Sun is out!

Windy but glorious out there.

I am drinking cold cocoa and preparing to go to the church 30th birthday party.  It should be fun and festive.  I will report on how the song went over before I go to church tomorrow (I’m opening for Audrey the Wonderful (she really is, too, so firm of mind and so soft of voice)).

Paul just called – he’ll be coming as well and is making up some of his famed quinoa tabbouleh.  Of course he had to be reminded about it and that’s okay, it’s cool that he’s coming.

Kate is at her level two Foodsafe course, Monday we open a business account, Tuesday my money to close should come in, and then we hammer a cheque and get it to the current owner and get an introduction to the landlord at some point prior to closing.  Work is happening every day on the purchase, and while I would have preferred opening an account on Friday one business day won’t make a difference.

Everything people are saying on the internet about Amanda Fucking Palmer’s ‘the Bed Song’ is TRUE.  DO NOT WATCH UNLESS YOU ARE OKAY WITH CRYING.

I am writing YET ANOTHER character song for Midnite Moving.  It’s from George to Raven and it’s called ‘and then you smile’.

and I deleted the whole thing in 2020 because it was DREADFUL thank god I have this power.

Katie’s off at the cafe learning about the menu

And I am here at home working away on receipts and getting the printer hooked up to the new computer (Jeff advised, I finally took the advice).

Margot has been defluffed (as if….) and rendered a little less stabby, as I took off some talon action on her back feet.  She barfed all over my Fraser Health certificate plan and now I have to print another one.

This may seem like a particularly asinine comment, but if the way they blocked off Kingsway and 14h this morning is anything to go by, the Burnaby RCMP couldn’t organize an orgy at a porn convention.

This afternoon we bake, and Jeff will be the (hopefully) happy recipient of the largesse.

Peggy is back from China, I am so looking forward to talking to her about it.

I formally dropped out of the Chalice circle.  I am too set in my ways – the first one was so good, and was all about deepening friendship, which thank you very much IS spiritual.  However I was alternately disturbed and disappointed by the materials we were supposed to read, and the presence of two of the long time members of the former iteration of the circle was not a sufficiently  appealing inducement.

Still need the business name registration, waiting until later this week….  sigh.

Busy bodies

Naomi said, “There’s no chairs downstairs!” as soon as she saw me at church yesterday, so John H and I put out tables and chairs.  John’s over 80 so I really appreciated his assistance, especially when he realized that somebody had stacked the chairs in such a fashion that one good shove would put a couple of hundred pounds of chairs on top of somebody, probably a small child.  We fixed that problem.  Hope the insurance people don’t find out.

Today I am going to harass the business licence people to find out why the hell they haven’t gotten back to us in three days like they promise on the web site (if ever a girl was fooled…).  Rat(((((ers.

Also, baking today.  I’m going to find out where the cheapest almonds are and buy and toast a lot of them, and then make a quadruple batch of biscotti.  (Some for the Beacon Birthday party!).

Also, buying more printer ink, why else was I born….

Also cleaning kitchen which is a sty after my cooking frenzy yesterday (haddock and veg, butter chicken).

Also, reviewing the deposit sheets for church to cross check the donation amounts by donor, plus updating the new addresses in the system.  A treasurer’s work is only done when she leaves the job at the AGM!!! Two more months, and a bit.  I believe I should actually have the receipts out in time!

 

 

Erk.

Yeah.  I should never have volunteered for anything at church.  I hope the word no comes to my lips with more efficacy in future but in the meantime I have stopped associating church with awe and wonder and now associate it with work and worry.  Plus I’m no good at it… and of course there’s stuff I can’t put in a public place, boorah.

So I am going to back away from the chalice circle, and finish up, as best as I am able, the work for the church year (I am finishing the receipt data entry this morning) and then traverse the moments between now and the AGM and then pretty much stop going to church.  I was reading the church folly lane book that Latham wrote yesterday, and for all the people who are infused with energy about church thanks to his workshop, what will happen?  All he did was get everybody enthusiastic and the second everybody allows themselves to feel the exhaustion associated with the massive amounts of labour in putting on a 30th birthday show (and I don’t include myself in that because all I’m doing is open church the next day, bringing food, helping set up starting at two next Saturday, and singing a song I composed especially for the occasion which I really should rehearse again for at least half a dozen times between now and then) we will be able to TALK enthusiastically, but to steer the church through a course of transitioning from family to pastoral to program church is impossible with the people and the energy that we have.  Being a small church is in the DNA of the church.  The second we reach a certain size, there’s always a crisis and people quit.  (I am thinking of the RE director debacle we had a few years back and by debacle I’m talking about how we p8ssed all over the covenant we have to be mutually supportive and face our problems with courage and truthfulness, not anything the RE director did).

I have said it before and I’ll say it again.  RELIGIOUS EDUCATION is the engine of growth of a church.  If you don’t tend it lovingly and house it appropriately, you can’t grow the church, because there’s no place for young adults with children to attach to the church.  No young adults, no new members to train in organizational leadership.  No relief for the people who run the church; they get to do the same thing over and over and fresh faces and ideas don’t come in.  Now Robert Latham says you must have a clear sense of mission and then the church will be vibrant, or else you’re just a social club for aging liberals.

Church didn’t do anything to me.  I did it to myself.  I wanted to make things better, make it more welcoming for young people.  Still, we sing old songs that apart from the lyrics are exactly what you hear in other churches, still, we don’t use technology effectively in our services, still, we have no decent RE space, still, we are renters, still we do not challenge ourselves with service content.  We are consistent, we are generous, we are friendly. And we’re old.  Average age on the Board is 60.  That is terrible.  It says everything about our leadership, our energy level, our demographics.

Like I said I’ll keep pledging.   And if I am spared, I’m going to start my own church.  That’s how you really make money in this modern world.  Ask anybody.

Updates

Entered bunches of data for tax receipts, got church bank recs done, should have financials for tonight.  Wow, a board meeting on Valentine’s day.  Should prove that whatever we are it isn’t sentimental.

The master of ceremonies for the Beacon birthday party is now in possession of my lyrics, and I guess he’s a convert.

Phew!

Met with current proprietor of cafe yesterday afternoon, reviewed the inventory, all looks good.  The inventory covers all but 10K of the asking price; we’ll have to buy knives, a coffee maker, a meat slicer and a couple of microwaves, but all of that we can do without too much difficulty.  Waiting with bated breath for the registered name to come back.

Katie came up with an idea for a muffin that nobody else is serving in the lower mainland.  If it takes off, we’ll have people driving out of their way to eat it.  Just mentioning it to a couple of people yesterday made their eyes light up.

And we will be serving gluten friendly (can’t say gluten free because it’s a mixed use kitchen) food, as well as vegan offerings.

Happiness….

My heart feels like it’s being squeezed by two subway car doors

But that is usual when you get freaked out by your to do list.  Paul and the kids and Jeff and I feasted at Chong Lum Hin yesterday. Dim Sum!  Gung Hay Fat Choi!

Katie saw Warm Bodies and loved it.

Margot is still shedding so massively that I can take a teacup of compressed fur off her every day with NO VISIBLE EFFECT.

Rob watched TSSIT and LOVED IT.  What’s not to love? Son also watched it and found it ‘adorable’.

Purim is coming.  In the words of the immortal Sean Haugh (a facebook friend of the libertarian/sf fan persuasion whom I have never met IRL).  (And you have to understand, I only friend non IRL people who are friends with at least six of my other friends).  “Purim is my favorite religious holiday bar none. A feast to celebrate the death of a tyrant, a religious service that comes with its own drinking game, and! the best cookies ever! Why Purim isn’t the biggest holiday on the calendar is beyond me.”

Here’s the Beacon Birthday Song lyrics!  Nobody from church reads my blog (thank GOOOOODDDDD) so I’m not giving anything away.

To think that it all started with committee work
These long years past
Some now here assembled came and did not shirk
And they had a blast
We are trying to help the world
All the little boys and girls
And the ones who aren’t sure which they are
Growing their theology
Becoming all that they can be
Knowing in their lives they’ll wander far
And Beacon will be part of who they are

All the controversies now seem very small
When we look back
It’s a miracle that we are here at all
With all that flack
Boards and staff in panoply
Ministers and homilies
Days when the presenter failed to show
Visits to the partner church
Pledges paid or in the lurch
Always wondering if we would grow
As if our wishing somehow made it so.

But it is no joke
To fight oppression’s yoke
Whether in the soul or in the street
What you think is true
Is shown in what you do
And sharing truth is really why we meet

Here’s to Beacon’s 30th, now raise a glass
And toast us proudly
Maybe all our dreams have not yet come to pass
Still we sing loudly
We can set up anywhere
Little but somehow we share
Knowing that our giving shows our love
The future holds its mystery
As we toast our history
And the peace that we’re all dreaming of
And the peace that we’re all dreaming of.

 

 

 

 

bad tempered comment

By not dying in harness, Benedict is spitting on the traditions of his office, and showing that he’s either afraid of prosecution or death, either of which demonstrate a marked public lapse in faith.  And the commentary from the Vatican on how African cardinals couldn’t get past first ballot in the conclave because they are ‘not known’ seems like the most egregious twaddle from a catholic – ie UNIVERSAL church.  (Notice how I didn’t use the words ‘institutional racism’?)

 

At least Rome no longer has crowds in their thousands outside the Holy See yelling ‘GIVE US AN ITALIAN’ which has happened more than once.

 

More commentary.

Big News, small news, glad news, sad news

I put a deposit down on the cafe yesterday.  So begins an enterprise.

Expert, schmexpert.

The only thing I don’t understand about the rogue LAPD cop Christopher Dorner is not why he hasn’t been caught – he will be, and I cheerfully predict that he’ll go quietly and not die in a hail of gunfire – it’s why nobody’s bought the domain name yet.

My fellow board member Audrey has lost her mother.  She was well into her nineties.  Blind Lemming Chiffon, when we had dinner at Conflikt, said that until you’ve lost a parent you can’t understand what it’s like.  That was also the same supper where he gave me the Ebay overview on what allows him to sell like a master, and where he recommended Searching for Sugar Man, one of the best and most astonishing music documentaries I have ever seen.

Jeff is having pie for breakfast.  He’s a rebel.

I was thinking (as I had another crying bout thinking about John last night) about loss.  I thought, “Ah, so selfish.  It is not my love for him that hurts me.  I will have that forever; I can’t stop loving him just because he’s dead.  I’m sad because he loved me, and he’ll never stop me from falling off a mountain, or give me a lift on his motorcycle, or make me laugh, or sing with me, or feed me or lift my spirits or be a familiar face in a crowd of strangers ever again.  And that is why I am sad.  Not because someone I love died.  It’s because someone who loved me died.”

I saw both of the kids yesterday, yay, and fed Rob and Keith as well as Jeff.  I made pork schnitzel, taters, broccoli and carrots, and there was a tablecloth and pie and two kinds of ice cream, so it was rather festive, even without beer.  I’ve gone off beer again.  There is a medical condition which I’m too polite to whine about in public which improves by about 30% when I don’t drink beer, and it definitely hurts the insomnia when I drink beer.  I just love beer and wish it wasn’t so mean to me.

It’s a fine axemurderer’s fog out there this morning.

Obviously I have a lot of work to do before Katie calls me for our trek up to City Hall, so I’ll get to it.