When you come to the end of a pretty good day...

It was a happy Pentecost -- up very early with lots and lots of time to get everything ready to go -- out of the house about 9 a.m. and arrived at The Church of Two Names an hour and a half later.  An easy drive, blazing sunshine, just one stretch of highway where paving is happening: an interlude of the stink of tar, and the rattle of "loose chips".
The route is not one I've taken very often, but it is a kind of thrill to swing northward toward a whole array of sonorous destinations, with "Alaska Highway" at the foot of the list ... and the thought that I just might could run away altogether, if I took the notion.
Arrived good and early for the service; the church is next door to a large Roman Catholic church: "Cage match -- Spiritual Ecumenism vs. PARKING SPACES".  I went around and around a couple of blocks, and, true to form, the minute I parked, turned off the key, and opened the door, that was The Signal ~~ Ite, missa est ~~ they all came out and drove merrily away.  It's actually kind of a municipal tradition in this community. 
Preached on the Holy Spirit as the Inconvenient Infrequent Conflagration AND the unquenched unnoticed essential pilot light, and how that manifests itself in language, in speech.  It seemed to go down well... Fluent instantaneous Pamphylian, vs. five words in a row that make sense.  I worked off a sustainable sermon-text from about five years back...
We were  a small group, about fifteen, service went smoothly around and over the inevitable idiosyncrasies.  Pleasantries were exchanged, and off down the road for home, stopping on the way for a good, healthy, late, lunch (in a restaurant, yet, conscious of the honorarium in my pocket).
I was full of yeasty ambition to continue working in the yard, but instead had the usual nap and am about a third of the way into The Lords of Finance.
Time now for a little snack, a little tidying in the kitchen perhaps, another kick at the laundry situation, and so to bed.

ramblin'

Back again in the internet oasis and about to go back to the Falls and walk a little bit more ambitiously than the last time.

Another brilliant, brilliant day -- not hot, but the sun is v. assertive at these altitudes.

As always on holiday I make plans to revise the day-to-day when I get back to ordinary-level: purchase topographical maps, choose and fit the permanent car-picnic box, keep better records, REALLY find out how this camera works best...maybe this time?

Opened the curtains on the west-side of my motel room this morning to see the first light on the mountains across the valley. And what walked by, close enough to touch, but a very nice young white-tail buck...probably full of apple-sauce, bless him, there are a couple of derelict old trees in the next block. I admired him until he disappeared, then began getting day-ready, and there was a great uproar out that window, sounded something between a 'quack' and a 'mew' -- maybe most of all like a really annoying child with a new kazoo. Looked out again. Mrs. Whitetail went by, vociferating.

Got my opening-time dunk in the hot pool (102 F) this morning and then UP the delectable valley very briskly.

Lunch has been purchased, and I'm on my way again. Home tomorrow. Full of RESOLUTION.

ahoy

Dear all,

Deep in the moun-TAINS and having the most wonderful time.
Practising to be all OLD and everything. It's a hoot.
And I'm happy to report that the osprey population is almost excessively healthy and full of bumptious good spirits in these parts.
That is all.

the state of affairs...

The only way I can describe how the last week has felt... is to say that I think I have been rolled out like phyllo pastry, beaten out like gold leaf, or maybe just pounded and stretched out in all directions like schnitzel.

-- the royal person's visit plans continue growing ever more elaborate. Fortunately externally generated funds are available to underwrite the more extravagant proposals (hanging baskets? what do you think this is, Aunt Granny's Ye Olde Tea-House? hanging baskets?)

-- annual general meeting for the local Ecumenical Gaggle HASTENING upon me, ready or not (and it's "not").

-- annual general meeting of MH & U, come to think of it -- this will tell you how fraught everything is, that the parish's annual general meeting, Part II, Parish Officers, the election of, is a matter of "meh" at this point.

-- timing of the first demi-official announcement of the Rambler's pending departure from active full-time ministry, also on the front burner.

-- baptismal and confirmation prep "oh yeah" -- there's a baptismal service on Pentecost...marshalling the candidates and trying to tell them something coherent.

-- a curate, rushing down upon us like the wolf on the fold, and requiring some sharp and salutary lessons in authority (mine) and obedience (his) before he's a month older.

-- oh yes and on the EVENING of Trinity Sunday, also the day of the royal person's visit... there's an ordination: two priests, one deacon, the deacon a product of MH & U. And the one in the purple hat, upon whom be peace, has tapped the Rambler to conduct the pre-ordination retreat ... three days in sequestration away from the parish, in the week before the arrival of the royal person.

-- and I am dealing with three different police forces, and the army. "BRING'EM ON," I say. "Qu'ils y viennent, un a la fois ou tous ensemble..."

The Rambler is feeling the strain just ever so slightly.

But it was a great Mother's Day with all the young'uns and nice supper and wild games with Nefertiti, and a laser pointer. During which we proved conclusively that cats DO get dizzy. And when they do, they fall over. Hilarity ensued.

home again

back at my desk late in the morning after a tiring but very happy weekend elsewhere.

word is that the Honorable Assistant held the fort in exemplary fashion on Sunday.

good times among the ladies of the diocese of Up-Yonder...including two long drives from and back to the closest by-air arrival point...coming back to the airport yesterday, a very special stretch of roadway alongside Major Northern River...

beautiful country with big rounded velvety hills and great tracts of plough-land -- farmers out "on it" already doing preliminary disc'ing.

Saw some deer in the distance -- also elk, but that was cheating because they were on an elk ranch.

The ladies were most receptive to discussion of Julian of Norwich, mysticism generally...

And it was a happy time!

Back to 55 unopened emails, also phone messages, 'space-hook' messages...plenty on the plate and a very long and mostly futile meeting this afternoon.

Home now. Maybe a little work in the yard before dark.

In which the Rambler...rambles

Just about to hoist suitcase into vehicle and make tracks for the airport, bound for the next See City to the north of us in Prairie Province.

Carrying Big Suitcase (boo) to accommodate VESTMENTS, as part of this trip includes presence and preaching at Wee Cathedral on Sunday morning.

The rest is leading a group of 50 Mothers in Zion through some of the lesser intricacies of the Shewings of Julian of Norwich, blessed be she.

Back at the ranch...

...returned to Prairie Metropolis late last night with what passed, at the time, for a "hoodling kind of roar." Northwest Airlines was doing its best, with the hoodling and roaring, at least.

The Rambler -- and this really is, "Where I came in, a year ago" -- has been away from home to the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists (woot woot -- try explaining THAT ONE to US Customs, upon whom be peace). This year, not in Adjacent Prairie Metropolis, but in St. Louis. (= "LeWIS" I find, Judy Garland to the contrary notwithstanding, also W. C. Handy, and, most fondly remembered, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, she of the nephew, on an old LP of travel songs)

Are you still with me? Good.

It was a great weekend -- sumptuous accommodations, great presenters, good chats, lovely socializing, wonderful weather.

And a confessional moment; yesterday I cut church, not out of any distaste for United Methodism, heaven forfend, but just because it seemed like such a sin-against-locale NOT to go down to Laclede's Landing and look at the Big Muddy One. Such a treat, for the Rambler, to see a waterway that DOESN'T flow eventually into the Arctic Ocean!

So thanks to the Metrolink, I was able to do that; and also, of course, to take in THE ARCH. Sweet mother of us all. I remember when it was built (creak of rocking chair is heard in the background), but nothing photographic was ever adequate preparation for how big it is.

And the National Park Service, whom we love, were having Park Palooza with lots of Informative Exhibits, yet!

And a whole lot of the citizenry, wearing red T-shirts, got on the Metrolink, and got off, hollering, at Anheuser-Busch Stadium. From which the Trained Mind here infers that something of a baseball-ious nature was toward...

All in all it was a delightful time, but I am kicking myself that I didn't book off one of my remaining, dangling, weeks of holiday time, rent a car, and head south and west into Missouri to see what else there is to see including Places of Ancestral Origin. I was lamenting to this effect to the Nice Young Person from the Parks Service...and he LOOKED at me, and said, "But you're comin' back...."

Sigh. At the risk of being stripped of my maple-leaf patterned suspenders, I have to say... I have a huge great fondness for the Excited States of America.

Now we were warned, in conference, about NAIVE ROMANTICISM in our initial reactions to each other's ecclesial polity and practise. No doubt the same warning applies to nations.

And the Rambler says, "What of it?"
And answer comes there none.

I have to do a little work here, IRL, and then go collect the poor old Taffeta cat for her final visit to the vet. This is a sadness, but Daughter Unit will come with me.

Vacation company.

One of the joys of these driving holidays in the mountains is getting into truly quirky bookstores -- I have a fondness for Bacchus Books, whence I never come away without something of value. This trip, it was a Carol Shields title I'd never seen before, "A Celibate Season" -- a novel in letters, which Shields co-wrote with...somebody else...(blush to say I've forgotten the name). Highly entertaining, I recommend it.

And I had taken along a satchel full of miscellaneous theology, of which I really read only a part of Jaroslav Pelikan's "The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary" -- very stimulating it was, too, and satisfyingly opinionated without being cranky.

In some ways it was a very Mary Oliver-ish kind of vacation trip - lots and lots of deer, herons too, and even four bears -- had there been any owls or foxes visible, it would have been just about perfect from the point of view of her bestiary. I had with me one volume of her "New and Selected Poems" (or "Selected and New," I'm not perfectly sure!) -- and this was the one that hit home most powerfully.


Grass

"Those who disappointed, betrayed, scarified! Those who would still put their hands upon me! Those who belong to the past!

How many of us have weighted the years with groaning and weeping? How many years have I done it how many nights spent panting hating grieving, oh, merciless, pitiless remembrances!

I walk over the green hillsides, I lie down on the harsh, sun-floavored blades and bundles of grass; the grass cares nothing about me, it doesn't want anything from me, it rises to its own purpose, and sweetly, following the single holy dictum: to be itself, to let the sky be the sky, to let a young girl be a young girl freely -- to let a middle-aged woman be, comfortably, a middle-aged woman.

Those bloody sharps and flats -- those endless calamities of the personal past. Bah! I disown them from the rest of my life, in which I mean to rest."

The Treatise on Bathing Suits (ahem)

The Rambler is home again, all rambled out for the time being...

Car went like a thing possessed, and mileage was unbelievable even at high highway speeds AND at the more rally-like conditions of mountain driving. Some of those roads came awfully close to turning into Moebius strips, I am sure.

And now, anent bathing suits. (No doubt there is some kind of linguistic isobar dividing those of us who say "bathing suit" from those who say "swimsuit" -- but that's a thought for another day.)

YES, sistren, we ARE permitted to have two bathing suits. We after all have two brassieres (each), right? And at least two pairs of big-girl panties? Some of us, rumor hath it, even two pairs of SHOES. So why not two bathing suits?

BECAUSE, it is no more extravagant to have two than to have one; initial outlay is doubled, perhaps, but each suit lasts twice as long before getting all saggy and "picked" and ridiculous-looking.

My thought is not to wait for some longed-for improvement of physical figger before buying the two bathing suits, either. There ARE bathing suits out there for ladies in the Prime of Life...with nice discreet little skirts, some of them, too. ;-)

If the thought is still daunting, I recommend frequenting hotsprings and other such resorts in late spring but BEFORE schools let out for the summer. Not only is everything a lot less crowded before families take to the highways...but those clambering in and out of the pools carry their years with dignity and acceptance...and joy for the temporary sensation of weightlessness as well!!!

Sidelight on the whole question: one of the pools I visited had a "swimsuit extractor" -- a small powerful automatic spin-dryer, which greatly accelerated the drying of the bathing suit en route to the next pool. But apparently these machines are very expensive, and young'uns tend to swing on them and render them unserviceable, so they are not universally distributed.

Which gave me the GREAT THOUGHT of the week...to buy several gross of those handheld salad-spinners, and rent them out to swimmers to whirl their bathing suits in, by hand...Rich and Famous, I tell you, any minute now.

en route...

Turned the corner and pointed toward home...still deep in Pointy Adjacent Province, still dunking in hotsprings whenever, or almost whenever, the opportunity offers.

True luxury...is TWO bathing suits. So you never have to put on a wet clammy one. This is important because at times the hotsprings are quite close to each other. But most of the time the most-recently used suit gets dry and toasty just being hung in the back of the car. It's been WARM where I've been.

There are wineries in Pointy Adjacent Province.... Just sayin'.

Not only deep in the province but deep in "teh funkeh"-- a number of roadside establishments of the "Ye Olde Faerie Gems Ashram and Spa: deutsch sprechend: we take US $ at Par" type...
...I believe that all these hotsprings, warmsprings, geysers, etc., are powered by a deep down seething bubbling high-pressure lake of...free trade organic coffee...woo hoo!

ramblin'

Just quickly to say STILL ALIVE, STILL BLOGGING, still ramblin'...through the pointier bits of Adjacent Pointy Province.
Weather mixed. Accommodations comfortable. Hotsprings still a) hot and b) wet -- huzzah!
Lots of wildlife too. OSPREYS in great and glorious abundance.
This is the time of year to be on the highway -- families with school-aged kids are still homebound.
ONWARDS!

Au revoir...

The Rambler, for the next few days, will be...rambling. W/o phone, pager, or computer.
Catch y'all on the backswing.
Meantime, Beware Impostors:

Eight Miles Up

Back at my Tuesday desk after adventures in the last week. Last Wednesday in the midst of an errand reeking with self-conscious benevolence, I tripped and sprained an ankle (mine, alas); took Thursday off on doctor's (shouted) orders, and Friday flew off to Neighbouring Prairie City for a weekend conference. There were moments en route when I wondered whether this was a pointless exercise in clerical machismo...but the beautiful venue and the friendly folks present and the whole inspiring experience turned out to be just what I most needed.
Flying home Sunday night at twilight, looking out the window and trying to grasp that we were eight... miles... above the farms visible below us. (Neighbouring Prairie City is just far enough away that air-travellers have about five minutes at this altitude between the end of the climb up'n'out and the beginning of the descent into...) and then watching the yard-lights come on...headlights on the roads...the beautiful sense of work being done, life going on, people coming and going about their business under the vast glowing sky.
Time to get about my own business here; a meeting this afternoon, a Bible study group tonight (Matthew, with help from N. T. Wright), and in between a couple of hospital communion visits.