90/365 It's not about me

If one more person--especially Lynn--cracked a stale joke about stripping the altar, I was going to have to do something. I guess write about it here. But that's not the point.

I spent this evening again at church, this time practicing for Triduum. I had a vague sense that I wasn't living up to expectations. This has happened to me a lot over the years. I'm not the student Mr. Sweeney wants me to be. I don't have the magnanimous heart Fr. Bell is looking for. I'm not the obedient RA that Housing wants me to be. I fail to meet Taylor's expectations of friendship. Or Lillian's. Hilda gives me that tight-lipped disappointed smile when I tell the board I'm resigning. "Not living up to potential" is the phrase most likely to be seen on any review of my behavior or work.

I have a nagging sense this is also becoming true at church. And while I was happy to say goodbye to being a dormitory police officer or the unappreciated role as secretary of my neighborhood board, I don't want it to be true at church.

Part of it is having a 3rd child. When I got back involved at church, Maeve was already 2 and sleeping through the night. Leo, as happy as he is, is not like getting a 3rd cat. It takes time and energy to have another person living in the house. Part of it is having older children--back then, Sophia didn't go to Irish dance twice a week. She was barely going to kindergarten. Mike travels now--a lot. I'm not good at single parenting. Life is different now that it is different. Duh.

But I think part of it, the largest part, is that I have again failed to understand and live up to expectations. And the most frustrating part is that (besides the Leo Factor) I didn't know I was failing. But tonight gave me this vague sense that, yeah, I am. I can't even put my finger on it. No one said anything to me about it. Nothing was implied. It was just this feeling in the air. This sense of...heaviness. I can't describe it well.

Or maybe, now that I've written this down, I can take Astrid's advice. She and I often find ourselves in moments when it seems like we've done something wrong. Something is screwed up and it's our fault. And it's taken each of us some time and reflection to realize that most of the time, if we're bewildered by someone else's reaction to us or behavior, it's not about us. Who knows? Maybe it was just Holy Week. Maybe it's not about me.

Or if it is, maybe it will be clear later.

92/365 To done

All over but the banners. Still have those to finish. I'm about 2/3 the way done with the pinning--the water part at the bottom is ready for sewing, and the left side as I face it. The thing is, I can't see the whole banner set laid out at the same time. I can only get a partial view. There is nowhere in my house large enough to lay out something that is 12 feet long and 7 feet wide. The attic, maybe, but that would involve a large amount of house cleaning, which would probably make me break my Lenten promises to not yell at my children.

So I'm reminded of the reading I want at my funeral, which is usually read at weddings (but not at mine). The Corinthians one. You know it. Love is patient, love is kind, and so forth. But the part I want is later--Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. I can't know what this will look like until I hang it over the choir loft.

And I'm over myself. I pulled a spectacular April Fool's joke on many people and while that might not be really in the spirit of anything Lenten, it was fun, after a long string of life not being very light for me. I don't know. But that, plus simply backing off and reflecting on what I do at church, and more importantly, why, put things into a better perspective for me.

Last night's Holy Thursday service was good. We're getting better and better at stripping the altar. I need to convince Sal that he really, really should stay in the sacristy and not wander off mid-ritual, but it isn't easy to convince him of things when he has his heart set on something.

After going home and frantically working on banners, I paused and went to night prayer. God's work, my work. It may have been more productive to stay at home for the 20 minutes and pin pin pin but I would have regretted missing prayer. I got there a few minutes early and sat next to Sal...and listened to him breathe and swallow for an eternity. I thought about community and why we, as humans, choose to join them. What is it about being with other people--especially other people who irritate us--that gives us so much life? It isn't just sharing in a task like a work committee or political campaign. Church communities have people like Sal and people like Wilma and people like Dolores.

I drove home down Grand thinking these things, missing the monastery, and knowing there was no possible way I was going to get any more work done on the banners that night. Quilting is a liquid--it fills the container given. They would be done by Saturday whether I worked on them or not. And they wouldn't be done until then, whether I worked on them or not.

102/365 Vanda Phone Call

The answering machine light was on. I pushed play.

Bridgett? This is Sr. Vanda. Up at church? I'm sorry to bother you but I just stopped in at the church to pick something up for someone and Bridgett, the flowers are looking pretty sorry. I hate to say that but they really need some care. Sr. Hildegard said she was out until Saturday afternoon at least so I'm hoping you have time in your schedule to come up and tend to them sometime before the weekend. I know you have a busy schedule so I wanted to tell you that it really needed to be done. The flowers are in real need. And just so you know, when it comes time to discard some of those plants, I would certainly be interested. But Bridgett, you really need to come up and fix things....

I pushed stop. I don't know how much longer the message was, but I was done. I took a deep breath, wondering when it would be understood that "if you see a need, fill it" was my philosophy for plant care. I don't have ego wrapped up in plants the way I do in fabric. Seriously. I don't have any houseplants. They die. This is not my forte. But I'm happy to have it be my job. It just amused me, sort of, that Vanda's message took longer than filling a pitcher of water and hitting those plants in most need would have.

I went up to church and took care of things best I could. Confirmation is coming and we'll be redoing things. Just need to limp along a bit longer.

118/365 Crooked Neck Squash

"Bridgett? This is Hildegard," the voice says on the phone. "We were out in the garden just now and have these crooked-neck squash plants, you know, yellow summer squash?"

"Sure," I agree, stirring the risotto on the stove.

"Well, Kinnera planted several of them, and they're all doing well. We don't need all of them--would you like one?"

"Sure!" I never turn down free plants, produce, or fabric.

She explains the procedure. It involves breaking into their yard with a hand spade. This week.

"I'll do it when I come up to water," I tell her.

125/365 Oh, yeah.

So much of what we have is dependent upon who our pastor is at the time. Whatever he puts as a top priority becomes a priority for the parish, and the things that are not important fall by the wayside. I think about the past 11 years at the parish and how things changed when Miguel first came to us.

Right after the switch, there was a meeting of congregations way out in the county--congregations from all over, but in order to have us fit, we met in this mega-church out west. It was a political rally sponsored by a union of congregations (Catholic, other Christian, and Jewish) from the area. They'd invited candidates in an upcoming midterm election to come speak about their values and see if they would pledge to uphold our values. A rally. Everything had already been decided in advance. We weren't in on the planning stages but that was fine because, frankly, life is busy and that's not where my energies lie.

Our parish got a bus, a school bus, and we rode out there together. I sat next to Dolores and Mike had the girls behind me. In the middle of the light chatting on the way home, one of the nuns who gave lots of time to this organization suddenly asked, "Was Fr. Miguel there tonight?" The answer was no. There was a pause while she worked this out in her head.

"He'll figure it out," she said. "Some things he has to do."

And Dolores turned to me: "Do you know he has the audacity to put on his phone message that he takes Fridays off?" She laughed. "Like anyone can take a day off at our parish."

And while I wondered if Miguel, whom I barely knew, and only from parish council, would in fact figure it out, I thought I felt something, something imaginary and brief on the back of my neck. A realization. Things were changing.

This isn't to say that our parish isn't still active in social justice--of course we are. It just isn't the topic of every single homily. Social justice folks aren't gone. They just don't get 15 minutes after communion to read aloud their platform for change once a month.

I'm not a social justice person (I say that meaning "this is not where I sink all my energy" not meaning "I don't think we should work for social justice"). I'm a liturgy person. I'm not trained (thank you Lynn for reminding me) but this is what I like. This is why I stay. If it weren't for liturgy, our liturgy, the focus on liturgy at our parish now, if it weren't important to me, well, damn it, why wouldn't I just go sit with the Quakers at 10:30 on a Sunday morning and chuck all the baggage that goes with Catholicism?

So I know the world does not revolve around me, but it's a happy accident that Miguel arrived at our parish when he did. It was sort of a reawakening for me. Oh yeah, here we are now.

126/365 Zoo

"When you took Leo to back," I ask Mike after church, "did you go to the Utah Vestibule?"

"Nah," he shakes his head. "It's sort of become a zoo for choir folks' kids."

It has.

I go back and forth on this now. I sat back there on Sunday for a bit after Leo got away from me in the pew at the offertory. Dolores' daughter and her two wild ones were back there, their mom leaning against the wall looking tired. The little girl came up to me after I sat down and handed me a book. "Read!" she shouted.

"I'm trying to listen to church. You can sit on my lap, but I'm not going to read," I told her quietly. She climbed up on my lap.

"Read!" she demanded again. Her mom picked her up, embarrassed or at her wits' end (oftentimes, when I'm one, I'm the other as well). They left with her brother to go downstairs instead.

There was a little girl, a daughter of one of the choir members, coloring on the floor and yelling at her little brother. They are Maeve's and Leo's ages. Leo played with the little boy for a few minutes and then sat on the floor holding a ball someone had brought. The two kids' dad was more engaged, but they had definitely come to play. And even stranger, one of my girl scouts was back there. A third grader. Sort of helping out, sort of causing trouble indirectly, playing with the 5 year old girl.

But what to do? Complain? Mention to the girl scout that maybe she should join her dad in the choir? I didn't want to get her into trouble.

"You're Bridgett, right?" the dad asks me.

"Yeah, we've met before," I say, friendly. "At Astrid's houses, halloween."

He nods. Our sons play together a few more minutes there on the floor, and then it's time for communion.

Zoo, yes. Unnecessary cage for children, maybe. Allows some families to come to church? I don't know. I'm torn.

128/365 Corpus Christi

Sal's in church when I get there this morning. He's setting up the kneelers for the wedding this weekend. "Setting up" means randomly dragging them out into the sanctuary. There are 4, but many couples only use two (or none at all). But he drags them out every time. I'm there to take plants away so that the bride's flowers don't clash. Whatever.

"Hey Bridgett!" he says, like always. "We did good with the Easter decorating."

"We did, you're right," I say, putting Leo down so he can look at the font.

"Pentecost, I guess we'll put up the red and white banners?" he asks. If he means the felt ones with all the words, the answer is no, we threw them away ages ago. But I just shake my head. "Oh, ok. I'll help take everything down after Pentecost," he offers.

"That would be fine," I agree. "Some time that week we'll work on it."

"Have you heard about Corpus Christi?" he asks. I hate finding things out from our mentally disabled janitor. Sometimes, though, he knows things first. It's a mystery.

"No, what about Corpus Christi?" But I can tell on his face he doesn't have any news. He pauses.

"Are we going to have Corpus Christi?" he asks, trying to be more clear.

"Well, yes, Sal, we'll have Corpus Christi." It's on the liturgical calendar. It's not optional.

"Nobody told me about Corpus Christi," he shakes his head like he's suspicious of my answer. "Are you sure we're going to have Corpus Christi?"

"Yes," I say more definitively. "Everyone has Corpus Christi."

"Ok, Bridgett, if you say so."

I've never been happier to see Gillian walk through the door.

129/365 How much to be a parishioner?

I simply don't go to church. I go, I attend, I'm part of it, right, but I haven't been there regularly since, oh, January? I can't believe how busy this spring became. And suddenly it's mid-May and I won't be there Sunday either--girl scout camp. I will be there next Sunday for Pentecost, but then not the Sunday after. And so on.

When I'm there, my heart aches to stay. I need some good routines. Now.

134/365 Variety of Celebration

Lynn wrote that she had been going to other liturgies (meaning other centers/parishes) to experience a variety of celebration.

Something about that, no, something about everything she says, just makes me nuts.

A variety of celebration.

As for me and my house, we've found our niche. If I went looking for a variety of celebration, it would be simply an exercise in irritation. I am so "at home" at my parish that everywhere else is like a night in a cheap motel. Sometimes necessary, sure, but never desired.

Mike and I did hop around for a year, with the naive notion that we would see everything there was to see in the diocese--instead, we saw most of south and north city. Then we found a place we liked and stopped.

Maybe it's good, though, to make sure that where you are is still where you belong. I don't know. Maybe it's because she explained it that way. Like it was some grand plan of hers instead of "I was dissatisfied with our parish and I church hopped for a few weeks." Maybe it was because she explained it at all.

Maybe it was just that she gets on my nerves no matter what.

Ok, that's probably it.

136/365 Rabbit Song

Gonna waste some time with you
and let this world go
Keep my heart idle
--Hem

We arrange plants. And then, because one must check the arrangement from where the people sit to be sure it's done right, Kinnera goes and sits in the front pew. Hildegard sits on the opposite side from her. I put something away in the sacristy and sit myself down on the top step, leaning on the marble communion rail.

Ah, the communion rail. So much kerfuffle over a piece of architecture. I might be one of the few people in the parish who doesn't have an opinion. We could leave it there and make the church look like it always has (except NOT, since it's changed and evolved over time anyway), or we could take it out and make the worship space more up to date. I don't care. I've never felt like it was a barrier because I'm a post-Vatican II baby and I never knelt at it. I've never felt barred from the sanctuary. So it doesn't bother me. But neither does it seem like the church would be scarred and broken if we took it out (unless of course we did a bad job at it...).

Anyway, just an aside.

I sat there and Kinnera told a story from lunch. Lunch at the parish where she works sounds like fun. Hildegard told a story of being trapped on Mustang Island in a car that wouldn't start. It's longer than that (obviously) and I just wanted her to keep telling it. Keep talking and chatting and I won't have to go home yet. Not that home is the problem. Anywhere but this moment is the problem. I want to sit leaning against this cool marble and listen to you chat and not think about anything outside this moment.

It wasn't anything important, the moment. We weren't making decisions or discussing deep topics. We were being idle. Putting off the next things--for me, girls' bedtimes and housecleaning. Just being there.

When I left, driving down Grand towards home, I realized how much I used to do that. Linger, chat, be. And I wondered what happened to make that so rare. Leo's birth? One too many obligations? Too much Irish dance? I don't know. It was a nice moment. I need to do it more.

142/365 Ecumenical Dialogue

Why is it that I can have religious conversations with a Lutheran minister's wife in Texas but can't bring myself to do so with the conservative Catholic who sits behind me at mass?

For that matter, I can chat with and have a good time with the mom at my kid's school dressed in a hijab, a convert to Islam with her blue-green eyes and pale skin and completely white middle class name, but I can't bring myself to be anything more than thinly courteous with the Latin mass attendee on the next block?

My evangelical neighbors know more about my faith life than my Catholic ones.

Maeve's godmother is an Evangelical Lutheran (ELCA, I mean) and Leo's godmother is a Presbyterian (Presbyterian USA).

I share many values more closely with the Mennonite family in my girl scout troop than I do with my Catholic parents.

Why are so many Catholic feminists so very very angry? If they left, we could talk. But they stay and we can't get past the anger.

My few Jewish friends ask important questions about the Vatican, about conversion; my Catholic friends seem to have few opinions about either.

Yet I attended a Jesuit university because the Methodist one that was first on my list treated me terribly on my tour of the college when I visited. Perhaps they weren't interested in ecumenical dialogue. Perhaps they'd been talking to the same Catholics I've been avoiding.

Several times a week I ask myself why I stay. And I've already answered this question and stability is part of it and the biggest part, frankly, but that vow isn't just a promise, it's a deep love for place and denomination and parish and family and I stay because there's nowhere else for me to go, because Sr. Jean Frances told me most people don't have to leave from where they started to find the right place, because I've always been leaving or coming to a new place and I hate starting over and I've already converted too many times to try again now and there is this deep, deep rooted conviction inside me, maybe it's a part of stabilitas, that says:

Stay right where you are. Stay. Down and stay.

But stability isn't my problem. It's the conversion of heart: being a good monk, essentially. How do I be a good Catholic to my fellow Catholics? I'm so good at hospitality across scarred battle lines, but I'm fearful of my nearest neighbors?

Maybe it's because, within the Church, Ecumenical Dialogue has turned into Ecumencial Diatribe. I get sick of flinching.

170/365 Stewardship Report Leads Me To Thinking

"So we're up to over 500 families," Mike mentions after the meeting.

"That's great."

"And this weekend, we realized, is Pride Fest. And then there was this debate about bottled water," he sighs. "And I suggested big coolers of ice water with dixie cups, but this was mostly ignored."

I reflect on past Pride Fest weekends. The parade starts right there, practically on the steps of church. It tends to be a circus. A hot crowded circus. But this is what I love about our neighborhood: it is a hot crowded circus.

And I think about our church's (big C, actually, not our parish) attitude about homosexuality. And it makes me glad that we live here, that the parade starts right there, and that we were having a debate about ice water. Instead of posting threatening messages on our marquee like the Lutherans down the way ("Jesus died for the sin of pride") or being absolutely crazy and bringing in, say, a loud speaker and a big wooden cross to drag around and antagonize people with.

There are things to get all riled up about, and there are things not to.

175/365 Astrid's House

I spent the morning at Astrid's house. She lives a few blocks north of me and her house is open. It is pristinely clean and she always has coffee brewing.

This is what I want as time goes by. I have it in some realms, but as things evolve with neighbors and in-laws and friends, I want this more and more. I want a comfortable place to waste time with folks and talk about important and unimportant things. I have it there, and I can see in my mind eventually having it in my own house, too. It isn't my time right now, as Astrid always says about this or that, with a new toddler and sloppy school aged children, but it's coming.

It's interesting to me how notions in one's head become reality. Sometimes not the way we plan, but if something gets mulled over long enough, it starts to emerge.

It makes me careful what I spend time thinking about.

178/365 This is How You Can Help

The other day someone asked me, and I won't go into too many details, but she asked me, "What can I do to help?"

People ask this all the danged time. Someone dies: what can I do? Someone is sick, someone has had a baby, someone is struggling financially or with depression or anxiety. And sometimes the person at the heart of the matter (the new mother, the grieving widow, etc) is asked the question.

They never know how to answer. They are knee deep in the mire.

Other times, someone nearby is asked the question. The sister of the new widow, the cousin who pitches in to help with the woman with breast cancer. And so forth. This was more the position I was in. And oftentimes these people, because they are doing it all, or because they have gotten used to not having help, or because they don't even realize that things are truly getting out of control, say "Oh I don't know...." and let the conversation drift to other topics.

But this time I turned to the person and said exactly what I wanted her to do. I gave a specific suggestion that was well within her ability and frankly, one of her strengths. And I know she will do it.

It's a kind of reverse hospitality, frankly (I've been thinking about this concept a lot lately). Letting someone help you, or someone close to you, is a kind of gift. Not like the mom I was carpooling with several years ago who always failed to hold up her end of the bargain and then would ask me, "what can I do to make up for it? Can I get you a gift certificate to somewhere? Or maybe I can pick up on alternate Thursdays during a full moon?" which actually made my life harder than if I just picked up her kid every Monday morning and forgot about tit-for-tat.

What I mean is really letting go of a small thing (or large thing) that you know the other person can help you with. I think it takes a deep understanding of the other person and of your own needs--I'm not patting myself on the back here, trust me, it was one of those moments where I stood outside myself and tapped myself on the shoulder and said, umm, you need to take her up on this. But saying "yes, there is something," increases the connection between people and within families or communities. We shouldn't try to do it all.

188/365 BASIC after mass

After mass I turned to Sophia and told her she could go downstairs for a donut. And then found myself pulled into a conversation with Missy on my way to join her. I didn't know what my in-laws had planned and I thought they could figure that out and let me know. Missy has a way of making me engage her, even though every conversation takes effort.

It always has. If she wasn't a current parishioner I would have more things to say, funny insane things that Jessica and her sister have shared with me. But funny things about former parishioners can be amusing and kind of like a car wreck, but current parishioners fall into a different category. I don't want to stir our tidy little anthill. But just to say that Missy takes some overly polite handling.

We discussed books. I am shamefully not well-read in the areas of religion, politics, spirituality, and so forth these days. I have some Benedictine books on my list, and a ton of juvenile fiction of course, but I'm not reading, say, the most current biography of this or that political leader from the last century. I don't know much about the history of liberation theology or people closing down torture rooms in Myanmar. Or whatever (I'm just making this up). So I often find myself caught in a conversation with Missy that begins, "What are you reading?"

She is never very impressed with what I'm reading. She is one of the people in my life who fit into the "disappointed with Bridgett" category. Lots of people make assumptions about who I am based on a couple of encounters. It seems that my Jill of All Trades status confuses them. Perhaps I don't portray myself well. I tend to use camouflage to hide my secret identity. But I think some folks assume that because I share, say, their intense hatred of winter squash, or their love of magical realism, or a casual interest in matrix design, that I am just like them. Or that I would also share 99% of their other interests, hobbies, passions, and loves. Missy is one of these folks. She doesn't get me, and we don't see each other often so she doesn't have much of a chance to get me. We don't see each other often because she drives me crazy. And this becomes a cycle, like an old BASIC program:

10 INPUT "What are you reading these days?", R$
20 PRINT "I see."
30 PRINT "I don't know", R$
40 PRINT "I am reading the newest biography of liberation theologians who shut down torture rooms in Myanmar."
50 PRINT "Goodbye. I wish we could talk more."
60 GOTO 10

She recommended three books. She even spelled the last name of one of the authors. The author had a common noun as a last name. I told her those sounded like a plate full for the summer. She smiled, blinking at me. And then it was over.

192/365 Coffee Friday

I go to coffee on Wednesdays with Astrid. We sit in the back of a little ice cream (gelato, actually) place and pontificate, knit, and solve the world's problems. This Wednesday I didn't, though, because of camp driving and busy summer for Astrid and our other friend, Louise. But Louise wanted to get together on Friday, which would be a new thing for me--I don't think the two of us ever have gone to coffee alone. Strange--it's been 4 years of going to coffee with her but never just us--Astrid is the connection between. But I think we both wanted to get out. So I got to the gelateria at 9:00--I'd told her 9:30 because I had no idea how long camp drop off would take--and there is Fr. Miguel on the opposite side of the street.

He's gotten his hair cut because it's every other Friday. So he was across the street and comes over to say hi.

Nothing much to say--it was nice to sit and chat: coffee, a muffin, kids, and then Louise showed and we talked about her vacation and other stuff. The stuff doesn't matter. What matters is harder to define than conversational topics on a hot July morning. Planting my feet in this parish, in this neighborhood--I know, I talk about that a lot--but the idea of living somewhere where I had a chance of running into my parish priest on the street and then have coffee with him? Instead of a tight lipped smile and the weird feeling of meeting someone out of context like when you see the checkout girl from the grocery store at the next table in a restaurant? And then he sends out a twitter message about running into me, and Sr. Hildegard responds that she's jealous, that she's been working hard while we were caffienating ourselves? The whole idea is like something out of a novel that I wouldn't want to finish if I were reading it.

But I'm not just reading it.

193/365 And then the doorbell rang

We'd worked on building the porch all afternoon in the hot July sun. Picked garlic and refilled the pool after my sisters' party. Dinner from the gyro place down the street. Sophia and a friend had baked in my kitchen (read: destroyed) and had spread cupcakes around a bit. The doorbell rang and I figured it was a neighbor returning a plate. So I go down because I have other things on my agenda with the neighbors involving the fact that we have to get together because I'm dying to spend time with adults this summer.

But it's not a neighbor. It's...Fr. Miguel. And Hildegard and Kinnera and their housemate Karen. And Jack and his wife Elaine. On my front porch. I open the door and after a puzzling interchange that involved my saying, "but it isn't my birthday," they come in.

They were just passing by from a restaurant a few blocks east. "Bridgett lives on this block..."

And there they were.

And that was a wonderful surprise. The Gospel this weekend was Mary and Martha. I am always and forever a Mary.

203/365 Inner Thoughts and Filters

There are like, 6 people reading this. Maybe more--there's a woman in Portland who belongs to a UCC church there who may have spread the word. I get 70-100 hits a day over at South City but this is definitely a niche market.
And I use pseudonyms, although long-term readers or folks who know me "in real life" know exactly who Astrid and Hildegard and Lynn are. I occasionally get an email asking "ok, who is ____" and I fill them in. I write with pseudonyms because I sometimes say things that aren't 100% sweet and nice. I sometimes wish I started that long ago on all my blogs, but it would be hard to keep up the facade. Here it works because it's so specific: parish life.

I love my parish. It is intertwined in my life in such a way that there's no way I can leave at this point. As much as I have troubles with Catholicism, it doesn't matter. My parish has ruined me. I can't go anywhere else. A long time ago I thought I was convert material but it turned out I was just looking for the right community. I found it here.

Things change and especially an organization that is bound only by the words "I belong" changes. Nobody is stuck in our parish the way you might be stuck in a neighborhood or marriage or demographic group. If you don't like the parish, you can move up the way to several different Catholic choices, and there are plenty of non-Catholic options, too. People stay because it brings them life in some way. Sure, there are probably people who aren't self-reflective about why they're in the parish (duh) but if they were truly unhappy, they'd either get involved to try to change things (like my mother-in-law, who stays in her parish against all possible odds) or they would walk away to greener pastures.

I used to say things, in general, like "for right now, this is right for me," or "this is what works for now." In regards to not just my parish membership, but where I lived, where I worked, where my kids went to preschool, and so on. Things aren't permanent but this is what is good now.

The last 3 years or so, since I became an oblate, things feel more permanent. Leaving would take so much energy and so much wasted time. You can't grow olive trees in one summer season. You have to plant them for your children to raise.

So when I complain about doing "Jesus' laundry" or get aggravated with people who sit on committees with me or realize with guilty dog looks on my face that I haven't watered the plants all week and they're probably dead now--it doesn't have to do with church. Like everything I write about, frankly, it has to do with me. "Look how I screwed up again" could be the title of every blog I write. Of every entry. Of every letter I send, every phone call I make. Because that's where the story is, in the details of mistakes and annoyances and little victories. And, like Miguel said the last time I went to confession, it's hard to live under a big tent. There are folks who belong to my parish that I think I wouldn't miss. But maybe I would. What would I say? If everything was wonderful and perfect and I loved every moment, well, what good is it to love those who love you? Obviously you do that. And what good is it to write about things that are 100% "right" and perfect? It makes a better story this way. And I am so in love with our story.

I want to raise olive trees, not just cucumbers and tomatoes.

207/365 Summer Ordinary Time

Very very ordinary. It's summer and nobody is here. We're not even here. We are, it's just like we're phoning it in these days. Nothing to really take care of, nothing to meet about. Nothing new. No one comes, no one goes, it's awful (Waiting for Godot).

It's late summer. Knee deep in ordinary time. And hardly anything to say.

220/365 Coffee with Fr. Miguel

He was supposed to get his hair cut. The barber shop is across the street from the coffee house (I love my neighborhood, have I mentioned?). We were chatting about vacations, mostly about Astrid's thousand-day vacation to South Carolina. He appears around the corner and comes in to chat. Keeps looking out to see if the barber shop is open yet (I don't think it ever did, for mysterious reasons).

We talk about vacations some more, about knitting, about kids, about the oireachtas (Irish dance regional competition) Sophia will probably not attend. We talked about this and that and whatever, just like any coffee Wednesday or Friday (Wednesdays are our standard, but in the summertime things get loose, especially when Astrid takes 1000 day long vacations).

It's a great way to start the day. Energizes me and not just because of the coffee. I get so much done on the days I go to coffee.

He left about 9:30, realizing he'd have to do something else about his hair (which is a quarter inch long, if that). We stayed a bit longer, but knowing we had things to accomplish as well on this hot hot day, we wrapped things up and went down the road.