Oedipus and a tragic flaw.....

It's the inevitability that is the real chill of the tragedy. That there is nothing that Oedipus, a good guy,
can do to change fate, a fate that has actually already been truth for about 20 years...and it's the realization with which a person cannot continue.

And with Oedipus, every action that the characters consciously do are actions attempting to make things better.
Even way back to the shepherd who finds the baby, who is clearly left purposefully to die on the mountainside.

Missing the mark.....trying to circumvent the fates and not hitting the self we are and the gifts amongst the curses.

Epic Average!

I had the Bible Content Ord exam this week. I passed. I did not get an A.
Taking it felt weird. Finishing it felt weird….
Part of this weirdness is how very different the Bible knowledge expectation is to what we are guided to believe the core of the Christian life and experience and Scriptural role in that to be is. If we are in a relationship with a relational God, a God who even by Godself is a community and thereby functions only in relative communion, then it would only make sense that the written word….the tangible word on the page….be experienced in some sort of relational way.
I admit I’m in a bad mood because the trivia questions that were new to this year’s exam were trivial enough that I didn’t know them. I’m self-absorbed, I know, but at least honest enough to confess I’d be elated if they were the type of trivia questions that I had picked up on! Many are asking my “score”, my “grade” and I’m finding everyone wants to rejoice in knowing an “awesome” me, and they really are not wanting to hear of a C*… It’s mediocre…It’s Disney Channel… It’s Menudo. Oh well.

This feeling is a shame because it doesn’t reflect the fabulous, un-mediocre learning curve I’ve experienced with Scripture in the last 18 months…..

The practice of the Daily Lectionary and the Sunday Lectionary has brought me to a new place with “The Good Book”, and that place is extremely relational. It’s relational between the page and me and the HG; the page, me, the congregation, and the HG, and also relational between texts given on the day. What speaks here though is not actually any of the literal word (although that’s part of it), but the image and the thought provoked by the connections my mind, or another listener’s mind makes when these are read aloud. Maybe the air and the light….at my house the dust….and the whole environment affect the meaning? Certainly the events of the week and the morning and the other relationships around us affect the meaning.
My understanding of Scripture now has become more like a swim, or a soar, or a free-fall….not so much a multiple-guess on which prophet said “Woe is me because nobody listens or cares much about God anymore” or “Who is Jepthah’s daughter’s veilmaker”…just kidding. It was not that obtuse. I’m trivializing it in an attempt to make myself feel better for not knowing the Bible really, really well.

At the end of the day, you can always do better….but at the end of the day, should you do better?
Peace.

The middle of the middler

Today I drove up to New Brunswick for my middler assessment. The word assessment ranks right up there with the words
"co-op" and "community project" as things I try to avoid because they generally mean more work for me. And...well....I'm sort of lazy...Who needs more work? Turns out, the assessment wasn't really an assessment...it was more like a really lovely talk about all the things I think about: my seminary experience, my ministry, and theology in general....clearly, since I have a blog about such things, this is right up my street. So. That's me. Half-way through officially.
So it was a good day.

Mostly.

I saw some carnage today, though....along with the blue sky being brushed clean by the scrubbing brushes of the twiggy trees and the icy breeze, and the perfect, white, midwinter sunlight, my drive up the parkway was punctuated by a sight I've never seen before. As with any highway accident there is the traffic, mostly due to emergency vehicle, clean-up, and rubber-neckers...uh...the rubber-neckers could be forgiven this time because the one-car crash involved a small sedan that must've been going at some speed, skyted off the highway, flew down to the ditch, hit on its front, and flipped. When I was passing the car was nose down....hanging about 20 feet up in the trees. Yes...hung up in the tree tops along the parkway, roof towards the road.
No...I didn't have the thought of taking a picture on my phone or bloggie. It never crossed my mind. The car was empty. the windshield gone. No sign of anybody but the emergency vehicles. Lots of them.
It was all rather unbelievable....I'm now telling myself that maybe it was a set for a film.
Amn't I morbid? It always works its way back to mortality for me, doesn't it? Another example of the fragility of us...this time and space, and the fact that to leave the house angry, or to dwell on the negative is to risk having our last bit here be...well....bad.
If anyone finds out that a film crew was at Allaire today...you wanna let be know?!

I'm not so sure how I'll tie this in to the middler assessment.

Suspended between heaven and earth, life and death, past and future, we're sort of all middlers in one way or another......a celtic z-rod through a threshold of concentric circles....or something to that effect

Lame. HA!

Why do we bother?

OK....as if I had nothing better to do, I have just spent the last 6 hours working on the Burns Supper.
I honestly do feel that the musings and writings of Robert Burns speak frequently to my condition. He was a very gifted poet. I also enjoy celebrating his birthday every year. Truth be told though....this Manson Burns Supper has gotten so big that I fantasize about all sorts of crazy scenarios that would make me able to miss it.
I'm thinking that maybe I should listen to my own fantasies. If the event has gotten so big and burdensome then it is not a celebration....the tradition becomes a chore....my whole month of January becomes a nightmare! I'd like to go to other Burns Suppers...I'd even sing or recite at them! I just do not for a second enjoy the minutia that goes into pulling one off. We're now up to 90 guests and the hall raised its price by 30%!
So even as I type this I think of how free I would be if I just said, "It's over."
And then I get instantly sad.
I think, "What if the people in Lerwick, Shetland just got sick of the hassle of building a Viking ship and burning it for Up-Helly-Aa every year? What if Farmers just stopped making Halloween corn mazes every Hallowe'en because it was a pain in the butt? What if Santa just decided the trip round the world in one night and all the free prezzies was just too blinking much? What then? What then? What then?
When we stop going the extra mile we create a negative ripple that starts a chain of events and habits that....well....it's regrettable when we stop caring and we just sit there.
And so, I juggle table seatings, hurt feelings, extra guests, performers, and the dread of the annual clean-up knowing that a positive event, although taxing and trying, time consuming and soul draining goes much deeper into the culture than just the chronological space that it seems to inhabit. Creating an excellent, thought provoking event is a catalyst. Of course, there is always the possibility that the event could turn out not excellent...but even Rabbie knew "the best laid plans o mice and men gang aft agley"!
So....
I accept that it keeps getting more bogus until the night...and then it's all fairy lights and tartan, great speeches, fabulous food, couthy music, in a hall done up like a pub in 1790. It is magic. It is.
So I continue..for auld lang syne...but you know what would be really awesome? To have a Burns' Supper dressed as vikings and then burn the hall down every year! Just kidding! Up Helly Aa memories getting in the way!

We bother because to not bother unravels life altogether.....

Onward and Upward 2011!!!!!!!

I cross this threshold into 2011 as I do when crossing all the important thresholds....full of the hope and the plan to not be such a slacker.....hmmm.....we'll see how long that lasts! It's funny, as with all thresholds there is the rational, the intellectual, the indefinable Spirit of God always present....and the traditional, which quite frankly, for me, is blinking superstitious!

So, the New Year plan is this: I'll like blog every day, save all my receipts, never procrastinate, I'll take better notes so that when I start writing a paper I'm not like...."Which book did I read that cool thing in???", I'll exercise and meditate, I'll eat only small portions! You know....it'll last until tomorrow, or maybe tonight if the pudding is yummy...I'm middle-aged, friends....I know myself pretty well. To resolve will only work if I can find a way to solve the issues of Attention Deficit Disorder, gluttony, selfishness....the list goes on!

But it is the new year, and one has to make an effort. Again. Really, the circle of the year is so full of "new years" and thresholds marking changes, that this is just another in a constant rolling cycle of clean slate options. This is a blessed thing. It's a chance to reinvent yourself and try a new tactic for being more organized....more efficient....more creative....more loving.....

I have tried my best to "put my house in order"....and have not even come near to the job that my mother and grandmother did in the run up to the new year. In large part, this is due to the fact that we have far, far too much stuff! But that's neither here nor there.....it's natural to want to start afresh clean....with some organization....and a game plan....not so much for the superstition of guaranteeing a good year (although I don't deny that that still lingers in my mind) but for the sense of being prepared to weather the wind and waves in which life might toss you.
I did arrange a fabulously handsome, tall, dark first-footer, for those of you aware of the Scottish New Year traditions! Thanks Dave Farmer! :) I had the proper foods for eating....we melted tin on the fire and threw it into buckets of snow for the shapes to be interpreted. (I think this is a Norse tradition not a Scots one...but it's fun!)My shapes were very eagle-esque from every angle, so I hope that means I'll soar through Koine Greek translations of John with the ease of....well...an eagle!

This past year has been both tempestuous and mild. Usually, I blog when things are good.Towards the tail end of the year things did go a bit pear shaped...I didn't blog about the gun crazed scary people, the house so messy that it smelled of hamsters when we don't even have hamsters, the overgrown flower garden, the under-grown vegetable garden, the termites, the chanked pool-liner that we won't be able to afford to replace, the gutters ripping off one side of the house, the free Audi A6 I was given that dropped its front-end in the middle of the night...on the New Jersey Parkway... sixty miles from home...in a nor'easter....actually, I should blog about that after the fact....in hindsight it's pretty dang funny...This sort of stuff only happens to me.
It's been a year alright. A simultaneously wonderful and scary year in which I learned a whole lot....and was confused and disturbed a whole lot.
So many of my friends are out of work...abandoning homes and moving someplace cheaper...or where there's work...Here's me, half-way through seminary and wondering how this family will survive the next year and a half...these three boys: one my husband...struggling with the fact that I'm not really around now...unable to be any help financially, and of minimal help in all the ways where I once carried the ball! At a critical point in his own career. One boy, quite nearly a man, pondering his place in the universe, often trapped in layers of thought that is age appropriate, yet painful, as peeling back those layers of thought reveal how vulnerable we all are. And one boy...still very much a playful child... eating as many Mike and Ike's that he can cram into his mouth and making huge living-room sized racetracks with blocks and matchbox cars...his deep thoughts shining through unexpectedly throughout the day-to-day stuff like sunbeams through storm-clouds...and I'm often not home to appreciate it. And, of course, like the rest of the world, I wonder if there will be a job at the other end of seminary when the government says "Right....give us all that money back! Um....NOW!"
Still...amid all this tension, I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that God is in all this. I admit I don't always know where or how....but I know.
So we organize as best we can to weather the storms....to fix the annoying and not productive bits of us....but really now it's about the loving. Being more loving to see each other through those stormy moments. And for that loving...Thankful. Really quite extraordinarily thankful!
And God is in this.......
in the broken and hirpling community that supports me, and R, and the boys every moment of every day! The laughs, and the cups of tea and coffee, the shared chocolate bars, the Glenmorangie, and the email and fb encouragement, that is so constantly present.....
There's God! And over there! And in this! And in them! And through me!
For all this love I am thankful!

Happy, happy New Year!
Onward and Upward!

Finally Fall!

Ok...so....it seems a bit funny that every time I have a wee moment to post I find a whole month has passed...Ooops.
I do have a jolly good excuse though....Koine Greek has to be the MOST time consuming thing ever. It involves hours and hours of memorizing endings to nouns. For me, there is nothing to help me remember...no sense that I can hook it to...I just have to remember! This doesn't seem to be working too terribly well. Last week's quiz I think I only got one right.... And the word I got right was "amartia" which is "sin"...so ....I've got that going for me anyway! Which I suppose is something!

This weekend....which should have been all about parsing Greek nouns was only slightly about parsing Greek nouns because I was at Cub Camp. I did spend Saturday afternoon in the back of the van parsing nouns, etc....but the morning was spent following the guys around as they did scouty things. This is where my life gets tricky. I don't want to miss the few years left of my boys'childhood; the silliness, and newness, and foundation on which they build the rest of their life experiences. Coll is already an adolescent. My being gone all the time is annoying for him, but he can build a Tesla coil in the garage without me. He doesn't look up from his work and expect my smiling approval anymore. He might still like it, but he doesn't need it. Caoir still does. My choice this weekend was between the Theology reading and the Greek translating, or the nine year olds with their constant "Bazooka Bubblegum" song, and sniggering every time they heard the word "duty", and pretending the large acorns are grenades. Next year, they might not want me around as they travel the trails of Citta Scout Reservation as a pack of Webelos....they might have comments they don't want a middle-aged lady to hear, and not need my cheers and snap-shots from below the rope bridge as they cross on wobbly, skinny legs. That might be so "fourth grade" and babyish! This is my only chance to do this. Next year, they will be darker haired, and huskier, and tougher, and more independent...as it should be.
Thinking back over what I've just said it seems very much like I'm asking for permission to not parse....or to read less....and that's not the situation at all.
I'm just not about parsing...or reading...or writing. That is all part of what I do, but it's not what I'm about.
Those kids come first, and they have to know it. It might not always be the "first" as they think it should be, but they need to know that the bottom line is that they end up in a good place...loved and supported and enjoyed before all other things.

On that happy note. I shall go parse and translate and read and write...er....after I get out the Halloween decorations. I want them to be happy when they get home from school today! I won't see them until Wednesday! Oh well! Life just keeps getting in the way!

A new start.....HAPPY NEW YEAR! Sad New Year...love is the answer!.

Happy New Year to my Jewish sisters and brothers celebrating Rosh Hashanah!
Let me join you in assessing my spiritual highs and lows of the year and prepare a clean heart for the year to come....and eat honey apple cake! Yum!

Happy New Year....and Eid to our Muslim friends! Refreshed after Ramadan and hopefully renenergized with a new spirit! Let me join you whilst you eat a lot!

Happy New Year to the Hindus who celebrate their god Ganesh...that elephant head dude...the god of beginnings and science, and art, and creativity! I'll eat with you, too! Probably no meat....

And continuing with the new year theme.....

Both boys got on the iconic yellow school bus with smiles...sort of...that's them in their first day back at the institution! I did not embarrass them with photos and kisses at the bus-stop, but I did make small-talk with everyone present, children and parents alike, which I'm sure they didn't appreciate! Oh well.
Maybe once in this run-up to school I got a twang of remembrance for that back-to-school feeling for the teacher....the organizing the room....the bulletin boards....those tape name-tags with the alphabet on each student's desk... the surreptitious, stolen whiff of the new crayola box ...oh no...wait..that was last year! This year I'm just so happy I'm out of it!!!

On a less frivolous note, R and I woke early for the webcam funeral of Professor Alan Ervine at Glasgow Uni. It was a good celebration. Sad...which is fitting. He was young and had just retired, planning to do missionary work in East Africa. I really didn't know the guy more than to exchange pleasantries, but this last, really tragic month of his blogging has been transforming for me. His honesty, his faith, his anger......he said to his minister the other day, "When I die, I want you to take the service.....and I want you to preach the Gospel!" Well done. It was well done. Onward and upward friends! Keep working until your time's up!
For Alan's family, obviously, I pray. This isn't just a new year...it's a new life that's going to be pretty tough without him.

I know this... Monday, a beautiful day that was a little cooler, marked the 25th anniversary of my mother's death. Strangely, it both feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago.....yet were she to walk into my kitchen just now and make a cup of tea, I probably wouldn't bat an eye...at least at first. Assuming she looked...like normal....not like a zombie or something! That would be freaky. Just kidding.
Every year, on the 6th of September I am stopped in my tracks. This year it was different. Somehow, twenty-five years makes the mourning more...grown....more able to take care of itself. The hole her passing left is still there, the me maybe dances with it rather than is led by it. As I come closer to the age she was when she died, my perspective on how I live changes and that hole helps define me, and obviously makes me question how I spend my time.....which for any of us, is limited. A few months ago, Alan Ervine was planning his future, wasn't he? We need to make the most of what we have whilst we're here.

I wanted somehow to mark the day...I wrote a poem...I'll maybe spend some time today working in the moon garden...it's all a bit hollow this 25th anniversary. Not even a little silver...maybe it's a tarnished silver. I dunno.

The next anniversary coming up this week is that of 9/11.
Regardless of your personal stance on terrorism, politics, the loss of innocent life, your own friends or family lost that day, the memory of that gorgeous, picture-book September day...full of Monarch butterflies and ripening apples... and those towers being hit, and collapsing, changed you...Changed you forever. How you felt on 9/10/01 and how you felt on 9/12/01 were drastically different. This year is super-charged with emotion because of the plan to build a mosque so close to the site.....I hear both sides of this issue constantly, and in both sides I hear fear, but I also hear love.....only I don't hear enough love.
Ouch.
Start with love. Breathe out. Breathe in. Open your heart to God, and make every thing you do be with love.
Put the fear aside.
Yoda said it well, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to sufferiiiiing." Yoda, a very wise puppet indeed.
Put love first.
...and happy new year!