So Much to Say, So Little Time

So my job as head gluer at the Andover Divinity School library (I glue every single label on every single book) has been more time-consuming than I envisioned and cut into my blogging time. Part of this is also because I want to craft each post as if I was painting my ultra-final masterpiece to go in a very fancy museum. That has to stop. So I’m going to try to post shorter, sweeter, and with less explanation. First posting will be my (I am sure long- and eagerly-awaited) Eating Sustainably and Lovingly Tips. I’m going to do that right now.

What’s to come…

The next post will be of the foster kittens (finally!). I’ll link to it from Craigslist where we advertise for potential adopting families.

Otherwise, I have a few things I’ve been meaning to write about but thanks for a never-ending paper, it just hasn’t happened yet.

Here is what’s to come after the paper is done (or, should I say IF it is ever done):

In UU World Bill Sinkford writes about what he calls the central act of religious community. You can see the article here. He says that the central act of the religious community is worship. I’m not so sure.

I’m going to the reproductive rights conference sponsored by Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom in DC next week. SYRF is a subgroup of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. I’m interested to see what it will be like and to learn more.

Now onto the foster kittens. I hope soon I’ll be back to my regular blogging self.

Greetings to FUUSMers

Hi especially to friends and members of First Unitarian Universalist Society of Middleboro that read this. Just a note to let you know that I have not, in fact, fallen off the face of the earth but rather with travel to Kentucky and final papers I’ve had to be home recovering from travel or working hard for the last few Sundays. Officially, my “job” at FUUSM runs from September to May 1, but I will still be around quite a bit this summer continuing work on the Green Sanctuary project, adult education, and other things here and there. W. and I will attend our “home” church here in Cambridge some, too. Just to provide an update since a few kind souls have emailed to wonder where I am :)

And, for those of you waiting breathlessly for the pictures of the new foster kittens, it will be a few more days because the first set of pictures had them all with glowing eyes and it looked like we had a collection of possessed kittens. So as soon as final papers are turned in we’ll have another photo session and you can see the cute little faces of Blake, George, Savannah and Olivia. Back to the paper-writing grind. -Elizabeth

Update from the ark

Greetings all. Apologies for such a long absence from the blog. It was nice to visit Kentucky and see family, and to celebrate the life of my grandma. I also worked at The Kettering Foundation for a day, visited the boys I work with in Dayton (all of whom are doing well), spent time bonding with my parents’ cats Sugar Boy, Sebastian, and Priscilla, and thinking about what I will write for my papers that are now due on May 17 and 22. Although I must say that four days of constant rain is not conducive to feeling motivated to write papers. I feel like we are on Noah’s ark. Speaking of animals, we watched March of the Penguins last night which was beautiful but I was really sad when some of them died and that they have to live in such harsh conditions. I am just not a movie watcher, especially when anything sad happens. To me, there is enough sadness in the world without needing to watch movies to remind me of it.

 

I went to a Mother’s Day party for a fellow Vagina Monologues cast member today, who gave birth to twin boys two months ago. They were early and they are litttttle and cute and all healthy now. I just love little ones and would love to have one, but I just feel like they are so much work. I think we need to be more settled before little ones arrive. Or win the lottery.

Now that I’m back in the swing of things I’ll update more often. Thanks for your comments and I’m just getting around to responding in the next few days as breaks from writing papers.

For those in the Boston area, try not to drown.

E :)

Grandma Update

A big thank you to those who emailed me or posted comments about my Grandma. Her funeral is on Monday — she passed away peacefully on Wednesday with family around. In a very Kentucky sort of twist of events, the funeral was supposed to be on Saturday but it had to be changed to Monday because it interfered with the church tractor pull. At least some people in this world have priorities straight :) Of course, she would completely understand. I found it amusing.

One big disappointment is that I won’t be able to go to New York City with our church youth group. I went to New York City on a “Summer in New York” trip in 1996 (ten years ago!) with my youth group and have been back many times with various groups to learn and teach about all the things in New York City that one does not learn about in rural Ohio. Urban poverty. Different cultures. Coffee shops (I had my first cappuccino in New York at the Used Book Store Housing Works Cafe which is still in operation). Homelessness. Ultra-rich people. And all sorts of other things. I lived at the Bowery Mission. The youth group will also be visiting the Bowery and seeing a service like no UU service they have ever seen. If you want the free meal in the evening at the Bowery you are required to go to the service. Sort of like food for oil a la Iraq only it is food for God. There is a big push to get people saved as soon as possible. There are a few amen-chanters near the front and many of the others sleep through the service. I can’t wait to hear what the youth think of it. Or Tricia (our minister) for that matter.

Wish I was going. But New York will always be there.

Times of Crisis, Need of Comfort

I got off the phone with my mom about a half-hour ago and she told me that hospice says that my grandma will probably only live another few hours or maybe a day. What surprises me a little is how I run back to those religious places in my life that are most comforting even if I’m not even sure I believe them. I want to kneel down and pray. I want to talk to God, not the UU God that I know, that presence that is within us and among us, but my old God that was this big guy with loving arms living up in the clouds. In times of crisis and sadness and just struggle, there is something about going back to that non-intellectual place we were when we were younger. That love of familiarity and that non-complex deity that was just perfect and loving and comforting. I guess the great thing is that the divine can be both of those things. God/dess doesn’t always have to be complex or heady or in need of ten different adjectives (the great mystery, the spirit of life, interbeing…) but the divine is all of those things and more. For me, at least, both simple and complex. Both personal and diffuse. The great thing, theologically, for me about UUism is that we acknowledge that different paths work for different people and that we are all just sort of fumbling toward making sense out of something that is truly beyond words. Beyond our words. It is nice not to have the responsibility or the pressure to systematically develop a theology where it all fits together, that really gets to it all, but to say “This divine, this non-divine, this something, is so great, so loving, so complex, that we simply cannot get all of it at once into language.”

So, Grandma, mother of 12, grandmother to 26, wife to Arnold, devout Catholic, peace, and love, and gratitude to you as you go to that which is beyond our words.

Dying

My grandma is dying very quickly. She was diagnosed with lung cancer about two month ago or so, and we soon found out that it spread to her bones. I have planned to go see her two times, but both times ended up canceling because I wasn’t feeling well or it seemed so hectic to try to go down to see her and weave around the throngs of family there and try to talk to her while she was feeling bad and…. well, it just seemed to make sense to wait and she was doing quite well until just recently. And she is not doing well now. She can barely walk or go to the bathroom herself. She knows she is dying. She is 81 and has nine children and 32 grand children and feels that she has lived a good life. That said, I don’t think it makes it any easier for the family to watch her increased confusion, decreased ability to do adult things, her increasing pain, that fear that she has even as a Catholic that she can’t be sure what comes next. I can’t help but be angry that my mom has to take care of her again - my mom did so much taking care of my grandma and her brothers and sisters when my mom was a child and my grandma was sick then too. And of course it doesn’t feel good to be a little angry at someone who is dying, but of course I’m sure it is normal. What it really comes down to is that when people die, it just sucks. The process typically isn’t pleasant. The feelings it brings up aren’t pleasant. I know, I know. Not very ministerial, ehh? I mean, this a time to celebrate life, pass peacefully into a new place, and so on. But it just isn’t that easy, at least not for me. It sucked when my Aunt Carol died of lung cancer two years ago, it sucked when my Mammaw suffered for five years before she finally died, it sucked that a possum ate my sweet little kittens Wilbur and Lilly when I was 10, when Luke (another cat) got hit on the road, or getting that call in the middle of the night that my cousin committed suicide. I know I’ll need to develop a better spiel on this before I do my CPE with hospice (planned Summer 07), but sometimes I think people try to flower up death and make it a beautiful process and celebration of life and there really isn’t anything nice about not being able to go to the bathroom yourself or your bones being painfully eaten away by cancer. And ministers need to find a way to acknowledge the messy, horrible parts of death and not just make it some sort of divinity-school-land fluffy thing about beauty and hope and transition and cycles. It is horrible, in many ways. And I hate it that my grandma has to go through it and that my mom has to suffer too.

A short p.s. I am listening to Third Day which is a Christian band I listened to in high school and there is something comforting about it. Even though the way they sing about God is not quite how I would frame it, it is great to hear the passion and joyful aching about God’s love. And it reminds me that I really do relate to God language and it makes me more irritated about that speaker yesterday (see previous post) making fun of people who believe in God or talk about God in a certain way. In times of death and dying and deep deep darkness that doesn’t seem like it will ever go away, God whoever whatever he or she is has been a great person to be with me. And, even as I make fun of Revolve magazine (see two posts ago) I also need to remember that that type of spirituality, no matter how sexist and annoying I find it, can bring great joy and comfort to girls who ache. I just hope that in my life I can carve out a space for a God that is there for you when you ache, and even maybe a Jesus who is there for you when you ache, without all the other baggage about how nonChristians will go to hell and men need to be in charge.

Enough for today. As I wrap up Gracie (my kitty) has come up and licked my nose. Animals are so good at caring for us. That’s all for now. E

On Strengths and Weaknesses, a lesson from Mrs. Troutwine

I have been informed by an unnamed source that despite my attempts at spell checking there are, gasp, some errors on this blog. This reminds me of first grade when dear Mrs. Troutwine pulled me aside to comfort me because I had recieved yet another C on my spelling test. Despite the fact that I could read quite well, my spelling was not going as well despite lots of intense studying. Mrs. Troutwine told me that I was a “sight reader” which meant that I just recognized words rather than sounded them out as many first graders do. An early lesson that we cannot have our cake and eat it to — its either spelling or reading for me, and I got reading. This story is getting long. The point is that since I did not sound out many words, I did not learn how spelling worked. This has haunted me to this day, including a Rhodes Scholarship application that was apparently rejected because of “numerous errors” (despite multiple proofreadings). This blog is not an exception. Alas. Apologies to those that are understandably troubled by such errors.