Category: Church

Ingredaments acquired

Yesterday was a day of cleaning out my car, and the kitchen, acquiring ingredients for spicy soup, and feasting Tom at Tom and Peggy’s.  Poor guy has some kind of lungcrud and was muttering about whether a girdle would work for his rib pains from coughing so OF COURSE I told the family story about how when Grampa got kicked by a horse he repurposed Gramma’s girdle to ease his rib pain.  She even wrote a poem about it.  Good times!

I assisted in the making of cheese sauce and it was lovely to see Lady Miss B and her energetic lad; I’d been up late and Jeff was feeling distinctly poorly and so we ate our lovely roast beast and skedaddled early.  Paul and Keith were also in attendance.

I updated my resume and sent it off to the recruiter.  However I have not stopped sending out resumes, hopeful as I am this lead will pan out.

Ah, soup lunch.  It’s worth it all to see the happy congregants sucking back lovingly prepared food.  I guess I’ll always have that corner of momness in my brain.

Poor Carrie… she’s having a hell of a time moving off Haida Gwaii.  After saying they would, now the Ministry is saying not only won’t they move her she’s going to get any ‘profits’ she makes from the sale of her furniture that she scrimped and saved for deducted from her income.  She’s got disabilities that make packing and hauling a bit problematic.  And gosh, she’ll be making 10 cents on the dollar, if that, for the furniture seeing as how people are leaving Haida Gwaii in droves after the last two big earthquakes and the weeks of aftershocks which followed.  The west coast of Haida Gwaii could get a tsunami anytime.  Jeff and I feel for her and we have room for her for a month, but no room for her furniture even if by some miracle she gets to bring it with her.   And really, she wants to live in Victoria and Juliana has no room due to her tenants, and the parental units have no time or space for stuff or drama.  I looked at my friendslist here in town and I have no suggestions.  Anybody disciplined enough to not have junk overflowing every room is already renting space.  It’s awful to feel so helpless when friends are in need.  I’ve already told her that if she puts her stuff before her safety life may get very very uncomfortable.  I like to think I would not go running back into the house on fire to fetch Otto.  I am more important than my stuff! But I still feel bad, this is something I’d like to fix… if I had any spare cycles.  I’m also very very concerned about other stuff going on in her life which I don’t feel comfy about posting.

 

I know I have never

fallen asleep like this.

It’s a dog with its paw in its mouth.

Chalice circle was a very big disappointment.  Like uncomfortable making disappointment.  It got better, but I still felt very withdrawn and disconnected at the end.

1.  I did some but not all of the homework.  I was supposed to print out the homework and bring it with me, and also a show and tell item, but I didn’t do that.

2. Lot of no-shows.  This is hard to bear; a lot of organizing went into this and I feel for both host and facilitator.

3.  The ritual was in my view goofy, poorly worded and ever so sincere (we’re doing this out of a book called Soul to Soul and while I admire the effort put into it it’s all a bit ‘canned’) with that reverent spoken word Unitarian sincerity which long timers will completely get and the rest of you will go hunh?  And it got my atheist back up.  I don’t give a shit about facing north and thanking mother earth for her wisdom or toenail clippings or whatever.  I was sneakily pleased that I wasn’t the only person in the room with the ish.  NOTE: If it had been a real Cree or Salish greeting of the directions, I could have stood that.  That has emotional resonance; not some made up pseudo Wiccan horse maneuvers.  However the ritual was brief, I’ll give ’em that.

4.  I was appalled, and I mean it, when I brought 10$ worth of cheese and got told to take it home with me as these chalice circles were not to involve food. I could feel the ghosts of a hundred Mennonite relatives cluster round me with staring eyes and pointing fingers, Matthew 25:35 “I was hungry and you fed me!”  How can the soul be nourished without the body!?

5.  The long pauses in between sharing were good.  That was stabilizing.

6.  There was housekeeping afterwards and my comment about food got taken seriously.  We will have tea or something bracing and then have the sharing.

7. The goofy ritual is supposed to be tried 4 times until we get used to it and THEN if we don’t like it we’re supposed to ditch it.  Hard to believe this never caught on with the Catholic Church.

8.  And there’s @@@@@@ homework.  We covenant to do the *$YO homework.  Srsly.  The point is to increase sacrifice and therefore commitment and it counts as religious education, which the minister is getting marked on, and it means that everybody is going to go through the curriculum at the same time in much the same way (varying by facilitator of course).  If it was my puppy, I’d be doing it SO DIFFERENTLY AND  there would still be more time for sharing.  I totally get why this is happening this way, and the increased emphasis on shared experiences to somehow account for how we don’t really have a liturgical year or specific faith wide rituals has to do with gluing newcomers into the church and broadening and deepening fellowship.  I get all that.  But without food?  Jesus wept.

I believe it could be done better, but since I’m working on other stuff for Unitarianism (my current in process homily is called “Threat Level”) and there’s this LITTLE NOTION THAT I CAN’T FIND A FUCKING COMPETENT BOOKKEEPER TO SAVE MY LIFE and I’m desperate and miserable and anxious and horrified and frightened about it really is not helping.  I thought I had a back up plan but I can’t get anybody.  It’s so painful and awkward it’s warping my frame.

On the plus side I’m getting a lot of money back on my taxes, or so the accountant tells me.

 

This is a year when my faith will be tested and toyed with, and it was ever so.

 

 

 

 

Didn’t happen

I drove all the way down there and there was no safe place to park (sorry, I’m no parking under a towaway zone sign so I can – with no cash on me – deal with trying to get home on transit  or cab and then bail the car out).  I guess my revisionist tendencies continue.

Church in 3.5 hours.  I am going to go a bit early to make sure the instruments are at the right temperature and help with set up.

very foggy

It’s a spooky foggy morning out here in east Burnaby.

Jeff’s coming home from Victoria today.  The cats sure make a lot of noise when they go up and down the stairs; I keep thinking it’s something that weighs 200 pounds, but it’s just a cat.  Not nice when you’re in the house alone.

I was in bed by nine last night and slept through the ball drop.

I called the minister to wish her a happy new year.  She was going to be ordained from our church this year but her dad’s coming to the end of his life and she’s helping her mother.  Sounds like they are doing everything right and bringing him home.

Margot really really hates firecrackers.  She was sitting next to me breathing hard and wincing every time something went off.

I suspect 2013 will be the weirdest year ever.

 

 

 

 

Some phrases are so evocative

I am currently reading Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein.  Which is, textual evidence to the contrary, about memory and memory palaces and the history of memory.

 

He has provided a phrase I find particularly memorable.  On the day of his bar mitzvah, he was a ‘parrot in a yarmulke’ which essentially means that I will not ever be able to think about a bar mitzvah ever again without this mental image.

 

I was writing cheques for church this morning over at Sue’s place (she also joined me for breakfast) and her cat punched a hole in a letter I have to send.  Most entertaining.

 

New definition of fabulous

If we now construct the word fabulous to mean that ‘We did nothing, and enjoyed it immensely’ I had a fabulous visit to the parents’. My role as a grandchild deliverywoman is now complete.  Katie had a really good night of sleep, which is excellent because she hasn’t been sleeping too well.  I slept 8 hours continuously which must be a recent record.  I think one of the reasons I sleep so well there is because they keep the humidity set to “Human, rejoice!” as opposed to most gas heated homes, which in the winter time is “Human, all your mucous mebranes are belong to us!  Suffer!  Mwa ha ha!”

My blood sugar is 6.  My blood pressure is 136 over 88.  Not worrisome but it’s definitely time to take some weight off.  These are the kinds of things one learns when one visits parents!

I bought the What Colour is Your Parachute 2012 workbook, and it’s making me turn things over in my mind. I also bought yet another writing book.  I haven’t set a record, but I may yet.

Home made bean with bacon soup going to church with me today.  I extracted one bowlful for Jeff, as he said “Oo!” when he saw/smelled it.

Izzy is doing very well.  He’s eating every five days, and becoming quite hand tame.  He really likes Katie’s glasses.  He will be almost two metres long when he quits growing in a couple of years.

State Troopers of Connecticut have assigned a detail of Troopers to protect the families of the slain children and staff from unwanted attention.  This is in response to the crushing attention of the media, may they all experience the pangs of conscience, and the unindicted miscreants of the Westboro Baptist Church, who have promised to picket the funeral.  Given that the American public LOATHES the Westboro Baptist Church and is starting to get pissed off at the media, I think the response is fitting and an appropriate use of government resources.

Now I DEFINITELY need more coffee.  This is going to be a long day.  I am once again opening and closing at church and there is yet another interminable church discussion today.  If I get out of the meeting without offending anyone I’ll count it a plus.  HA HA KIDDING.  That’s half the fun.  NEED COFFEE.

Margot didn’t even respond when I came through the door last night (after a 6 hour journey, blech, thanks to the *ing weather in the Strait yesterday).

 

frabjous news

I have simply spectacular good news but I can’t say anything about it until I receive authorization.  It has to do with me and music.  I’ll leave it at that.

Board meeting was excellent and productive.  We had a board meeting/potluck and Jeff grazed on leftovers.  One of the joys of Unitarianism is candle wax, and I got some on my gran’s linen tablecloth but sing HA I have already ironed the wax out and I’ve run the tablecloth through the laundry.  So no harm done.  We had to make some hard choices, but Debra is an awesome minister and she is completely unFaZed by organizational change, is a great communicator and gosh darn a nice person.  She told her partner recently that she’s falling in love with Beacon.  I dearly love Rev Katie and really enjoy her posts (and her hubby’s) on facebook (the only way I keep track of her as there is meshugas about a retired minister poking head back in to a church for a couple of years) but she is a reserved individual and Debra is a gregarious individual and it’s obviously playing out in an interesting way in congregational life.

I’m seeing Katie for lunch today – her treat, yippee.

TAMMY IS COMING THIS MONTH.  So looking forward to seeing her and her mum, whom I usually see at the festive season.

Sue is playing Santa Claus in a play which I am going to go see.  She says playing Santa Claus is hot and hard, which kinda makes it sound pornographic now I write it out like that.

I got a completely unprintable and exceedingly welcome compliment from somebody recently, to the point that I must now quote Mark Twain: “I can live two months on a good compliment”.  I may have to stretch it out even farther than that.

I have a very obnoxious complaint to make about somebody and I am not going to publicly state it.  I want a medal or something.

I think Jeff is thrilled we had company; there’s whipped cream in the fridge and the kitchen table is now clear.  Oops, just put laundry on it.  O well, it was nice while it lasted.

This afternoon after my Katietime I will do something productive, just haven’t figured out which of my piles of shit I should attempt to render into something useful first.

I love Lockout.  Guy Pearce is A GREAT SMARTASS. Man after my own heart.  Here’s a quote from him: [2007, on his music] “I don’t want to make music to get into the pop charts and make a career out of it. I just want to play music with other people. Sometimes I record it. I think there is a value in recording it in the same way that you might write a diary. Writing a diary does not mean that you want to publish it. If this is my diary, I’m not sure that I want it to be read. And anyway, I think there is an automatic disdain for somebody who is too ambitious. People think as an actor you are gifted and don’t have any troubles in life. You are lucky to be doing this thing where all you have to do is go around telling lies and you get to kiss beautiful women. So how dare you want to be able to do this other thing. I am not interested in releasing music to a skeptical audience.”

I mourn the passing of Dave Brubeck, and light a candle also for the victims of the Montréal Massacre

More life

  • Wonderful meeting with Bareld; I am now feeling MUCH better about being a treasurer. He said “I’ve seen it all” and he shared.  We often end services with “You are not alone” as the benediction, and he provided coffee chocolate and sage advice so I really felt the benediction!  Also got to see Marylke briefly as she came in from erranding about.
  • Paid UPS so we won’t lose our church mailbox.  Given it’s the address on the cheques…. you see the problem.
  • Tomorrow, cleaning and cooking for the board meeting at my house.  It will be a potluck.  I’m actually kinda looking forward to it.
  • Keith has framed and will be hanging up his ‘shingle’ – his diploma and professional designations – at the place he is now working.  I AM THRILLED.
  • Katie phoned me yesterday to ‘hear the sound of my voice’ (and can there BE words a mother more wants to hear, at least a partway functioning mom) and to tell me she’s trying to rearrange her sched so she’s got Sunday Monday off.  This is partly because she wants to actually SEE Kyle, and also because as she said, “If I get it you’ll see more of me in church.”  THRILLED ALSO.  Two very very happy making convos in one day, it was rather delightfully dizzying.
  • Saw Premium Rush AND LOVED IT.  I had heard it was a guilty pleasure of a movie, but all I can say is that it was very well constructed and didn’t have airs or pretensions – it was made to entertain, at which it succeeded marvellously.  I now have Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s evol chuckle percolating through my brain.
  • Margot barfed on my copy of Red Roses and Dead Things.  This does not accord with my opinion of this fine work of music.
  • Jeff continues to be the World’s Most Awesome Broâ„¢.

 

 

 

 

Daysigns

Wow.

First thing I saw when I left the house yesterday was a man still drunk from the night before taking a swig from a flask and then walking into the Serbian Orthodox Church.  Now I wish I had a god to thank that I don’t have to be drunk to go to church.

Church was excellent.  Debra preaches a mighty sermon – this one was essentially how we should cherish our doubts.  You can’t hurt truth by doubting. Doubt and faith are not enemies.  Also, holy sheep Batman, but we’re having to put out more and more chairs.  And she brought her partner, who is the very model of a fine gentleman.

 

I had to open and close and it took forever because of a Christmas pageant rehearsal.  Then something challenging and unpleasant happened, so I went home and collapsed and ordered Chinese food.

The order of the universe having now been somewhat restored, I’m going to bitch about some things.

 

Stephen Harper, not recognizing steps on the way to Palestinian statehood makes me VERY ANGRY.  I didn’t vote for you and I wish the rest of those fucking morans hadn’t either.

THE WEATHER HOLY SHEEP HOW GHASTLY.  Rain, rain, rain til Thursday.

 

The good and the bad

The bad first – the bookkeeper hasn’t responded to my requests and that means I’ll be standing in front of everybody at church tomorrow with no backup information, just the budget for next year.

Fortunately, I am very relaxed about it.  It will be embarrassing, but so what?  I’ve sh*t myself in public, that was worse.  Also, in retrospect, an extremely funny story.  Actually, twice now, once in the Parliament buildings.  I mean, that’s funny in and of itself.

The good – saw Robof9 and Liz last night with Paul for dinner out in Langley. OH IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE THEM.  I miss Rob, he’s still as much of a card as ever.  We talked a little about Paul’s biz idea but mostly visited.

More bad – there was a f*cking coyote IN THE YARD last night.  I was having an intense convo with Paul about his biz idea in the car, sitting in the driveway, and when I saw the coyote I screeched “The CATS” and booked it into the house to check in on them, all okay thanks for asking.