Balancing Acts in the Time to Come

In some ways, life returns to normal today.  We are headed across the mountains soon, so I can preach and preside at Faith Lutheran's worship service which begins at 10, with Confirmation at 9.  There may have been some freezing precipitation in the highest elevations, but it looks like the worst stayed to the east.

In some ways, normal life is on vacation until mid-January when I report back to campus at Spartanburg Methodist College.  I'm not done with my teaching life--no, in some ways, it's getting even more intense, as all the classes that I teach, in person and online, come to a crashing close at the same time, with grades due within 24 hours of each other.  But I won't be commuting.

In the time freed up by not commuting, I hope to have a bit of writing time in the next week, along with some reading time.  I hope to redistribute the creative energy that is so often spent on planning for daily classes to writing new poems.

I know that I tend to overschedule myself in these weeks off because I'm trying to make up for lost time.  I did not have much time off this summer, which makes my need to catch up with friends even more intense, along with my need for down time.

It's a delicate balancing act, and I hope to be intentional about the balancing.

Thanksgiving History in Fabric Scraps

Here I sit, at the kitchen table of the big, ramshackle house at Lutheridge, the church camp where my family has always had our holiday festivities (well, since 1992 or so), the house where we’ve assembled for at least 20 years.  It was at this table, on the Saturday of Thanksgiving week-end in 2022, where I first assembled the log cabin patch out of scraps, and I’ve been doing it ever since, and may just continue to do it until my fingers won’t let me.

It has been a great Thanksgiving this year, although zooming by too fast, and I know I likely say that every year.  This year, all the members of the next generation are teenagers now, which brings a certain sadness about all the books we’re not reading about giving a mouse a cookie or llamas in pajamas.

 Happily, there are other joys.  We spent much of the week-end helping the oldest teenager in the house with a project she envisioned:  letters made of fabric scraps, sewed on a sweatshirt.  When my cousin wrote me in advance and told me what she had in mind, I brought all my fabric scraps with me.

 

 

The project became a bit bigger than we first thought it would be.  She chose small squares, and we made them into larger squares of four patches; then we made took the template she’d made of paper letters and cut out the fabric.  We used the Steam-a-seam product to make sure the letters didn’t move around.

 

 

And what do you know—it worked!  It looked very much like the picture that had provided the inspiration, and she was very happy with it.  The whole family had a great spirit going in, and they assured my spouse and me (mostly me) that whatever happened would be fine.  I was worried about a ruined sweatshirt and the crushing of creative dreams—I’m so happy that didn’t happen.  The oldest teenager was so happy with her creation that she wore it on the long car trip home.  I wish we had had more time to sew the letters to the sweatshirt, but she knows how to do it, and her mom knows some folks who will help, and in the meantime, they won’t wash the sweatshirt.

In a way, that’s a metaphor for the whole holiday time together—the worry that the experience won’t live up to expectations, the happiness of time together, the realization that it’s all going to be O.K., even if not exactly perfect.

                                                                                                           

Thanksgiving Morning

Thanksgiving morning, in a house with no wi-fi, and a writer determined not to use her hot spot until the last possible minute because she, unlike much of the U.S.A. does not want to pay for unlimited data on her cell phone. But she knows what to do. And so she writes the old-fashioned way, typed in a Word document that will be uploaded later.

You thought the writer might use a pen? She’s not that old-fashioned—she still has electricity! And she’s willing to pay for the version of Microsoft Office that’s always available, regardless of Internet access.

That writer, of course, is me. I’m being cautious with my cell phone usage because one past Thanksgiving of reckless abandon showed me how much data can cost, when I left the hot spot function on overnight. I am educable.

But I’m also delighting in disconnecting. I’ve gotten a sermon written in the past hour since I got up. If I’d had connectivity, I’d have spent that hour looking at stuff on the Internet, and likely feeling dispirited. Now I am feeling virtuous!

Long ago, I did write with a pen and paper, and I do remember that I had to fend off distractions then, too. Back in those days, I might be tempted to read the newspaper before I started—the old-fashioned kind, that arrived on the doorstep, not on my computer screen. The world is always trying to pull us away or lull us into complacency or sedate us—or terrify us or make us feel inadequate.

Let me take a moment before Thanksgiving starts in earnest, a moment to remember some of the wonderful events that have already happened:

--We have managed to gather at the ramshackle house at Lutheridge where we have gathered almost every year since 1992.

--Not everyone could come. But we had new participants—yesterday my mom and uncle’s cousin’s wife came over for a wonderful afternoon of talking and reminiscing.

--The babies that I once read to are now teenagers. They are grown but not gone yet. They have interests (fabric! Cooking! Getting ready for Christmas!) that intersect with mine. What a delight.

--We did not gather at this house last year because of hurricane damage from Helene. I have not looked out of these windows at Thanksgiving until this year, although I was in the house in September. In September, the view was obscured by the trees still in full leaf. Now that the leaves are down, I’m sobered by how few trees are actually there.

--It is also sobering to think about how much older we all are. On the other side of the spectrum from babies grown into teenagers are the rest of the family, with a variety of health challenges.

But for today, we are here, the house is still here, and we will celebrate that fact with food, my favorite meal of the whole year.

Gratitude Tuesday: British Lit, Teaching, and the Larger Perspective

This morning, I'm trying to remember to do my writing first before going to teaching duties.  Yesterday I did grading for my online classes; I thought I was caught up with grading late work, only to discover that I had some more to do.  It's not a huge deal--it's late work, after all, so students should have no expectation of timely grading.  But the term is ending soon, so there's some pressure, all self-imposed, because the semester isn't ending that soon.

In short, I was in a sour mood yesterday.  That's not the reason I didn't do any blogging.  I didn't do any blogging because time just zoomed away from me.

I went to school yesterday, and had a good in-person teaching day.  My English 101 class got their final exam writing assignment and settled in to write--they are one of the best classes I've ever had about settling in to a writing day.

My British Lit class was wonderful in a different way.  I did a variation of an in-person final exam that I did in the spring with my American Lit class (see this blog post for more information).  My Brit Lit class is much smaller, so I skipped some steps.  First I had them write their top 5 list, the 5 works we studied which most inform their understanding of the world today, the top 5 list of works that they would keep on the syllabus.  Then I had them divide into 2 groups of 4 students.  Each group made a group list and put it on the board at the same time.

Both groups had Frankenstein at the #1 spot, which I expected.  I was happy that both groups also included "Goblin Market" and Mrs. Dalloway.  We had a good discussion about the similarities in the works and the differences.  One group also included Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" for similar reasons.  That group's fifth work was "Porphyria's Lover," which led to a great discussion of new ways of telling stories and creating characters, like the dramatic monologue--new ways which are as old as literature, in many ways.  

The other group chose Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, which made me happy and led to a conversation about women's lives and ordinary lives being seen as important--links to Mrs. Dalloway.  The other group also chose Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," mainly for ways it shows the way the past affects the present--good insights that the student who advocated for it came up with on his own.

We also talked about works that we didn't cover deeply or much at all, and what might be included next time.  One of my students suggested Jane Austen, and I said that I had also been thinking about adding Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  I also mentioned that Sense and Sensibility is coming back to the big screen for one day only and recommended it.  I may have waxed too enthusiastic about Emma Thompson, saying, "If Emma Thompson came through that door right now and said, 'Come away with me right now, and we'll make wonderful movies,' I would leave without a second thought.  Would I go get my purse?  Yes, probably."  And then we talked about big name British actors of the 1990's for a few minutes, and then I turned our attention back again to the work of the course.

I feel very lucky to be teaching this next generation of students at Spartanburg Methodist College.  They give me hope for the future.  They have a wide range of interests:  I'm thinking about my Brit Lit students who had a great conversation about musical theatre when I asked them about the direction of theater after "Waiting for Godot."  They've been good sports about my cell phones in class ban.  They're respectful, even as they question what the larger world wants them to believe.  

I've got one more class day, today, wrapping up three classes, and then it's on to Thanksgiving and exams.  I don't need to report to campus for exams, another aspect of life that makes me feel very lucky.  So much gratitude here in this week as we dash to Thanksgiving and beyond!

Book Buyers on Campus

On Friday afternoon, I noticed a stranger in the office suite.  No one seemed alarmed, so I thought maybe he was expected.  He wore slightly better clothing than our usual student visitors.  A job candidate, perhaps?  But surely not on a Friday afternoon, which is not a high traffic time on campus.  A former department member?  Maybe--but it would be going way back, because I hadn't heard of an older white man as a former department member.

In the end, he turned out to be a book buyer, the kind who goes from campus to campus, looking for old textbooks to buy.  The business model used to be that he'd buy them for slightly more than one could get at the campus bookstore.  Now campus bookstores have a much smaller footprint, and many college teachers are using online textbooks, open source material, or no text at all.  

I'm a little surprised that there's enough of a market that someone would still put on their better clothes and trudge from building to building with a rolling suitcase for the books to be bought.  But I'm also happy.

And yes, I realize all the reasons why this shadow economy is bad for book writers and students and textbook companies.  But I'm also happy.

Homespun and Spinning of All Sorts

My writing time is about out--but happily, I've written a rough draft of Sunday's sermon.  And I didn't have a unified blog post in mind.  Let me just collect some fragments.

--I've now had two days of commutes back home with construction and 2 days of commutes back home without construction.  The days without construction feel like I fly home.

--The local (Anderson, SC) classic rock radio station, 101.1, has a promo going from Nov. 17-21, where they are playing classic rock, A-Z, with songs from each letter of the alphabet, along with an obligatory contest (each time the alphabet letter changes, one can text for a chance to win tickets to a concert).  So on my Monday commute home, I heard Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues," and on yesterday's, we were to the G's, with the Who's "Getting in Tune."  These are songs that I haven't heard in decades, and yet I can still sing along.

--I realize that radio stations these days have programming done from a central location, but it still makes me happy to listen to a list like this one.  It makes me happy to have a d.j. who says, "This one is my favorite Steely Dan song" and goes on to give some human sounding reasons and memories.  I am guessing that in the future I'll be hearing a chatbot pretending to be a human in the not too distant future, if there are any radios with d.j.s at all.

--We've been watching the new Ken Burns documentary about the Revolutionary War; we've finished the second episode.  It's not all brand new to me; I went to K-12 schools that spent a lot of our time in history classes studying this time period.  But it's put together in interesting ways with intriguing synthesis and analysis of what it means to us today.  

--As we've been watching, I've been sewing by hand, putting scraps together into log cabin patterns.  I have numb finger tips because I've been sewing a lot more this week.

--As I listened to the segment on the resistance of colonial women who decided to weave their own cloth (homespun!) and take themselves out of the King's economy, I thought about the gorgeous fabrics moving through my hands.  I feel like there should be a poem there, but I'm not sure, so let me record it.

--Today is an easier day at work--it's a writing day for my students, which can be done in class or outside of class.  I'm available in my office.  It's an approach that I've adopted from my colleagues, so I'm not going to be seen as slacking off.  Most places where I have worked would not have approved of the need for this kind of "let's get caught up" kind of day.  I'm glad to be here.

--And there's a Town Hall in the middle of it, the monthly update from the president, the meeting that has coffee and food beforehand.  I am so happy to be at a place that keeps us updated and keeps us fed and caffeinated along the way.  I'm so happy to be at a place that trusts faculty members.

Various Patricia Smiths and Various Strands of a Life

I have spent some time this morning listening to Patricia Smith's acceptance speech for the National Book Award for poetry; another poet pasted it in a Facebook post.  I went to the website where one could watch the whole ceremony (here), but instead, I'm listening to Ezra Klein's interview with Patti Smith--the more famous Patti Smith, the godmother of punk, the author of Just Kids, along with more recent books.

Back to the poet Patricia Smith, who was the only poet of all the nominees whose work I had read (go here for the full list).  I hadn't even heard of the poets nominated until they were nominated.  Some years are like that.  But happily, I have heard of Patricia Smith; I remember a presentation she did at an AWP conference, probably as far back as the one in D.C. in 2011.  I probably wouldn't have discovered her book Blood Dazzler on my own without hearing her talk about it at her presentation.  It showed me what poetry could do, and I'm glad she's now gained wider recognition for her poetry.

And now I've done what I've always done:  I looked up her birth date.  She's ten years older than I am.  I read her whole Wikipedia entry, and of course, she had a lot of writing history before Blood Dazzler.

This morning before I got up out of bed, I was thinking of my novel idea that I had earlier this year which I wrote about in this blog post:  " a new narrative that might weave the voice of an older woman in seminary, a younger woman teaching section after section of freshman comp in a community college, a middle aged woman struggling to write poems around the edges of her administrator job--and yes, they would all be me."

Because I've been rereading The Hours and teaching Waiting for Godot, this morning, even before I got out of bed, I was thinking about that idea, about a poet who is closer to the end of her life than the beginning (age 60-70), who finally gets big recognition.  Maybe her first and only book with a spine is the one which wins the big award (a Pulitzer or a National Book Award, something bigger than publication alone).  Different life phases could represent different theological/philosophical positions on life.  For example, the administrator job is the Waiting for Godot existence, where so much seems meaningless.

Some things I might include (but not saying too much here, so as not to lose my writerly interest):  the young poet, pre-chapbook-publication, reading May Sarton's journals and marveling at her envy of other poets despite her own success.  The late life poet, getting ready for the awards ceremony, trying to decide what to wear, and she remembers long ago how she had planned out what she would wear should Oprah chose her book for Oprah's book club.  All that "manifesting," but no one tells you how long it might take for a dream to actually arrive.  A book of photographs of writer's studios or that book of interviews, Parting the Curtains, and feeling jealous of the amount of time that writers in the book have--and then, 30 years later, realizing that she has carved out time for much of her adult life by getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning.  Reading Kathleen Norris and wanting to go to a monastery, and all the other more rigorous religious traditions contemplated.

Could I weave these strands together in a compelling way?  Will I?

These days I am feeling my writing time drained away not by non-writing tasks, the way I did when I was an administrator.  These days, my writing time is drained away by things like sermon writing.  Let me turn my attention to that.

Scraps Before Thanksgiving

I am feeling like my attention span has been ripped into scraps.  I'm not too worried.  It's that time of year:  close to the end of the term, but not quite there yet.  Let me record some scraps that I want to remember.

--It has been a week of very long commutes back from Spartanburg Methodist College.  On Thursday, there was a terrible wreck that shut down the interstate.  On Monday and Tuesday there was road construction on the westbound side of I 26, my fastest route home.  On Monday, I got off at the Saluda, NC exit, and took the winding road up to Hendersonville, a road also under construction.  Yesterday I took SC 11, the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway, over to Highway 25, a much easier trip.  It still takes longer than I 26 when there's no construction on the interstate.  When there is construction, heading cross country is much easier.

--The long commute does leave me even more tired than usual.  I have decided that I just don't care--I'm going to bed when I'm tired.  So last night, I fell asleep at 7.

--I've been texting with my uncle and cousin about Thanksgiving.  We've strategized food, of course.  My cousin's daughter wants to do something with fabric scraps and a sweatshirt.  I plan to show her all of my fabric stash and let her have fun.  I'll also explore my new sewing machine.

--I started reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours again last night.  Yes, I read it back in May (according to my Books Read 2025 document).  But reading and discussing Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway in my British Literature class made me want to read it again.  So yesterday, when I was at the library, I checked it out again.  What a delight of a book!

--We finally had a plumber come out yesterday to fix things that seemed beyond our capabilities.  Did you know that wax rings for toilets come in different sizes?  I did not.  I realize that most people can go their whole lives without even knowing the inner workings of a toilet.  Some days, I envy them.

--I'm told we now have two working showers.  But the hall shower will always be my favorite.  We chose tile for it that still takes my breath away in certain lights.

--In past houses, the slow pace of home repair aggravated me.  In this house, I find myself not caring.  It's a pleasant aspect of late midlife that few people mention:  many things that once aggravated me or took up lots of brain space no longer concern me.

Watching "Waiting for Godot" Again, with a New Generation of Brit Lit Students

Yesterday I showed my British Literature class the first 40 minutes of Waiting for Godot; that's likely all we'll watch because to show the whole thing would wipe out a week.  And frankly, 40 minutes is about all we need to get a taste of theatre of the absurd, and yes, I realize that in some ways, we're not getting the full experience at all.

This morning I was trying to remember when I last showed this play to students, and I think it was as long ago as 1997 or 1998.  I didn't show the play when I taught the survey class at the University of Miami.  That syllabus shows that we did Beckett's End Game, which would have been in the Norton Anthology in the early years of this century.  Also, I didn't have an easy way to show classes anything.  

Even in the 90's, when I worked at a community college, it wasn't easy to show anything.  I had to go to the library to check out a TV and VCR that were bolted to a rolling cart, which I would then wheel across campus to the classroom.  Then after class, I would wheel it back (and part of the year, that meant wheeling it back after dark, across parking lots and sidewalks).

It was so much easier yesterday, with the ability to stream a YouTube video on the big screen that's part of the classroom, and happily, the technology didn't fail me.  But was it any easier to watch in terms of content?

I've always found Beckett a mix:  delightful, absurd, disturbing, and on some level, boring, despite being also profound.  Yesterday was about the same for me, although as I watched, I did see a new interpretation, as I have more experience with aging.  It's hard for me to watch this and not jump to a dementia interpretation, although that interpretation is new to me, and I don't think it's what Beckett intended.

Tomorrow, my Brit Lit class will do a different type of debate--both sides will argue that the play is brilliant.  It's too easy to argue that it's not brilliant.  I'll put them in 2 groups and see if they can come up with reasons why it's brilliant, why I'm showing them this play, some 73 years after it premiered.

Making Applesauce, Making Poems

I ended up doing a lot of cooking on Saturday, which was both restorative and necessary.  I needed to make bread for communion and to make applesauce to use up the apples that were past their prime.  I also made a wonderful seafood-fennel soup, which requires lots of chopping (the recipe is in this blog post, if you scroll down; I usually make it with canned clams, frozen shrimp, and frozen white fish of some bland variety).

I had forgotten how much effort it is to make applesauce, but it was worth the effort.  I left it lumpy, because some of the apples just refused to cook down.  A little texture is fine, right?

I had a bit of the applesauce in my oatmeal this morning--the most superb way to have apples in oatmeal!

I also returned to the beginning of a poem that I started on Saturday.  I had a first line:  At the end of the season, we make applesauce.  I made a poem out of all the apple-related cooking we thought we would do.  On Saturday, I thought it was rather blah, not saying anything of any importance at all.  This morning, I thought it was a great way of talking about all the plans that we have that collapse for any number of reasons.

I'm still working on it.  I'm in that phase where I wonder if it needs more, but I want to be careful, because I know that I tend to write poems that explain too much.

This week is my last week of going to campus every week day for this semester.  Next week, we have two class days, and then we're off for Thanksgiving.  After that, students have final exams, and we're allowed to work remotely.  I am ready for a schedule that involves a bit less driving.

Making Applesauce, Losing Time

At some point today, I should probably make applesauce out of the remainder of the bushel of apples that I bought.  Two weeks ago, I bought cottage cheese, thinking I would be making applesauce soon.  It's still good.

Two weeks from now, Thanksgiving will be over, and my family will be departing.  I know that I will look back longingly, wishing I could redo the stretch of holidays over again.  In some ways, I feel similarly about the month of October.  What a delight that month was.  Of course, September was also lovely.  What a great autumn I have had.

----

I went to write a poem about making applesauce, and my morning writing time has evaporated into the blare of TV noise and Saturday schedules ahead.  But I'll go ahead and post this unfinished writing.

A Day that Is Less Idyllic: Active Shooter Training and Travel Delays

In case my life seems too idyllic, let me record the events of yesterday, so that I remember that it's not all uplifting teaching and preaching with poetry and sermon writing.  And let me spoil the suspense by saying it was all minor stuff really, in the longer range view.  But it made for a very long day.

I had to leave early because yesterday was the last scheduled day of Active Shooter training that we're all required to take.  This year, because we're shifting to a new system, we had to actually find 2 hours when we could sit in an auditorium to be trained in what to do if an active shooter comes to our campus.  Yesterday was the only training time, and there were many, which didn't conflict with a class that I was teaching.  I needed to be in the auditorium by 9, and I knew that there was road construction, so I left by 7:30--happily, there was no road construction.

In so many ways, this Active Shooter training never changes.  The only change that was mentioned is that past trainings told us that hiding was an option, but we want to move away from that thinking, because if the shooter finds our hiding place, there's no escape.

I wrote to a grad school friend while the training was happening--a real old-fashioned letter written by hand on paper.  I didn't want to try to balance a laptop on the auditorium chair without a desk, but writing a letter was doable.  I wanted to write to someone who would share my being aghast and sad at the thought that we now need this training.  Our grad school selves would never believe it.

I went on to have a good teaching day and headed to the car, ready to go home for a quick supper before a Zoom call to help with retreat planning.  It was not to be.

My commute usually takes no more than an hour.  Three hours later, I was still sitting on I 26, occasionally moving an inch or two.  I thought I was in some road construction hell, but it turned out to be a horrible accident that had shut down the interstate.  I sent a text to one of my fellow retreat planners to let her know that I wouldn't be at the meeting.

I got home to my supper which was cozy and lovely, and then I went straight to bed.  Happily, there was no reason that I needed to keep muscling through the day.

As I said, as bad days go, it could have been much worse.  I am now trained for an active shooter event, training that I don't expect to ever need to use.  I do understand all the liability reasons why schools want us to get this training.  

Bookending my day was the road accident, but it was not my accident.  I saw the smashed cars when I finally drove past, and I said a prayer for the victims, along with a prayer of thanks that it only impacted me in inconvenience, not in something more essential.

In Praise of Untidy Women: Teaching "Mrs. Dalloway"

This morning, I was thinking of the last time I taught Mrs. Dalloway.  I know that I didn't teach it when I was just out of grad school, that first job at Trident Technical College in South Carolina.  I thought I might have taught it when I taught the survey classes at the University of Miami; I have a memory of reading the paperback on the Miami Metro as I commuted back in the years 2000-2001.  

But this morning, I went to my computer file called "Old Computer," to the Teacher Stuff file in that Old Computer file.  Sure enough, there was an old syllabus from the turn of the century, a syllabus which shows that I did not teach Mrs. Dalloway.  

I think I was thinking of adding Mrs. Dalloway to the syllabus, but I might have been re-reading it during my long commute on public transportation because I had just read Michael Cunningham's The Hours.  Back in those days, the only Virginia Woolf selections in the Norton Anthology were her nonfiction.

This morning, I'm reflecting on age and teaching, age and literary characters.  Clarissa Dalloway is 52 years old.  If I had taught this book back in 2000, I'd have been closer to young Clarissa Dalloway than Clarissa Dalloway at midlife.  Now, I am 8 years older than Clarissa Dalloway in the book.

As I have re-read chunks of the book this past week, I've been struck by how Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts move back and forth in time.  But I do wonder if my students, who are the same age as young Clarissa, find it as compelling as I do.  After teaching the book yesterday, I spent a good chunk of my drive home feeling this fierce yearning for my girlhood self and all her friends.  In my case, it's more poignant because so many of my high school female friends have died.  They won't be crashing any dull parties that I might give, the way that Sally arrives uninvited at the end of the novel.

I really loved the descriptions of the young Sally Seton with this reading; I don't remember loving her as fiercely in past readings as I have been now.  I love that one of young Clarissa's older aunts calls Sally "untidy."

With this reading, I'm also struck by how the Peter Walsh character is the one who is much more stuck in adolescence than the two women, Sally and Clarissa.  He still yearns for them, and I suspect he's primarily yearning for the women that they were, or the women that he thought they were.  And I'm feeling slightly guilty, because I'm not spending much time on reading the Septimus passages, although I do circle back to discussing him.

In my morning meanderings, I came across this article in the New York Times, Michael Cunningham reflecting on Mrs. Dalloway.  My writing time draws to a close, so I'll conclude using Cunningham's conclusion:  "“Mrs. Dalloway” would be a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery. The novel would also mark the early period of a literary career that would change forever the ways in which novels are written, and read. It’s an intricately wrought portrait of a place and a moment, and a stunningly acute depiction of the multifarious experience of living a life, anywhere, at any time."

Quilt Camp Homily: the Prophetess Anna and Our Quilting/Spiritual Life

I gave the homily for our Saturday night Quilt Camp closing worship.  I wanted to take a minute and make a record of the experience before it slips away.

Our Bible verse for the overall retreat was Psalm 91: 4, and during the evening devotional time of the first two nights, we focused on the first part, about God covering us with God's feathers and sheltering us beneath wings.  We talked about wings and feathers and angels.  We had a prayer board in the shape of wings, and we had feathers where we wrote prayers.

I wanted my homily to go in a slightly different direction--what happens when we don't feel that sheltering space?  What happens when it looks like everyone else's prayers get answered and not ours?  How many of us feel too old for whatever might have once seemed to make us special?

We had begun the retreat by talking about where we had sensed the presence of angels, and I started my sermon by talking about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, but that's really a young person's story.  Can you imagine if Gabriel came to any of us with that possibility?  We'd say, "Hmm, mother of the Messiah--not really my calling thanks."  

So I thought about other people who make an appearance in our Advent and Christmas texts.  I thought about Elizabeth, who gets to be the mother of John the Baptist.  But she doesn't even get the angel message herself; it comes through her husband, who laughs at the idea that his very old wife might have a baby.  He's struck mute through the whole pregnancy for his disbelief.  But it's still pregnancy, still not everyone's idea of fulfillment.

I continued:  I call your attention to a bit later in the story, when Joseph and Mary bring the baby Jesus to the Temple.  Simeon has been promised that he will not die without seeing the Messiah, and he holds the baby Jesus, holding the light of the world in his arms.  But I call your attention to Anna in Luke 2:  36-38 (I read the text).  We may think of Mary Magdalen as the first evangelist, the first to tell of the empty tomb, but I've come to think of Anna as the first, as she goes out to tell everyone about the Messiah.

Of course, it's sobering to realize that by the time the Gospel of Luke was written, that very Temple has been destroyed, and it will be thousands of years before there will be another one.

Then I took the turn to quilting:  it's a bit like quilting.  Some of us have everything we need, the right material, the sewing machine that is up to the job.  Other times, we discover we didn't buy enough cloth, and it's no longer available, and we have to figure out what to do.  There are times we are given a quilt started generations before, and it comes with no instructions, and we have to figure out a way.  And we, too, will die.  Maybe someone else will complete our projects, maybe not.  But we continue to do what we can do.

The life of faith is like this.  Some times, everything goes well.  Other times, the sewing machine explodes.  But we are in a group that can keep us going, keep us encouraged, help us solve the problems.

I concluded with what I think is the most important thing to remember:  when we feel abandoned by God or abandoned by our quilt group, we're not.  God is still there, although we may not be able to hear God.  Even someone like Mother Theresa has felt this way, as we discovered, when her letters were published after her death.  Some people thought her doubt diminished her, but I felt just the opposite, this relief that if even someone like Mother Theresa feels doubt, then I shouldn't feel alarm when I feel abandoned.

The trick is to keep going, keep working on our quilts, keep believing until the time when it isn't so hard to keep going.

As I delivered the homily, I noticed a few people wiping their eyes.  I noticed people smiling and nodding--happily, I didn't see any angry expressions.

I felt good about my homily, and I got good feedback, from people who appreciated the brevity to those who appreciated the message which gave them hope.  But most importantly, I feel that my homily spoke to those who were feeling loss and grief, emotions that are never very far away, especially for those of us who are on the older side of life.

Armistice Day with Monastic Poem

It has been many years since I was teaching the second half of British Literature in a Fall semester when Armistice Day/Veterans Day happens.  This year, I am.  We've already covered the material, although now we're discussing Mrs. Dalloway, a book which may be the first depiction of World War I caused PTSD in a novel.

I think it's hard for most of us to conceive of how many people died in World War I.  Even when I have my students imagine all of their male classmates going off to fight and no one coming back, I think it's hard to get our heads around the total.  I wish we could all go to the WWI cemeteries in France.  It's a visual that's tough to capture in a picture; it does make a very different impact.

Years ago, I was at Mepkin Abbey on Armistice Day.  It also happened to be near All Saints Sunday, the first All Saints Day after Abbot Francis Kline had been cruelly taken early by leukemia, and the Sunday we were there was the day of the memorial service for him. Part of one of the services was out in the monks' cemetery, and all the retreatants were invited out with the monks. I was struck by the way that the simple crosses reminded me of the French World War I cemeteries:

I took the above picture later from the visitor side of the grounds, but it gives you a sense of the burial area. I turned all these images in my head and wrote a poem, "Armistice Day at the Abbey."



 Armistice Day at the Abbey



The monks bury their dead on this slight
rise that overlooks the river
that flows to the Atlantic, that site
where Africans first set foot on slavery’s soil.

These monks are bound
to a different master, enslaved
in a different system.
They chant the same Psalms, the same tones
used for centuries. Modern minds scoff,
but the monks, yoked together
into a process both mystical and practical,
do as they’ve been commanded.

Their graves, as unadorned as their robes,
stretch out in rows of white crosses, reminiscent
of a distant French field. We might ponder
the futility of belief in a new covenant,
when all around us old enemies clash,
or we might show up for prayer, light
a candle, and simply submit.

Hinge Points of November

The wind is howling outside, and I'm trying not to be nervous.  Will it be better when the sun is up?  On the one hand, I'll be able to assess how much wind is actually blowing.  On the other hand, I'll be able to see the trees as they move in the wind.

I have a bagel toasting in the oven.  It's one of the bagels I bought on Wednesday when I went out to breakfast with some of the Quilt Camp leadership team.  I offered to bring a bagel or two with cream cheese back for my spouse.  It turned out to be cheaper to buy a dozen bagels, which are half off on Wednesdays, with a tub of cream cheese than to buy two individual bagels with cream cheese for him and one with cream cheese for me.

I am wishing it was a week ago, when I would still have the delights of quilt camp coming.  How wonderful that it was so wonderful!

It is hard to believe that a third of November has already zoomed by.  A week ago I'd be scrambling to make sure that everything was in place for me to be off campus from Wednesday to Friday.

Two weeks from now will be the last two days of regular class days.  Then we break for Thanksgiving.  After Thanksgiving is a reading day and then final exams.  I'm in that stage of the semester where it feels like we've been meeting together since the beginning of time, and we've covered all the important material.  But we still have two weeks together.

Two weeks from now we'll be getting ready for Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays.  I'll continue to try to savor every moment that remains of my favorite season, the one from early September to December 24.

Quilt Camp Ends

I did not mean to take a break from blogging.  In the past, I've often had time to blog, but this year, I was trying to get a sermon written and to keep up with all the classes I'm teaching, which meant I needed to log in periodically.  Other than those times, I haven't had the computer on at all, which has been heavenly in a way, in most ways.  I haven't had my usual early morning writing time because I've left the house just after 6 a.m. to open the Faith Center for early morning quilters--and this year, we had more early morning quilters show up than ever before.

Let me record some wonderful moments, and to note that there wasn't much in the way of any moments that were less than wonderful. 

--I am almost done repairing the old quilt that we've been sleeping under since 2005.  I still need to complete the binding on two sides, which is more complicated than it seems.  It's at the edges of the quilt that I need to make decisions about whether or not I cut the extra fabric or tuck it under the binding.  The edges are already thick with 4-7 layers of fabric from the old quilt.  

--My fingers ache.  I quit sewing yesterday when I realized that my forearms also hurt, and I worried a bit about feeling the twinges that could become carpal tunnel syndrome if I'm not careful.  I was thinking of a librarian-artist I knew who spent a week-end cutting paper for an installation art project and pushed on past the pain of her wrists and eventually needed surgery.

--I tried a variety of thimbles to protect the pads of my fingers.  The silicone one was best, except it still allowed the occasional needle stick.

--I will always sew by hand--it's a soothing thing to do while also having other activities going on, like TV watching or visiting with family.  But the day is likely upon us when I will stop doing some of the rest of it by hand, particularly for bed-size quilts.  One of my Quilt Camp buddies told me about a woman who will do some basic quilting with her long arm machine and even provide the batting, for just $100.00.  It sounds too good to be true to me.

--But now, I don't have to sew by hand.  One of my other Quilt Camp buddies brought me a sewing machine to have, and it's a good little machine made by Bernina.  No, it's not the high end version.  It's their budget model--but it will even do button holes.  I did a bit of sewing with it, and it's a dream.

--I have a vision of starting to assemble quilt tops for Lutheran World Relief.  I have so much fabric, and I continue to collect more.  The machine will help with this process.

--My feet are also sore this morning.  We took more walks than we usually do.  Or maybe this daily walking at 3:00 will be the new normal at Quilt Camp, as more people realize it's an option and that it's good to get up and move around more than just going to the bathroom or the snack table.

--I can scarcely believe Quilt Camp is over.  There's always a moment before it starts where I savor the beginning, while also knowing how fast it will fly by.  And now, it has.  As always, what I cherish most is the chance to reconnect with friends.  

Quilt Camp Begins

I am glad I was able to be here yesterday to help with set up for Quilt Camp.  We don't have to do the heavy lifting work, the getting the 90 tables in place in the Faith Center at Lutheridge.  But we did need to do the other work:  deciding where the cutting tables and ironing boards will be, putting plastic tablecloths on the tables in the worst condition, going out to get more plastic tablecloths, running extension cords from plugs to tables, and those kinds of things.

We also had to do the work that seems trivial but takes time:  putting nametags into plastic holders, putting those plastic holders on the table so that retreat members could find them easily, lots and lots of organizing of supplies.

By the time that everyone arrived and settled in, I was tired.  But it was a pleasant tired, a far cry from the tired that I feel after driving in from a distance for a retreat.  I got some sewing done, and today I hope to make serious progress on my big project:  a new quilt top for the quilt that we sleep under.  The quilt top is created.  I'll attach it to the old quilt and put on a new binding.  The quilt back is still in good shape.

It may seem like a strange approach, adding a new quilt top to an old quilt.  But in fact, it's a very old approach:  quilters in past centuries didn't have access to supplies that we do, so they used old quilts as the layer of batting in new quilts.

I also plan to make progress on my other big project, the log cabin quilt, the one I thought I might be able to finish back in March.  But when I stretched it on the bed, I realized I needed a few more rows.  I've been making log cabin patches, so we shall see.

We're having glorious weather, which is a gift.  I am leading a walk each day at 3, and if the weather this week was the rainy, cold weather of last week, we'd ditch those plans.  At Quilt Camp, we spend much of the day and night in a chair, and I spend it hunched over, which is my posture any time I'm in a chair. 

I am surprised to realize I took no pictures yesterday.   Happily there is still time.

Gratitudes Before the Start of Quilt Camp

Quilt Camp starts today.  This time, unlike last Quilt Camps, I'm part of the leadership team.  I will help with set up today, I will deliver the very short sermon for Saturday closing worship, and beyond that, I'm not sure what being on the Quilt Camp leadership team means.

In the early days of summer, when I thought about Fall Quilt Camp, I thought I would head to Spartanburg today, do my teacher duties, and then arrive for Quilt Camp.  But as the semester has gone on, I've changed my mind.  My students can use today to get caught up, and I'd like to be a bit less tired when Quilt Camp starts.

I am so grateful to be working at a place where I have this kind of flexibility.  I am so grateful to be at a place where when I say, "I'll be leading a quilt retreat this week," and no one says, "What does that have to do with you as a teacher?  No, you can't be off campus this week."  I'm thinking of past bosses who made their disapproval known, even as I was using my personal vacation time to be away.

Make no mistake:  I do get teaching inspiration from retreats.  It may be a different kind of inspiration than I would get at a literary conference, but I am a different teacher, a better teacher, because I go on these retreats.

I am also grateful that I live closer to camp.  When I first heard about Quilt Camp at Lutheridge, back in 2018 or 2019, I lived in South Florida, a twelve hour drive if all the traffic went smoothly.   I was torn--on the one hand, it was a longer retreat, so the drive would be worth it; in those days, I never would have made the drive for a retreat that started Friday night and ended Sunday morning, as so many retreats did then.  But on the other hand, it was such a long drive.

Because I live here now, I have the best of several worlds.  I don't have a long drive.  I get to sleep in my own bed.  I don't feel like I'm abandoning my spouse or my other duties at home.  Of course, that benefit has a shadow side--it's also hard for me to completely disconnect on retreat.  But that was true of past retreats too.  My brain is always working at various levels, and it's hard for me to focus on just one.

This morning I realized another value to coming to Quilt Camp from my house that's less than a mile away.  I feel less pull to do the other area attractions:  apple orchards, fabric stores, and Appalachian arts and crafts.  At least my active brain will calm down around the other wonderful outings that I would want to be taking, if I didn't already live here.

On this morning of the day when Quilt Camp begins, I am most grateful to be feeling like my life is in better alignment than it was back in 2018/2019 when I thought about the possibility of coming to Quilt Camp and decided I couldn't make it work.

Rejections to Treasure

I got a rejection note in my inbox, and it spurred me to look up my submission.  Sure enough, the rejection note referred to two of the poems in a specific way (the full fat cream and the cinnamon rolls):

"Thank you very much for entrusting us with your poetry. I’m sorry to say that you’re not a finalist for this year’s ______ Prize, but I'm always glad to read your work! As far as I'm concerned, you deserve all the full fat cream, all the cinnamon rolls."

I promptly made a few more submissions, with those poems, to other places.  It put me in mind of a time long ago, when I was a much younger poet, taking rejected poems out of the envelope of rejection, giving them a quick check to make sure that they weren't marked in any way, and putting them directly into a new envelope going to a different literary journal, along with another self-addressed, stamped envelope.

For many years now, I've been avoiding any literary journal that charges $3.00 or more for a submission.  I was still back in the paper era, thinking about how little I used to spend when I sent out submissions in envelopes through the U.S. Mail.  But postage has gone up, so now $3.00 seems somewhat reasonable, at least once a year.

I'm still aghast at the odds against my success.  I still want to be a bit wary, and I don't want to lose track of my expenses, which are no longer tax deductible for me, since it's been years since I earned any money from writing.

There is part of me that wonders why I bother.  Publications aren't likely to get me a tenure track job or other opportunities.  My annual review at Spartanburg Methodist College does consider publications, but they are far from the most important part of how I will be evaluated.

I have been dreaming of a book with a spine for so many years and decades now that I still hope it happens.  So part of my submission strategy is force of habit.

I still get a thrill when I have an acceptance.  That alone makes it worth the submitting.  I also know that other work has to take priority, the teaching and the sermon writing, the work that actually pays me money.

A Wonderful All Saints Sunday

We had a great All Saints Sunday.  Much as people complain about the time change, every autumn when we turn the clocks back, I have a night of wonderful sleep.  This year was no exception.  Because of the time change, we were both up early, and we headed over the mountains to Bristol early.

It was wonderful to travel in the daylight, to see the trees in their full and fading autumnal glory.  This year, various trees are on their own schedule.  Some are still green.  Some have lost all their leaves.  There's every variety of in between.  It's not as full and blazingly beautiful as two or three years ago, but it's been a treat, especially considering last year.

I was glad for the extra time, because we had a lot to unload.  I knew that the confirmation class, and perhaps all the youth who arrived for Sunday school, would set up the space I envisioned for people to put photos and other mementos of loved ones who had died.  I brought all the supplies:  fabrics, fairy lights, candles (both traditional and electronic), candle holders, 2 yellow mums, and a small table.  I gathered 2 additional small tables from the sacristy.

The youth did a great job of working together to create the space.  They are two pairs of siblings, and the siblings are cousins, so we had a head start in working together.  They seem like the kind of cousins who are more like siblings, siblings who like each other and have fun together.  I was so impressed with what they created:

The congregation came through too--we had plenty of pictures, so many that we added two additional flat spaces (flipped boxes with white tablecloths to hide their identity).  

After church, we spent some time in the front, hearing stories of the loved ones whose pictures had graced our worship space.  I had made extra bread, and people ate bread or took some home.  It was delightful, a way of having a picnic with the ancestors.

My sermon went well, which is always a treat for me.  What I mean by well is not that everyone loved it, but that I felt good about my delivery (not too much reading, not getting tongue twisted).  If you want to view the recording, it's here on my YouTube channel.  If you want to read a version, head to this post on my theology blog.

We came home and relaxed, as we always do.  Sunday afternoons come after very full mornings, so we're not going to be doing much of substance.  We watched a great PBS show about a man who was taking a last trip on a buckboard wagon pulled by his 36 year old mule on their last trip in Hyde county, NC.  It was oddly compelling.  I did a bit of sewing on my quilt top and headed to bed.

Today I have two days of work, and the rest of the week is spent at Quilt Camp, just up the hill at Lutheridge.  I'll sleep in my house and spend the rest of my time at Quilt Camp.  I'm hoping to make progress on a variety of projects.

It sounds heavenly, and it will be, but first I have to do the prep work so that I can be gone from my full-time teaching job.  I am probably further along on that project than I think, but I feel a bit of anxiety.  At the same time, I'm sure it will all be fine.  It's nice to be at a school where I can rest easy in the knowledge that it will all be fine, even as I'm feeling a bit of anxiety.

All Saints Sunday, 2025, the Prep Work Edition

We had a pretty good day yesterday, a day of running the dishwasher three times because we were doing so much baking.  

I also got some grading done, some sermon revising done, a trip to the local library branch that always cheers me up.  I got early morning shopping done at Walmart, where, to my delight, they had the anise seeds I needed for the Pan de Muerto, the Day of the Dead bread recipe that my spouse shaped into delightful shapes.

I looked at my Walmart cart which had marigolds for today's table at Faith Lutheran that will hold the pictures and other things that remind us of our loved ones and the anise seed for the Pan de Muerto, the festive bread we'll use for communion and eating after worship.  My cart also contained nicotine tablets for my spouse, along with paper towels and other mundane objects for every day life.

Today should be a good day at Faith Lutheran Church in Bristol, TN.  My two confirmation students will help set up the worship space, which will give us a chance to talk about worship and worship spaces.  I have hopes that the service will be meaningful; my tiny congregation has had a tough year in terms of losses, sickness, and death.

The Day After Halloween

One of my students yesterday asked me if I got many trick-or-treaters at my house.  I answered simply, "Not really."  I didn't want to explain that I live in a neighborhood that is very small and has very few children.  Even if I kept the porch light on, if I was a child, I wouldn't make my way down the shadowy, gravel driveway to the porch.

So, we kept the porchlight off.  We ate our dinner early, watched some episodes of NYPD Blue, and I fell asleep early, as I usually do.  It felt like a good Halloween, although I know that it might seem sad to the student who asked if I had fun Halloween plans.

Today I will bake a special bread for tomorrow's All Saints Sunday service.  This morning I will head out to several stores on a quest for anise seed for the bread--and a chance to snag some after Halloween deals.  I saw several witch's hats yesterday that made me want a witch's hat of my own, but I don't want to pay much money for something that I won't wear very often.