Separation Anxiety

My mother cuddling me and kittens when I was six or seven.

The gospel for this homily is John 14:1-14. I chickened out and ignored the other readings; I'm sure someone's pulled off the task of squaring Mother's Day with the stoning of St. Stephen, but I wasn't up to it. *

Good morning, and happy Mother’s Day. If you’re someone who likes Mother’s Day, I wish you every joy of the occasion. But I want to begin by acknowledging that for many people, today is difficult. If you miss your mother, miss your kids, are estranged from your mother or your kids, never had the mother or kids you wanted, or are under pressure to be somebody else’s idea of a perfect mother or kid, the holiday can feel more like torture than celebration. Today’s Gospel offers good news to anyone in that position -- and to anyone else feeling alienated or grief-stricken -- but before we get there, I need to talk a little bit about my own mother.

I was one of the lucky kids; my mother and I were very close. But as many of you know, because I’ve told the story here before, she was alcoholic, and her illness shaped my early life. When I was a baby, she spent a lot of time in hospitals. By the time she got sober in AA, when I was three and a half, my father had decided to divorce her. Dad, in consultation with Mom’s doctors, very wisely decided that in order to be awarded custody of me and my older sister, she had to meet three conditions. She had to stay sober for eighteen months; she had to have her own place to live, and she had to have a job. She had to prepare a place for us. In the meantime, we would live with him.

It was a kind and responsible decision, the best thing for all of us. Dad loved us and took good care of us, but I was too young to understand why the separation was necessary. The only thing I wanted in the world was my mother. We visited her on weekends in her new apartment, and I always demanded, “Can I stay with you now?” Every Sunday evening when she drove us back to Dad’s house, I cried the whole way there. Many years later she told me that she cried the whole way back. When the eighteen months were up and my sister and I finally went to live with her again, I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. If I couldn’t see her, I panicked. I was terrified that she’d die, or go away, and leave me.

In this morning’s Gospel, the disciples remind me a little of myself back then. Jesus, whom the disciples love, has to leave them. The Ascension is coming.  He tells them that he is preparing a place for them, but they panic. They don’t want to let him out of their sight. “What do you mean we know the way?” they demand. “How can we, when we’ve never been there? How can we follow you if we don’t know where we’re going?”

Jesus responds with some of the most famous words in Scripture. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  

The disciples don’t understand this, either.  “What?  What are you talking about, Jesus?  When have we seen the Father?  Show us!”

I sympathize with them. The Gospel of John is my least favorite of the four, because it so often features Jesus making cryptic, long-winded pronouncements instead of telling stories or healing people. If I’d been with the disciples, I probably wouldn’t have known what Jesus was talking about, either.

With the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight, more repetitions of the baptismal covenant than I can count, and a number of church classes, I think maybe I do. I think Jesus is telling us that when we’re in his presence, we are in the presence of God the father. Meanwhile, our baptismal covenant charges us to “seek and serve Christ in all people,” which means that when we’re with anyone else, we’re also with Jesus, which means -- according to Jesus -- that we’re also with God. QED. If we’re with Jesus, we’re on the right path. The philosopher Jean-Paul Satre famously said that hell is other people, but the Gospels remind us that heaven is other people, too. The Kingdom of God is other people. Whether we’re in the here-and-now or the hereafter, we find the divine in our neighbors’ eyes.

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” Jesus says. Most of us are more familiar with the older translation, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” I think each of us is a mansion for God, just as our mothers -- good or bad, loving or neglectful, near or distant -- were mansions for us during the nine months before we were born. Each of us has a place in God’s kingdom, both here and in the hereafter, because each of our hearts is one of the dwelling places of God.  

The problem is that while this makes logical sense, it’s too much like a geometry proof, and the beauty of the math sometimes breaks down in practice. The people around us can be irritating, difficult, smelly, needy, and sometimes even dangerous. So can each of us, for that matter. Searching for Christ in our neighbors, or in our own hearts, can feel like looking for a mustard seed in a wheatfield. And the task is often most daunting when we’re gripped by separation anxeity, terrified of abandonment. As a five year old tenaciously glued to my mother’s side, it wasn’t enough for me to hear her patiently telling me, again and again, that she wasn’t going anywhere, that I really did live with her now. Words weren’t enough. I needed to feel her physical presence.  

Gradually, though, I relaxed. I learned to trust the signs that she was with me even when I couldn’t see her: the clothes she laid out every day for me to wear to school; the lunches she packed, often with homebaked cookies; the letters and care packages she sent me when I was in college, and in graduate school, and when I moved across the country to Reno to take a job at UNR.  

I always believed that I would be devastated by her death, and when she died in 2010, I was indeed terribly, deeply sad. That pain, though, was gradually replaced by the recognition that she’s always with me:  in the tangible gifts she gave me, jewelry and furniture and dishes; in my memories of her; in the things I see every day -- cats, birds, cloud formations -- that she would have loved. I can still hear her voice in my head. When I have a problem, I can usually imagine how she’d respond. And as I get older, I have growing faith that I’ll see her again.

This process isn’t that different from what the disciples experienced. Jesus indeed ascended, and they must have grieved, but at Pentecost they received the Holy Spirit. God was still with them. They learned to trust in the signs that announced God’s presence even when they couldn’t see him. Bread. Wine.  Rushing wind. Each other. We still have those signs now. We celebrate them every Sunday at church, in the sacraments, and less formally every other day of the week. God dwells in all of creation, loving and cherishing each of us.

And so, I think, does motherhood, which is one of the faces of God. I was one of the lucky kids. I had my mother for a long time, and I knew she loved me. While I never had children myself, I also never wanted them; I have been content to let others do the difficult work of parenting. I’ve met countless people, though, who are deeply wounded by the death or desertion or cruelty of their mothers or their children, or by inability to conceive children they desperately wanted. None of these issues is simple.  Those pains run deep. But many of my friends who carry such scars have found alternative forms of mothering. They have been nurtured by loving friends, teachers, and chosen family. They have nurtured children they did not bear. They have discovered their own, deeply satisfying ways to embody, and to receive, the love of God, to whom each of us is a cherished child.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus promises us many mansions, if only we can recognize them. I think all of us, if we look, can also find many mothers, both those we’ve had and those we’ve been. On Mother’s Day, I wish all of you the joy of loving and being loved; of cherishing, and being cherished.

Amen.

Journeys to Resurrection

I've preached this homily twice before, years apart, with different examples. I reread it this year wondering if the beginning would seem stale, if I'd need to rewrite it, but I still like it. I hope other people will, too. The readings are Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 11:1-45. *

“How could God let this happen?”

We hear this question all the time: after shootings, after tragic car accidents and plane crashes, after typhoons and mudslides and earthquakes. In my volunteer work in the ER, I’ve heard it often. It is the agonized cry of faith in the face of tragedy, and it’s at the heart of this morning’s Gospel.

The raising of Lazarus is a dress rehearsal for Holy Week. Eleven verses before the beginning of this passage, the religious establishment of Judea threatens to stone Jesus for blasphemy, for claiming to be God. After Jesus escapes that threat, he learns that his beloved friend Lazarus is dying. So Jesus — knowing that a return to Judea will seal his death sentence — decides to go back, but only after he’s dawdled a few days, to make sure that Lazarus will be dead before he gets there. An ordinary healing won’t be enough this time. The stakes have been raised; the chips are down. Jesus is about to perform nothing less than a resurrection.

As a dress rehearsal for Holy Week, this story contains many familiar elements: an all-powerful God refusing, for seemingly inexplicable reasons, to prevent the death of a beloved; weeping women; a tomb sealed by a stone; and, finally, the death-shattering miracle of resurrection. The biggest difference is that Lazarus dies of natural causes, not by execution.

Or does he? If Jesus could have prevented Lazarus’ death and refuses to do so, isn’t it somehow his fault? Mary and Martha think so: both of them say, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Some of the mourners agree: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” How could God let this happen?

Jesus has earlier told his disciples, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” But belief isn’t the main issue here. Mary and Martha, the other mourners, and the disciples already believe in Jesus. The issue is anger. If we believe in God, if we know that God can act to prevent suffering and forestall untimely death, we may become more angry at these things than non-believers would. People who don’t believe in God don’t wonder where God is in the middle of earthquakes and famines and tidal waves. They don’t rage at God when their loved ones die too soon or after too much pain. They don’t demand, “How could God let this happen?” For non-believers, such events constitute compelling -- indeed, crushing -- proof that there is no God.

It’s believers who rail at God. “We know you can fix this. We’ve seen you do it before. Where were you this time? If you really love us as much as you say you do, how can you just sit there, cooling your heels, while our brother’s body is growing cold in his tomb? How could you let this happen?”

Jesus wept. This is, famously, the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus weeps when he sees Mary and the mourners weeping. “He was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved,” the Gospel says.   I always want to ask, “What did you expect, Jesus? Did you think the people who loved Lazarus wouldn't weep at his death? Did you think they’d tell each other, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Jesus will show up one of these days, when he gets around to it, so let’s have a party?’”

Any way you look at it, the situation stinks, just like Lazarus’ body stinks after four days in a hot Middle-Eastern tomb. And yet, having finally shown up, Jesus does indeed make everything right.  He calls Lazarus out of the tomb, and he instructs Lazarus’ family and friends to unbind the burial cloths, to help Lazarus readjust to his new life. Any mourners who didn’t believe in Jesus before that little demonstration certainly believe in him afterwards.

Their belief is about to be tested yet again. The dress rehearsal is over. Holy Week is almost here.  This time, even Jesus will cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Once again, there will be weeping women and a tomb sealed by a stone, a tomb from which God impossibly, miraculously, will call forth new life.

The story of Lazarus offers us at least three lessons. The first is that there are no shortcuts to resurrection, even for those who believe. The most steadfast faith will not protect us against grief and doubt and bitter trials. The most serene acceptance of God’s will cannot shield us from feeling, at times, as if God has abandoned us. All of that is human and holy. It is human and holy to get angry when we feel forsaken; it is human and holy to question God, to rail at God, to weep at God’s apparent absence. It is human and holy to mourn our dead. God weeps with us, and when the time comes, God will show us how to unbind what has been resurrected.

The second lesson is that resurrection is a process, even for those who believe.  Look at today’s reading from Ezekiel, the famous Valley of Dry Bones. That’s a resurrection story, too, but it happens in stages.  First you need breath; then you need muscle, sinews, skin. It’s like peeling an onion, but in reverse. Resurrection happens from the inside out, and it takes time.

That is why, every year, we make the long slow journey through Lent, walking through those forty days just as Jesus walked through the desert, just as he walked back into Judea to Lazarus’ tomb. We make such journeys at other times, too: whenever we have suffered grief or betrayal, whenever we feel abandoned by God or other people, whenever we gag at the stench of death in a place where we had prayed for rebirth. Rebirth can still happen. God’s time is not ours. Even as we weep and pray, God journeys towards us, step by step, bringing resurrection.

But God needs our help. The third lesson of the Lazarus story is that resurrection is a community project. “Unbind him, and let him go,” Jesus tells the onlookers. Those who have been resurrected need to be helped by their neighbors and welcomed back into community. They need to be loved. They need to know that they matter.  

This makes resurrection inescapably political. People desperate for new life can’t achieve it if they’re deported back to their tombs. They can’t achieve it if the communities to which they have journeyed put them in handcuffs instead of unbinding them. They can’t achieve it if other people’s fear of who they are, or where they came from, overcomes willingness to love.   

Here, courtesy of CNN, is a story about what that kind of love looks like. In January, an Illinois woman named Nancy Swabb learned about a baby girl in Cote D’Ivoire, the Ivory Coast in Africa, who needed emergency life-saving surgery in the United States. Baby Dominique also needed foster care during her treatment. Swabb and her family, who live near the hospital that donated the surgery, opened their home to Dominique and asked their neighbors to help out with supplies. Within two days, a pile taller than Swabb herself filled the house. Neighbors donated diapers, formula, wipes, clothes, a stroller, a car seat and a playpen. Swabb's daily walks with Dominique in the stroller stretched to an hour as neighbors stopped to greet the baby they had helped welcome. "She has become the community baby, and everyone has been really interested in her story," Swabb said.

Dominque’s story ends as happily as Lazarus’ did. Her long, complicated, risky surgery was more successful than the doctors had dared hope. She is recovering well and will return to her African birth family in April. "I can't wait for her parents to see her," says Swabb, who hopes that the two families can meet someday.

Here in Reno, St. Paul’s -- along with other churches -- has welcomed our local family of Syrian refugees just this warmly. But having kids in the picture makes that easier. Dominique is ten months old and adorable. The Syrian family has small children, too. Kids remind us of innocence, of birth, of Christmas. Lazarus, four days dead and reeking, probably wasn’t adorable, but he was welcomed back into the world by people who’d known him his entire life, who already loved him.

Our challenge as a country right now is to remember that everyone alive is someone’s child: both God’s child and the child of human parents. Everyone alive was a baby once, as lovely as Dominique, as the Syrian children, as the infant Jesus on Christmas morning. Our challenge is to help yesterday’s Christmases become tomorrow’s Easters. We are called to unbind, not just the innocent and adorable, but the adults such children become, people whose unlovely tombs and journeys have left them shattered and smelly and scarred. We may well demand to know how God, or other people, could let this happen to them. But even if we never learn the answers, we can still welcome them into new and abundant life.  

Amen.

Replacing Judas

Here's tomorrow's homily.  The lesson is Acts 1:15-17, 21-26.  I usually preach on the Gospel, but this week it's Jesus-as-talking-head pontificating in John, and I'd always rather preach on a passage where people are doing things.  Narrative junkie, c'est moi.

*

Most of you know that I came to St. Paul’s after the closure of St. Stephen’s. St. Stephen’s might have gone under anyway; it was tiny, and like so many mainstream churches these days, it was struggling financially. But its demise was hastened by not one, but two clergy misconduct situations. In the first of those, I wound up -- through a complicated set of circumstances I won’t rehash here -- being one of the people who reported to the bishop. Although the situation was ultimately resolved correctly, the process took far too long. Procedural promises from the bishop and the diocese weren’t kept. I, and a number of other people, wound up feeling betrayed not only by the priest in our parish who was busy breaking every vow within reach, but by the larger church hierarchy.

Even now, twelve years after that first misconduct scandal and five years after the closure of St. Stephen’s, it’s difficult for me to talk about what happened without pain and anger. This history has made it harder for me to trust people at St. Paul’s, partly because I’m not sure I can trust my own instincts about whom to trust.  I was so wrong before. Although I’ve been at St. Paul’s for five years now, I’m still wary. Except when I preach, I keep to myself. I stick to the small 5:00 service. I know that this isn’t St. Stephen’s. I know that the players are different, and I really do trust this set of players more than the first one. But part of me is still convinced that staying safe means keeping to myself and keeping quiet.

How do we move forward after betrayal? That’s the question posed by today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Judas, one of the beloved Twelve, sold Jesus to the Romans for thirty pieces of silver and then hanged himself. The twelve are now eleven. Jesus named twelve; he meant for there to be twelve. The empty seat must be filled.

The lesson makes this sound like a simple matter of reasoned discussion, prayer, and casting lots. Two men are chosen for an election. One wins; the other doesn’t. The empty seat is now filled, and the Twelve are twelve again. Mission accomplished. Meeting adjourned.

But anyone who’s ever suffered betrayal knows that it can’t have been that easy. And although very few of us have been sold for thirty pieces of silver, all of us have been betrayed. A spouse is unfaithful. An employee embezzles. A friend gossips about something said in confidence. Clergy misconduct, political corruption, student plagiarism: all of them damage our faith in other people. All of us have felt the pain of shattered trust, and all of us know how easy it is to shut down and withdraw so we won’t risk being hurt again.

“I’ll never remarry. All men are cheating so-and-so’s, just like my ex-husband.”

“Why even bother to vote? All politicians are crooks.”

“You won’t catch me in a church again, not after what that priest did.”

We’ve all heard people say things like this. And while we often think about betrayal in terms of big-picture issues -- family, country, religion
 -- trust is essential to almost everything we do.  An article in Psychology Today describes how thoroughly it permeates our lives:

Trust is the foundation of all human connections, from chance encounters to friendships and intimate relationships. . . . No one would drive a car or walk down a sidewalk, or board a train or an airplane, if we didn’t ‘trust’ that other people took their responsibilities seriously. . . . We trust that other drivers will stay in their lanes, that conductors and pilots will be sober and alert, and that people will generally do their best to discharge their obligations toward us. Culture, civilization, and community all depend on such trust.

That dependence begins the moment we’re born. Psychologists believe that forming a trusting relationship with the world -- being able to count on love and security, food and shelter and nurture -- is one of the most crucial tasks of infancy. Babies who can’t trust their caregivers face significant challenges navigating the world as they grow older. And our ability to trust ourselves is every bit as important as our ability to trust other people. Do we believe that we can stay in our lanes, remain sober and alert, discharge our social obligations? Are we secure in our ability to care for others, to maintain intimate relationships, to be good neighbors?

This morning’s story about replacing Judas speaks to both sides of the issue. The believers choosing a new apostle must have worried about whether the person they chose would be trustworthy. After all, Jesus’ followers still faced persecution. The danger of being betrayed to the authorities remained very real.

Barsabbas, who wasn’t chosen as the new apostle, must have wondered why. “Lord, you know everyone’s heart.” That was the beginning of the election prayer. Had God looked into Barsabbas’ heart, seen future betrayal or wrongdoing there, and guided the lots accordingly?

Matthias, who was chosen, must have wondered if he could be trusted with the great responsibility he’d been given. Yes, he loved Christ; but so had Judas, once. What had happened? How could Matthias be sure it wouldn’t happen to him, too?

And then there’s Peter, who called for the election. Peter also betrayed Jesus, although not as catastrophically as Judas did. Peter is the man who, in terror for his own life after Jesus’ arrest, denied his Lord three times after swearing to remain faithful. The most brash and self-confident of the apostles fell, and fell hard. Peter knows all about self-doubt.

But Peter has also seen the resurrected Christ. He has eaten fish his risen Lord cooked for him on the beach. He has heard the command “Feed my sheep.” He knows that he is forgiven, and he knows that he -- and the church -- have a job to do.

There’s a reason we’re hearing this reading during Easter. There’s a reason we’re hearing it on the last Sunday of Easter, the week before Pentecost, the birthday of the church. What initially sounds like a dull bit of bureaucracy, a first-century vestry business meeting, is really a resurrection story. The pain and mistrust created by Judas’ betrayal could easily have killed the church before it was even born. Instead, Jesus’ followers recommit to their mission, and to each other. Their resurrection is made possible by his.

“One of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” The resurrection is the ultimate proof that death cannot overcome God’s love, that our betrayals are forgiven, that we can trust God to care for us. The resurrection means that God gives all of us -- the betraying and the betrayed -- second chances. The resurrection means that our scars and wounds, like Christ’s, are no longer marks of shame, but proof that we have risen from our graves of failure and betrayal to new life. The resurrection means that God trusts us to be the church, to feed his sheep, even when we don’t trust each other or ourselves.

Getting from the betrayal of Good Friday to the renewed trust of Easter, though, can take longer than forty days. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes a lifetime. I have a hunch that there are other believers in the crowd who are still cautious: wondering whom they can trust, keeping to themselves and keeping quiet. They love God and Christ. They want to participate as fully as they did in those early days, before their trust was shattered. God, always patient and always loving, has never left them. The church’s job is to be as steadfast and trustworthy as the God it serves, to become a place that heals betrayal, a place God’s servants feel no need to leave.

Amen.

Unseemly Angels

Here's today's Blue Christmas homily.  The readings are
2 Samuel 7:1-11 and Luke 1:26-38.

*

Tonight, the Winter Solstice, is the longest night of the year. Tomorrow, the days will start getting longer again. But many of us have come to church this evening because we’re struggling with our own darkness, with sorrow and loss.
 
If we’re sad, Christmas can feel like nothing but duty. Store displays, advertising and inescapable holiday music insist that we must be happy, surrounded by festive family and friends.  If we’re grieving broken relationships or departed loved ones, the holidays can be a constant reminder of what, and who, we miss. All too often, the people around us don’t want to hear any of this, even if we feel like sharing it. Weeping into the eggnog is unseemly.

When I was a kid, I loved Christmas. It was a magical season, one my parents worked very hard to make both fun and beautiful. But my parents are dead now, and our family Christmas traditions died with them. The season became even darker when my husband’s father died right before Christmas six years ago. These days, I dread the weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. Whenever I hear the song, “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays,” I feel homesick. I can’t go home for the holidays. The home I long for no longer exists.

And so today’s lectionary readings comfort me.  They remind me that God meets us where we are, not where we -- or others – think we should be.  In the passage from 2 Samuel, David frets over the fact that he lives in a nice house while “the ark of God stays in a tent.”  He feels a duty to build a nice house for God, too, until the prophet Nathan passes along God’s message.  “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? . . . the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house.”  God says, in effect,  “It’s not your job to provide for me, David.  I provide for you, as I always have and always will; what’s more, I will provide for your descendants for generations to come.”

The most famous of David’s descendants is Jesus, whose birth we hear announced in today’s Gospel. The angel comes to Mary where she is -- comes to an unmarried young woman in an obscure town in an occupied territory -- and delivers decidedly unseemly news. Although the Christian tradition has always made much of Mary’s obedience, I wonder how much of her meekness is really shock. Her life has been turned upside down. She has just learned that the darkness of her womb houses a completely unexpected, and socially scandalous, miracle.

This story reminds us of the value of darkness. Children grow first in darkness; so do seeds. Life begins in places we cannot see, and bursts into the light only when it is ready. Darkness offers rest and healing and growth, if only we can allow ourselves the time we need for rebirth, and if only we can recognize and welcome the angels who bring us good news.

The angels on greeting cards have never done much for me. The same culture that demands joy during the holidays has turned angels into lovely, fluffy beings, all sequins and glitter.  Even before Christmas became so hard for me, I couldn’t imagine such a creature holding me while I cried.  I’d dribble tears on its pretty white robes.  I couldn’t imagine it visiting my house; its wings would become befouled by dust bunnies and cat hair.

And then ten years ago, visiting my father for Thanksgiving, I found this statue in the gift shop of the George Ohr Museum, a pottery museum in Biloxi, Mississippi.  This angel, wearing a quizzical expression and covered with wounds and bruises, fascinated me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  He made me think immediately of the angel who wrestled with Jacob in Genesis, and who must have sustained his own scars in the process. I carried him around the store with me for at least half an hour, while a woman who was buying everything else in the shop told me that if I didn’t buy him, she would. I finally handed over my credit card, fretting about how I’d get the angel -- with his fragile, brittle wings -- home safely on the plane.

The shopkeeper had told me that the artist, a woman named Dina O’Sullivan, was Director of Education at the museum.  Back in Dad’s apartment, I found her e-mail address on the museum’s webpage and sent a note asking if there was a story behind the angel’s creation. She wrote back very quickly. She’s Jewish, and to her, this angel symbolizes all the stories of struggle in the Hebrew Bible. My instinct about the Jacob story had been right.

I swaddled the angel in bubble-wrap and cradled it on my lap during the long, bumpy plane ride back to Reno. Then I started doing research. According to one tradition, the angel who wrestled with Jacob was Gabriel, the same angel who appears to Mary in today’s Gospel.  And Gabriel, in many of the sources I read, is called “the angel of incarnation and consolation.”

Incarnation and consolation, mortality and comfort: they’re two sides of the same coin. Incarnation is the miracle of God become naked, vulnerable human flesh, of God growing a body. But bodies are fragile, and need to be healed and comforted. Two thousand years after the first Christmas, we know how the story ends. We know that the God who was born a mortal baby to an outcast mother, the God who heals and comforts us, will be executed as a criminal.  We know that he will be bruised and wounded. We know that this is a story in which God’s love cannot be separated from hard work and pain. The ultimate comfort, Christ’s resurrection, comes only after the embodied agony of Good Friday.  

As I grow older, there are days when I think that resurrection is the only thing that makes incarnation bearable. Our embodiment inevitably subjects us to loss. As Christians, we trust in resurrection, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve and need comfort.  We rejoice whenever a baby is born, but we also know that all babies, as they grow, will meet trouble, will be bruised and wounded. We long to spare those we love from suffering: we try to swaddle them in bubble-wrap and hold them in our laps to protect them from turbulence, and sometimes it works, for a little while. We do everything we can to keep what we love from breaking. But Lent and Good Friday await all of us, as surely as Easter does. Ultimately, we cannot assure safety for those we love. Our only sure promise lies in God, for whom nothing is impossible.

And so we need Gabriel, the angel of incarnation and consolation. He meets us where we are:  he appears in the darkness of our most difficult labors, as we bring forth new life and as we face death.   He’s not afraid to get dirty. He tells us, “Look, I’m scarred too; I’m wounded, too. I’ve struggled all night with fierce adversaries who refused to release me. I’ve sat with women as they labored in childbirth. I am the angel of everything that is bruised and broken but stubbornly survives, and I am here to tell you that for every pain there is also joy, joy at the end of everything, joy and the peace that passes all understanding.  From now on, you will not suffer anything that your Lord has not also suffered.  You are no longer alone, no longer poor and outcast: you are the Lord’s beloved, cherished and whole.”

On this day of darkness, let us trust in the return of light. Let us have faith in the new life that is even now growing where we cannot see it. But even as we trust the future, let us take comfort in the present. Emmanuel has come. God is with us, now and always, meeting us where we are:  in the humble dirt and straw, the dust and tears, of our unseemly lives.  

Amen.

Choosing Love

Here's my homily for 3 Advent.  For obvious reasons, this is a challenging preaching occasion: one on which I find myself, as I've so often been before, infinitely grateful for poetry.

The readings are Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-18.

*

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, also known as Gaudete Sunday.  Gaudete means “rejoice” in Latin.  This is the day when we’re called to put aside the somber, penitential business of Advent to revel in the Lord’s impending arrival.   “Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!  The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies.  The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.”

I don’t know about you, but after the terrible news from Connecticut on Friday -- right after that other terrible news from Portland only a few days earlier -- I don’t feel like rejoicing and exulting.  I don’t feel like the Lord has turned away my enemies, and I doubt that any of the survivors of those mass shootings, or their families, feel that way either.  I fear disaster as much as I ever did, if not more.

Usually I don’t like John the Baptist, this grumpy prophet with his locusts and wild honey, howling at the assembled crowd to repent, telling them they’re a brood of vipers.  He’s such a downer,  right before Christmas.  Where’s the good news here, exactly?

But in the middle of so much bad news, I need this morning’s Gospel.  John doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but he still offers hope.  The good news he brings is that we are capable of kindness, of good deeds, of the love of neighbor that is Jesus’ greatest commandment.  When the crowd asks John, “What should we do?” he says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.”   In this wide, wild world where there is so much we cannot control, we still have free will.  We can choose love.  

In the past few days, many people have been sharing something Mister Rogers once said.  I’ve talked about Fred Rogers from this pulpit before, and I ask your indulgence as I do so again.  This quotation has gone viral because it so perfectly fits the situation.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

Fred Rogers’ tone is very different from John the Baptist’s, but they’re saying the same thing.  Choose love over despair.  Choose love over violence.  Choose love over vengeance.  Even in the darkness, choose love.

And, on Gaudete Sunday, we are also called to choose joy.  That may seem impossible right now.  It may even seem disrespectful, a sign that we don’t care about all those dead children and their families.  How can we find joy in the middle of so much sadness?

Here is a poem about that process.  It is by Jack Gilbert, and it is called,“A Brief for the Defense.”

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Choose love.  Choose joy.  And listen.  There will be music despite everything, even in the midst of tears.  And in a few weeks, if we listen very carefully, we will hear another kind of crying: the thin wailing of a hungry, newborn child lying in a manger, bringing light and love and peace even in the darkness.

Amen.

The Last Shift

Today I served my last shift as a volunteer lay ER chaplain.

When I was there Monday, a letter was being written to spiritual-care volunteers explaining that the department was being cut because of the sale.  I never got that letter this week.  When I went in today, the letters were sitting unmailed on my supervisor’s desk, although he told me he’d called everyone to make sure they knew.  “It doesn’t say much,” he said with a sigh as he handed me mine, and indeed it doesn’t: thanks us for our service, explains that the department’s closing, instructs us to hand in our ID badges.

“I need to say that this sucks,” I told him.  “The way this has been handled is terrible.”

He nodded glumly.  “We do many things very well.  This has not been one of them.”

I went next door to sign in, and then popped back into his office to ask him a question, but he was on the phone, so I went downstairs to the ER.  The first thing I usually do down there is to check the blanket warmers: I give out a lot of warm blankets, and I need to make sure I have my supplies, so for years now I’ve restocked the warmers at the beginning of each shift.  There’s one at each end of the rather large ER; usually the one farthest from the linen cart is partially full and I only need to carry a few blankets down there.  But today that warmer was completely empty, so I decided to roll the entire cart down to the warmer rather than trucking back and forth with armloads of blankets.

The cart is huge, taller than I am, and very ungainly.  It was difficult to steer; I couldn’t see over or around it and wanted to make sure that I wasn’t running over staff, patients or equipment, so I finally got in front and walked backwards, pulling and looking over my shoulder to navigate.  And then, all of a sudden, I saw my supervisor’s face, his eyes round with surprise, peering at me over the opposite end of the cart.

I’ve never seen him in the ER.  I thought maybe there was a patient emergency and someone had called him.  But before I could ask, he said, “What are you doing?”

“Restocking the blanket warmer.”

He frowned.  “We really aren’t supposed to do that.”

Bite me, I thought (completely unjustly; I’m just a volunteer and he lost a salaried position, so getting cranky at him makes no sense, except that he’s the one who’s there).  I’ve been restocking the warmers for over seven years, and I get grief about it on my last day?  “Look, I give out a lot of blankets, and it’s easier and faster for me to do it myself than to nag an overworked tech about it.”

He nodded.  He got that.  (Later I apologized for being cranky and he said, “It’s okay.  Letting people be cranky at me is about all I can do for anyone right now.”)  It turned out he’d come down to find out what I’d wanted to ask him, which was really very decent of him.

We chatted; he left; I kept rolling the cart.  A registration clerk spotted me and said, laughing, “Okay, you’re hired.”

“Actually, I’m fired,” I told her, and explained the situation.  She hadn’t known.  Nobody knew until I told them.  I didn’t tell many people, since everyone was busy, but I did have a long talk with a nurse sitting in the psych hallway, and I also mentioned the situation to the psychiatric social worker, another nurse, and a security guard, all of whom gave me spontaneous hugs.  “You’ve been here forever,” the social worker said, and the security guard said kindly, “With your gifts, you can go anywhere.”  Nice guy.

From my point of view, it was a somewhat slow shift, but a lot of people thanked me for looking in on them, and one couple recognized me from an ER visit last year.  And we had one extremely obstreberous patient who wound up in restraints and was threatening all kinds of violence to medical staff.  “Don’t go in there,” the nurse said.  “That patient doesn’t like women.”  But when I went in and identified myself as the chaplain, the patient started crying, and asked for prayer, and clung to my hand, and treated me to a long, heartfelt and incoherent life history.  Things went south again with medical staff later, but for a few minutes while I was there, that part of the hallway was a little quieter.  The nurse came in again to get vitals while I was there, and the patient said, “I’m talking to my chaplain now, and she trumps you.”  (I explained that actually, medical staff trump me.)  Somehow I don’t think identifying myself as a patient advocate would have had quite the same effect.  Still, I’ll go back as a patient advocate if they’ll let me, as soon as the new owners start accepting volunteer applications.  My supervisor says it’s possible that the new outfit will bring back some form of spiritual care, but I’m not betting on it.

After my shift, I went back upstairs, and removed my badge from its holder, and gave it to my supervisor.  I was pretty teary-eyed.  “Are other people having a hard time with this?” I asked him.  

“No,” he said gently.  “Not as much.  Or at least, they haven’t talked to me about it.  But it’s an individual journey.”  I find that a little hard to believe, since some of the other volunteer chaplains have been doing this much longer than I have.

I cried the whole way home.  Seven and a half years and 1,132 hours: that’s a chunk of my life that’s over now.  And I know I’ll find things to fill the void, but they haven’t arrived yet.

We’re going to a concert tonight.  Music will help.   On Monday, which would ordinarily be a volunteer day, we’re going to a movie.  I’ll keep myself distracted.  But this is a true loss in ways even I can’t quite put my finger on yet, and I ask my friends’ patience and understanding.

End of an Era

1: Background

My hospital has been sold.  All of the hospitals in this area – like so many hospitals across the country – are having terrible financial problems.  If my hospital hadn’t been sold, it would have had to close.  In everything else I say here, keep in mind that closure would have been worse.

The sale’s been percolating for many months.  At one point, it looked like we’d be sold to a particular company: I got online and checked out the websites of the hospitals in their system, and a number of them had spiritual-care departments, and when I spoke to my supervisor, he confirmed that they were sympathetic to spiritual care.  So we were happy.

But that sale fell through, and we were sold to another entity, and when I checked that entity’s hospitals, none of them had spiritual care departments.  And my supervisor confirmed that fact, too, and said it didn’t look good.

2: The Plot Quickens

A few weeks ago my supervisor told me that he had been fired and that there would no longer be a Spiritual Care Department.  He didn’t know what would happen to volunteer chaplains.

This past Friday, I passed his office on my way to sign in for my shift, and ducked inside to say hi.  “Anything new?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.  There won’t be volunteer chaplains anymore.  The last date they can work is, uh . . . “ – he checked his calendar – “the 18th.”

“Of May?  That’s in two weeks!  We haven’t gotten a letter!”

“It will go out Monday.”

I felt like I’d been sucker-punched.  I reeled through my shift, fighting periodic tears, venting to a few staff.  One doctor I hadn’t even talked to came up to me (very unusual, but it was a slow shift) and said, “I just heard. I’m so sorry.  You guys are so important.  Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

I kept wondering aloud if there’d be some way for me to stay in the ED, maybe as a patient advocate, but everyone told me I’d have to talk to the hospital’s volunteer coordinator about that, and she was on vacation.  So I finished up that shift and came home in tears, heartsick and furious.

3: Big Picture

A lot of my anger was political.  My hospital is the only one in the area that still has in-house Spiritual Care; after the change, there won’t be any.  The importance of spiritual concerns in illness and healing is pretty general knowledge these days, and after seven and a half years of doing this work, I know firsthand how much prayer, comfort and conversation mean to patients.  I literally can’t count how many patients have wept in gratitude during my visits with them, how many of them have told me that they feel better just from talking to someone like me.   I may even have played a tiny role in helping save a life or two, simply by – for instance – offering suicidal patients a different perspective on their despair.  I know for certain that during the time I’ve been volunteering, ED staff have asked at least twice for more chaplains in the department.  Emergency-medicine people are the ultimate empiricists: they aren’t going to ask for something unless they know it works.

It absolutely infuriates me that this crucial aspect of patient care is being abandoned because it doesn’t meet a corporate bottom line.  There’s no billing code for prayer.  Over the weekend, I talked to a professional chaplain who confirmed that it’s not just us: Spiritual Care Departments are being dismantled, and chaplains fired, all over the country.  This is only one more indication of the country’s economic slough.  Once again, I’d rather see departments dismissed than see entire hospitals close, although I have to wonder if Spiritual Care actually has a positive effect on the bottom line that no one’s bothered to try to measure.

4: Also, It Feels Personal

So I spent a lot of the weekend weeping and raging, not just over the dismal swamp of healthcare in general, but also over my own loss.  In case it wasn’t already obvious, I love being a volunteer chaplain, and I think I’m good at it, not least because my somewhat spiky personality is an asset, rather than a drawback, in the ED.  It’s often very difficult for me to see progress in the classroom, and I’m often despondent about my writing, but after any given volunteer shift, I can point with certainty to places where I did good work and produced palpable results.  Losing that role felt like having a body part torn off.

And this loss comes close on the heels of many others.  Over the last five years, I’ve lost both of my parents, Gary’s father, two cousins, an especially beloved cat, and my church.  The world feels a lot thinner than it did five years ago, and (like so many other people), I’ve also suffered losses connected to the inexorable tightening of standards in the university and the church.  Five years ago, I believed I would one day be both a deacon and a full professor: now I know that I won’t be either, because the level of insane hoop-jumping required to reach those spots - a function of nationwide changes in professional expectations - simply isn’t anything I want to attempt.  These decisions are choices, of course, but I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that this kind of bar-raising is happening in many other fields as well, placing a lot of jobs out of realistic reach of people who’d be very good at them.  Losing my cherished volunteer gig at the hands of a faceless corporation isn’t quite the same thing, but it pushed some of the same buttons: the powerlessness any of us feel in a world of moving targets we can’t map or predict.

Let me say here that I am also very blessed, and know it.  I’m very grateful for everything I have in a world where so many people have so much less.  That doesn’t change the fact that I’m also grieving.

It was not a good weekend.  I sent wailing e-mail to three of my clergy, cried a lot, went through some PTSD-ish bouts of anxiety when I started wondering what I was going to lose next – I probably drove Gary nuts with my clinging – and, not to put too fine a point on it, was a mess.  To be fair, I also did research.  My supervisor had recommended that I move over to being a hospice volunteer, and I talked to a hospice chaplain who said that I’d be very welcome.

5: Cautious Optimism and Tentative Plans

Today was much better.  I talked to the hospital’s volunteer coordinator, who sympathized completely and gave me a huge hug; I once visited her and a sick family member in the ED, and she’s a fan. She said that I should indeed be able to remain in the ED as a “patient advocate.”  I’ll have to reapply, as everyone else at the hospital will.  I’ll have to be retrained.  I won’t be able to say the word “God:” she said there are very strict rules about that.  But I’ll be able to stay in a place I know, where people know me, and I’ll be able to keep helping patients.

She also told me that the last day for volunteer chaplains isn’t the 18th.  It’s the 11th: this Friday, not next.  I have one more shift.

Today’s shift was full and busy and confirmed, yet again, the value of volunteer chaplains.  I prayed with a newlywed whose spouse was on life support, and who thanked me copiously.  I prayed with a woman who wept in gratitude and squeezed my hand.  I cheered up a lot of people just by popping in and asking if they needed to talk.

The doctor who’d come up to me on Friday was working today, too.  I told her about the patient-advocate gig and said, “I could move to hospice, but I’d rather stay here.”  She smiled and said, “We’d rather you stayed here!” which of course made me feel good.

I saw another doctor and filled her in.  When I said, “I can stay here, but I can’t say the word ‘God,’” she rolled her eyes and said, “You have got to be kidding me.  Well, just do what you always do and call it something else.”

Exactly.  And again, lots of what I do – talking to people about advanced directives, giving out the number of the crisis-call line, calling shelters to try to find beds for homeless patients – doesn’t involve explicit mention of God anyway.  Preach the Gospel without ceasing; use words when necessary.  The trick now will be finding safely secular words.

When I went upstairs to sign out, I ran into a social worker who usually works in the ED.  I briefed her, and she said, “We’re going to need advocates, big time.”

So that’s sounding like a plan, but I won’t believe anything until it happens.  I have no idea how long it will take for the new volunteer training to happen.  In the meantime, I’m going to call hospice and check on their training schedule, since they only do trainings once or twice a year and I’d hate to miss out.  I’m hoping that their training will be far enough down the road that I can try the patient-advocate role first, see how I like it, and switch to hospice if it doesn’t work out.

Over the weekend, I got supportive, sympathetic responses from two of the clergy I e-mailed.  Today the third, my rector, called.  He told me that he always needs pastoral-care help in the parish, people to help with hospital and home visits.  So that’s another possibility.

I really do love the ED, though.  I love the clinical setting, the snippets of Cool Medicine I get to overhear, the sheer diversity of the department.   So I’m really hoping that being a godless patient advocate will fill the bill for me, although there will certainly be challenges.  Today – as happens fairly often – a patient recognized me from a previous hospital visit, and thanked me for praying with her then.  What will I do if that happens after the changeover and the patient asks me for prayer now?

“Point at the ceiling,” said Gary, my creative nondenominational pagan.  “Use the Voldemort strategy:  Pray to He-She-It Who Must Not Be Named.”  

Actually, I’d probably break the rules, say the G-word, and hope that no one called the cops.  But it’s going to be very interesting to see how all this works!

The Same Boat

Here's tomorrow's homily, which I'll be giving at the St. Stephen's reunion in Wadsworth, on the Pyramid Lake reservation. The readings are 1 Kings 19:9-19 and Matthew 14:22-33. Special thanks to Ken Houghton for helping me find a copy of the Patrick O'Leary poem on very short notice!

*

Good morning. I’m delighted to be here, and to see so many of you again, and I’d like to thank Eric Heidecker for inviting me to preach today.

This morning’s readings are about people, scared out of their wits, who learn that they can’t get away from where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing. Elijah, hunted by people who want to kill him, flees to Horeb, only to have God command him to go back. He still has kings and prophets to annoint. He doesn’t get to run away.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is still badly shaken by the death of John the Baptist. His first attempt to sneak away for some alone time was interrupted by a huge crowd, desperate for healing, who followed him. He healed them, but then they needed their supper. We heard about the famous Feeding of the Five Thousand last Sunday.

When the story picks up this morning, I imagine that Jesus is pretty tired. “Finally!” he must be thinking. “They’re all healed. They’re all fed. Now I can send everyone home and have some time to myself.” And so he does: packs the disciples off in a boat, dismisses the crowds, and climbs up a mountain to pray. He spends all night there, a much-needed mini-sabbatical. But in the morning, he again has work to do. The disciples, hapless as ever, are stuck in their boat in the middle of a storm in the middle of the Sea of Galilee.

I’m told that the Sea of Galilee is quite geologically similar to Pyramid Lake. The winds on Pyramid Lake can be really dangerous, and anyone who’s been in a small boat, or even a larger one, knows how terrifying a storm on the water can be. People die out there. Anyone who knows the water knows that, so it’s a pretty safe bet that the disciples were frightened out of their minds even before they saw a ghostly figure walking towards them across the churning water.

Seeing the ghost freaks them out even more, until Jesus speaks words of comfort. That’s when Peter says, “Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water.”

Peter’s always doing stuff like this, trying to set himself apart. Yesterday, August 6, was the Feast of the Transfiguration, when Jesus climbed up the mountaintop and was joined by Moses and Elijah just before being clothed in light. Remember how Peter responded to that event? “Hey, Jesus, let’s build some houses and stay up here.” That time, Jesus said no. Sorry, Peter. We have to go back down the mountain. We have work to do.

This time, he says yes. Peter isn’t speaking out of pride now; he’s frightened, and Jesus wants to comfort him, because that’s what Jesus does. So he calls Peter, who starts walking on water just like his beloved teacher. Mind you, the storm hasn’t stopped yet. It won’t stop until Jesus gets back into the boat. I think Peter’s so desperate to be out of that blasted, bucking boat, so desperate to rejoin his Lord, the source of his safety, that he doesn’t even realize at first what’s happening. But the minute he looks down and sees the whitecaps under his feet, he panics again. He sinks, and Jesus has to haul him, sputtering and coughing, back up.

Where does Jesus take him? Back into the boat, while the storm’s still raging. Sorry, Peter. You can’t stay on the mountain and leave your friends behind. You can’t get out of the boat and leave your friends behind, either, not for good. You still have work to do. You’re in the same boat with the other disciples. You’re in the same boat with Elijah, and with me. You’re in the same boat with everyone who has heard God’s voice, whether it’s offering comfort over the raging winds of the storm or issuing commands in the perfect silence afterwards.

God’s people don’t get to run away, and they don’t get to opt out. Jonah learned that. Elijah learned it. Jesus learned it, when he prayed for the cup to pass from him and it didn’t.

All of us here this morning are in that same boat. All the baptized are in the same boat, whether we’re safely ensconced in a church we love, or bailing furiously to try to keep a parish from sinking, or flailing in the freezing water after our beloved home has vanished under the waves. Whatever else is happening in our lives, whatever storms we’re riding out and whatever fears we’re facing, we’re still bound by the promises we made at baptism. Our job is to feed the hungry, to comfort the sick, to seek justice for the oppressed, and to welcome the stranger. Sometimes that work is exhausting. Sometimes it’s joyous and uplifting. It’s always with us.

This morning’s Gospel lesson reminds us of the promises that come with this backbreaking responsibility. God will grant us the rest we need, the mountaintop respites we need to replenish ourselves. If we listen for the voice of God, we will indeed hear it. In the midst of chaos, we may discover a startling ability to walk on water, however briefly, and when we sink, Jesus will haul us up by the scruff of our necks. Necessity is leavened by grace.

Above and beyond those promises lies the larger one, the ultimate one, the promise that the ends we fear -- economic collapse, disaster, death -- are not really the end. Beyond death lies resurrection. To get there, though, you have to stay in the boat.

I have to admit that when St. Stephen’s closed, I thought about simply leaving the church. I’m at St. Paul’s now, and I like it, but it’s still not home for me, not the way St. Stephen’s was. I know it never will be unless I stick with it, so I keep doggedly going to church every Sunday. But now St. Paul’s is having some of the same problems -- financial shortfalls, sparsely filled pews -- that brought down St. Stephen’s. This is happening to mainstream denominations all over the country, and it’s only one symptom of the very scary economic storm the entire country is weathering right now. The fact that churches are having so much trouble means that the people they serve are having even more trouble. When churches struggle, our baptismal promises become more important, not less.

I’m praying that St. Paul’s will pull through. In the meantime, I still volunteer as a lay hospital chaplain. That work reminds me, every week, how many people in this storm need any rescue we can offer, whether it takes the form of a hot meal, a cup of cold water, or simply the lifeline offered by anyone willing to listen. And it reminds me every week that when human rescues fail, God is still there, waiting to haul us out of the water by the scruff of our necks.

I don’t believe that belonging to a church is the only way to do God’s work of healing the world. It’s the way that works best for me, and for many of us. In church, we can all pull on the oars together. But church is only one vessel. God has given other people other vessels, and will give us other vessels, too, if we need them. Ultimately, though, the planet itself -- God’s beloved creation -- is the boat we share with everyone else who lives here. This ship, we can’t jump.

Shortly after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, poet Patrick O’Leary wrote a poem called “The Boat.” I would like to close by reading it. It speaks to the time when it was written, but I believe it speaks to our time, too, and to Jesus’.

The Boat
by Patrick O'Leary

I am in a boat.
No. We are in a boat.
And it's not a boat
but you know what I mean.

And the boat is going somewhere
Or maybe nowhere.
But it is floating for now.
Unless it's sinking.

It is so comforting to be in a boat.
To have a vessel. A destination.
We don't know the destination.
But at least we're floating.

But then there is the ocean
Or this small part of its depth
That surrounds us, buoys us
As if it wanted us to be here get there.

We do not think about the depths
Below us. The cold dark water
Unbreathable undrinkable.
Who would want to drink an ocean even if they could?

So this boat. This water.
You and I
between here and there.
Is somebody rowing?

In this whole world
There is only you and I and this boat
On this ocean. And what happens
depends on us or the ocean.

I say we have to be very careful.
We are only so strong.
A boat is a delicate thing.
And I have never seen an ocean broken.

I say we love each other
But that is so easy to say.
That means knowing
who we're rowing with.

We did not choose the ocean.
We did not choose the boat.
We did not choose each other.
But we must choose.

Amen.

Lotsa Stuff

Hi, everybody! Sorry not to have posted in a few days; I'm spending a lot of time over at FB these days. It really is a fun way to keep in touch with people.

A few items of note:

* For those of you in Reno: On Saturday August 13 at 2:30, I'll be giving a talk and reading at the Nevada Historical Society. This is part of a Worldcon promotion. The curator says that after my talk, "we will show the bad sci-fi movie 'Godmonster of Indian Flats' for Nevada-themed sci-fi." Mark your calendars! Bring popcorn!

* I now have 71,000 words of the rough draft, with completion of same estimated around August 10.

* I love weaving on my new Cricket loom and can't wait to try different techniques. My first scarf was short and ugly; the second, currently in progress, is longer and less ugly.

* It's really wonderful to be going into August without having to worry about prepping fall classes. I needed this sabbatical!

* Caprica is well; she goes to the vet for her FIV/FLV tests tomorrow, and, we hope, will be "released to GenPop," as Gary puts it, soon thereafter.

* Last night we watched a TV special about the Serengeti. As a baby elephant and mom traipsed across the screen, James Earl Jones praised the devotion of elephants and said, "The bond between mother and daughter can last fifty years." My first thought was, "Lucky elephant. I only had my mother for forty-nine." I'm doing better, but still miss her.

* There was a wildfire across the street two nights ago, about half a mile away. We watched it from Gary's study; when someone started pounding on our front door, I thought maybe we were being evacuated, but no, it was two friends who'd come over to watch the fire. Summer sport in Reno! (Cars lined the street, too.) Luckily, they got it under control quickly, and there was never any threat to structures.

I think that's about it. Hope you're all well!

Warp Thirty, Mr. Sulu

Here's the warped loom, finally (although, as you can see, I haven't gotten much actual weaving done yet). Today would have been Mom's 86th birthday, and in her honor, I decided to spend extra time on handicrafts today. As far as I know, weaving's one of the few she never tried, but I think she would have been fascinated.

Today's Effort

A little crooked, but it was fun to make. As Gary said, "Hey, you're only using a cardboard loom."

Today I started planning an insanely ambitious scarf, which is probably beyond the reach both of a cardboard loom and of my beginning weaving skills. Everything I've read says that to make a scarf on a cardboard loom, either the cardboard needs to be as long as the scarf, or you need to make the scarf in loom-sized sections and sew them together. Seems to me that if you have your warp on bobbins, and have a way to clamp the finished cloth to the bottom of the loom as the project advances, you should be able to weave a scarf in one piece on a workably-sized loom.

So today I ordered clothespins to use as bobbins and some kitchen clips -- the kind designed for bags of potato chips -- to use as clamps. Since we're talking about thirty bobbins, rewarping the thing whenever I need to weave a new section is going to be a hefty piece o' work. But looms with fancy rollers and whatnot cost approximately my annual salary (okay, that's a slight exaggeration), and I think cardboard and tapestry looms are better for freeform weaving, anyway.

So, the scarf: Longtime readers will recall that last July, my sister and Gary and I drove through Arizona's red rock country on our way from my cousin's funeral in Flagstaff back to our hotel in Phoenix, where he and his wife lived. We stopped in Sedona, where I bought some gorgeous orange laceweight yarn that reminded me of the color of the sandstone formations. I've since tried to knit with the stuff, but it's just too fine, and keeps defeating me.

But if I weave with it, especially in conjunction with other, thicker reddish-orange yarns, I think the results could be really pretty, and might even look something like the layers in the rock formations.

Or, I could just make a giant mess of expensive yarn. It's a toss up. But what's life without risk?

Tomorrow's the formal beginning of my sabbatical, and also the first day of my state-mandated paycut, and also the first day of our new, drastically unimproved health-insurance package, with its huge deductible.

I gotta say, I've been in better moods (although I'd feel infinitely worse without the sabbatical).

And on that note, back to work on the book.