Saturday Afternoon Photos

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I walked out to the pond this afternoon; in just a few short weeks the catbriars and poison ivy will make it difficult to get back there. There were ducks, too, but they flew off before I could get a picture.

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I noticed this huge nest the other day from a distance. I have no idea whether it's new or from last year, or what kind of creature inhabits(ed) it. Maybe squirrels?

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Self-portrait in shadow

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Afternoon sunlight

Coming up: Holy Week

Holy Week is no doubt the busiest time of year for clergy; reflecting that here's a Friday5 from the RGBP:

1. Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated?

This Sunday is properly referred to in the Prayer Book as "The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday" which pretty much answers that question! We will begin with the "Procession of the Palms" and this year (if the weather cooperates) we will begin in the library parking lot across the street, bless the palms, and process singing into the church. The mood switches mid-service with the reading of the Passion (Luke this year). At the end of the service we will depart in silence (well, we'll try, anyway.)

2. Maundy Thursday Footwashing: Discuss.

Yes. Interestingly enough I was in a discussion about this in another on-line forum and I was surprised by the number of Episcopal churches who don't do footwashing, because it's been a part of my church life every place I've been as an adult.

I should insert here that my liturgics professor really emphasized a full observance of the Triduum, and that along with my own experiences means that I see this week as the most significant liturgically of the year. I also believe the sign value of what we do is very important as well. In seminary we washed each others' feet--each person up washed the next person. I really liked that. Last year (my first year here) we only had a few people come forward and while I don't like "plants" very much, we may have to encourage a few folks to see if their coming up will encourage others.

The word "Maundy" comes from the mandate Jesus give us to serve others, so it seems valuable to model it in the liturgy. Last year I set up the context in my sermon; I had thought about preaching on the Luke text alternative this year, but after my earlier discussion I think I will stick with John and the footwashing again.

3. Share a particularly meaningful Good Friday worship experience.

In seminary, the Good Friday Liturgy from the prayer book was taken more seriously than I had ever experienced before. At one point in the liturgy a large plain wooden cross is brought out and people are invited to venerate it if they wish. To be really honest, I had never seen such a thing and it seemed, well, a little silly the first year but I tried to be open about it. By my third year and after reading my liturgics prof's book on the Triduum (This Is the Night, James Farwell) I finally "got it". I can't really articulate it, but the whole Good Friday observance took on new meaning for me.

4. Easter Sunrise Services--choose one:
a) "Resurrection tradition par excellence!"
b) "Eh. As long as it's sunrise with coffee, I can live with it."
c) "[Yawn] Can't Jesus stay in the tomb just five more minutes, Mom?!?"

d) none of the above? If it's the Vigil, fine. Otherwise, no.

5. Complete this sentence: It just isn't Easter without...

Alleluias. Easter hymns. Joy.

Bonus: Any Easter Vigil aficionados out there? Please share.

YES for reasons I've given above. The Vigil is the culmination of the Triduum. It's moving and it brings home the drama of Easter--if it's done well. I love attending, and I'm beginning to love planning one. I would love it even more if my rector felt as strongly about it as I do.

Both at my seminary and at my field placement church the Vigils were very well done. They (at their best) start in the dark with the new fire and the lighting of the Paschal Candle, the singing of the Exultet, the readings that chronicle our salvation history. We will have a baptism again this year which is wonderful. After the baptism which takes place in candle light, the bells ring and the organ sounds and the lights come up and we really celebrate.

The Vigil can take place on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, but if I had my druthers it would be THE MAIN celebration of Easter, just as the Christmas Eve service is the main celebration of Christmas. It's a bit of a tough sell, though.

Random bullets--end of March edition

~I am soooo glad that March is almost over. I know many people bemoan February as the worst time of year, but March is loooooong, and around here, it's still not spring--it's gray and drab and cold and the weather is fickle. Our location with water on two sides means that this area is slow to warm up compared the rest of the region, which is slow enough on its own.

~Add to that the fact that March was ridiculously overbooked...some extra work thing every single weekend, and no time to take any comp time if I wanted to.

~The first part of April will be crazy busy, too, (but in a good way I think) what with Holy Week and Easter. But then I get some down time--a week off after Easter, and then later in the month three days at a clergy conference where I will get to meet our new Presiding Bishop and the president of the House of Deputies. I am psyched about that.

~I've been so tired when I get home at night that I don't want to do anything. The Kid got me watching Grey's Anatomy (he borrowed the first season and convinced me to buy the second season) so I've used that as stress relief. Pathetic, huh?

~The last few nights I've been playing with Photoshop (see below). I'm not artistic, but I've always wanted to be, and making pictures look like "art", even bad "art" is fun....but it also feels a bit like cheating...sort of like doing paint by numbers. I mean I'm not actually doing anything artistic at this point--just applying filters to my pictures, which anyone could do.

~I keep toying with the idea of going ahead and buying a DSLR...I can't really afford it, but will I ever be able to? Eh. I don't really want to be rich (good thing!) but I wish I could sometimes buy things like that without analyzing it and agonizing about it for months first. I did the same thing before I bought my new laptop.

~I think I've been in a little bit of a funk all winter, and it's mostly related to work. I don't feel like I can blog about it in any detail here, but I've whined about it often enough over at Phantom's. Sometimes I wonder if it's just me being difficult. But I don't think so.

~I was miserable my first semester of grad school because I had chosen my program poorly. I thought about that the other day for the first time in a long time because on my worst days that is what I feel like now. But that was just one semester and then I changed programs. Changing jobs is not that simple for a variety of reasons.

~On the other hand when I started my academic job and when I started seminary I KNEW I was in the right place doing the right thing at the time. Is it too much to hope for that again?

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Fun with Photoshop

I installed Photoshop on my MacBook a few weeks ago, but haven't done anything with it. Today I decided to play around with it and learn how to really use it. I'm not sure I achieved that goal, even in part, but I had fun.

I started with this picture, which I posted a few weeks ago and applied various filters to come up with these:

(all of which look better if you click to enlarge)

Spring?

Most everything is still a dull brown, and the weather is still iffy--we may get snow showers tonight though it was in the 60s yesterday--but I've begun to see and hear a few signs of spring:

~Our groundhog ambled across the back yard this afternoon.

~Chipmunks have been running up and down the stone wall.

~A half dozen or so geese have taken up residence on the pond.

~I've had grackles and red-wing blackbirds at the feeder.

~The neighbor's lawn sported a few crocuses (croci?).

~And tonight when I walked home from church, I heard a few spring peepers.

Catching up Project 365...again

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My kitchen window received its final coat of paint about two weeks ago, about the same time my new table and chairs arrived. So here it is, the day it was all finished. I spend a lot of time sitting here.

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While I was sitting at the table this morning watching the snow fall, one of my favorite birds, the red-bellied woodpecker came to the feeder. This isn't the greatest picture in terms of sharpness, but what I like about it is that you can see two birds on the periphery coming towards the feeder.

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Again, not the sharpest photo, but I still like the birds in it. (It looks better if you click on it to enlarge it.)

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This is a white-breasted nuthatch perched on the side of the garage, waiting for a turn to eat.

The eyes have it

When I downloaded some pics I took this morning, I found some pics the Kid had taken of himself--probably when he was supposed to be doing homework. I cropped these to show just his eyes. I CANNOT make myself cross-eyed, and I love that picture.

Torn

I'm supposed to go to a conference tomorrow. It's not that far away, and it should be fairly interesting. But the weather is tres crappy. It's pouring rain now and windy, and it's supposed to change over to "wintry mix" here and snow where I am headed. I just don't feel like dealing with it, so it occurred to me that I could just stay home.

In some ways staying home sounds very attractive. I'm not preaching this weekend and I worked very hard this week to be mostly caught up. So if I stayed home tomorrow and Saturday would be free days, which I've had precious few of lately.

But I've already paid for this conference, and it feels a bit like I'm wimping out just because of bad weather.

Gah. I guess I'll see what the weather looks like in the morning.

ETA: Friday morning: That nasty combo referred to euphemistically as "wintry mix" was falling when I drove the Kid to school this morning; it turned to snow about 7 am and it's been snowing since, with more snow forecast for my destination. So I'm staying home, wimp or not.

We interrupt this program

for a brief political rant.

~Rant the first: I do not understand the huge backlash against immigrant workers. This country was founded and populated by immigrants, and successive generations of immigrants have continued to enrich our culture and contribute to our economic growth. I am appalled by the thinly veiled racism that seems to underlie current attitudes towards immigrants, illegal or otherwise.

Last week a factory in my state was raided and illegal workers were rounded up and detained. Many of them had children who are now in foster care; some of those children fell through the cracks when their parents were detained and were left all alone. Some of those children were born in the US and what their fate will be if their parents are deported is uncertain.

These are people who were working hard to support their families and make better lives for themselves. Isn't that the American dream? Is that dream available only for a select few?

And the factory that was raided? It was making supplies needed by the troops in Iraq. Which leads to...

~Rant the second: I am vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq. I am a pacifist at heart and pretty anti-military. Because of this I have been accused of not "supporting our troops." But I wonder if this charge shouldn't be directed back at those government officials who make it so difficult for troops returning from war to receive the medical and psychological treatment they need? And who withhold discharge papers from someone who is paralyzed from the waist down while they figure out if he is "permanently" disabled, thus preventing him from getting VA benefits including the rehab he needs to get on with his life (this story was on NPR this morning). How can we send young men and women off to war and then deny them the care that they need to recover from the horrible effects of that war? It is unconscionable.

Neglecting the blog

and other random bits of Monday

~I knew I hadn't posted in a while, but I didn't realize it had been over a week! What happened to my post-a-day habit? It didn't last very long after NaBloPoMo.

~And what happened to my Project 365, taking and posting a picture every day? I feel frustrated about that, because it was something I really wanted to do. I've really enjoyed others--like Ianqui and Scrivener and Liane to name just a few.

~Could this be related to the fact that today is the first whole day off I've had in two weeks?

~And that wouldn't even be so bad if I felt like I had accomplished a great deal, or if I felt caught up. But, nope. Neither of those is true.

~In fact, if truth be known, I have work I should do today....write things for the newsletter for example, since the deadline was Friday.

~At least the two all day meetings I went to last week, and the half-day workshop all seemed worthwhile. There is nothing worse than pointless meetings and worthless workshops.

~Yesterday was the first warm sunny day we've had in a while. But I was too tired to do more than sit on the couch and watch the last four episodes of 24's first season. Sheesh...could we have a few more plot twists? And I'm not so much for sad endings.

~I saw a chipmunk this morning, so spring must be coming :)

~Yesterday was Elder Son's birthday. It makes me feel awfully old--compounded by the realization that several of the bloggers I read just turned the same age he did.

~And Elder Son is engaged! To be married in July 2008.

The Interview Meme

Like Trillwing, I'm late with this meme, but it's not for lack of questions. Profgrrrrl-not-Katie Couric sent me the questions a couple of weeks ago. So here goes:

1. What material possession would you find most difficult to give up?

~Right off the top of my head I would have to say my laptop and my camera. My laptop is my link to the "outside" world--my link to friends and family who are scattered all over the place. What would I do without email and blogs and such? Since one of the lovely daughters is on the other side of the planet I keep up with her life through her blog, and she keeps up with me the same way (although her blog is generally more interesting than mine.) And although I haven't been doing it much the last couple of weeks, I love taking pictures. Ever since I earned the Photography Badge as a Girl Scout, I wanted to take lots of pictures, but I never had a good camera and I was terrible, just TERRIBLE about getting film developed. I was relatively late jumping on the digital camera bandwagon, but I love my camera because I can take as many pictures as I want and just download them....so easy! so fun!

~The truth is that I do have other things I am attached to...a while back I decided that I only wanted to have things that I really care about. So every picture or doo-dad hanging on my walls has some sort of story attached. The only jewelry I own consists of a few inexpensive things I've bought for myself or my kids have given me , and things that my late mother-in-law who loved antique jewelry gave me so it all has more personal significance than monetary value. I have the christening gown that both my daughters wore and that was worn by their grandmother and I have the christening gown that I wore. I have an old trunk that is just like one my grandmother gave me (the original one got ruined but this one really is an exact copy). So things like that I would hate to lose, too. And my books.

2. What's the most important part of your daily routine?

~Having a few minutes of quiet time to just be. I'd like to say that I have a well developed routine of prayer/meditation or exercise, but I have neither. I really like to have a bit of quiet time in the morning though, before I have to talk to anyone too much and a few minutes of quiet when I get home from work.

3. What are you currently learning that excites you the most?

~Not one particular thing, but I love the way things I've learned in the past (in seminary for example) come together and are reintegrated as I use them and add in new things --experiences, readings, etc. In particular I find that preparing for sermons I revisit readings and discussions and often come to a new place with the material. And when I teach something that often happens as well.

4. Who would play you in the movie of your life?

~Oh my, I am so NOT up on actors, etc. But I admire Meryl Streep, so perhaps she would do. And if I wanted I could so have her hair in "The Devil Wears Prada".

5. If you found a $20 bill tucked deep in a sweater pocket, long forgotten, what would you do with it?

~Buy a book (except so many books are more than $20 these days!) or maybe have lunch with a friend.

Now, I am supposed to offer to ask questions of anyone who wants them, so if you want an interview, let me know.

Aaarrgh!

Is anyone besides me having trouble leaving comments on blogger? Some but not all blogs that use letter verification don't show any letters...so how the heck are you supposed to leave a comment. So YT, APL, AAYOR, Woman Warrior, and maybe a couple of others I've forgotten, I've tried to comment and it won't let me.

I've had "new blogger" for a couple of months and this just started happening, so I don't think it's just the conversion that is doing it.

Not my usual behavior

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