Friday, July 28, 2006

fifty-foot ladder in a one-year gig

Below is Sharon Olds' poem, "Physics"
I am using it in my final sermon at CCUU. It is proving very difficult to write this sermon, as my grieving keeps getting in the way. Their life is in my life, and vice-versa.

Her first puzzle had three pieces,
she'd take the last piece, and turn it,
and lower it in, like a sewer-lid,
flush with the street. The bases of the frames were like
wooden fur, guard-hairs sticking out
of the pelt. I'd set one on the floor and spread
the pieces out around it. It makes me
groan to think of Red Riding Hood's hood,
a single, scarlet, pointed pie, how
long since I have seen her. Later, panthers,
500 pieces, and an Annunciation,
1000 pieces, we would gaze, on our elbows,
into its gaps. Now she tells me
that if I were sitting in a twenty-foot barn,
with the doors open at either end,
and a fifty-foot ladder flew through the barn
at the speed of light, there would be a moment
–after the last rung was inside the barn
and before the first rung came out the other end—
when the whole fifty-foot ladder would be
inside the twenty-foot barn, and I believe her,
I have thought her life was inside my life
like that. When she reads the college catalogues I
look away and hum. I have not grown
up, yet, I have lived as my daughter's mother
the way I had lived as my mother's daughter,
inside her life. I have not been born yet.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

antique internet

I am sitting in Sames & Cook, once a hardware store, now a combination antique store and internet cafe, in Mount Gilead, Ohio. I had heard that the place was pretty "hip" (for a small town in the Midwest). To my delight, it is--I'm cruising the 'net on a nice iMac, just ate a BBQ pork sandwich, and I'm surrounded by interesting items. I woudn't want to own many of these things, but it is nice to see them all collected somewhere. If this weren't my home town, if I weren't already old enough for nostalgia to feel real, maybe it wouldn't be as hip. As it is, though, it makes me very happy to sit here. I hope Traverse City has such a place.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

goodbye RIC

Becky worked her last day at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago yesterday. She has really loved her patients and her co-workers, but she is elated to have some time off. See for yourself:
Before:


After:

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

midsummer classic

The worst thing about baseball's All Star game is that there are no games on the day before or after. In my version of heaven, there would be baseball every day. Except for college football games on Saturday afternoons.

Potential moral: by looking for the superlative, we miss the wonder in the everyday.

shine on, you crazy diamond

RIP Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (1946-2006), co-founder of Pink Floyd.

I never met Syd, didn't even like some of his (solo) music. But he was a strong influence on Roger Waters, who has influenced me. I'm sorry for his loss.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

worship set list

This feels a little irrevernt, to be so joyous about this, but it did work well this morning, and it definitely felt like the Spirit was moving, so I present my first-ever Worship Set List:

Warm Up: Ship of Fools played by Tom Dempsey, Jeff Phillips & Tony Pretto ("CCGD")

First Set:
Welcome & Announcements
Prelude Box of Rain (CCGD)
Call to Worship (largely from Box of Rain)
Opening Hymn Morning Has Broken #38 (CCGD)
Chalice Lighting
Covenant
Story for All Ages (man pays for another's burial, is saved by buried person's ghost--a grateful dead story)
Reading 1 The Wheel lyrics, excerpted
Prayer
Meditation hymn Broke-down Palace (CCGD)
Reading 2 Estimated Prophet, excerpted
Antiphonal Reading #645 from Whitman's Song of the Open Road
(children respond "we are traveling souls" after each adult section)
Offering (Offertory: Friend of the Devil" (CCGD)
Reading 3 Greatest Story Ever Told, excerpted
Homily I religious metaphors of the Grateful Dead
(including Humming to Snails by the Rev. Dr. Midge Skwire)

Intermission
("for the next two-to-three minutes, get up, walk around, introduce yourself to somebody you don't know...we'll be back in just a little bit")

Entr'Acte Uncle John's Band (CCGD)
Reading 4 from All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum
Drums
(clapping, stomping, kneeslapping rhythms)
Reading 5 Way to go Home, excerpted (RIP Vince)
Homily II fire from the ice
Closing Hymn Let It Be A Dance (Debbie Lee)
Closing Words ("Let the words be yours...")
Antiphonal Benediction

Encore Ripple (CCGD)

Other than #38 and #311, all songs from the Grateful Dead; two John Perry Barlow songs, the rest Robert Hunter. About 70 minutes.

Friday, July 07, 2006

blog job?!

I received a job offer last night, in an email that began "I linked to your blog from someone else's..." and included a request that I consider their church, if I am "in a job search mode for next year." This brings up two things: I haven't blogged about how happy I am, to have been called to serve the UU Congregation of Grand Traverse (thrilled, ecstatic, a little anxious, *psyched*), and I hadn't previously included links to my friends' blogs. Obviously, these links are good things to have! So, in their Yes!Church debut, links----->

Thank you to all you wonderful folks who link to me. Your friendship, in the real world as well as cyberspace, makes this life sweeter.

If you are "in a job search mode" for next year, check out the Northern Hills Fellowship in Cincinnati, Ohio.