Winter is over

It’s been a while since I have felt well. A nasty infection kicked off the ugly trifecta of colitis, fibromyalgia and migraine to leave me battered, behind and annoyed at the limits of the body. I kept things going, by a hair… courtesy of Cipro, health services and Toradol, but not without a lot of agony. Note that I am getting all of my complaining done right up front.

But now I am feeling back to normal. In fact I feel great. Full of energy and vigor. Back to normal and ready to get back to the path. I must confess that January really threw me for a loop. Does anyone like hearing they are a judgmental, closed minded, know nothing? Because that’s what I found out about myself. Sigh. I know I don’t MEAN to be, but the sad truth is that after my daughter decided to convert to Islam and I stopped running away from God, I wanted to only hear the nice Episcopal voices that made me comfortable and safe. God is merciful and gentle, for a while, he let me get away with that. January and Lafayette Square showed me exactly how small my box had become.

I suppose it’s OK to like doing things your own way, to want to have the liturgy just so, to take it uber seriously, to be in a smaller community based church that has robust children’s programs and retains an ability to be pastoral to  nursing home and homebound parishioners. BUT, I couldn’t believe the amount of discomfort I felt in being in a church that had a completely different flavor. Rather than finding joy in what was there, an urban based mission church, with a prophetic voice at the altar, and programs aimed at more diverse constituencies, I spent a lot of time feeling panic at the lack of what I was used to. I’ve given this a lot of thought of course. Importantly I don’t think St.John’s Lafayette Square was in error in any way, though probably a key learning for me is that I need to serve in a smaller, more community building parish versus a large city church. But maybe another lesson is that it is time for me to stop clinging to the comfort of “my way”. A priest of  a church as broad as ours has no business crouching down and holding on so tightly to one right way of doing things. You can’t be a parishioner and a priest at the same time. Lightbulb.

Seriously, what am I so afraid of? As unpleasant as the experience of being so out of my element was, it was one of the most valuable I’ve had. I am still thinking if how fascinating God is. How clever. How else could he have gotten me to so utterly understand my incompetence in this arena? If  there is one thing I feel he wants to impress upon me, it’s my utter lack of knowledge and expertise at this moment. Not to humiliate me, but to shake me out of talk mode and into listening mode. Hard habit to break when you’ve been leading others for years. But that’s not what he needs me to do right now. Just to underscore this, on every interaction I have had at church lately, from leading the prayers to serving at the altar, I am bound to miss a key piece of information, be a moment late, misunderstand, be slow on the uptake, and basically make some kind of spectacular mistake to make me feel utterly small and useless. It would be infinitely worse if I didn’t feel the laughing presence of God at my side, as if to say, “what did I tell you about being a blank slate now!? You=Beginner!”

I can only swallow my embarrassment and grin. If God’s laughing, even at you, it’s impossible not to go along.

So, things are good, as weird as it may sound. Even as I sense I am being put back in Basic Training after some kind of respite, it feels like progress.

Winter is over, Spring is here, Easter is coming and the world stirs. I believe.

Hypertext Revisited

I know I am behind in updating but I’m back in school and loving every minute of it. My trip back was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It’s fantastic to be home and have my little dog Tucker home with me again. Today I even won two tickets to Ladysmith Black Mambazo for tomorrow night!

I am taking a lot of amazing classes. Death and dying, which is turning into the odds on favorite so far. World Religions II, which initially I was excited about because we are studying Eastern Religions, then anxious about, because it’s a new teacher and I heard she’s hard and now am in love with, because by hard, they meant she’s GOOD. Then there is Philosophy of Religion, a very small class with just the four of us, it feels like pure entertainment so far. Chaplaincy Studies, where we have a whole bunch of new Chaplains to help grow the community here on campus and add even more energy to SRLA.

Then finally there is the hardest class so far: Literature and New Media. It’s my Big Q class, in other words it fulfills my Quantitative Reasoning requirement and helps me avoid any math. Yay! I say that it is is hard, but that is all relative of course. I mean that it’s hard because it’s an area of expertise and yet it’s from a literary perspective, a cul-de-sac of the medium. I am intrigued and sometimes aghast. Here’s an example. The word Hypertext in my world is used to mean any word in a document that links in a networked way whether locally or remotely to another location in the same or another document. There is a different definition in the literary world. Immediately I could feel my internal head shaking no-no-no.

In the literary world, Hypertext means: ” Text which does not form a single sequence and which may be read in various orders; specially text and graphics … which are interconnected in such a way that a reader of the material (as displayed at a computer terminal, etc.) can discontinue reading one document at certain points in order to consult other related matter.”

Similar but not the same. An example of this literary Hypertext can be seen in one of the stories we read called “The Jews Daughter”.

It’s a single page that has a couple of highlighted words. When you rollover the selected word, paragraphs on the page change, also changing elements of the story while you remain on the page. It is an interesting experience. You can come to know a lot about yourself as a reader by attempting the story. How do you interact with it? I found myself trying to read the story elements straight through at first because I love story so much, but when that proved difficult, I fell back on my second love, language and just let myself enjoy the poetry of the writing and the flow of the text across the page.

On the Electronic Literature Organization’s Website, they have this to say about the piece, ” The Jew’s Daughter is a work that renegotiates the concept of the hypertext to present a reconfigurative narrative. As the reader moves the mouse over links, segments of a page replace one another fluidly, giving the reader the sensation of watching a single page evolve step by step into another kind of textual instrument with its own sense of narrative rhythm.”

This form of writing and using technology to create an experience while gently reminding the reader that they are in fact using a medium to access story is called Metafiction. Wikipedia describes it as a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work. An online version of this can be seen in “The Garden of Forking Paths” which is a story which is labyrinth-like in it’s unfolding plot and is constructed online into a labyrinth-like experience.

Interesting. Lots of mind squishing classes in general, between the nature of reality in World Religions II, the nature of God in Philosophy of Religion, loss, life after death and grief in Death and Dying and the notion of media, authorship and technology in this class. Altogether intoxicating.

It’s shaping up to be an interesting semester and I haven’t even talked about the stuff outside the academic realm!

Stay Tuned

The Veranda Cafe is adjacent to a gas station right near Hollins University and they offer a 5% discount to students and teachers. I’ve been eating there at least once a week since I heard about the place because they make an absolutely amazing Stromboli. It’s really their pizza crust wrapped around cheese and pepperoni with a robust, tangy tomato sauce to dip it in. A few nights ago I ate there with my friend Leigh and I also sampled their homemade baklava. It was filled with crushed nuts and honey layered between flaky phyllo. Still warm. The menu features many Greek items as well. I especially liked the chicken and rice soup flavored with lemon.

No boyfriend visit this weekend and mom is in Richmond working at the new job. Dog sitting for a friend from church. I’m looking at a new place for me tomorrow. So many wonderful shows on TV. The Office is back on, and Pam and Jim are engaged. It was so romantic! Heroes is just rockin’ my world. I’m still totally in love with Peter Petrelli, after all, according to a Facebook quiz I AM Peter Petrelli. Grey’s Anatomy is OK…but not sure if I like it as much as last season. I am enjoying Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dirty Sexy Money.

Monday is “Chalk it Out” at school. That’s an event the Spiritual and Religious Life are sponsoring where we are putting a couple of big chalk boards that we made out and writing a question on it while encouraging students to write their answers in chalk. Since Monday is the KickOff we are doing Karaoke and unveiling the new logo we selected at it too. I also have to write a couple of new poems to turn in this week.

I’m deep into the process of writing the liturgy for the Goth Eucharist on the 22nd. I’ve asked one of my fellow students to DJ the music I’ve selected and I am working on the leaflet . I’ll recruit ushers on Monday. I will ask Lisa about putting it in next Sundays bulletin at St.John’s. I finished the advertisement this morning for school.

Wednesday I meet with the Bishop. It’s the first official step to starting the discernment process in the Episcopal church. If approved, my rector, Barkley Thompson, will select a group of parishioners to meet with me for six months to determine if my call is a true one. If it is, they will recommend me to the Vestry. If they approve me, they will recommend me to the Commission on Ministry. Then they decide what to do with me.

Starting on Wednesday night I’ll be on Fall break, and I am going to Greensboro to meet my boyfriend’s mother and stepfather. We plan on seeing Max Payne late Thursday night, and then on Friday we’ll drive to West Virginia to meet his father and stepmother. So a big weekend/fall break for me. Actually, kind of a big week all around.

Oh yeah and the RedSox won tonight!

New Ideas

It’s crunch time at church. I am trying to write all the copy for the new site and it is extremely time consuming. I only have 1 more day after today since I will be a a Diocesan offsite tomorrow.
My advisor at school emailed me about an internship at the Episcopal church across from the White House during the month of January. It’s paid, I can focus on liturgy and an alumnae is offering their home for lodging.
Imagine, being in DC during the Inauguration! I sure hope Obama pulls it out. That would be amazing.
I also recently read about a program at the Yale Divinity School called the Marquand scholars. 5 of the best incoming students are selected to be Marquand scholars and are provided with full tuition and $5000 in living expenses. That would go a long way toward making it there. I am going to focus on polishing/documenting the attributes they might seek in hopes of achieving that. It would take a lot of burden off of my parish and off of me in the long run.
YDS is having an Open House this November, but don’t know if it will be in the cards. I need to check the Calendar at Hollins to see if school is in session that week. It probably is. 🙂
I am switching my classes around some and plan on going out to school sometime this week to formalize it. Adding French, dropping Sociology, moving the Drawing class, dropping Film Production and replacing it with Biology. Adding one other class…probably a religion class. I love August, I’ll get to buy my books with my financial aid and it’s such a rush to have all those new books.

Prompt #1

This post is in response to an assignment in my English class which is called “The Artist’s Journal”. We were to find a place that was outside, then observe it and write about those observations in our journal. Here goes:

There is a church on a hill near my house, a very high hill that gives you a view of the entire valley. On Saturdays there is no one there and you can drive to the top and simply park your car in their enormous parking lot and look out over the city.

It’s strange how different Roanoke feels to me from up on the hill. There are its sounds, which recede into a hushed breaking of the waves on the shore. A kind of sussuration of car, wind, electrical hum and distant voices lost and subsumed into nothing more than background noise.
The clearer sounds are those of tree limbs nearby, cracking and creaking, still losing occasional branches after last weeks storm.

Then there is bird call as well. Intermittent and soothing, when I hear it I always resolve to get the Audubon field guide and start trying to learn to identify each colored wing and mottled beak, yet I never do.

There is always the light to get lost in. The shadows of clouds and pools of light flow in intoxicating patterns across the landscape. I always feel a little catch in my throat. It doesn’t seem real. Off to my left I can see a bubbling cauldron of smoke in the distance near Hollins. It’s behind a ridge, I guess that’s what accounts for it’s appearance. I wonder why these fires won’t end.
Roanoke doesn’t look like a city from here, but a farming community in a valley, that just started to build things in its center and called it a town.

I lunched on some delicious take out fare from Teaberry’s, where the service is terrible, but the chicken salad plate is very appealing. They include pasta salad, some fruit, a deviled egg and delicious crackers in the styrofoam partioned clamshell. The salad itself is a plain jane variety that I favor, no pickle relish, just chicken, mayo, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Delicious.

After tidying up, I read some of my World Religions homework on Judaism. It’s actually turning out to be a perfect complement to my New Testament class as we discuss Judaism lightly in that class, but I get to go into it in much more depth in World Religions, which makes me feel satisfied.
I have a hard time when I get too little information, and then I have to go home and do my own research. This way at least I am getting credit for it. It also builds tremendous anticipation in me for Seminary and I daydream about that for a while. I imagine what it will be like to study there and just have nothing to think of except that aspect of my life. God, my relationship to him and how to live out his will in my life. I am longing for that day to come, but recognize that I am not ready for it yet.

What I am noticing most of all is the emptiness and aloneness of where I am and I suddenly feel very vulnerable. I begin to remember all the news stories that begin with “her car was found abandoned…” only to end with something like “…the remains of the college student who was planning on becoming a priest, were found today in a garbage can…” I go to get my pepper spray out of the car just in case some looney tunes saw me sitting alone up here and decided I was a perfect target for abduction and dismemberment. I’m not normally so fearful of my safety, the pepper spray isn’t something I routinely have, it was a gift from my overprotective little brother, who happens to be 6’3″ to my 5’1″. I try to put my finger on what is triggering my fight or flight response, but don’t see anyone around. Perhaps it’s just the openess at my back?
I do not know. I’ve been here before and never felt this way, today it feels less safe.

I try to brazen it out for a while but I have lost my sense of serenity. When I hear a truck driving up the road I look up and note in relief that it’s a man and his son. Presumably I am safe enough if a child is around. Nonetheless, I pack up my things and head home.