Father's Day and the Summer Solstice

Today we have a variety of holidays to celebrate. People who have good relationships with their fathers, or people who have children, may be celebrating Father's Day. Others may be observing the Summer Solstice, in any variety of ways. Some of us will go to church, as we normally do.

I will be preaching, but at this moment, my sermon doesn't mention Father's Day.  The Gospel for today is  Matthew 10: 24-39, the text about Jesus coming to bring not peace, but a sword, to divide families.  So I'm taking a long view of all the summer liberation holidays:  from June 6 to Juneteenth to July 4.  Once I've finished the revisions, I'll give a link to the sermon which I always post on my theology blog.

Because it's Father's Day, my social media feeds will be full of people talking about their fathers.  I do feel lucky to have gotten the father that I did.  The older I get, the more impressed I am with how well he did as a father.  My dad was born in 1937, so again, I'm lucky that my father learned to adapt to the world his daughters were born into, a world with more opportunity for women, while at the same time, not fully liberated.

I think about my own generation, so full of absent fathers and abusive fathers. So many of us experienced divorce done badly, oh so badly, in the 1970's. I was lucky that my own father was different.

In fact, my father seemed more like the fathers we see these days. He could pack our lunches and brush our hair into acceptable ponytails and teach us how to be long-distance runners. He helped us with science fair projects and took the family on camping trips and in general, he was very involved in our lives. I haven't met many other people of my generation who were as lucky.

I'm glad that we've become a society of people, at least some of us have, who can be our best parents to children, whether we're fathers, mothers, or part of the village raising the children. We still have a long way to go before our culture is where I'd like us to be in terms of work/family balance. But that's a topic for a different blog post.

Today is also the summer solstice, the official start of summer.  Many of us live in places where summer weather comes early and never leaves.  But even in those places, like South Florida, the light does change.  In the northern hemisphere, we have the most amount of daylight today.  We won't really notice a difference tomorrow.  But by late August, we'll have darkness earlier.  Last night I got up briefly at 9:30 p.m. (after falling asleep at 8 p.m. with the sun yet to fully set) and noticed that we still had that not-dark, bluish twilight.  We won't have that for much longer.

We're at the midpoint of the year and in many ways, the midpoint of summer.  This might be a day when we want to think about our trajectory--are we on track for the year?  Or maybe we want to celebrate nurturing of all sorts.  Maybe it's a good day for self-care.

For me, it's time to turn my attention back to sermon revising.  One of the treats of summer is that I can also get a walk in before it's time to head across the mountain to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.

TEEM Work and Other Anxieties

It has been a strange week in terms of home renovations.  We're at a point where it makes sense to wait until the work of next week is done.  Hopefully by this time next week, we'll have an HVAC system installed and the house rewired.  Then we'll do the painting and the hardwood floor restoration.

It feels weird knowing how much work needs to be done, but not doing it.  Of course, I have plenty of other work to be doing, primarily grading and encouraging students.

In a way, it has been a good week to be pulling back on fixer-upper tasks.  I've gotten information about the next part of my path to ordination.  I will take three classes through the TEEM program, and the first class is next week.

The TEEM program has 3 onground intensives a year where participants gather in Indianapolis and take 2 classes, one on Monday-Tuesday and one on Thursday-Friday, along with a workshop on Wednesday.  I will be taking the Thursday-Friday class on Paul's letters next week.  I'm happy to be able to patch up some holes in my knowledge; I had wanted to take a seminary class on Paul, but it never worked out.

I needed this week to order books and get started on the reading.  I had missed the deadline to get the discounted hotel price, but happily, when I called, I was able to get that price. 

It's been an up and down week in terms of anxiety.  When I'm at the house in Spartanburg, I feel that we made a good decision.  When I'm not there, there's a bit more self-doubt rattling in my brain.  I've never driven to Indianapolis from here, so I feel a bit of anxiety in terms of a car trip, while reminding myself that I have relatives along the way who could help me if need be.  I'm headed there by myself, because my spouse needs to be here to oversee the HVAC installation and rewiring.  I'm looking forward to being away, but also a bit anxious at the thought of all the new people I'll meet.  I feel a bit of anxiety at the thought of all the money we're spending on home repair--if it goes well, I'll be glad we spent the money. 

I have some course work to do besides showing up for class next week.  There's reading to do, and a movie about Paul to watch, which I've done, and a review of the movie to write, which I haven't, but will soon.

But it's nice to feel I have time to do that work.  The last time I was getting ready to go to an onground intensive, it was October of 2024, and we were still dealing with Hurricane Helene aftermaths.  I'm sure there's some residual anxiety that my body is dredging up.

Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be able to look back on this anxiety and smile because all the moving parts came together so well.

Liberation Holidays: Juneteenth

Today we celebrate our newest federal holiday:  Juneteenth.  Of course, many populations have been celebrating Juneteenth since the news of freedom first came to the last enslaved people in Texas in 1865.  This is the first year that I've been in a workplace that recognized the holiday.  In 2021, I was working for a small school that was very stingy with holidays, so we didn't have that holiday or MLK day or Presidents Day.

In 2022, I was no longer working for that school.  I was driving back across several states, coming back to Florida from the onground intensive at Southern Seminary.  I was already a certified spiritual director through their program, but I went back to take advantage of the education, to have a reunion with my small group, and to see a friend graduate from the program.  Two weeks later I would turn around to drive back up to Arden to buy the house that I'm writing in this morning.  So far, I have never regretted that purchase, which is not usual for me when it comes to housing or moves or jobs.

Or maybe it is becoming usual.  I don't have regrets about the spiritual direction certificate or my MDiv.  My main regret about my job at SMC is that I didn't have it sooner.  I love this house in a way that I haven't loved any other house.  Maybe my lack of regret is a pleasant part of being in late midlife.

I am tempted to tie these ideas back to Juneteenth, but I don't want to trivialize the holiday or the history.  While regret can enslave us, it's a very different enslavement than other forces and humans that enslave.

Wat are the forces enslaving so many of us? We think of iron shackles, but there are other societal constructs that hold so many back: debt, geopolitical forces, violence, educational systems.  And let's not forget that literal slavery hasn't disappeared. 

So on this Juneteenth, let us think about the captives who need our help to be set free. Let us also think about all the captivity narratives that hold us enslaved. Let us embrace liberation narratives. Let us envision what life would look like if all were truly free.

The Rethinking of Mary Magdalene Gets Wider Acceptance

I have been listening to a fascinating interview between Diana Butler Bass and Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer.  Several years ago, Bass preached a sermon using Schrader-Polczer's work, which Bass points out is one of 3 of the most watched sermons of all time; the other two were Bishop Budde's sermon at the interfaith worship service after the second inauguration of Donald Trump and the sermon preached at the wedding of Prince Harry and Mary Markle.

In that sermon, Bass presented the work of Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer, who was then a PhD student at Duke.  She did research on the Lazarus text and noticed that the word Mary had been changed to Martha.  Why would someone do this?  And how can we be sure?  

Bass published her sermon here.  It's worth the read, and it's got a link to hear the sermon.  Bass makes the case that it was likely a 4th century change, a change to disempower Mary Magdalene.

In the interview I'm listening to today, Bass and Schrader-Polzer review those ideas.  It's an interesting window into how research on ancient texts is done, and how this work was done.  It's got great information about issues of gender, along with church history.

Here are some highlights:

--At minute 28, they talk about the canon--which books made it into the Bible, which did not, and why.  Schrader-Polzer posits that the approach to Mary Magdalene, the changes made in the Gospel of John, might have happened in the 2nd century so that the book would be seen as more acceptable, so that it would survive. 

--In the oldest artwork, whenever there's a Lazarus, there's only one sister.

--Throughout the interview, there's lots of great information about translations of the Bible and how we come to have the Bible that we do.

--It is fascinating to me that there are changes to Bible commentaries and forthcoming changes to translations, including the master text, the "Novum Testamentum Graece (Nestle-Aland). The 'Nestle-Aland,' or 'NA,' is the source from which almost all versions of the New Testament are translated into every language around the world" (quoted material from Bass' newsletter).  These changes happened because of Schrader-Polzer's work and Bass' promotion of this work.  I'm inspired that academic work can have this effect.

--Bass points out that this kind of revision to Bible scholarship, a major revision like Schrader-Polzer's, doesn't happen often and usually about once a generation.

--In the first century, the town of Magdala didn't exist (roughly minute 1:08).  So using Mary of Magdala would be a wrong translation.

--"Reframing ancient questions" vs. "opening new questions"--Bass uses this language about the way that the Catholic church might approach these developments.  She posits that this research is the reframing of ancient questions kind of development.

--Just after 1:18, Bass and Schrader-Polzer talk about the Gospel as a piece of story telling, a cohesive narrative, that is not the way that most people think about a Gospel:  approaching it the way a creative writer/teacher would see it.

More Thoughts on Tiredness and Home Repairs

We had good news at the fixer-upper house in Spartanburg yesterday.  The kitchen sink had very low pressure, but the rest of the house is fine.  The plumber who came out to make sure nothing was leaking said we could fix that ourselves by changing the faucet.

I was doubtful.  Based on what????  I have far less plumbing experience than the plumber.  Happily, we replaced the faucet, and lo and behold, good water pressure.

I dread plumbing fixes for all sorts of reasons, chief among them, of all the projects we do, plumbing is most likely not to come together the way it should.  There's often unexpected leaks and trying to do the same fix over and over again, along with much cursing and bad feelings.  The kitchen faucet project did not have any of these issues.

Then we moved on to the next project:  painting all the walls, except for the kitchen, which we will probably cover with beadboard.  If you haven't painted the walls of an older house, you may not know how much prepwork is required, primarily filling in the holes with "mud" and then sanding them smooth.  Yesterday we finished the sanding.

We won't be doing the painting until the rewiring is complete, and we've got the HVAC in.  It was good to sand without having an HVAC system running to suck dust into the system.  But the painting will go more smoothly with an HVAC system working.

We headed back to our Lutheridge house after getting the sanding done.  In some ways, it was a short day, with 4-5 hours of work.  But I was just as exhausted as if we'd been working double the time.

Here's where I might say, "But exhausted in a good way."  I'm not so sure.  I did an hour or two of sanding--and that wore me out.  Hmm.  It's work that I never do on a regular basis, so in some ways it makes sense that I'm tired.  But it's not like we had to build a wall first:  no heaving lifting.

I am trying just to accept my body where it is, day by day, instead of trying to understand so I can outsmart it.  I am trying to give my body good nourishment and exercise each day, and it's important to remember that rest is an important part of both good nourishment and exercise.  Some days, I'll need more sleep than other days--and if it means I'm falling asleep by 6 p.m., that can be just fine.

Happy Bloomsday!

I only care about Bloomsday as a sort of cosmic accident. When I got to grad school and pored over the list of classes I could take, I discovered that most of them were full. As a new grad student, I was last to register. And so I found myself in Tom Rice's class on James Joyce. What a life-changing experience that was.

Several of the stories from Dubliners show up in anthologies, even first year literature anthologies, so I might have eventually discovered them in my teaching life that was to come. But would I have ever had the patience to wade through Ulysses all by myself? Absolutely not.

Bloomsday celebrates the day, June 16, on which all the action in Ulysses takes place. The book covers almost every kind of action that can take place in a human day: we see Leopold Bloom in the bathroom, we see Stephen Dedalus pick his nose, we see Leopold Bloom masturbate . . . and we finally get to the masterful final chapter, where Molly Bloom muses on the physicality of being a woman.

As with many books, whose scandalous reputations preceded them, I read and read and waited for the scandalous stuff. As a post-modern reader, I was most scandalized by how difficult it was. It's hard to imagine that such a book would be published today.

But what a glorious book it is. What fun Joyce has, as he writes in different styles and plays with words. What a treat for English majors like me, who delighted in chasing down all the allusions.

I went on to write my M.A. thesis on Joyce, trying to prove that he wasn't as anti-woman as his reputation painted him to be. Since then, other scholars have done a more thorough job than I did. But I'm still proud of that thesis. I learned a lot by writing it. At the time, it was the longest thing I had ever written--in the neighborhood of 50 pages. A few years later, I'd be writing 150 pages as I tackled my dissertation--on domestic violence in the Gothic. By the time I'd written my thesis, I had said all I had to say on Joyce.

So, happy Bloomsday.  Those of us who were born later than Joyce, who haven't read much of the work that came before Joyce, probably aren't aware of what a radical experiment he presented.  A work that takes place in just one day?  Revolutionary!  I could argue that Virginia Woolf did it more artistically with Mrs. Dalloway, but before the Modernists, most people would have thought of just one day as not worthy of documenting.  And Joyce's interior monologues capture like no other work what it's like to be inside a brain, to listen to thoughts without the scaffolding of traditional narrative.

I have read Ulysses several times, and I confess, I likely will never read it again.  But I'm grateful to have done it, grateful that it exists, grateful that I had guides to show me of its mastery.

Sermon Revisions, Poem Revisions

It's been a good week-end, with our attention shifting from home repairs to church work.  I usually have a rough draft of my sermon written by Friday, but not last week.  So my main writing task on Saturday was sermon writing.  Happily, by the time I sat down to write, I had already plotted it out in my head.

You can read my sermon in yesterday's blog post at my theology blog.

It's always interesting to see how the sermon changes from rough draft to preaching manuscript to actual delivery.  For example, I will occasionally reference the youth sermon, but since I don't write it in advance, it won't be in the written versions.

We're a small church, and occasionally in the summer, when families are on vacation, we have no youth, so there's no youth sermon.  When I announced that there would be no youth sermon, I asked the congregation to think about what had brought them joy in their own youth.  I referenced a popsicle in the park event that one of the members had made the subject of a Facebook post.  The recording of the sermon referenced that popsicle event; the manuscript does not.

You can view yesterday's sermon here, on my YouTube channel.

I've been trying to read my sermon less, which in some ways is good, primarily in the more lively energy.  But I don't like that I get tongue-tied, and I worry about my sermons getting longer.  I try to limit my discursive comments so that they don't become a wandering tangent where I can't easily get back.  I want a sermon to be 9-12 minutes, so if I'm going to continue this experiment in not looking at the manuscript as much, maybe the manuscript needs to be shorter.  

Now it's time to shift my attention back to poetry writing.  My various writing projects do feed each other, while at the same time demanding time, which requires constant balancing.  Last week, I returned to a May rough draft of a poem, "A Song Both Familiar and Strange."  In the poem, I connect my visit to my friend who had a catastrophic stroke which means she now lives in the skilled nursing unit to Julian of Norwich.  I did some serious revising, moving stanzas, taking out material.  I think it's done, but before I started last week's revisions, I thought it was done.  

Last week's earlier draft ended with this stanza, which I worried ended the poem on too melancholy a note:

By your bedside, as you sip
tea through a straw, I think
of Julian of Norwich
who insisted that all manner
of things shall be well.
I wish that I could share
the convictions of Julian,
but in the presence
of your shrinking
body and mangled speech,
my doubts blossom
into an orchard of hazelnut trees.

Now that stanza is in the middle of the poem.  Here's the last stanza:

Like a medieval priest
chanting words in a strange
language, I read scraps
of Julian’s work, her odd
metaphors for the Divine
filling the space between us.
You listen and sing
a song both familiar and strange.

Last week I even made some poetry submissions.  In some ways, it's easier in the summer when many journals aren't taking submissions.  In September, when most journals are "open," and most for a very short time, I find it overwhelming.

Home Renovation in Our 60's

We have been doing home repairs and remodeling all of our married lives.  It's interesting to think about how things have changed in the decades:

--We have so many more choices now.  Once we went to the big box store and chose from the 6-15 types of tile or flooring or other materials on display.  Now the displays are bigger, and one can easily special order from a variety of sources.

--Once my spouse could work 12 hour days; I have never been able to do that.  Now we are both tired and ready to call it a day after 5-8 hours.

--One of the most obvious reasons why we're ready to work more reasonable hours is that we don't have the physical stamina that we once did.  I am about to turn 61, and my spouse will be 62 in September.  Our 20-something selves could go and go, even as I wished we were doing something more fun.  We could get up day after day and do hard, physical labor.  Now we plan some rest days, in part because I have other work to do, in part because we need to recover.

--You would think that after doing this work for decades, we'd be better at communicating.  Actually we are better, in the ways of longly-wed couples who can recognize the dispute we're having.  It often boils down to me thinking we've made a decision and have a plan, and my spouse not seeing it that way or not remembering the details.

--My spouse still sees evidence of rack and ruin everywhere.  I am inclined to shrug and try to decide if it's worth fixing.  We've decided to have the house re-wired and to put in a new HVAC system.  I am less concerned with a crack in a wall or the ceiling.

--In part, I'm less concerned because we have more money to deal with issues.  We've also had much more problematic houses and had no trouble selling them, so I tend to avoid catastrophizing--which is strange, since my brain often goes to catastrophe in other areas.

All the Battles Worth Watching, One after Another

We spent a long chunk of time yesterday watching One Battle After Another.  It's a movie that's been out for awhile, but only recently free to stream on Amazon Prime.  I had forgotten how long it was, but happily, we started it in the late afternoon, not at 7:30 at night.

It wasn't until the later part of the movie, during one of the long (LONG) car chases that I became aware of how long it was taking to finish the movie.  It was compelling from the beginning until close to the end, compelling in ways that surprised me.

I was impressed with all the chunks of narrative that did manage to come together.  Paul Thomas Anderson deserved those Oscars for best director and best adapted screenplay.  There were moments when I did some math to try to figure out the revolutionary aspect of it all--if the daughter is 16 or 17, then the revolutionaries were active in 2008 or 2009?  The planting of bombs in government buildings and calling in bomb threats from a pay phone seemed so 1972 to me, but clearly, that timeline wouldn't work.  It was a nebulous revolutionary movement in the movie, so I was willing to suspend my initial disbelief.

There's another revolutionary movement in the movie, and it's the "Latino Harriet Tubman situation."  This movie has a lot to say about a great many issues, and one of the disadvantages of a vast movie is that some issues get short shrift.  I'd have liked more about all the Latino issues, especially the nods to the sanctuary movement that are hiding there in plain sight for those of us with eyes to see.  It's in the storylines about migration where we see revolutionaries who are working for social justice and working against a government that's against the flourishing of all people--unlike the other revolutionaries, the main characters who seem to be just blowing things up for the thrill of it all.

I try very hard not to fault movies or books or TV shows for not being the story that I wish they could have been.  In the end, I was happy to have a well-made movie to watch, a movie with much to mull over, a movie worth re-watching, as so few things are deserving of a second look these days.

Summer Reading Report Card

I am happy to report that I am managing to read this summer.  Once I took reading in the summer as a given--classes came to a close, and what else would one do?  Now I continue onward:  as one set of classes ends, I teach the next set.  But summer still feels spacious in a way that other seasons do not, in part because I'm working from home more, commuting less.

I would likely not have picked up Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, if a friend hadn't talked about how much she liked it; she read it after her grown up son raved about it.   After the movie came out a few months ago, she asked if I had read it, and after her recommendation, I added it to my ever growing list of books to read.

I read The Martian (I wrote about it in this blog post) and liked it well enough, but Weir hasn't been one of those writers whose work I seek out.  Project Hail Mary felt familiar yet different.  I liked the flashbacks better than the parts in the spaceship.  I found the premise intriguing, the in-depth mechanical explorations less so.  

After finishing Project Hail Mary, I was in the mood for something shorter.  Kevin Wilson's Now Is Not the Time to Panic fit the bill.  Wilson captures a different kind of summer from the one I am having, a teenager without a job kind of summer.  Wilson captures the mid-90's, captures what it was like to have artistic aspirations in a pre-World Wide Web age.  The parts of the book about the girl artist grown up were a bit less developed, but I wasn't as curious about her--should I have been?

When I was younger, in my middle school years, my goal was to read 100 books in the summer.  Often the local library had some kind of contest.  Of course, those were easier books which I could read in an afternoon.  When I was older, in high school, I was reading the books I felt I should read by the time I went off to college, along with pulpy romances and multigeneration family sagas.

Now I just want to be reading books that call to me when I'm doing other tasks.  These two books did just that. 

Summer Then, Summer Now

A year ago I'd be getting ready to head over to the VA hospital for my first day of CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education.  I blogged about it during my first week, then it was brought up in a group meeting that I was blogging my positive observations, that VA officials higher up the chain were monitoring.  I was writing on my own computer, during my off hours, so I decided to be even more careful.  I didn't use the VA computers for anything other than entering patient notes and checking VA e-mail.

So, for future scholars, reading last summer's blog posts, wondering why I wasn't writing more, there's the story.  I did some offline journaling during the summer, but for the most part, I was too exhausted by being a VA Hospital chaplain to do too much in the way of writing at all.

I'm still not sure why this kind of training is seen as essential for ordination in the ELCA version of the Lutheran church.  Chaplaincy is VERY different from visiting parishioners in the hospital.  Throughout last summer, I kept thinking, what, exactly, am I supposed to be learning here?

While I liked all of the people I met during my CPE experience, I have not kept in touch with any of them.  It's strange, in a way--we do have a lot in common, even outside of our shared CPE summer.  But I am old enough now that I can't keep in touch with friends in the deep way I would like--there's just too many people to call every week or to see once a month.  So I'm rarely adding more.

CPE made for a strange summer, and it came crashing to an unexpected close when my mom got very sick with pneumonia; she was much closer to dying than we knew at the time.

This summer is very different, and I'm grateful.  I'm teaching more online classes, so I'm not having a complete summer off.  We've got a house that needs attention, 2 houses really.  But even with the pivots and plotting that a fixer-upper requires, there's still more down time.  I don't need to be at a hospital for 9 hours a day.  I have time for other interests, time to see friends, for example.  I'm still feeling overwhelmed at times, but I'd rather be overwhelmed by home repair timelines than by patients with life threatening issues.

The Morning After the Tony Awards

I have just spent a delightful smidge of time reading about the Tony awards.  Once I wouldn't have had to read newspaper accounts; once, in long ago teenage years, I would have stayed up late to watch the awards show.

I don't remember a time when I wasn't interested in drama as a genre (as opposed to drama as a lifestyle?).  I was in plays throughout elementary school, and I was that strange kid that also wrote plays--and performed them.  I loved making puppets and putting on puppet shows.  For Christmas one year, I got a puppet theatre, which was three boards with hinges and a square opening--and a curtain!

So perhaps it seems inevitable that at some point, I'd think about becoming an actress as a career plan.  I first decided this in 7th grade, and in 9th grade, my best friend and I planned to go to NYC as roommates when we graduated from college.  She had recently moved from New Jersey to Charlottesville, Virginia, and was homesick.  I had recently moved and was impatient for grown up life to start.

I read every play I could get my hands on (often out loud, in my room, choosing one character and reading only those parts out loud) and bought the soundtracks to Tony nominated musicals.  Occasionally, I went to see plays--during most of my childhood, we lived in places with community theatre or university drama department offerings.  In those days, seeing Broadway traveling shows meant a trip to larger cities like Atlanta or Washington D.C., which we did occasionally.

This year, unlike other years, I read about last night's Tony awards, and most of the names of the plays are familiar to me.  In part, it's because many of the nominees are revivals or shows based on earlier works, some dramas or musicals (like Cats), some not (like The Lost Boys, based on the movie from 1987).  I also worry that we're in a thin period for theatre, where fewer shows make it to the stage or stay there long, so it means that people like me have less to keep track of from a distance, if we try to keep track through the years.

I am happy that I didn't try to make my childhood love into a grown up career--Broadway has not been kind to women, particularly older women.  I am happy that this childhood love of drama continues to make me happy, even as I don't always go to see live theatre or even read plays.  I do want to make a mid-year intention to read more plays, beginning with Bess Wohl, who won last night for Liberation.

Short Story Inspirations and "Mrs. Dalloway"

On Friday, I headed to Columbia to see my grad school friend who had a catastrophic stroke 2 years ago and now lives in a skilled nursing unit.  After that visit, I went to a different grad school friend, my upstairs neighbor in long-ago grad school days.  We are both writers, both college English teachers, both on life paths similar and different.

Lately she's been attending a Shut Up and Write group, which has been working for her in all sorts of ways.  I keep thinking I might go with her on a Friday when her group meets.  I'm also thinking it might make an interesting experiment for my own writing classes that I teach.

As I've been driving these past few days, I had an idea for my idea that I had a year ago on the 100 year anniversary of the publication of Mrs. Dalloway.  I wrote about it in this blog post:  "Now I am thinking of new projects, 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."

Throughout the past year, this idea has bubbled back up periodically and then simmered right back down.  I have not had the time or focus to write a novel.

And then, on Friday, I thought, why not write linked short stories?  Write a short story for each year of my past 30 years and then choose the best.  I would probably not play with time; I would probably organize the stories chronologically.  So the fact that the characters in the blog post description are the same would not be a surprise.

I immediately felt tired at the amount of short stories if I had to write one per year--so I immediately decided that I didn't have to do each year.  I did wonder about perspective--if I'm writing a story set in 1995, can I use knowledge that doesn't come for another 20 years?

On my drive yesterday, I thought about a different approach.  I could write stories by way of subject.  I wrote one such story as a requirement for a seminary class, which I wrote about at the end of this blog post.  That story used fairy tales as a jumping off point to talk about beauty and self image and other stories, like the Little House books, that girls often read, along with boiling water in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.  

Some subjects I thought about:

--shoes:  hiking boots and camouflage high tops

--the habit of buying fixer-uppers

--tea practices

--various books could serve as jumping off points, the ones we read in grad school or in childhood and the surprising intersections

--journaling and blogging and the types of writing that aren't always valued by grad school professors

--the oat bran muffins I made in grad school, the muffins sold in the coffee shop in the basement of the humanities office building

--all sorts of baking

--nutrition developments through the years

--a wide variety of religious/theological issues

--and then there's all the music

--yearning for graduate studies even after getting a PhD

I love the idea of short stories instead of a work that has a long narrative arc across 200-300 pages. It's an idea that's much more manageable with my current commitments.  Maybe in retirement I'll return to to writing traditional novels. 

Annual Dinner with Camp Counselors

Last night, we had dinner with the Lutheridge and Lutherock camp counselors.  We've done it before, and I always come away impressed.  The neighborhood community who lives in the residential section of Lutheridge brings a variety of desserts, and the camp provides burgers and hot dogs, chips and beverages.

We sat with a guy who's finishing the fall semester and then headed to Duke Divinity school and another senior staffer who hopes to come back for another summer or two before he said he probably should find a regular job.  I said, "Or you could continue working in outdoor ministries year round."

Happily, no one was there to point out the shrinking job opportunities in that field.  I will never understand why the larger church doesn't do more to help/commit to campus and outdoor ministries.  The counselors I spoke to last night are full of hope for all the ways their futures might unfold.  I've found that my SMC students are similarly optimistic.  It's refreshing.

Before the dinner, I spent the day trying to fix my course shell for my online class at Spartanburg Methodist College.  The book has changed editions (again--sigh), so the references to the book page numbers that students find in the assignments and discussion posts are wrong.  Ugh.  I'm teaching someone else's course, and so it's not intuitive to me, the way I would have if I had created it all--it takes more time to diagnose problems and fix them.

I also did some baking--I decided to bring a gluten free, dairy free dessert.  It worked beautifully.  It's an almond-coconut concoction, and I want to record it here:

1 C. sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 C. almond flour (or grind up a lot of almonds into as fine a powder as possible)

1 1/2 C. coconut (I used sweetened and unsweetened in 2 different experiments--no difference)

Whip the sugar and eggs until tripled in volume or until tired of the noise of the mixer.  Fold in the almond flour and the coconut.  Pour in a 9 inch cake pan lined with parchment paper and greased or in cupcake pan.  Bake at 350 for 25ish minutes.  You can only tell if it's done by color--a golden, light brown color.  It will be sticky and delicious.  It keeps at room temperature for days, although the crispiness of the crust declines.

The Tiredness of Being Grounded

I woke up feeling tired--and why?  We spent much of yesterday at our Spartanburg fixer-upper, but we weren't doing the hard-on-the-body work of home remodel.  We were there for experts to come and evaluate various systems.

Yes, most people do this before buying a property, but we had a sense of what would be needed without needing a home inspector to tell us.  Now it's time to figure out a timeline.  So yesterday we had a plumbing team and an HVAC guy and an electrician come to the house.  It was a lot of waiting.

This morning, I thought, yes, it's been a long time since I had to be in a physical location for 9 hours.  The visits between experts were spaced out, which was great, since we could give our individual attention to each system under analysis.  It was exhausting in the unique way that waiting for home repair specialists is exhausting.

Before I went to bed, I took some ibuprofen.  Why were my arthritic feet so achy?  I have no idea, but they were.  They are not as achy today.

Now it is time to get on with the tasks of each week which don't involve a fixer-upper:  sermon writing, online teacher tasks, food prep.  Let me get my walk in before inertia takes over.

Memory Whisps from Last Week's Travel to the High Country of NC

Before we get too far away from our travels of last week, let me record some memories that I don't want to slip away.  We went to a different part of the North Carolina mountains, near Boone.  We were there for the wedding of my spouse's sister's oldest child.  The wedding was beautiful, of course, but there were other beautiful moments:

--On Monday night, we went to Parallel Brewing in Boone for a rehearsal dinner/party.  Do they brew beer?  I don't know.  Did I taste it?  No.  I wanted wine to go with the pizza.  Was any of the wine memorable enough to make note of what it was?  No.

--I was much more interested in Huzzah Books, which shares the building with Parallel Brewing.  We could go back and forth, which made the party better--more space.

--I also loved lingering among the books, which seemed to be used books from decades when publishers were more serious about publishing.  I found a book of "best new poetry" published in 1960 or so.  The names were fairly familiar and all male, except for Adrienne Rich.

--One of our younger family members (21 or so) was thrilled to find a book by Jane Kenyon.  I was thrilled that she was thrilled.

--We didn't do more in Boone.  We spent most of our time visiting with family members on the front porches of our cabins.  If it had been clearer weather, we'd have had a glorious view.

--I did love seeing the fog/mist move across the land, only to vanish.  Once again, I thought about how humans might come to believe in ghosts.

--I was disappointed that we didn't have a clear view of the night sky.  I wanted that non-light polluted view.  But we did have lovely nights on the porch, watching the mist, listening to frogs and insects.  And we saw fireflies, which I associate with much later in the summer.

--I'm not usually awake much past 8:30 or 9 these days, but for two evenings last week, I had normal-ish adult bedtimes.

--It was great to have a get away that was much closer.  We were home after a 2.5 hour drive.

Songs and Other American Experiments

It's Tuesday, and I began as I almost always do on a Tuesday, reading Dave Bonta's Poetry Blog Digest, which almost always takes me in interesting directions.  This morning, it's been a bit of a trip down memory lane, courtesy of Shawna LeMay's blog post which mentioned Bruce Springsteen's "Downbound Train."

She quoted lyrics, which I didn't remember from the song:

"Now I work down at the car wash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don't you feel like you're a rider
On a downbound train?"

So of course, I went in search of the song, which instantly catapulted me back to the fall of 1984, when the album Born in the USA came out.  I bought it at Wal-Mart, along with a fan for my dorm room.  A few weeks later, my boyfriend went back to Memphis where his mom needed him.  He'd been wearing my DC101 (a rock radio station) jacket that my sister had won somehow and given to me.  That jacket smelled of sweat and the Players cigarettes that he smoked, and I wore it all fall, feeling sad as my smells replaced his.

It was a different time, the results of a different election, daylight in America, brutal regimes across the globe, and when people wonder why I'm not as hopeless in 2026 as I might be, it's because I remember past time when I couldn't imagine how humanity would survive--and here we are, surviving this history that is not repeating but rhyming, a slant rhyme, to be sure, or maybe just a history so full of allusions that it's hard to read.

I wrote so many letters in the fall of 1984, actual letters on paper, back when long distance phone calls were expensive, and the only phone I had was the one at the end of my dorm hallway, where those of us with long distance relationships talked to distant loves.  My half of the correspondence filled a dresser drawer.  My boyfriend's letters took up a shoe box.

I married him anyway.  And now, here we are, decades later.  On Sunday we watched some PBS presentation on the American experiment, featuring Ken Burns talking about his documentaries.  It was fairly recent with the focus on the Revolution in 1776, and my spouse bleakly said, "It's all over."  I think he meant the grand experiment of freedom, and I said, "No, it's not."  I was talking about the American experiment of revolution and self-governance, with piercing awareness of all the ways that the foundational documents of the USA have not borne fruit--and all the ways they have.

We were well into the second bottle of wine on Sunday, so we didn't discuss further.  But it's a conversation we've been having since 1983 when we first met, so we didn't really need words.

This morning, some lines came to me, as I've been reading and writing:

We are half drunk with disappointment,
fueled by sundrenched picnics and longing,
and you declare the great experiment
dead, and I say no.

Schooled on Springsteen
and Woody Guthrie,
and the songs of enslaved people,
I know that times have always been hard.

I've begun the poem, but I don't know where it leads--like so many elements in my life.  The YouTube algorithm has given me delightful songs from the Springsteen starting point.  It's been a delightful morning, as Tuesdays so often are, rooted in the words (and rabbit holes) of others.

The Feast Day of the Visitation and the Reminder that So Much More Is Possible

Today is the Feast Day of the Visitation, the feast day that celebrates Mary, pregnant with Jesus, going to be with Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist.  We could celebrate this feast day in any number of ways:  we could celebrate intergenerational support for each other, the ways that God doesn't abandon women who are on the margins of society, the ways that improbable situations can be harnessed for hope, and the hospitality that is evident on so many levels (the wombs of the women, Elizabeth welcoming Mary).

The story in Luke leaves questions, of course.  Did Mary travel alone?  How did she stay safe?  What did Mary and Elizabeth talk about in the month (months?) that she was there?  Why did she leave before Elizabeth gave birth?  What did Joseph think about all of this?  Was Joseph even part of this narrative?

We get more of Joseph's perspective in the gospel of Matthew.  What I love about this feast day, however, is that it's focused on the women.  We don't have much celebration of women in the Christian tradition.  We should hold on to what's here, in addition to looking for ways to add more women to our celebrations.

I love this story because it reminds us that God doesn't choose those who are already ready and waiting for the call.  Imagine how many lives could have been changed if the earliest Church had emphasized this aspect of a call, this being worthy in God’s eyes even if one is not worthy in the world’s eyes. Imagine if we had centuries of the message that God loves us before we’ve done anything special at all, and even if we never live into our full potential in the eye’s of our society, God will see our value. 

Imagine if the church had given emphasis to Elizabeth, along with Mary.  I love the message that we're not too old, that our hopes and dreams might be answered after all.  We're not cast away if we're not a young woman, like Mary, with years ahead of her to be of service to God.  The definition of fertility enlarges.  

On Sunday, we heard that God doesn't call the equipped, but God equips those that God calls.  There's a bit of troubling theology here.  I believe we're all called, over and over again, a wide variety of calls.  God offers us invitations, and even if we say no, God will return with more invitations.  And when we say yes, God has resources, even if we don't.  We might even discover that we have all that we need.  God may not need to equip us at all.  Our weaknesses might turn out to be strengths.

It's a great day to celebrate those possibilities.  And even if we've been feeling like our time is passed, that it's too late for us, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way.  If we feel like we're too inexperienced, that we don't know what we're doing, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way.

It's great to remember Elizabeth's blessing:  "Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill the Lord's promises to her!” (Luke 1:  45, NIV, gendered language corrected).  Elizabeth gave Mary this blessing, but I believe it extends to us all, if we're open to the idea that with God and community, so much more can be possible than if we rely on our solitary selves.

Unfinished Post in a Scrambled Week

It's been a scrambled week.  Yesterday I kept reminding myself, "It's Friday, not earlier in the week."  Leaving town for a wedding made Wednesday feel like Sunday; the wedding was on Tuesday because it's cheaper to have a wedding at a scenic venue on a weekday than on a Saturday.  But to my brain, it was a Saturday.

Yesterday we had loose plans to go back to the new fixer-upper house in Spartanburg.

Update, 11 a.m.:  My week is so scrambled that I never finished this post.

Our Next Fixer-Upper

If such a thing exists as a regular reader of this blog, that reader would notice that my regular schedule of posting has been disrupted.  On Monday, we left town until Wednesday for a wedding.  Yesterday we headed down to Spartanburg because I scheduled a turn-on date for water and electric utilities at our new-to-us fixer upper-house in Spartanburg.

Yes, we bought another fixer-upper when we're not done fixing up the house we have at Lutheridge.  Let me be clear--we're not selling that house.  We are fortunate enough to be able to afford 2 small houses.  And one reason why we can is that each house needed work, and very few homebuyers these days want to put in that sweat equity.

In the spirit of full disclosure and complete honesty, I, too, would like a house where I didn't need to think about upgrades, where someone else had already made the decisions and installations.  But as we looked at houses, we kept saying, "Why would someone make the kitchen this way?  Why didn't they do the bathroom that way?"

I almost didn't look at the house we bought.  The pictures were just too scary, like this one of the kitchen:

Did they have a fire?  Some catastrophic plumbing issue?  But it was around the corner from a very cute house, so I swung by.  As I peered in the window, I thought, well this isn't as scary as it looks.

When we had our realtor show it to us, we all said, "This house is much better than it looks.  And more solid than it looks."  So we made an offer which was accepted.  We closed on the house May 8 and because of travel plans made a year ago, we are only now having time to make upgrades.

You might say, "Yes, but why 2 houses?"  In March, I accepted an offer of a tenure track Associate Professor position from Spartanburg Methodist College, which means more job stability--income to count on and a schedule to count on, a schedule which means I need to be on campus every weekday, during the 8 months of the year that school is in session.  I have done that kind of commuting for the past 2 years, and it's getting tiring.

I'm still a Synod Appointed Minister at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, so our thinking is that we'll be at the Lutheridge house on the week-end, in the Spartanburg house during the weekdays.  And I will want to spend the summer months in the Lutheridge house.

Of course, much could change, as much has changed.  It hasn't been that long since we bought our current fixer-upper, the Lutheridge house.  It was just 4 years ago, when I had only done a year of seminary, when I didn't even know that SMC existed.

Second Spring Wedding

I will write more about our second spring wedding adventure at a later time.  Back in March, at the first spring wedding adventure, I wrote a blog post that covers some of the territory of this week's wedding too:  "My spouse's sister's youngest child is getting married this week-end, and her older child will get married in May. I think that this wedding will be the first of the next generation that I've attended. Wait, that's not true. I went to the weddings of both children of my grad school friends who moved to England, in part because she was from there, in part because medical care was better/easier there. But I am almost sure this is the first wedding of grown ups whom I held when they were babies."

This time, it was the oldest child getting married.  I remember the morning of her birth, getting the phone call in my grad school apartment from my father-in-law, who was also at this wedding which happened last night.

This time, wedding travel took us to the high mountain country near Boone, NC--spectacular scenery, very rainy weather, fog rolling in, winding dirt/mud roads.

I am sitting in a tiny cabin in near dark, and I'm always surprised at how hard it is for me to work on the computer lit only by the light of the computer.  I'm fine reading online stuff with no other light, but writing a blog post feels hard.  Or maybe it's the tiredness that makes it hard, the existing outside of my normal routines. 

Let me record a line that came to me this morning, which may find its way into a poem at some point:  "I am the bartender without a corkscrew."

Memorial Day 2026

Today is Memorial Day, and through the years, I've come to realize how many different things this holiday can mean to people.  I've met people who won't celebrate it because of its roots in memorializing the Civil War Union dead.  My dad was an Air Force officer in the Reserves until he retired, so Memorial Day was personal for him.  I don't think I know anyone who was killed while on active duty, but I do want to honor those who died.  Some people I've known seem to have no inkling that the holiday has anything to do with soldiers at all--for them, it's about getting a good deal on a holiday sale or opening up the vacation home or having a cook out.

I remember feeling desperate for Memorial Day, for a day off, but during my days of working as an administrator, I was always desperate for a day off, a day off that didn't require me to use up any of my paltry allotment of vacation time.  For the past several years, Memorial Day as a three day week-end was not top of my mind, since I've already had a few weeks of schedule easing in May.

I also know that many people don't get to have time off.  All of our grocery stores are open today, for example.  When I taught in community colleges in South Carolina, we didn't have Memorial Day off.  Our nursing students needed every scrap of time in the summer, so that holiday had to be sacrificed so that we stayed in compliance.  Or maybe it was because of the Civil War; I got different explanations. In past years, I've used the day off to catch up on grading for my online classes, and this year, I'll do some grading too.  Most days of the year, I have grading to do.

This year, I'm thinking about past years, when war seemed far away.  And now, here we are, with war in Europe (Ukraine) and war with Iran, and lots of smaller scale wars across the globe.

But let me circle back to the intent of this holiday.  On this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

Let us remember how often the world zooms into war. Let us pray to be preserved from those horrors.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Memorial Day:

God of comfort, on this Memorial Day, we remember those souls whom we have lost to war. We pray for those who mourn. We pray for military members who have died and been forgotten. We pray for all those sites where human blood has soaked the soil. God of Peace, on this Memorial Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this Memorial Day, we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

(Pictures in this post are memorials around D.C. from the Honor Flight experience that I was part of in October of 2022)

Rain and Writing

It's the kind of rainy morning that's saying, "Wait and walk later."  Of course, the risk in waiting is that I might not go at all:  it could continue to rain or I could submit to laziness.  It's the kind of rainy morning where I have writing that I need to do, so waiting to walk makes sense.  

I was feeling bad that I had no sermon rough draft written, but by last night I was glad.  We went to the last fish fry of the season at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, where we discovered that a church member had made aprons for everyone, reversible at that.  As I looked at us all wearing our aprons, I thought about Pentecost and the metaphors for the Holy Spirit, and I got an idea that hadn't been there before.  I don't want to write about it further, for fear of losing the energy of the idea.  Once I've posted the sermon, I'll come back and put the links in this post. 

I am happy for the rain, even if it means my walk never happens.  We've been in such a deep drought across the southeast.

Of course, last night I was not happy for the rain as we drove back from the fish fry.  At first, as we left at 7:30, it was beautiful, with clouds across the mountain.  The rain settled in as we got to the top of the mountain; once we got to the road construction outside of Asheville, the rain got heavier and the road conditions worse with construction debris and barriers and various lines on the road.  I have rarely been more relieved when we pulled into our driveway as I was last night.

Let me keep this blog post short so that I can take advantage of this rainy morning and get my Pentecost sermon written.

Great (but Easy) Books to End a Reading Slump

When I read/hear a book review/author interview, if the book sounds good, I put a request in at the local library--the same goes for social media.  But often, it takes many months before I actually read the book, which means I often don't remember where I heard about the book.  In some ways, it doesn't matter, but I'm often curious, particularly if the book disappoints.

I'm happy to report that my 3 latest reads have not disappointed.  I am always overjoyed when I get books that are the kind of reading experiences where I get lost in the book and/or when I wake up thinking about the book.

*  Still Life by Sarah Winman was not that kind of book.  It was more gently compelling, a perfect just before bed kind of read, when I can only read a page or two, every evening or so.  It was a book about two characters who meet in Tuscany as WWII is coming to an end and the ways their lives revolve around Tuscany and each other.  It was a delight of a read, not the 800 page sprawling history, but encompassing post-WWII 20th century history nonetheless.  It showed humans at their best, and occasionally (enough to make the book compelling) not at their best.  What made it gentle is that the characters were able to recover from bad behavior.  It's the kind of book that bubbles up in my brain occasionally, and in a good way.

-- Nonesuch by Francis Spufford was also rooted in World War II, but it was a different approach, with time traveling and wizardry of a sort.  I loved the main character, a woman both of her time and ahead of her time, lots of interesting insights about gender and relationships and finance.  I had trouble visualizing the way the time travel happened, by way of statues and shapes shifting, so I scanned the pages and pages of description, and had a reading experience that came out just fine.  It was a fun but also serious read about fights against fascists, both the historically accurate kind (Britain during the bombings of London) and the time travelling, fantastical kind.

*  The Wedding People by Alison Espach was a different kind of delight, revolving around the ways we try to redeem our lives through our relationships.  At first, I almost took it back to the library, because I didn't want to read about very expensive weddings and the entitled people who want them.  But the book was in high demand, even though it was published in 2022, so I decided to read the first chapter--and I was hooked.  The main character is an adjunct English faculty member, so there's some delightful stuff about reading and teaching, along with lots of humor--and a happy ending!

# Next up is Colored Television by Danzy Senna.  How delightful to have a bit of time to return to reading, one of my earliest loves. 

* I put these books on my list after reading Paisley Rekdal's March 18 Facebook post:  "OK people, I'm getting ready for a little R&R time and I'm looking for a fun book that will tax no more than 5 brain cells. Like, writing that will basically bathe my frontal lobe in martinis and oxytocin and chocolate for a day or two then evaporate. A one-night stand of a book. A dumb but hot college boyfriend of a book. What is that book? I swear, I will go back to serious literature and yelling at my congresspeople and more paperwork in a week, but right now I just need a recommendation for a fun, IQ-obliterating read. No judgement. What is that book for you?"  These two books were so delightful and satisfying that I returned to her post this morning to capture some additional recommendations.

-- This book came to me by way of a Fresh Air interview with the author.

#  This book came by way of Leslie Pietrzyk's May 16 Facebook post of 4 books that she had recently read: "Earlier in the year I was in a patch of so-so books, and I'm delighted to report that these excellent beauties got me out of my slump! Highly recommend, and 3 are writer-adjacent!"   Her post reminded me that I heard good things about Colored Television when it first came out, so I requested it from the library, where it arrived in record time.

Creative Upkeep: Sorting the Strips, Filling the Markers

Yesterday was a day of creative sorting, creative upkeep.  Late morning, I returned home from a bagel break with a retreat friend who is here working a temporary gig at Lutheridge--what a delight to remember how many friends I have in the wide, wide world.  I decided it was time to return to my Christmas quilt that I want to have ready to gift at Thanksgiving.

Of course, it's been awhile since I picked up this project, so I had to remember what plan I had back in March when I cut strips and put them away.  Happily, I had put all the strips in a separate bag inside the bag of Christmas cloth, so I laid out the strips by color and leapt back in.  Later, I laid out the patches on the bed to see how far I am from finishing.  My plan is to sew the top together at the August Quilt Camp and finish assembling it at the November quilt camp.

In the afternoon I read a bit outside, as I did on Monday--trying to keep my sunkissed look from last week going.  It's been awhile since I spent time on the deck, and I've missed it.  I used to do the refilling of my markers on the deck--at first because we didn't have another table, and then, because it was messy and I wanted the mess to stay outside.  I decided to refill my markers yesterday.

It's a task that I don't particularly like--I would rather buy a new marker than refill the old one, wasteful as that is.  But I've already bought a lot of ink to refill markers, so I try to make myself refill the markers occasionally.  It's sort of meditative (when the ink goes where it should), sort of irritating (when the ink spurts or overflows).

In the evening, I did some stitching and did some sketching, along with some reading.  I felt a bit irritable because it's a week that's unusually hot for the mountains in North Carolina, and I'm trying hard not to turn the AC on too early in the afternoon/evening.  My spouse hates the cold weather months, and I want him to have some heat while it's here (while at the same time wishing he would just go outside and be in the heat out there).  

We finally turned on the AC when the inside temp hit 80 degrees.  Shortly after that, I went to bed where I slept the satisfied sleep of one who is getting her creative life back on track.

Summer Writing Intentions

I have not meant to let so much time go by since my last blog post; indeed, I'm astonished to see that I haven't written since Friday.  On Saturday, I wrote a rough draft of my sermon, and Sunday, I had to be on the road by 7 a.m. to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol.  Yesterday I was putting together the syllabus and other unique-to-me course elements for the online Professional Writing class that I'm teaching for Spartanburg Methodist College this summer.  The class starts on Tuesday, a week from today, but students have access on Thursday.

I often tell people that the only time I really feel that I have off is the week between Christmas and January 1:  no classes to teach, no sermon to write, no prep work to do.  Still, this week feels different, even though I still have appointments and online teaching duties.

It feels like the first week of summer, although it's hard for me to pin down when summer starts precisely.  The last day of in-person class feels like a demarcation line, as does turning in grades, as does graduation.  I want to spend some time this week planning for ways to get back to creative writing, the non-seminary, non-sermon writing.  I want more poetry.  I also want to remember that this summer is the time I planned to put a new poetry collection together.

Here's what I wrote in a December blog post:  " I'm going to wait until summer to do a deeper dive into manuscript assembly. I'm going to create a new manuscript called Higher Ground. The title works on several levels with the climate change poems along with spirituality poems."  That blog post reminded me that I had looked at past manuscripts--do I want to use one of them as a skeleton/scaffolding or start by looking at files of individual poems?

I also want to return to my New Year's resolution, which was also my 2025 resolution:   "I am not feeling OK about how many poems I am not writing. I do a good job of writing down fragments and inspirations, but I'm also aware that I have fewer inspirations and fragments in the past year or two than has been usual. I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished. Fifty-two poems gives me space to catch up, and space to have a white hot streak that sets me ahead."

Here's hoping for some white hot writing streaks this summer!

Notes from an Off-season Beach

We are at the beach in a slightly off season, here in mid-May.  It's warm enough to work up a summer-like sweat in the late afternoon.  But my morning walk today had a chilly enough wind that it was almost unpleasant.  Let me record a few other observations.

--Being here in mid-May means that the only children who are here are younger than elementary school age, which translates into lots of cute toddlers.

--We are also here with lots of older people, the ones with either very flexible vacation times or retired people.

--I am likely in the same age category as many of these older women, yet I am working from a different jewelry sensibility:  a nice way of saying that I love colorful glass beads that aren't very valuable, and I'm surrounded by precious gems and metals that are.  I am not wearing jewelry on vacation, and I'm in the minority.

--I have started judging restaurants by their playlists.  High marks go to Poseidon for having 3 Queen songs, including the more obscure "Hammer to Fall," which I am listening to in my earbuds right now.  What a great song--and it still feels very relevant.

--I do realize that "Hammer to Fall" was released as a single and went up the charts.  When I say it's more obscure, I mean that it no longer gets much airplay.  We're much more likely to hear "Somebody to Love," when we're out and about.

--A different musician performs by the pool each day.  Yesterday the musician could play steel pan drums, guitar, and saxaphone, but he didn't always know the song lyrics.  Strange to hear his version of Sting's "Englishman in New York," which didn't sound very English-y, and we're far, far away from both England and New York.

--Yesterday was my last Lutheran Confessions class.  It was a good class, and I learned a lot, although I'm not sure that much of it will be useful in my future life.  I love the idea that the creeds are not like a pledge of allegiance, but more like a love song of the early Church, more like a hymn than a confession of faith.  It seems counterintuitive--we say we confess our faith using the words of the _____Creed.

--It's been a good week, both bittersweet and tiring and inspiring.

A Poem for Ascension Day

Today is Ascension Day, the day that 40 days after Easter, 10 days before Pentecost. This feast day commemorates Jesus being taken up into Heaven.

Imagine it from the eyes of those who have followed Christ from traipsing around Galilee, Crucifixion, and then Resurrection. You have just gotten your beloved Messiah returned to you, and then, poof, he's gone again. What a whipsawed feeling they must have had.

For more on this day from a theological view, head over to this post on my theology blog.

A few years ago, May Day, Ascension Day, and performance review deadlines all converged, and I wrote a poem, "Conducting a Performance Review on the Feast of the Ascension."  It reminds me of how I am so grateful to have ascended out of administration.

Conducting a Performance Review on the Feast of the Ascension

I have wrestled
with these forms—a modern
crucifixion—for over forty
days. I spend more time
trying to coerce
the software into cooperation
than I do in assessment
of employee performance.

Regulations require me to assemble
the same information across several forms.
Employees must cobble
together thick packets of proof
that they’ve done what the forms
report, although if they hadn’t,
the work would have ground to a halt.

How I wish I could ascend
above all this bureaucracy,
that I could shower
my employees with all the glory
they deserve. I long to welcome
them with praise instead of forms.

Alas, the modern workplace
has yet to be redeemed,
and so, I slog
through forms and documentation and rubrics and scales
of pay. I protect my cowering, stressed
employees as best I can.
I whistle “Solidarity Forever” as I complete
the tasks that must be done.

Beach Sunrises

It's been a time of mostly vacation--and yet, I need to finish a paper for my Lutheran Confessions class that I'm taking and start thinking about Sunday's sermon.  It's been a time of mostly vacation, and yet, I still have 2 online classes that began at midnight.

It's nice to take a walk with different sunrise vistas:

Here's the Facebook post I wrote about the picture:  "This morning's Hilton Head sunrise is winder, sand scoured, with storm clouds rolling in. Only 5 of us on the beach to bear witness."

I thought that yesterday's sunrise would be like this morning's, but yesterday, we had a surprise break in the clouds.  At times, the sun looked like one of those pictures of a distant planet:

At one point yesterday morning, a sea turtle patrol truck drove down the beach away from the sunrise, with one young worker guy hanging out the window taking pictures.  I assume that the workers get to see a beach sunrise every morning.  The fact that one of them went to such an effort to get a picture made me happy.

I've said before, and I'll continue to remind myself that the human capacity for wonder makes me think that humans may survive after all.

On Mother's Day, Vacations, and Work

Here I sit on Mother's Day morning, one of the rare Sundays that I'm not getting ready to drive across the mountain to Bristol to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran.  Let me record some thoughts:

--I feel lucky to have a mom I love who loves me.  I know that many don't have that kind of luck.

--I feel lucky that my experiences of not having children is what I wanted, and it worked out how I envisioned.  I know that many don't have that kind of luck.

--I'm not preaching today because I'm in Hilton Head, SC with my mom and dad, who are in their last half of their 80's.  I know we don't have many more holidays like this ahead of us, so I'm glad to be able to be here.

--The last time I was in Hilton Head was in 2022, with my lower arm in a cast.  In fact, I had just had surgery to repair the broken wrist, so I was on heavy antibiotics, which messed up my GI system.  Happily, I'm not facing those kinds of challenges on this trip.

--The time before that, in 2021, we had stopped to pick up my sister at the Savannah/Hilton Head airport on our way north.  I remember one morning talking about whether or not we should sell our Florida house--the market was just starting to heat up.  She was one of the first who said, "Sell."  No equivocating, no hesitations. I had been accepted to seminary, but I still had my administration job, which was slated to end later in the year when the New York buyers of the school were going to close the Hollywood campus.

--We also came in September of 2020, where we were careful to stay very far apart from each other.  We grocery shopped early in the morning.  The resort amenities were very limited.

--I'm glad I was blogging during the pandemic.  Otherwise, I'd have lost a lot of those memories, or I would think back and doubt that it was really as bad as I was remembering.

--It's been a week of a different kind of disease news, hantavirus on a cruise ship.  I'm glad that I don't love going on a cruise ship.  In light of my understanding of disease and transmission, I have no desire to have a vacation that relies on a plane or a ship.

--It is the day after graduation which went well, but meant it was a day of a lot of driving.

--I came across this statistic in a New York Times article about retirement and work:  "Roughly 37 percent of Americans over 55 are in the work force."  That number seems low to me.  But what I really want is the percentage of working Americans who are ages 60-75.

--I feel lucky to be at a school where I can envision teaching long past the age where others might retire.  I won't be the only older faculty member--a lot of us know a good thing when we see it.

--And a lot of us have been teachers our whole lives, which means we can't afford to retire like past generations could.

Graduation Morning

I am up early, trying to write a rough draft of my last seminary paper for my Lutheran Confessions class, before heading down to Spartanburg for the graduation ceremony for Spartanburg Methodist College.  It will be the last time that both December and May graduates walk across the stage together.  Our number of graduates has gotten too large for our venue, and in the future, we'll have a December graduation and a May graduation, and faculty will decide which one they attend.

SMC's graduation had already outgrown the on-campus facilities, so we use a local high school.  And now, we're too big for that venue--what a wonderful problem to have, especially in this age of shrinking higher ed.

For a week where I didn't have regular classes to teach, I've been up and down I 26 more times than in a regular week:  faculty workshops and the faculty/staff lunch, a trip down to Columbia to see grad school friends, graduation, and a new housing adventure (I'll blog more about that later).  This morning, it's all feeling a bit surreal to me.

But I am also feeling fortunate.  Last year, I was happy that my year-to-year teaching contract had been renewed for another year.  This year, I am ecstatic that I have accepted a tenure track position at SMC.  I'm still not sure what it all means for ordination in the years ahead.  But I am delighted to be able to count on being employed by this school in a way that I hadn't before.

Julian of Norwich and Older Age

May 8 is the feast day of Julian of Norwich in the Anglican and the Lutheran church; in the Catholic church, it's May 13.  Is Julian of Norwich as famous now as Hildegard of Bingen or Ireland's St. Brigid?  Are any of these women more widely known now than they were in grad school when I first started searching for the females that had been left out of a variety of narratives?  I have no idea.  They are more widely known in the subcultures to which I belong, but in the wider world?

In those early days (the late 80's) of discovering female voices that had been left out of literature anthologies, I most treasured Julian of Norwich for her writing.  In later years, the theology of her writing fascinated me--so many centuries before any blooming of anything that could be called feminist, here was a woman writing about a feminine face of God.

Now, as I head into the second half of my life, Julian of Norwich calls to me in a different way.  For me, the last decade can be seen through a lens of loss:  my best friend from high school died a horrible cancer death, there have been other deaths along with a pandemic, we left South Florida for many reasons, job loss among them.  Why would Julian of Norwich speak to me in this new way?

I think of her, alone in her cell, all of her focus shrunk into so small a space.  I think of her as a model of living more with less.  So, I may never hike the Appalachian Trail in one long trek, but that doesn't mean that my life needs to come to a halt.  I may come to a point where I'm living in one room, but that might be a room that is more full than any of my previous homes.

When I've thought about my older age, I've assumed that I would create communities the same way I've always attempted.  I've thought about the Hildegards and the Brigids and their nunneries--I've always wanted (or thought I did) a community like that one.

Of course, having lived in smaller communities, I realize how much work goes into making that kind of community--but the rewards can be so amazing.

As my friends and family have had health crises, it has occurred to me that I may outlast my friends.  There may be no one to follow me to the commune.  What then?

I used to write to my friend with cancer:  "When we are little old ladies, rocking on the porch, we'll look back on this time . . ." and then I'd fill in with various visions.  When she died, I thought, well, I might be rocking on that porch all by myself.

Instead of that lonely vision, I'm going to train myself to think of Julian of Norwich.  Many of us may spend our later years not in some kind of community, but all alone, in our various houses and apartments.  While some isolation will occur, perhaps it can be a time of creativity, a time to focus that many of us won't have had before.

Mystics like Julian of Norwich can show us the way!

Faculty Appreciation

This morning, I'm sort of back to my normal school year schedule, as it has been for the last two years.  I will drive down to Spartanburg Methodist College, leaving here at 7ish, to make sure I'm on time for the morning's requirements.  We have a faculty meeting at 8:30 followed by a morning of faculty development workshops, followed by an appreciation lunch.

I don't resent today's tasks.  I remember a time when I resented quite bitterly being required to go back to campus during time when I wasn't teaching.  The administration viewpoint at the time was that we should be on campus 40 hours, except for our 4 weeks of vacation, 2 around Christmas and 2 in June.  We had a heavy quarterly teaching load:  6-6-5-5 when I started, 5 courses a quarter when the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale finally closed.  At times there was money for more traditional faculty development, like going to conferences.  But it was far more common for the school to save money by requiring us to do faculty development in house.

What really increased the bitterness of the faculty was that as the years progressed, the scrimping on costs got more severe, to the point where we didn't even have coffee, much less lunch or breakfast.  Today, in contrast, we have breakfast and lunch and we always have coffee available.

Let me stress that AiFL was a for-profit school, so those savings were going to the Corporate overlords who had bought the school in a hostile take-over.  I use the term hostile, because the Corporate overlords stripped all value from the school, leaving it a hollow shell.  When the first Corporate overlords bought the school, they kept a paycheck from all of us, telling us we'd get it back when we left.  My boss at the time assured me that if we'd gotten a job in a non-education sector, "in the real business world," we wouldn't see a paycheck for the first month we worked. Later, administrators lost a week of vacation time.  When I left the school, I didn't get that paycheck that had been kept.

I write these words, and I'm amazed we tolerated this treatment.  Of course, many of us had nowhere to go--the world is not awash in full-time faculty jobs, not then, not now.  And in some ways, the school was wonderful, full of creative people who were great colleagues.  In the early years when I was there, the students did go on to find great jobs, so the high cost of the school was worth it.  I was shocked when I discovered how much state schools really cost, so even the high tuition didn't seem as scandalous as the outer world might have seen it.

So believe me when I say, I am happy to be at a school that is committed to keeping costs for students low and committed to be growing at a sensible/conservative rate.  I am grateful to be at a school that truly appreciates faculty.  I am grateful to have a summer off.

I've been teaching full-time at SMC for the past two years, and in August, my contract becomes tenure track--hurrah!  I was on a year to year contract with the hope but not the promise of continuing in a full-time capacity; I taught five courses, but had no committee work requirement.  Now I'll teach a 4 course load, with some committee work.  The tenure track here stresses teaching and service to the college over publication, so I feel good about the next few years and my chance for success here.  More thoughts on that in the weeks and months to come.

Spring Semester Teaching--Done

I am tired, in that end of semester kind of way.  I'm done with grading--yesterday I submitted grades for all 7 (7!) courses I'm still teaching (there were 2 additional courses that ended April 17, and I got those grades done shortly after).  I am not done with seminary papers yet.  I have a sermon to write for Sunday, and because I'm going to be away, I need to get that sermon written by tomorrow.  No wonder I am tired.

I didn't write a blog post yesterday because I was looking at a noon deadline for grade submission, and I wasn't as close to being ready as I wanted to be--the same reason that I didn't do a morning walk.  When I got back from my early afternoon walk, I decided to see if I could get some grading and grade submission done for my Spartanburg Methodist College classes.  It was easier than expected, so I decided to get it all done, while nothing else was tugging at my attention.

Last night, we watched the original The Devil Wears Prada.  I wanted to be watching the sequel, but I didn't have the energy needed to go to a movie theatre--but the original was a treat.  I had forgotten how good that movie is.

This morning, I've done the tasks for open enrollment for benefits at SMC.  Now let me get to work writing that sermon. 

Retreat Chef

I have spent this week-end down at the Isle of Palms (near Charleston, SC), being part of a team that cooked for a retreat.  I used to cook for larger groups more often, so I knew I could do it.  But I'm also relieved that we're coming to the end of the retreat, and it's been a success.

We were helped by the fact that it's a group of people who are easy to cook for:  no dietary restrictions, no allergies.  We made pork tenderloin last night, and everyone ate it, and many went back for seconds.  Most of the participants spend much time in caring professions and providing care for family members--it's been years since anyone cooked for them, and they haven't been shy about expressing their gratitude.

It's an amazing kitchen--that helps too.  The kitchen has 2 dishwashers, 2 stoves, and 3 refrigerators.  It's got lots of equipment and all the basics, like dishes and silverware, every type of pot and pan, baking containers in every size and shape.

It hasn't all been cooking.  There's been Bible study and worship and lots of great conversation.  Back in October, on a chilly morning walk, when I agreed to help with the retreat, I hoped it would be this kind of experience.

It's been interesting being back at this retreat center, which is one of two Lutheran retreat centers in South Carolina.  I first came here as part of a campus group long ago in 1983.  My family came here in 1984 with a church group; it was the beginning of summer, and I wondered how I would last without seeing my college friends for a WHOLE SUMMER.

Now I'm thinking about coming back here at some point this summer to reconnect with old friends. 

I haven't done much grading, but I still have time.  Grades are due on Monday and Tuesday--plenty of time, but as I tell my students in the waning days of a term, not as much time as we once had.  I haven't done much writing, but there is plenty of time--a WHOLE SUMMER.

World Labyrinth Day 2026

   Today is World Labyrinth Day.   It's celebrated the first Saturday of May.

For more on labyrinths, this website is full of information. 

Below is  a poem-like thing with some of my favorite pictures of labyrinths I have known and loved:

We have walked labyrinths
made of fabric, made in fields,
laid out in tiles
or offered by cathedrals.

We have relied
on the promises of the labyrinth:
one path in, no dead ends,
no false turns, not a maze.

We have trusted
that the path leads
to a center that can hold
us all in all our complexities.