It is done

Which is not to say finished, but at least it's submitted so I can't fuss with it anymore right now. It's been a wild and crazy last couple weeks working on this project for my employer, and the last 48 hours or so have been the worst. My son and I have been working tandem, some 150 miles away from each other, on our end-of-the-year end-of-the-semester projects respectively. So, I've had to field his emails in the middle of the night with his latest draft for my comments (which he doesn't necessarily pay attention to -- he just needs to hear if he's on the right track and seems to think I know), while still trying to stay focused on my own work.

Meanwhile, since I turned in my final draft, and belatedly took the dog outside, it has come to me that I could have dealt better with the last section if I had moved it to an earlier part and checked again the federal regulations that go with the statute. Always these things come literally out of the blue when I am off doing something else. In fact, the first day I really understood the whole statutory scheme, it came to me as I woke up in the morning. Now I'll have to wait to make it look like I made the changes in response to my boss's critique (assuming he ever reads all 37 pages of it, including endnotes).

So, what do I do now to celebrate? I get to finally get cleaned up, run to the bank and the gas station, maybe shovel some snow, and get ready to go to my very first rock concert ever, 130 miles away, with a carload of teenagers, where we will eventually meet my son, who is coming up from college, and will all travel back home late at night. In the morning, I have an ordination to attend out of town, and maybe sometime after that maybe I'll get to BEGIN thinking about Christmas, maybe find a tree, and start shopping if need be. Then, maybe, just maybe, I'll stop long enough to read the ++ABC's latest, which I gather isn't very good, but who knows, maybe he's been busy, too, helping his kid with a Dostoevsky paper.

Then again, maybe what I'll do instead is get my Messiah music and see if I can really make some headway with the Alto runs in "To Us a Child is Born." A lot to tackle for an old person new to singing choral music. My goal is to make enough sound to support the "section" (well, there's only two of us for Christmas Eve!) but not enough to be heard if I get a note wrong. I guess that's pretty crazy (that's me!), so perhaps I'll just try to learn to sing all the right notes (in order, no less) with my electronic keyboard and see what happens at next rehearsal.

At least Mad Priest has already given me my present -- posting my first audio contribution to the mission work of his site. Thanks be to God, and to all a good night (or something to that effect).

Amen.

Waiting for the King to Come

An afternoon ice storm canceled our Advent Lessons and Carols Evensong last week. I was really looking forward to it, having for years either listened to or sung this service which, for me, marks the beginning of Advent.

In order to salvage all the music we've been preparing since September, Sunday we will do a shortened version of the program. One of my favorites is a new setting for this hymn, which begins:

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light triumphant breaks;
When beauty gilds the eastern hills,
And life to joy awakes.

The music, by Robert Lind, is both startling and beautiful, with the piano playing a duet, rather than an accompaniment, with the choir. It's got that Advent kind of clear, cold, crisp air and expectancy scaling upwards, reaching towards the Star in East breaking through the dark night.

Listen here (click on "Listen to sample audio").

The Crazy Ones

Today's junk mail that got through the spam filter:

Hey Karthy,

Here's to you and all the other crazy ones. Check out this 1 minute Apple ad honoring your kind ...

See it here: http://www.ConcordSociety.org/crazyones

Rock on,
Garret LoPorto
Author of The DaVinci Method

You were sent this because you took this personality test and scored 50% similar to the world\\'s greatest entrepreneurs.

[Hey this is fun -- open up an email, click a couple places, and presto a blog entry! All while I'm waiting to get an edit back from the central office. No need to think or write anything beautiful or profound -- just declare my Craziness. Back to my regularly scheduled program. BTW, I have no recollection of taking their personality test, but surely I can blame it on Eileen (though I hesitate since she's recently been maligned by the great Crazy One, but surely she'll forgive me).]

Buried in more ways than one

The view from my "office" window today.

City of God Appeal

Just in case anyone's missed it, please go to City of God Appeal and make a donation for the mission and work of Christ the King in in the Cidade de Deus, one of the most impoverished and dangerous neighbourhoods in the world.

I'll "borrow" from Mad Priest the latest news from Luiz Cohelo:

From Luiz Coelho:

First of all, I'd like to thank you for spreading the word about this initiative. Christ the King is, more than anything, the story of a rebirth.

Christ the King was the project of one man very dedicated to God's work: the Rev. Jorge Macedo. About 20 years ago, he managed to gather donations from one parish in Canada, one parish in the US and from a Social Fund in the Netherlands, and build the solid builiding Christ the King now has. He was the founder, rector and principal of an elementary school that existed there.

Sadly, he died of cancer some years ago, and due to economic crisis which didn't (and still doesn't) allow the Diocese of Rio de Janeiro to hire more clergy, Fr. Macedo was substituted by a series of supply priests (who were at the same time in charge of one or even two other parishes) and it experienced a decline in membership. The school failed into bankruptcy and a couple years ago, there were only 4 active members and an empty school building. Some in the diocese wanted to sell the property, but there was a last try: the school was converted into a social project, which is also funded by ERD, and rents space to several community-based initiatives. And one year ago, a young priest, Fr. Eduardo Costa, was assigned to that parish (Fr. Eduardo is also the rector of Most Holy Trinity in Méier). That's how I found the parish when I first went there, even before Fr. Eduardo's official installment. I was about to send my seminary papers and still doubtful about my vocation. Some time, later I was already officially helping serve there and with my training on charge. Christ the King convinced me I had something to do with the Church.

After one year of Fr. Eduardo's installment, last sunday, our diocesan bishop visited us. We had more than sixty people there. 10 children were baptized, 9 adults were confirmed and one was received into communion. I invite you to take a look AT THE PICS.

The formula? I have no idea... We just tried to make room for people and make sure they are loved. Most of our parishioners were the "leftovers" of society, and many of our Christian sisters/brothers didn't care much about them, because they weren't legally married, or were poor, or not well seen... We became a church of refugees... literally. Once, the drug dealers shot against the police in front of the church and we had to lock ourselves inside it. As our website says, Christ the King is a community which seeks the divine path of conversion through its common faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, through respect for the incarnational mystery and through a sacramental life rooted in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist every Sunday.

Next sunday will be my last official Sunday there. I'm very proud and honored to know some of you are contributing to our ministry with children. We have about 20 children who attend our parish every Sunday, and the more we expand this number, the less children will be corrupted by drug traffic (drug dealers start hiring children at the age of 10). These donations will be directed to this ministry. Some of our goals are: buying musical instruments for them (drums, flutes, etc), buying Christian Education material and a DVD player and some cartoons on Jesus and the Bible. Money will eventually go to our parish kitchen (we serve a meal to everybody - especially the children - after services) if we run out of food.

Advent

This was from the Church of the Advent, now the Advent Chapel in Montreal. Something about the rich blues in Anglo-Catholic churches -- this one for the Advent sky. I have no profound reflections on the season, just that it is dark, quiet, and full of reflection and expectancy.

It's Time

It begins. No, not the rapture. Winter.

Elizabeth Forter 1922 - 2007

I was just thinking the other day about how few women professors there were back when I attended college in the 1970's, despite the emphasis on the "liberal" part of our "liberal arts" education and the fact that the school had recently merged with Milwaukee-Downer Women's College. Men had an inordinate influence on my thinking and were those whose opinions mattered most to me. None that I recall discriminated against female students or failed to be supportive, but in hindsight it would have been helpful to have had more women around to have known as teachers and scholars and simply as mature human beings.

Then today I opened up an email announcing the death of Elizabeth Forter, a professor in the English department, the department of my major. I'm embarrassed to say that I had forgotten about her. I can now recall having taken at least two courses from her -- the third of the intermediate level courses on English literature covering the 19th and 20th c. and an upper level course on the English Novel, which went from Sterne and Fielding through Virginia Woolf. It was in that course that I first read Jane Austen - a delightful discovery, which I appreciated all the more for having made it so late.

Yet, as much as I enjoyed the courses I had with "Miss Forter" (although they invariably had Ph.D's, the custom at the school was to address professors as "Miss" or "Mr." because they considered "Dr." pretentious), I scarcely knew her at all. Turns out that she was an Episcopalian (not that it would have mattered to me back then -- although All Saints is located across the street from campus, I never darkened the doors of any church in college, except maybe the Methodist for an Easter Sunday service or two).

What I can recall was her wit, intelligence, and what the article aptly described as "good cheer." Elizabeth was not cheerful in the sense of being "cheery." But there was something about her, a calm sense of satisfaction and well-being that radiated from her, not out of a sense of optimism but rather a marvelous sense of humor and curiosity about the human condition and a delight and appreciation of those who wrote well about it, such as Austen. I believe her "specialty" was Trollope, whom she managed to continue to enjoy despite years of study, perhaps because Elizabeth knew, above all, how to truly read rather than merely dissect. I guess one might say that Elizabeth was someone who was characteristically in "good humor" -- a rare and wonderful gift to even those who only knew her at a distance.

I'm sad to hear of her death and regret I never got to know her better. At the time I was taking her courses, I was at the height of sturm and drang as only I, in full post-adolescence, could muster. I was more interested in listening to the men, wrestling with the likes of Foucault and Derrida or mucking in the swamps of Faulkner's Mississippi or swimming in the whiteness of Melville's whale than attending to a woman who was quietly but firmly sure of herself, her worth, and the respect of her colleagues, who was as interested in the big picture, the comedy and tragedy of human folly as the form and structure of the novel. Those young women and men who had the good sense to have worked closely with her and gotten to know her personally must have gained a great deal.

May she rest in peace and her friends and family find comfort.

Blame it on Eileen

Eileen has tagged me. Now she should know by now that I don't do memes (just like I don't do email chains and pretty much don't do anything anyone ever tells me to do). But, the hour is late, and this sure beats working for the moment, and I don't have the presence of mind to speak to all those to whom I've long missed writing, so here goes my belated thankful thoughts, now that we're past the Thanksgiving holiday (best commemorated by Sarcastic Lutheran) and Black Friday.

Seriously, what am I thankful for?

1. God's grace and love. Truly. Lately it seems like I've been blessed with God's special care and attention which, I'm afraid, often hits me most when I haven't been paying much attention myself.

2. My husband. He can be very difficult to get along with at times (as can I), but he is faithful and dutiful in ways that are astonishing. I am thankful and honored to have his love.

3. The internet. As much as I curse it at times when I let myself get overloaded with all that is out there, it brings a richness to life I could have scarcely imagined a few years ago. While I cannot spend as much time establishing personal connections as I'd like, it is so wonderful to be able to read others' thoughts, likeminded and otherwise.

4. My backyard, neighborhood, and place in the world. I've never been so happy about where I live. The physical environment is beautiful. It's a wonderful place to come home to, one I need to get know better before we must leave someday when we retire.

5. My kids. No doubt I am too wrapped up in them and their lives, but I never cease to be amazed that they and I got this far together. I never really planned on having children, and they did not arrive until my late, late 30's. But they have taught me so much, challenged just about everything about me, and occasionally make me feel I have something worthwhile to offer others. Of course they drive me crazy, too, but.... Funny about my daughter deciding at the last minute that we just had to clear off the dining room table for Thanksgiving dinner (we were going to eat at the everyday table in the family room instead), and she actually found a cloth tablecloth and napkins, washed and dried them, and set the table with candles. God knows how it happened, but we're family and I guess we have some kind of family traditions, or at least moments.

Well, that was five. Pretty obvious stuff, I guess. Memes should be kind of funny and different. I suppose I could add a few more -- beagles, smells and bells high Episcopal liturgy, fresh popcorn, swimming pools, swimming in salt seawater, soft and fluffy snowflakes, unexpectedly finding a laundry basket of clean underwear, peanut butter, curling up in bed with a good book, and............ well, that's a start.

Another Loss

Remembering Kaitlin Mahr '09

Kaitlin Mahr '09 was laid to rest Saturday, Nov. 24, in Onalaska, Wis. The Lawrence junior was remembered in the La Crosse Tribune last week.

From the Lawrence University Home Page.
LaCrosse Tribune obituary here.

Words fail me. I did not know this young woman and I only stumbled across this item via RMJ's reference at Adventus to Martin Marty (Marty's website reported that he will be speaking at an honors convocation at Lawrence University in April 2008 and gave the link. Marty gave the commencement address at my Lawrence graduation in 1977). This might have been me 34 years ago. I lived, loved, danced, and was deeply depressed in and near Lawrence for many years. I was fortunate enough to have come back from the hospital alive after a similar incident, although at the time I was not at all thankful for it. I am so deeply sorry that Kaitlin did not make it and will no longer be dancing again here on earth. Prayers for her and her family and friends.