagine anyone wanting, or being able, to reach us. Hell is the place where our fear overwhelms our faith, where our pain overwhelms our praise, where the darkness overwhelms the light, seemingly forever. Jesus harrows this hell, too, today and every day, although he rarely resembles a superhero in spandex. Hell is where we feel farthest from God, but there is nowhere God cannot reach. Christ is everywhere.

Many of us have times of the year, often coinciding with painful anniversaries, that are particularly hellish. For many years, the weeks surrounding the spring equinox were a time like that for me. This was when I was most tired and least resilient, when pain struck out of nowhere: scathing hate mail from people I had considered close friends, the agonizing and guilt-inducing death of beloved pets, humiliating episodes at work where I found myself being publically upbraided for things I hadn’t known I was doing wrong. Friends and family pooh-poohed my increasing dread of the spring equinox, dismissing it as superstition or self-fulfilling prophecy. But nothing I did, or didn’t do, succeeded in breaking the pattern.

I started doing research. I learned that in many cultures and faith traditions, the spring equinox corresponds to a descent into the underworld. For Christians, this is the Harrowing of Hell. The fact that the pattern was so universal offered some comfort; I had company. And if I descended into hell every year, at least I always came back up.

Last year, my friend Katharine DeBoer -- whose beautiful voice has blessed our service here tonight -- invited my husband and me to go to Maui with her over spring break in late March. When I told Katharine that I was nervous about the trip because of my long-standing history of awful things happening that week, she assured me that bad luck can’t travel across water.

My research had uncovered Carl Jung’s fascination with the archetypal descent to the underworld, which he calls the night-sea journey. One of the stories that illustrates this archetype, prefiguring Christ’s harrowing of hell, is Jonah’s journey in the belly of the whale. In March, Maui is home to humpback whales who travel there to breed and bear their young.

We went on a whale watch. We had seen a few fins and a few blows
-- definite whale sightings, but not dramatic ones -- when suddenly a tail fifteen feet across came out of the water right in front of us, and then vanished again. Everyone gasped. Our guides explained that the tail appears that way when the whale is diving, descending to the depths.

Back on dry land, I looked for some way to remind myself of that awe-inspiring sight. In a bead store, I found two silver whale-tail charms, which I had made into the earrings I’m wearing tonight. After I had bought the charms, I discovered that on the back of each was etched a tiny cross: a reminder that there is no depth so deep that Christ cannot reach us there.

And that made me remember all the people who had comforted me during my spring crises: friends who told me they loved me when I felt most rejected, veterinarians who sent beautiful hand-written condolence notes, students who assured me of the value of my work. These people stretched out their hands to pull me back into the light. They were Christ for me.

In a fourth-century sermon that is still read in Eastern Orthodox churches every Easter, St. John Chrysostom describes Christ’s harrowing of Hell: “Hell grasped a corpse, and met God. Hell seized earth, and encountered heaven. Hell took what it saw, and was overcome by what it could not see.” I could not see, until I thought to look, that I had risen from hell not through my own power, but through God’s grace, through Christ’s redeeming love.

Christ is everywhere and in everyone, even people who are not wearing spandex. This Easter, let us remember the personal hells that Christ has harrowed, the darknesses from which he has freed us. Let us, following him, bring the light of Christ -- the Morning Star who knows no setting -- to those in other hells: to prisons and hospitals, to homeless shelters and halfway houses, to war zones and our own seemingly peaceful neighborhoods. Let us proclaim, in everything we do and say, the triumph of love and the joyousness of empty tombs.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

More Maui Pictures Than You Can Stand

This is my favorite picture I took in Maui. I took it in the Valley of Iao; a Google search informs me that this plant is known as the "Swiss Cheese Plant" (Monstera deliciosa), although it must have a more dignified name. The design shows up on lots of Hawaiian shirts. Pretty cool looking, yes?

I'll show the other pictures as small thumbnails, which you can click to enlarge.

Da Beach, Da Beach!

Here's the pretty little beach across the street from where we were staying. Off to the right, you can see the cloud-covered West Maui mountain; most days, the two mountains (this one and Haleakela) were either cloud-covered from the get-go or became that way by midday.

The beach was very clean, with gentle waves and a soft, sandy bottom. And I found the water deliciously warm, although it was often a bit too chilly for Gary. (Water temperature is the only thing I'm braver about than he is!) We're hoping to go back sometime in August, when the water will be really warm. The whales won't be there then, but the sea turtles will be.

Here's the beach looking in the other direction, with Realio Trulio Palm Trees in the distance. We took these pictures early in the morning: the beach was usually a little more crowded than this, although we tried to swim early to minimize sun exposure. We worked aggressively not to tan, smearing SPF 50 all over ourselves at every opportunity.

And here's my honey, smiling in the sunshine. He took a bunch of photos of me, but all of them turned out dismally -- making me look either profoundly pregnant or unsettlingly gorked-out -- so I'm not posting any of those.

I used to be more photogenic when I was young. Ah, well.

The Valley of Iao

As I've mentioned before, Gary and I call the Valley of Iao the Valley of Meow, and here you see why. The day we went, the valley was quite rainy, and only two or three kitties had come out to pose for photos. The first time we were there, last year, the place was swarming with cats. They're cared for by volunteers and by the Humane Society, but most of them are pretty feral: they'll pose for pictures, but petting's out of the question.

This little cat looks a bit like Belphoebe, whose death Gary and I were mourning the first time we visited the valley. We'd had to have her euthanized a year to the day before that first visit, and we hadn't expected to see cats, so coming across the colony felt like stumbling into cat heaven. It was a healing synchronicity.

Phoebe was white with brown spots, rather than orange ones. Still, seeing this cat made me remember her.

"Cats!" I hear you grumbling. "They went to Hawaii and took pictures of cats?" (Hey, at least we didn't get any shots of the feral mother with two kittens who lurked around our resort!) But it's true that the Valley of Iao is most famous not for its many cats, but for its singular needle, a botanical spire towering above the valley. Gary took this shot; I took others, but they don't show the scale as well. To the left, you can see the shingled roof of a lookout area at the top of the trail we'd just climbed.

Elsewhere in the world of botany, I was intrigued by this tree trunk with a new plant growing out of it.

I tried to take other botanical pictures, especially of fascinating, twisted tree roots that looked like something straight out of Tolkien's Old Forest, but I didn't have much luck with those shots.

Great Blooming Hibiscus, Batman!

I was more successful with plain old flowers. This one was on the sidewalk bordering our resort, but there are flowers almost everywhere you look on Maui. Last year we saw a delicate purple and aqua flower, called a jade plant I believe, that was one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. We were told that they can't be brought to the mainland because they harbor pests that could be dangerous to mainland crops. We wanted to find some to photograph this year, but didn't see any.

So we had to settle for ordinary colors like yellow and orange. This group of flowers was in the Valley of Iao, I believe. I think they're some kind of lily, although I'm hopeless at recognizing plants.

Oh, Lee had asked about leis: no, we didn't get any. It always makes me sad to think that the flowers hanging around people's necks will die; I prefer looking at them in their natural environment.

This was a very pretty plant we saw in upcountry Maui, where we'd gone to a winery. Gary and our friends Katharine, Jim and Maggi sampled the wine; I tried out samples of various lotions, and wound up buying a wonderful lavender body butter. It will be great for keeping my skin moisturized in our brutally dry Nevada air, and will be a lasting and soothing reminder of Maui.

These vines, growing on a trellis, were also at the winery. The pink looks good enough to eat, doesn't it? There was a tree with vivid purple blossoms we saw several places, and now I wish we'd gotten a photo of it, but we were always in the car when we saw it, on our way to somewhere else. The purple didn't look real: it was so rich and deep that I kept thinking it must be a special effect.

Rainforest Waterfalls, with Warning Sign

Gary took this shot on our way up -- or maybe down -- the rainforest trail where we walked through the magical bamboo grove. We didn't try to get photos of that, because the light was too dim. This was in the state park containing the Seven Sacred Pools of Hana, although I believe that at this point, we were above those pools. All of the pools had copious signage warning people about the dangers of jumping into them ("Submerged Rocks May Cause Injury or Death"), although that's not something we'd have been tempted to do anyway.

Gary did get a shot of the warning sign at the foot of Wailea Falls, the two-hundred-foot waterfall we hiked two miles each way to see. It was very impressive, but at that point I'd seen enough other waterfalls that it wasn't the high point of the hike. The high point was the bamboo groves, which will have to remain in memory only.

And there you have it. Isn't blogging wonderful? You can scroll very quickly through people's vacation slideshows, or skip them entirely, instead of being subjected to them in real time!

It's not easy being green . . .

. . . Unless you’re a sea turtle. And no, I didn't take this picture; I got it off the web. I'll tell you about the turtles in a bit. But first:

Blogging News

The latest Change of Shift is up, posted as a series of limericks in honor of St. Patrick's Day, and I'm proud to be included!

I’ve also been tagged for a fun blog meme, but I won’t be able to participate until I get back home and have more time. Thanks for tagging me, Universal Health!

Today’s Erratum

In my last post, I said that the mandatory boating distance from whales is 100 feet; that should have been yards! Obviously, my vacation is eating my brain.

More News of Mice

The latest FoM review, by Victoria Strauss, is up at the SF Site. It's another very enthusiastic notice, although Straus joins Lalumiere in considering "GI Jesus" the weakest story in the collection. (I feel like I'm watching a tennis match, trying to keep a tally on this one!)

The Second Whale Watch

Here in Maui, yesterday’s expedition wasn’t quite as exciting as Tuesday’s, because we didn’t have hundreds of Spinner Dolphins surrounding the boat. The trip did start out with a spectacular whale breach, followed by pectoral fin slapping; after that, though, things quieted down. There were lots and lots of whales, including mamas, babies, and something called a “competition pod,” or “compod,” where two or more males head-butt each other (or maybe they only lunge at each other) over a female. But most of that was happening under the water, and while the naturalists claimed that they could see what was happening because of their polarized sunglasses, the rest of us with polarized sunglasses couldn’t see a thing. Either the naturalists were making it up, or they have x-ray vision.

We still had a good time, but it was a more placid good time than we’d had on the previous trip.

The Snorkeling Expedition

Gary and I have discovered that we love snorkeling. The boat’s first stop, at Molokini, allowed us to watch gorgeous little fish darting in and out of coral groves, and often swimming almost close enough to touch. Our optical masks worked very well: we could both see fine, even though we’re usually blind as the proverbial bats without our glasses. I heard lots of whalesong under the water, although Gary didn’t hear it. (There were a mama and baby whale quite close to us, and other people saw them breach, but we were watching fish when that happened.) It was really stunningly beautiful, and I can see how snorkeling could easily be a profoundly spiritual experience: just you, the water, the wildlife, and the gentle sounds of whalesong and your own breathing.

Unfortunately, my spiritual experience this morning was marred by three factors:

1. Gary and I were using proper snorkeling form: a dead-man’s float with gentle scissor kicks when we wanted to move somewhere. We were parallel to the plane of the water’s surface. This was how the instructor had told us to position ourselves. Unfortunately, most of the other people on our trip were hanging vertically down into the water, with their fins pumping as if they were on exercycles, popping up to chatter to each other and then plunking their masks back into the water to peer down past their feet. This meant that our own view of fish and coral was often blocked by a sea of pumping legs. I know that any true spiritual experience includes love for one’s fellow humans, but I was having some trouble with that this morning.

2. We had the first iffy weather of the entire trip: it was very cloudy and much cooler than it has been, and the water was very choppy. This meant that Gary and I both got chilly, even wearing wetsuit tops.

3. Probably as a result of #2, I wound up feeling very nauseous on my way back to the boat. Once I crawled aboard, I was okay, but it was touch and go there for a bit.

Me and My Turtle

On to Turtle Town! We saw more Spinner Dolphins on the way, and also had some more whale action. I’d told myself that it would be okay if I didn’t see any turtles, but I really wanted to see one . . . and sure enough, I did! I saw one large turtle, swimming placidly here and there, and I followed him (her?) at the required ten-foot distance. It really was ten feet this time, and not ten yards, because green sea turtles are no longer considered endangered, although they're still on the "guarded" list.

Later I learned that other people had seen a baby turtle: lucky them! I just saw the one. Sometimes I had to back up because I was too close to it. My turtle -- I became very proprietary towards the turtle very quickly -- was graceful and streamlined and soothingly green, and I was very happy; although, once again, my spiritual discipline of lovingkindness towards all living creatures stopped rather short of the idiot who swam about three feet from my turtle and flapped his fins in the creature’s face while trying to get a good shot with an underwater camera. My turtle appeared much less perturbed by this than I was, although it did make a dignified exit for its coral cave shortly thereafter. Honestly, dude: how would you feel if someone did that to you?

I thought about looking for other turtles, but I’d started feeling bad again, almost as green as my turtle was . . . and then rapidly more green, until I had to yank my snorkel out of my mouth to lose my breakfast and yummy boat snacks into the ocean. Delightful.

After that fun experience, I had to swim back to the boat, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I hadn’t been feeling violently ill. I managed to get there, though, and was keeping my remaining cookies down until everybody else got back into the boat . . . at which point I made a mad dash for the railing and hurled over the side of the boat five or six times in quick succession, while the other passengers stared at me. (“And now, ladies and gentlemen, our next eco-tourism adventure: Wild Vomit!”) The captain was very nice; she brought me a glass of cold water and told me, “You’ll feel better when we get going again, hon,” and then told the others, “We’re going to head back now, for the benefit of those of you who aren’t feeling so well.” It turned out that at least one other passenger was also sick, although I didn’t realize it then. When I apologized for fouling the water, the captain said cheerfully, “Oh, no problem! It’s fish food! The fish love you now! They want you to come back!” As Gary observed later, far better I should be sick into the ocean than into the boat.

Gary, alas, saw no turtles at all. He still loves snorkeling, though.

We made it back to the dock without incident, although it took a good ninety minutes for solid ground to stop rolling whenever I stood up. It’s the worst experience of sea legs I’ve ever had.

After a light lunch, a nap and a shower, I felt infinitely better, and Gary and I went for a nice walk on which I found fun inexpensive earrings and a new suitcase. The zipper on my old one had died. The new one is bright red, with yellow flowers and white turtles on it. It’s a little garish, but I definitely won’t have trouble spotting it at baggage claim.

So that was our exciting day. The whalesong and my turtle made everything worth it: I’d happily be that sick three times over, for those two experiences.

Tomorrow’s agenda: a quiet day of beach-lolling, probably a long walk for me and Gary, and then a fabulous dinner at an obscenely fancy restaurant, Nick's Fishmarket in Wailea. We went there for our farewell-to-Maui dinner last year, and it may be becoming a tradition.

Grand Rounds! Bamboo! Dolphins!

In Which We Announce This Week's Edition of Grand Rounds

This week's Grand Rounds is up, hosted by Dr. Samuel Blackman. I'm truly honored that he not only included the post I sent him, but said lovely things about my blog and then included a second post I hadn't even submitted. Thank you very much, Dr. Blackman!

In Which We Correct An Earlier Error

My post on Sunday said that we'd be returning next Sunday, but in fact, it will be next Saturday. I love Maui so much that I extended our stay by a day. Talk about Freudian slips!

In Which We Hike Through the Rain Forest

Yesterday, Gary and I hiked four miles through the rain forest, two miles up to a 200-foot waterfall and two miles down again. He's a much better hiker than I am, and this was a tricky trail: muddy and often fairly steep, with very uneven footing (lots of rocks and roots). We also had to forge a stream, across slippery rocks, in two places, although we fairly quickly hit on the idea of just wading through instead.

I did much better than I've done on hikes before, probably because I've been working out so regularly at home. I did manage to jam an ankle (which is fine and didn't even bruise) and bash my forehead on a low tree branch (again, no consequences), but I never fell. For me, this is a big deal.

The most beautiful part of that hike wasn't even the waterfall: it was walking through the bamboo forest. The park had put down wooden boardwalks, so the footing was easy there, and the bamboo was incredibly beautiful, rising yards above us with sunlight filtering dimly through it. It felt like being in a cathedral. When the wind blew, the bamboo stalks clacked against each other, making an eerie chattering. I felt like I was on another planet.

After the hike, my clumsiness continued: we went to another park where I swam briefly under two waterfalls, but also managed to fall and scrape my leg (again, nothing serious). Later, at dinner, I was pouring some olive oil onto my bread plate when the whole top came off; I righted the bottle before the oil overflowed onto the table, but everybody was teasing me for yet another mishap. Luckily, I managed not to spill olive oil all over our friend's new silk Hawaiian shirt!

In Which We Enjoy a Fabulous Whalewatch

Today we went on a Pacific Whale Foundation whalewatch out of LaHaina (we'll be doing another tomorrow). We saw lots of humpback activity: two juveniles playing, some bottlenose dolphins playing with the whales, and a pod consisting of a cow, a calf, and two whales. We saw lots of tails from diving whales, although there were no breaches as spectacular as the one we saw last year, when a cow breached and then her calf breached six times in quick succession. ("Look, ma! I can do it too!")

One young whale swam so close to us, maybe 75 feet, that we were being held captive, because the boat can't run its engines when a whale's that close. (Research vessels can get closer, but everybody else has to stay 100 feet away.) But the most magical thing happened when we were heading back, already late, to the wharf: we were suddenly in the middle of a group of five or six hundred Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins. The naturalists on the boats were going nuts, because they rarely see groups of more than twenty of these animals. Gary and our friends and I were right against the rail in the bow of the boat, and we could at least twenty dolphins directly under us, racing the boat and each other, periodically leaping into the air. You could tell they were out there just having fun! One dolphin, a few yards ahead of us, turned on its back and slapped the water with its tail.

I think dolphins are probably the most graceful animals alive, and seeing so many of them was an incredible thrill. I wonder what we'll see on tomorrow's whalewatch? Even if we see no animals at all, even if we only get a beautiful boat ride, we'll have considered our whalewatch money well spent.

And on Thursday, we get to snorkle! Gary and I really psyched about this; we both have horrible eyes, but it turns out that the snorkle place has optometric masks. I'm sure they can't correct for our astigmatism, but at least we'll be able to see more clearly than we would have otherwise.

And if I actually get to swim with sea turtles, I'll be ecstatic.

Technical Difficulties

Well, we got to Maui fine, and we got some great photos today, and I even got them downloaded from the camera to my laptop, but I can't seem to upload them to Blogger. So I'll just have to post them when I get back!

They're pretty, though. Lots of flowers. Also beach. Also cats (in the Valley of Iao, which Gary and I have taken to calling the Valley of Meow because there are so many feral cats there, cared for by volunteers and the Humane Society). Also a nice one of Gary on the beach blanket. He took some of me, but all of them make me look like the Michelin Man -- worse than a dressing-room mirror, I swear! -- so I won't be posting those.

Tomorrow: the Road to Hana and hiking in the state park where the Seven Sacred Pools are.

Tuesday: whale watch.

Wednesday: another whale watch.

Thursday: snorkeling! Our tour stops at two places -- Molokini and Turtletown -- so I'm hoping to get to swim with sea turtles.

Friday and Saturday are so far open but will no doubt include beach excursions, as this morning did. Sunday, we come home.

Have fun, everybody. Be good (but not too rickety!).

Maui-Ho!

At least, that's the idea . . . except that Gary and I are now worried about whether we'll actually get there tomorrow, because when we went to the Aloha site to print out our boarding passes, we learned that our itinerary had been changed: instead of going through Santa Ana to Maui, we were on a direct flight to Honolulu, and then to Maui. I called the airline to confirm this and to ask about seat assignments, and learned that not only were we on the new flight, but the new flight had now been delayed by two hours (which will at least let us sleep later tomorrow morning). I called the friends we'll be traveling with to update them, and one of them called me back to say that the Aloha people had informed her that yes, the plane really was delayed, and furthermore, it was also now going to stop in Orange County before continuing to Honolulu.

Gary and I can't wait to see what will have changed when we get to the airport tomorrow morning. I'm thinking they're going to issue us bicycles and wetsuits, and tell us to ride to a beach in LA and then swim.

In the meantime, my father's been in and out of the ER this evening, which ratcheted up my stress level a bit. And my mother may be having surgery in the next few weeks. And I'm feeling slightly guilty about going on vacation instead of going to Philadelphia to see my parents -- although both parents would say that was nonsense, since they want me to have a nice vacation. (I asked my mother if she wanted me to fly out for the surgery, and she said, "What? Of course not! Don't be ridiculous!")

So it's been a weird day. Between bouts of medical stuff and airline perplexity, I bought new shorts and a new bathing suit (I'm bringing four: should that be enough?) and packed as much as I can tonight, since I'll have to pack up the CPAP tomorrow morning. The cat-sitters have been given keys and gotten the litterbox tour. The cats have climbed in and out of open suitcases and perched on top of closed ones.

I don't know if I'll be blogging from Maui, since both time and internet access may be in short supply (the resort where we're staying doesn't have wireless, so I'll need to look for coffee shops). We are bringing the digital camera, but Gary doesn't want to take pictures and I'm not a very good photographer, so we'll see if anything comes of that. So if you post a comment here and it doesn't show up for a week, please know that that's because I haven't been online to approve it, not because I've rejected you!

I'll be back in a week, if not sooner. If, that is, we actually leave tomorrow.

Aloha, everybody. And please pray that Gary and I, and our friends, indeed reach Maui within the next twenty-four hours.

More Book News

I didn't post yesterday because I was frantically finishing some work projects, due today, on which I'd procrastinated for far too long. They're done now: yay! The next challenge will be my homily for a week from Sunday, combining the burning bush with the parable of the fig tree. Okay, so there's a definite agricultural theme, but yoking those two together will otherwise be a bit of a challenge. I have some ideas, though.

I also haven't read anybody else's blogs for, like, forever, because I've been so busy. I'm hoping that will change now!

The good news is that I've maintained my schedule of working out at the gym six days a week, which generally makes me calmer and happier, although it hasn't yet succeeded in making me look like Jane Fonda. I'd hoped to look like Jane Fonda by the time we left for Maui. I mean, I'm doing crunches -- which I loathe -- along with forty minutes of cardio a day (alternating swimming laps and using the elliptical). Surely the reward for all that should be looking like Jane Fonda?

But this post is supposed to be about book news, so here we go:

1. The mass-market edition of The Necessary Beggar is now in stock at Amazon.com. Only $6.99, with all the same words as the $24.95 hardcover! What a bargain! How can you resist? The TNB link on my sidebar will now take you to that edition, for your purchasing convenience. Not that I'm being crass and commercial or anything.

2. The Tachyon publicist, the awesome and wonderfully named Jennifer Privateer, just sent me a copy of the Booklist review of The Fate of Mice. And a glowing review it is, too:

Palwick's literary output until now has been limited to two critically acclaimed novels, the most recent of them the complex and moving ghost story The Necessary Beggar (2005). Thus her first story collection is a welcome addition to her oeuvre and a fitting introduction to her wide-ranging talent and vision. In the title story, a touching homage to Daniel Keyes' classic "Flowers for Algernon," an IQ-enhanced lab mouse awakens to the knowledge of his own impending demise. "Gestella" recounts the unsettling fate of a female werewolf who ages more rapidly than her increasingly less interested human lover. In one of the volume's standouts, "GI Jesus," a small town woman finds hope in the face of Jesus imprinted on an X-ray of her abdomen. All 11 pieces explore the most challenging conundrums of human existence, from the perennial pursuit of utopia to the many faces of mortality. Embracing elements of both horror and speculative fiction, Palwick's unique and commanding fiction never fails to trigger an emotional response as it captures the imagination. -- Carl Hays

Hey, they don't come much better than that! Thank you, Carl Hays!

3. Speaking of FoM publicity, tomorrow's the filming of the video podcast. I also have an appointment to be photographed by someone from the Reno News & Review, our local alternative weekly. (I'll be doing a very short interview with their arts editor on Monday.) You'll notice that these are both visual situations.

Have I mentioned that I don't look like Jane Fonda? Furthermore, I generally photograph so badly that not only don't I look like Jane Fonda, but I don't even look quite human: more like some kind of space alien with bug eyes, too many teeth, and really twitchy hands. So I'm pretty nervous about tomorrow.

I'm even more nervous because I'm caught in a terrible dilemma. I really need a haircut, see, so I won't look like a space alien with bug eyes, too many teeth, really twitchy hands, and a shaggy bathmat on her head. But I'm also in that charming phase of perimenopause which harkens back to the halcyon days of high-school zits. In other words, my forehead's broken out. Which means that if I get a haircut before the photo shoots, removing the hair that now mostly covers my forehead, I'll look like a space alien with bug eyes, too many teeth, really twitchy hands, and acne.

Bathmat or acne? Bathmat or acne? Which do you find more attractive? And what would Jane Fonda do?

Don't let anybody tell you that the literary life isn't stressful.

Meanwhile, UNR's online PR publication, NevadaNews, has done a pleasant little article on The Fate of Mice. This story, thank God, includes a picture of the book, rather than one of me.

That's it! Problem solved! I'll just hold the book over my face tomorrow!

Good Stuff (or: Whales for Lent)

Yesterday I got e-mail from the fabulous Maggie, who has evidently been following my scrubs saga with great interest (perhaps more than it deserves?). She's a quilter, and she told me that on her trips to various fabric stores, she's going to look for the magic-shirt fabric. If she finds it, she offered me to make me a scrub shirt -- she has a pattern for scrubs -- which I won't have to pay for, even. "I love the story of the magic scrub top and I want to see it keep going!"

How completely and utterly cool and kind and generous is that?

Of course I said yes. How could I not say yes? Thank you, Maggie! And I hope you find the fabric!

Good hunting! (Looking for fabric's more fun than looking for Cylons, yes?)

This morning I got e-mail from my friend Pamela K. Taylor, a progressive Muslim who's been on several of the "Religious Left" panels I've moderated at WisCon. The Washington Post has selected her as one of their "On Faith" panelists, so she's now writing a weekly column for them. You can find the first one here. I don't know nearly as much as I should about Islam, so I always welcome the chance to learn more. Congratulations, Pamela!

And last night, I finished a draft of my Ash Wednesday homily (which, of course, I'll be posting here on Wednesday). Writing the homily, I finally stumbled on a useful way to think about Lent, which I've always considered an unpleasant season of gloom and guilt-tripping. Last night, pondering Ash Wednesday's reminders of mortality, I realized that what Lent's really doing is calling us to live as thoughtfully and intentionally as people do when they know they're dying: to strip down to the essentials, to figure out what's really important and what can be let go. It's like that "What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?" question, except that Lent asks us, "What would you do if you knew you were going to die in forty days?"

And the answer is surely some combination of "Give up the nonessentials, to have more energy for what's important," and "Have fun in ways you've always wanted to." Which means that our Spring Break Maui trip isn't anti-Lenten at all. If I knew I were going to die in forty days, I'd definitely squeeze in a trip to Maui to watch whales.

Grand Rounds, et cetera

This week's edition is up, hosted by Dr. Couz. I'm honored to be included! The theme this week is medical professionals as people, and how they handle the personal/professional boundary. The posts look fascinating, and I'm looking forward to having time to read them.

That won't happen today, though. I'll be heading off to the gym after breakfast -- I've discovered that a good workout in the morning makes the day go much more smoothly -- and then I teach both of my classes, and then I have two meetings with students, and then Gary's meeting me at work so we can grab a bite to eat before going to a concert on campus.

The next three weeks are going to be crammed with grading, writing deadlines (including my Ash Wednesday homily) and committee tasks at work. After March 1, I hope to have a bit of a breather. And during Spring Break, we'll be in Maui!

That's what's keeping me going right now. When I start panicking about everything I have to do, I think about whales. Also, amazing flowers of colors you've never seen on the mainland and never will see (at least not in the flesh), because they can't be brought here, because they harbor organisms that would decimate mainland crops.

Also, swimming under cold waterfalls and in the warm ocean. Ahhhhhhh!

Dancing in Heaven

Here's tomorrow's homily. I had more trouble with it than I expected, partly because it was pulling in two different directions: All Saints is really about faith in an afterlife -- in the communion of all the saints, living and dead -- but the raising of Lazarus is about earthly resurrection, and they aren't the same thing. I tried to connect them, and I'm not sure how well I did.

It's also a very personal homily, as will become apparent. Gary's read this and approved it (thank you, love!), but I may have tried to do too much in too small a space.

We'll see how the congregation reacts. As my therapist keeps saying to try to break me of my perfectionism, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."

I had a very hard time loading the photo, which is already a cropped and scanned copy and therefore not the best reproduction. Blogger wasn't cooperating at all and would only load the smallest size, so I apologize for the poor quality. If you click on the one here, you'll get a larger, clearer version. One neat note about the photo (which I discuss late in the homily): our friend Katharine -- not Jefferts Schori; it's a common name around here! -- entered the full-size version in a photo contest, and recently learned that she's a finalist, so we're keeping our fingers crossed for her.

The readings are the Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9, Revelation 21:1-6a, and John 11:32-44.

* * *

I know a woman who died when she was nineteen. She drowned and was rescued by lifeguards, who resuscitated her. When she told me this story, she said, “I was dancing with my grandmother in heaven. It was beautiful. I was so happy to see her again, and when I opened my eyes on the beach, the first thing I said was, ‘Let me go back! Let me go back there!’”

That was a long time ago. My friend has grandchildren of her own now, and she’s very glad to be here with them. But she no longer fears death. She knows her grandmother is waiting.

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. This is when we remember the people close to us who have died, those we love but see no longer, who have gone on to heaven. Many of us have brought photographs or other mementos. I’m wearing a necklace that was a gift from my aunt, who died this past June. If we have no objects to remind us of dead loved ones, we can write their names on slips of paper. The Feast of All Saints assures us that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses; it promises us that there is, indeed, life after death, that those we love are not forever lost to us. In the words of the Wisdom of Solomon, “Their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”

This doesn’t mean, though, that we don’t or shouldn’t mourn. It is right and fitting that our faith in eternal life is balanced by sorrow for our own loss. One of the wisest passages in the Book of Common Prayer is the note after the funeral liturgies, on page 507:

The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.

The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy, by the certainty that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian. The very love we have for each other in Christ brings us deep sorrow when we are parted by death. Jesus himself wept at the death of his friend. So, while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn.

“Jesus himself wept at the death of his friend.” We heard that story today, in the Gospel of John. It’s the story of the raising of Lazarus, a tale that moves from tears and grief and the terrible anger of Mary’s bitter reproach — “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” — to the miracle and joy of resurrection. Lazarus takes us from Good Friday to Easter.

This Gospel gives us permission to be angry at death, to grieve and cry and rail at God, to question how any loving God could allow such suffering. The story assures us that God hears our anger and grieves with us; but it also promises us that death is not permanent, that we will be reunited with those we have lost. And, finally, it reminds us that those who have been welcomed into new life need the help of those who love them. When Lazarus emerges from the tomb, Jesus says to Mary and Martha and the other bystanders, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Lazarus can only come fully back to life if other people reach out to help him into his new existence.

This story takes place on earth, but I suspect the same is true in heaven. When my friend died, her grandmother was waiting in heaven, stretching out her arms in welcome. When my friend came back to life on earth, her rescuers were waiting: she survived because they had stretched out their arms to help her, to pull her out of the water and blow the air back into her lungs. She has witnessed the importance of human help and welcome on both sides of the grave.

Some of us may scoff at this story. We may believe that my friend only imagined dancing with her grandmother in heaven, that the whole thing was wishful thinking or a hallucination caused by lack of oxygen. But in my work as a hospital chaplain, I’ve heard many stories like this, usually from people who seem fully sane and rational. Hospice workers report that dying patients often attest to the presence of beloved friends and family who’ve gone ahead of them. When I lived in New York, I worked for a woman -- as no-nonsense and unsentimental a soul as I’ve ever met -- who died of cancer. At her funeral, a priest talked about visiting her in the hospital shortly before she died. Trying to comfort her, he told her that many dying people he knew had talked about seeing dead loved ones. Lucie nodded and said in her usual tart tone, “Oh, yes. They’ve already been here. They come and stand around the bed.”

We can believe that all the people who tell these stories are crazy or deluded, or we can believe that those we love live on in another form, and that they continue to love us. That belief can never be proven by science. It falls into the realm of faith. Faith in the afterlife is an act both of memory and of imagination. If we remember how our living loved ones have stretched out their arms to help us, and if we imagine how overjoyed we would be if those we have lost returned -- how we would rush to them with our own arms outstretched -- then perhaps we can begin to believe that when we die, we will be welcomed that joyously into the next life. My friend was delighted to see her grandmother again, and surely the joy must have been mutual.

I’ve never literally died, and I can’t say that I’m eager to have the experience anytime soon. But, probably like most of us, I have experienced metaphorical resurrections. One of them happened last March. As some of you know, I had gone through several very dark years of family difficulties, struggles here at church, and health problems. After a while, all of that started to take a toll on my marriage. My husband Gary and I descended into a period of mutual anger and distrust, months when I feared that our relationship might be dead, months when we often found it difficult to turn to one another for help or comfort.

Last March, our friend Katharine invited us to go with her to Maui for spring break. It was a wonderful, magical, healing trip. Among other miracles, Gary and I reconnected in ways I’d begun to fear had become impossible. Our marriage began to revive. During that week, we went for a hike on a very muddy trail in the rainforest, and Katharine, who had wisely decided to stay behind, took a photograph of us. You probably can’t see it very well from where you’re sitting, but those two little blue and white specks, framed by bamboo, are Gary and I. I had just scrambled down a very steep, slippery stretch of trail, and Gary was reaching out to make sure I didn’t fall. The angle of the photograph makes it look as if I’m buried up to my waist, rising out of the ground. It looks as if Gary is reaching out to help me out of a grave.

And that was how I felt. I felt like Lazarus, being called back out into the sunlight, being embraced and unbound by those who loved him. I felt as if I had been welcomed back into life.

This experience of earthly rebirth makes it easier for me to have faith in another rebirth: in the continued existence of my aunt, who died this year, and of my grandfather, who died in 1987, and of my mother’s mother, whom I never met, because she died in 1938. Although my faith will never be proven by science, I believe that each of them was welcomed into heaven by those who went before them, and I believe that when I die, they will welcome me, too. They will usher me into the place where mourning and crying and pain are no more, where God wipes away all tears. They will rush forward, arms outstretched in joy, to include me in the dance.

Amen.