Pet Blessing Service 2019

We are headed into the Pet Blessing Service zone.  Across the nation this week, many churches will have this kind of service as we celebrate the life of St. Francis (the one of Assisi, not the current pope who has yet to be canonized).

Our church did its Pet Blessing service yesterday.  Some years we do an extra service, but this year we moved the service into the fellowship hall and held it as our regular Sunday service.

At first, I thought we wouldn't have many pets, and I wondered why we did this at all.  But as the morning progressed, we had more pets joined.  And then I remembered that we also bless pets from a distance.  People brought pictures of their pets, and there might have been one or two pets attending remotely, by way of smart phone.

Our organist was away, but we had great music with our other musicians.  We had a meditation about the role of pets.  Afterward, we had pizza for a congregational meeting.

I have often wondered if we might have more attendance if we welcomed pets to our service every week.  I don't know what we'd do about the people with allergies or those who are scared of animals.  If you're the kind of person who would object to random noises by pets, children, and other people, you're likely going to another church already, so we wouldn't have to worry about that.

Still, we won't be the bring your pets to worship church anytime soon.  Or maybe we will.  I've been surprised by various turns of events in the past.  We are a church of radical welcome after all.  This year we're welcoming people of all genders/sexual preferences, so perhaps in a future year, we'll extend that to pets.

The Hinge Holiday of Michaelmas

If we lived in an earlier culture, we would celebrate Michaelmas today.  It's one of the harvest holidays, one of the quarterly celebrations that kept people rooted to traditions of the seasonal cycles.

If we lived in a high church kind of time, we would celebrate the feast day of St. Michael and all angels. The Divine Hours, written by Phyllis Tickle, explains that this feast is a celebration of the role of angels in the divine plan.

I am more interested in the idea of a hinge holiday, the way we shift from one direction to another.  In Holidays and Holy Nights, Christopher Hill explains, "In summer we celebrate our at-homeness in the world. Michaelmas balances that feeling (for) in autumn we feel our not-at-homeness, the sense of wanting something else, something we can't name. We feel like wayfaring strangers... Summer is static - in Latin, solstice means 'the stationary sun'" Summer is the sacrament of natural harmony with God... while autumn we fall away from the dreaming paradise of summer back into the conflict of light and dark" (pp. 36-37).

I am trying to slow down, even as the world encourages us to zoom, zoom, zoom.  I want to savor the way the afternoon light slides into evening from a different angle now.  I want to enjoy the seasonal decorations that we have now.  Two weeks ago, I started the transformation of the front porch:

Yesterday, I bought an autumnal bouquet.

Last night, we lit the candles in the terracotta candle holder:

I love the shadows made by the flickering lights, which I have not been able to capture on film:

A few weeks from now, I'll add real pumpkins to the mix, once they arrive at my church.  First I'll help offload them from the truck.

Of course, we still don't have much in the way of cooler weather.  But that's the nature of these hinge holidays, at least where I've always lived.  I've always had to provide some additional prompts to keep my attention coming back to the seasonal shifts.

September Struggles

I sit here sipping a smoothie that I made with my new immersion blender.  I bought the blender with the hope that blending soup into creaminess would be easier.  That first (and only until this morning) experience was not as effortless as the cooking shows make it seem.

This morning, I decided that I needed a nourishing start to the day, and I had already bought frozen blueberries, frozen raspberries, and frozen spinach.  I added some yogurt, and after 2 pulses, I had a smoothie!  Much easier than the blender, and I can make a smaller batch, something I never mastered in the full-size blender.

Sadly, when I look back on this month of September that's slipping away, I don't see lots of high points.  And many of my friends report similar feelings.

As I look back, it's no wonder that I'm tired.  We began this month by keeping a close eye on Hurricane Dorian. I spent every week this month on non-stop accreditation tasks along with the end of the quarter at my full-time job which has ballooned into a time and a half job.  We got the cottage "ready" for my sister-in-law, and she moved in.  We took on our new roles as co-treasurers at church, and I've done more of that than my spouse, the other co-treasurer.

As I drove home last night, after slogging through another week of accreditation work, I was grateful that I had given away my ticket to a food and wine festival.  I have been tired to my very bones.

But I've noticed a bit of a shift, both in the light and the morning temperatures.  When we first moved down here, it felt unremittingly hot for 9 months a year.  When we first moved here, we lived in a triplex, and our landlady lived in one of the units.  I stepped outside one morning, and she said, "The weather is changing.  Do you feel it?"

I expressed my utter disbelief.  She smiled and said, "Just wait until you've lived here awhile."  I waited years and still didn't sense it.  But indeed, a few days ago, it was a bit less hot.  Not cool, not autumnal--in fact, the temps reminded me of the way summer used to be, back when I lived in South Carolina, back when I would get up early to get the baking and the writing done in the cool of the morning.  Back when there was a cool of the morning.

But let me also record some happy moments:  one of my favorite poems that I wrote recently got accepted by Sojourners, which is the perfect home for the poem.  It's been two weeks of having my sister-in-law in the cottage, and so far, so good.  I've had some time with friends, some reunions with people I haven't seen in quite awhile.  I am never writing as much as I wish I could, but I am continuing to find time to write.

However, I am more than ready to see what October has in store for us.

High Holy Days and Low Ordinary Days

In later years, I wonder what I'll look back on and wonder why I didn't write more about that.  I go back to my journals that I kept in college, and I'm always very surprised by what huge national and international events get no mention in those pages.

I feel like I should write more about the impeachment proceedings of this week.  Frankly, I imagine that with the advantage of years between the Trump administration and the future, we will look back and wonder why this incident warranted impeachment, while so many other issues slid right by.

It's been the kind of week where I've been working intensely at work to get ready for a mock accreditation visit by Corporate folks today.  I've had evening meetings and a variety of obligations.  Race, race, hurry, hurry.  I've been more frazzled than usual.

When I come up for air, I check the news to see what new part of our long, national nightmare has been revealed.  Some part of me always wonders if I'm not reading some dark satire.  And then I dive deep into work again.

It's not the kind of work for which one will ever be awarded the MacArthur genius award.  Sigh.

These are the days when a variety of cultures celebrate high, holy days.  It's a hinge time between seasons.  It's a time when I wish I could slow down and savor the shift.

Let me look for ways to do that as I move through the next days.

The Genius of Essays

I did not plan to spend the last month reading collections of essays.  In fact, I didn't even realize I was doing so until I updated my Books Read 2019 list.  I began by reading I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum, who has spent much of her writing life reviewing TV shows. What a great book—wonderful to read her reviews about TV shows I’ve watched, but even when she talks about unfamiliar shows, it’s a great book.  And it's interesting to think about how much television has changed--now it's an art form that many more of us take seriously than we would have decades ago.

I decided to read the book when I heard Nussbaum interviewed on NPR.  Similarly, I got Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror after hearing her on several NPR shows.  Often when I've heard people on NPR, I'm bored by the book--it's as if I've already heard the major points, and there's not much reason to read the book.  That has not been the case with either of these books.

However, my favorite book of essays in this month of essays is Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations.  I would likely not have discovered this book without this review on NPR's Fresh Air.  The essays have  a poetic quality, moment after moment where I catch my breath and savor the sentence or the image.  Renkl explores a variety of topics, but she's often weaving back to the natural world and to all sorts of family constellations.

I found my favorite essay online--go here and scroll down to read "The Imperfect-Family Beatitudes."  It enchanted me from the beginning:  "Blessed is the weary mother who rises before daybreak for no project or prayer book, for no reason but the solace of a sleeping house and a tepid cup of instant coffee and a fat dog curled on her lap. Hers is the fleeting kingdom of heaven."

I found her depictions of life with her aging parents particularly poignant.  She notes, "The end of caregiving isn't freedom.  The end of caregiving is grief" (p. 189).  This is true of aging parents, but also of other kinds of caretaking:  the child who goes off to college, the bird that cannot be saved, the flowers taken over by weeds.  About those non-native species of plants she says, "The alien does not know it's an alien" (p. 10).

As I'm looking at my Books Read 2019 list, I'm realizing that I'm not doing a great job of reading more poetry.  I started off the year so strongly in that area, but it's fallen off.  Maybe it's time to finally get around to reading Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which has been on my to-read shelf for longer than I like to realize.

I confess that I thought of this book because of the announcement of this year's MacArthur awards.  I looked over this list and tried not to think about my own age and the age of the winners.  Some years I'm inspired by the list, but not this year.

This year I was already in a despondent place about so much of my life.  Looking at the list makes me even more despairing about all the opportunities that I haven't found.  It's been the kind of September where I haven't written much, and I've sent out nothing.

But I am hopeful that the pace of these weeks will abate.  We will get our materials ready for the accreditation visit and then, hopefully, we can go back to a more sane pace.

In the meantime, at least I have been able to read a bit here and there.  And that's where the essay format is perfect for these times, whether it's the longer, deeper essays of Jia Tolentino or the perfect jewels of the shorter essays of Renkl.

Let me hang onto the elements of my life that I love while working my way back to all that I hold dear.

The Next Garden

Once the path seemed so clear:

Once we assumed that every gate would open:

Now we must consider what's on the other side:

Now we fear we're lost in the weeds:

Maybe we're destined for a different garden than the one our younger selves would have chosen:

Let us rest awhile in this place while we discern the next step:

From Raggedy Individual Prayers to a Hoop of Prayers

Yesterday, I preached the sermon.  We've been doing a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer, and I got to preach on "Give us this day our daily bread."  As I thought about what I would say, and as I sorted through old possessions coming from the cottage, I got an idea for my big hoop that I bought but have never used for quilting.

As people came into the church, I asked them to choose a strip of cloth that spoke to them.

In the beginning of the sermon, we thought about what we needed for sustenance as we held the strip of cloth. Then I passed the hoop around and asked everyone to tie their piece of cloth on the hoop.

I talked about our individual wants and needs and the needs of the larger community--and how our solitary prayers feel like raggedy scraps, but when we add our prayers together, we can transform the world.

I did keep trying to loop back to the ideas of daily bread and what sustains us--but also a larger vision of sustenance. I was pleased that everyone took a strip of fabric and that everyone enthusiastically tied their strip to the hoop.  I talked about what we personally need to for sustenance, but also what the larger society needs for sustenance.

I also added another element.  I wanted a cross in the middle, and I thought about using one of the crosses made of palms that are left over from Palm Sunday.  But in the office, I had lots of crosses to choose from, and I chose the one above.

I really like the way what it does for the hoop:

And now we have a different element to take us to All Saints Sunday.  Here's the larger view:

I'm calling Sunday morning a success, even though my sermon went in an entirely different direction.  I want to say it was the Holy Spirit, but some days I worry that it's sloppiness and my inability to stick to my sermon prep.