Still here after all these years

Yes, I am still here... three years later almost... and in those three years, so much, so much has happened... But I am alive, enjoying my two cats, August and Pico, and the construction of an addition to our house, and into my third year without my dear father and, in general, still the same, vicar at Church of Our Saviour, still loving Vermont... but the new activities include signing up to do a Spartan Trifecta this summer and the Under Armour 5K race at Killington, going four times a week to Killington Boot Camp (TRX and Circuit Training), in an effort to stave off ageing :)

Of two minds

For years and years visitors to the little house in which Msr Óscar Romero lived on the grounds of Divina Providencia have seen this blood-stained shirt with a simple bullet hole through the left chest pocket. It hung in a display case alongside the alb and chasuble that San Romero was wearing at the time of his martyrdom. Intellectually, I knew the shirt was important, an artifact of a life snuffed out, a prophetic voice silenced and the hope of the Salvadoran people vanquished.

Now with the beatification of Msr Óscar Romero, now Blessed Óscar Romero, this shirt — not the alb, not the chasuble — this shirt drenched with his blood has taken on the level of relic. And with this change of status, the shirt no longer hangs in the display case for all to see but now has been carefully prepared and sewn (?) onto a pillow, which resides inside a glass-and-gilded box with a cross on its top. Said relic will travel from place to place before settling down at the cathedral (?).

In the thinking and style of Pablo Neruda in his poems on things or the French writer, Roland Barthes, who in his Mythologies takes on simple things and discusses the layers of meaning placed upon them, the object here has taken on more than its original simple essence. Thus, this grey shirt, which is a simple clergy shirt, becomes a museum piece to be further translated into an object of veneration, a relic.

I honestly struggle with the domestication of Romero's message, its appropriation, at times, by the right at the expense of the people for whom it was originally intended, the poor (one can argue that his message was also for the right and oligarchy, namely, to 'stop the repression'). And while I understand the importance of touching holy things and sites — I have done it myself countless times in helping out in burnishing the bronze mitre of Romero's third tomb — I still hesitate at the change that this shirt has undergone. That people venerate an object and that the spirit, the thoughts and the legacy of a person bothers me.

Rome's recognition of the importance of Romero is long overdue, no doubt about it. I am glad that Rome is gradually inching toward recognising what Central America and beyond have long recognised, that Romero is holy. I just wish this recognition would remember its origins — from the disenfranchised, the people in the streets, the poor, those without voice. I am not sure that such recognition is going to stick now that Rome has gotten in on the act 35 years later. I pray I am wrong.

As for me… I will not be venerating a shirt but trying in my own small way to continue to proclaim Romero's message of justice and his love for Jesus and love for his people.

Still here

Almost a year since I have posted anything on this page. And what little I write now is simply to serve as a page-marker so the blog isn't deep-sixed because of my neglect.

What goes 'round, comes 'round

Rarely (!) do I get a bee in my bonnet, but right now a current bee has been buzzing in my head... and that is my incredible disbelief at the parents out there who refuse to vaccinate their children against severe diseases such as measles. To read that there are increasing outbreaks of the measles stupefies me.

But what really has emerged out of the whole discussion about measles has been the discovery of a whole community out there of people who, having contracted the measles as children, have been living for the past 50 years with some sort of disability, as have I. Someone in the comments on the NYT the other day wrote about her experience of having the measles and ending up deaf in one ear. She described the same nuisances with which I live — always making sure she is at the far end of a table with her 'good' ear facing everyone else, not being able to differentiate noise, not being able to determine noise from behind, which led people to say she was stuck up and so forth.

Even though I probably knew in my head a long time ago that there was a whole population out there who had suffered the same sort of life-changing event, in these recent years to read about this community has woken me up. I have brothers and sisters out there. I want to line us all up and make the parents who don't vaccinate their children look us in the eye, hear our stories and then think twice about not protecting the rest of us (herd protection) from their selfish actions.

The reason this interests me so is because the message I received growing up was basically, 'Deal with it.' Deal with it in silence. Don't acknowledge the problem. (Evidently I thought everyone had a 'good' ear and a 'bad' ear by the time I was five.) Since no one can see it, act as though it doesn't exist. That worked pretty well for my first three decades of life.

My parents ruled out stringing a hearing aid set-up that would have sound from the left ear be transmitted to the right ear. Remember, that back in the early 1960s, hearing aids were cumbersome things, a box the size of a Walkman and then big circular earbuds. My parents already realised I was the class dork with my eye glasses — it wasn't until third grade that finally someone else got glasses. They did not want to make my life any more miserable than it was. I went through school always assuming I was flying under the radar as far as my hearing loss. I figured I was sometimes put up front because of my sight or because alphabetically my name comes close to the beginning of the alphabet. It wasn't until well after I graduated from high school that my high school French teacher informed me that they all knew about my hearing loss — I was flagged as one of the kids who might need extra help. Oh? (Never mind that I have relative perfect pitch and sing quite fine, thank you.)

It was not until CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education, required of seminarians in The Episcopal Church and other denominations), when I went to the morgue with my CPE group that I began to move beyond the live-with-it-in-silence coping mechanism. Seeing the morgue drawer labelled, 'Body Parts,' all of a sudden broke open a wall that I had subconsciously built ever since the age of three, the wall of, 'No, nothing really happened to you; it is no big deal, get over it.' I realised that when someone has an amputation, he or she clearly has a visible loss, a space of air where there once was a limb. She or he has to deal with phantom pain. I know that from my father's experience, when he lost in one minute the sight of his left eye to a stroke, that the eye continued to send signals to the brain for a good year, which resulted in incredible dizziness because he was getting the overlay of the left eye signals on the right eye. He said seeing was like looking at finger prints half the time. But loss of hearing? I don't know, because it happened when I was so little. However, once I saw that drawer for body parts, I realised I had never been allowed to mourn a piece of my être that was taken away from me. I did not dwell on that realisation for too long, a day or two of spacing out, but I was glad that I finally had a chance to acknowledge the loss.

Now, later on in life, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by speaking out... after all, the older we get, the more company I have in the hearing loss department. Most important, this whole discussion about measles and its lasting effects brought on so needlessly by misguided people, has made me circle back round to something long forgotten... a parallel discussion, but not for now, is those of us who had corrective surgery for strabismus back when and how that just tackled the appearance but not the brain connections for crossed-eyed vision.

P.S.: Whenever someone cannot remember which is my deaf side, I just say, 'Go for the gold.' I figured in college that since it did not work as originally intended, my ear ought to be at least decorative.

I do like my gold earrings.

Full cycle

The last supper at the family homestead

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A year ago yesterday we gathered for the last semi-full family dinner at my parents' house of 60 years before moving my father to his assisted living place on the 18th. Our last supper was not elegant — pizza and wine, but it was all we could muster as we gathered up my father's belongings. We all knew the change would be momentous, the end of an era, but being good stoic New Englanders, we did not really go into all that.

A year later, my father has survived the full cycle, seen the seasons and how they affect the pond outside his window, a pond that is most likely a blur. A year ago, he would ambulate, dress himself and move with relative ease. A year later, he is a prisoner in his body that is becoming increasingly rigid. He can no longer walk or dress or bathe himself — that all went within two months of his moving to his place — and he can barely feed himself. His mind, however, is as sharp as ever.

My mother is a helium balloon, rising higher and higher above the earth as her mind decreases. That is a whole other reflection.

And the house, the house. I still grieve it. The table, chairs, sideboard, a pair of candlesticks, and painting all now live with me. I don't have the wonderful black and white floor, which my mother loved because it reminded her of the 16th-century Flemish paintings. I am sure that that floor no longer exists any more than the kitchen and bathrooms we left behind. The house remains in my memory, where it is safest. One can never, ever go back.

And in that year, too, my father's cat, Pico, has come to live with me. He has settled in and my father misses him terribly.

As I have said often to others, I do not claim exceptionality in all this. Most adult children go through this same process. That said, I still feel it.

Poor neglected blog

Time to say goodbye... goodbye to this stonewall my father made over many years, goodbye to the house where I grew up, the home my parents built in 1953, before my time.

My summer and fall have been spent moving my parents, and then cleaning out a house-load of sixty years for its sale. My siblings have also been a part of this endeavour. Compa has been absolutely stellar in her efforts to clear out the house.

Consequently, this poor old blog has suffered, missing out on photos of Mission Farm in the summer, of my veggie garden, of fall foliage, of the CATS — the clowder now includes Pico, my father's cat, and is minus dear, dear Sophia, who joined Agatha in the heavenly catnip patch... Sophia died 26 July. I haven't even had a chance to mourn her.

We baby boomers are all struggling with elder care and, in those cases where they have not down-sized, their stuff. From all accounts, their generation saved stuff. A lot of stuff. Enough stuff to be equipped for Armageddon. I have heard of one case where the adult son had filled 19 twenty-yard dumpsters and was still counting. In our case, we are only on the third dumpster.

I will walk out of my parents' house for the very last time ever this Tuesday. Part of my heart still thinks I am floating in some surrealistic sort of dream. However, the sight of certain pieces of furniture in the vicarage reminds me that, no, it is not a dream, it is very real and from Tuesday forward, a major chapter of my life ends. My parents are still alive, in different places, but the house that served as our focal point and gathering place shall cease to exist for my siblings, our spouses, families and me.

Goodbye beautiful stonewall. May the people who move in appreciate it as much as I have.

Closer to fine

After the eighteen months of wandering through the desert (though having moments of hospitality), after eight discernment committee processes, I finally ended up fifteen miles from where I last served a congregation. I considered congregations in MA, CT and even Mexico. And when everything settled down, I landed at the congregation where Anne has been attending since 1994, eleven miles from our tiny house.


The preacher at the service of installation and celebration of a new season of ministry, the Rev'd Gwen Groff, a local Mennonite pastor, said eloquently:

... Which leads me to the last thing that Lee wanted us to focus on. This land. This thin place on the earth. Lee said what she is interested in is "connecting with the land and living in a thin place." The term "thin place" has been used in many ways, but I believe the phrase was originally used by the Celts, whose theology said that there are places on earth where the veil between heaven and earth is very thin, places that serve almost like a portal where you can practically reach through or step through and experience God.

Now I think of those sacred places as destinations, a place you travel to as a deliberate pilgrimage, or stumble upon unexpectedly. Lee's words, that she is interested in what it means to live in a thin place made me think of thin places a bit differently. Because if the psalmist is right, and Basil is right, that God's Holy Spirit is everywhere, then one place isn't more "thin" than another. A thin place need not be a windswept stone circle built on an energetic convergence of ley lines. A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened to God. God is always here. But in a thin place we are more open to God, we are suddenly made aware of God's constant presence, and we are more likely to take risks of listening and being transformed.

A thin place is not only a place we feel something; it's a state of being where we become more like the God we meet when our hearts are open. A thin place can be experienced in worship. This sanctuary is worn thin by the prayers that have been spoken here. And a thin place can be experienced in action, in working across differences and finding God in the other. [(c) Gwen Groff, 14 June 2013]

Church of Our Saviour, with its long history of farmer priests, its close connection to the land, and its Benedictine tradition all make for a peaceful, peace-filled spot in the Vermont Greens. COS is where the priest truly can live out relational priesthood, come back close to a vocational rather than professional priesthood, live with one foot in the 19th century when this place was founded and the 21st where it lives and reaches out to the local community.

I feel exceptionally at peace here, in a way that I have not since 2008 when I left Northfield. This sense of 'coming down' right was solidified as today I attended a wedding reception of two former parishioners. As I talked with other members of where I last served, I gave thanks again that I am no longer in that stressful place. Somehow COS seems more authentic, closer to the ground, not lost in pretense.

To my delight, I once again have a vegetable garden with potatoes (I no longer remember what types), green, purple and yellow beans, tomatoes and lots of hot peppers. The beans are sprouting as are the 'taters and the peppers and 'maters are coming along. No, I won't be Fr Dan or Fr Heminway in cassock out on a tractor (the church doesn't have one), but in a small way, I can tap into the ethos of the farmer priest which is so much a part of the history of this place.

Now... if any of you have $30K out there, it would go a long way to helping us repair the vicarage chimneys and replace the roof, and shore up a collapsing barn, all of which are on the National Historic Registry (!).

[Blogger ain't wordpress; formatting here is disastrous.]