Going Private

Search the Sea is going private in the next few days, as I try, as I am with Desert Year, to extract some of the material for publication in another form.

If you would like to continue to have access to it, let me know and I'll put you on the list.

gannetgirlatsbcglobaldotnet

Move to New Blog

In real life, I don't think that I can ever move. We've lived in this house 26 years and I am a Keeper of Papers and Books and Photos and Clothes That No Longer Fit.

Although ~ I recently talked to a couple who've downsized to a city condo. They told me that it's a two year project, and I believe them. Truthfully, I would love to move down the hill to one of the brand new condos in Little Italy ~ only a few short blocks from University Circle and its museums, the orchestra, and some wonderful possibilities for walking. Or even better ~ to a condo on the lake. (I'm sure those are priced well beyond our means. But the fantasy is a good one.)

If I find myself without employment this summer, I may make a dent in the two-year project.

Anyway, moving to a new blog is complicated, but there are no 20-year-old tax returns and children's artwork to discard. So I'm almost settled in over at

Metanoia.

Come and visit!

If I can ever launch the new camera, I'll host a housewarming party.

Break Time

I posted a bit about the Hebrew exam which we got yesterday and have to turn in on Thursday, and then had second thoughts, so I'll repost later this week. I was afraid that some kind of inadvertent discussion would ensue, and the last thing I need is to be the first person ever to have her exam discounted due to blogging.

It was kind of a nice day. I've stayed at seminary for the week-end, so I went to a GORGEOUS church this morning, a church at which one of our professors is the senior pastor. In the interests of even more discretion, I am not going to comment on the discussion some of us had afterward and my own observations contrasting this church with my home and field ed churches. Let's just say that between my classes and my experiences, I'm having a fascinating and enlightening year with respect to all the different ways worship might be.

It's been mostly dark and rainy so I've mostly stayed in and worked. (I did go for a soaking walk.) A fireplace would have made for a very nice afternoon.

Now I'm just exhausted. I plan to respond by playing around for a few minutes with one of those counters that tells where your blog visitors are from. So ~ if you're headed for someplace exotic, stop by for a visit!

And While We're On The Subject of the Challenges of Loss . . ..

I know that I have a number of good friends and readers who roll their eyes in disbelief, skepticism, irritation, and incredulity whenever the faith stuff comes up ~ and most especially in the context of things like my son's death, and death and loss in general. (Not that there is ever an "in general." It's always so painfully personal.)

If you've read any of Desert Year, then you know that I don't have a sentimental or squishy approach to faith, that I was besieged by a profound sense of God's abandonment in the year-plus after Josh's death, and that I am much more comfortable with questions than with answers. I am going to write more about all of that soon, but not now! ~ as I am confronted by the need to stop all unnecessary activity for two weeks in an effort to salvage my ordination exams, to which ironically, confident answers are the expected response.

I don't, however, want to depart for my husband's family and father's funeral and then The Library, without linking to one of the best things I've read in a long time about faith and consolation. I may have written that in the days after my son's death, I overheard my father say "At least she has her faith to comfort her," and that I shook my head as I kept walking down the hall, thinking that he didn't have the foggiest notion of the challenge of the Christian faith. Much of Desert Year was an exploration of that challenge, although I was far too immersed in pain to see or write a way out.

Ryan Duns, S.J. is an exceptionally thoughtful and articulate young man. I might debate his conclusion a bit, and suggest that there are times when consolation is not about confidence, which has a way of evaporating, but about hope when you can see nothing ~ and about not even your own hope, but that of others, who remain present to you and open to God and hopeful for life again, all when you have moved into some other dimension in which none of those things seem possible. Nevertheless, the post is a wonderful expression of an aspect of Christian faith seldom acknowledged. (I sometimes think that Ryan is channeling my first Jesuit spiritual director, something I recognize because I do it myself on occasion.)

At any rate, enjoy the music in the previous two posts ~ but don't think that I'm under the impression that faith is an easy road, especially when we live on life's most brutal edges.

I may be back sooner than later so that I can bemoan the need to write yet another exegtical paper in Hebrew ~ or I may wait till it's all over.

RevGal Meet-Up

Well . . . sort of . . . on the phone anyway: I got to meet Mags!

She writes such beautiful sermons, and she gave me some excellent advice about my own, and she was such a delight to "meet"!

Now at least I can put a voice to the sermons, and to the friend!

Monday Musings

I'm at home today, since I have no classes until late morning tomorrow.

I took the car in for its 60,000 mile check-up. The mile walk home was VERY chilly.

I finishd the editing on a 5-page outline for a group project. Two of us are rather particular about our work and two are not. Would it be snarky of me to say that in a couple of years the two young men will have found calls to churches before they even graduate and the two middle-aged women may stil be looking? And that that division reflects the division of labor on our project?

To be fair, the young guys DO NOT HAVE ANY IDEA what they are overlooking. I suppose I was very much the same as a young lawyer, and I must have driven my older colleagues equally crazy.

I am going to take another stab at my paper on virtual life and bodily life. It's supposed to be 750 words and when I got it down to 800 on the sixth try I decided I could not allocate any more time to it. But now it's kind of a game, and also a way of procrastinating Hebrew. I was going to write something very personal about blogging, but I ended up with something far more academic and only the vaguest reference to my online life. A lot of what I do in seminary is connected to my personal and family tragedy, but it's not necessary that everything be.

I AM going to do some Hebrew eventually. And clean the kitchen and vacuum the first floor. I would clean my car but -- it's not here, too bad.

On the subject of blogging, I'm also watching the poll over at Desert Year. I am fascinated by the fact that at the moment, two-thirds of the respondents describe God has having been far way or absent at the time of their deepest loss. Obviously this is a completely inaccurate poll of only 36 people so far. But the question I have at the moment: does that percentage reflect something vaguely accurate about the experience of loss, or does it merely reflect that people are less likely to respond to a question when their experience has been positive and more likely when they have something negative to say?

And finally, since my paper argues that virtual communication can be as intimate, as superficial, or as a confusing combination of both as real life, let me close with a response to someone with whom I have a solely (so far) online frienship, one which I value tremendously. Quotidian Grace has written another protest against twittering in worship. From my now-academic paper, at least as it reads at the moment:

"The downside of technological communication emerges when we permit it to disrupt existing real-life relationships. It tempts us to forget that which embodied community reminds us: relationship requires engagement with others. Texting or twittering during church services or meetings raises serious issues of attentiveness. The immediacy of virtual interaction exacerbates impulsivity and discourages more measured and thoughtful communication. Bonhoeffer’s insistence upon the value of a community life paced by monastic tradition speaks to this concern. It is difficult to advance the “encounter [with] one another as bringers of the message of salvation” when we are engaged in constant expression of self."

So there.

My day.

First Day Back

I'm not writing in my other blog for awhile, because my feelings are too raw these days to share in even a tiny and relatively anonymous public forum. So, over here, I'll just relay a little of how life in general is going:

The downsides:

People talking at me for six hours today, because it's the first day back; that's about five hours and 59 minutes too much of beng talked AT.

This morning's convocation sermon entitled "I'm So Happy To be Alive," which was preached one year to the hour from when three of us were sitting at my son's funeral, my son whose experience of life a week earlier had been so tortured that he could think of nothing but ending it. My best friend was sitting next to me this morning and ased if I heard any of it. "I listened to every word," I said. "I have to figure out how to get through these things." But now, twelve hours later, I remember nothing except how very painful it was to get through.

The upsides:

Seeing friends! Good conversations.

I am, as I had hoped, going to love my Church and Sacraments class. We have to write a short paper on how technology like church websites, blogging, twitter, etc. and their creation of disembodied relationships affects the church, for good and for ill. Will she admit to blogging or not? Maybe y'all can help me write the paper.

I was not looking forward to my required education class at all. Apparently there are many of us with graduate work and much experience as educators, however, and I found the professor to be delightful. It might be kind of nice to take some time to reflect somewhat systematically on the practice of religious education.

I'm all moved in to the dorm room which I will inhabit three nights a week for just one more year so, while I never did get around to reviewing Hebrew today, I now have a pleasant space in which a person who wanted to do such a thing COULD work on Hebrew.

I do not, actually, know such a person. Nevertheless, I now have to go and take a look at all that I've forgotten in the past five weeks, which is pretty much all of it.

Mothers Meeting

Chris lives in a magical place, just above a Great Lake. She prepared a delightful lunch for us and then we walked down the path through the trees and as far as we could on the beach with her chocolate lab Harry, whose enthusiasm for plunging and re-plunging into the water after a piece of wood does not wane.

We shared in some detail our stories of motherhood shattered by unexpected destruction. Chris's only daughter Sarah was lost two years ago to the rocks and raging waves off the Cinque Terre, a place of utter tranquility when my family had walked there a few years earlier. We described those first days and weeks after the deaths of our children to one another and, in her case, the extraordinary warmth and graciousness of the Italian people, both when her daughter died and a year later when Chris and her family returned to the spot where Sarah died. It's now marked with a plaque and a copy of the beautiful painting of Sarah created by an Italian artist from one of the last photos (which graces the front page of Chris's blog) of that adventurous, creative, gifted girl. Chris shared some extraordinary photographs and videos with me, and we talked about what it is like to have had experiences like these and what it is like to go on, to rebuild lives in the face of mystifying devastation.

Today I began reading a remarkable book, about which I'll write more after next week. However, since my friends know I always read the end first, I will conclude for the time being with the final paragraph, which applies, regardless of the form of loss, to heartbroken but still standing mothers, walking the beach and wondering . . .

Love is selfless, firm, intense, and even dazzling. Its strength outlasts death. Its bond overpowers loss. Its courage defies inhibition. It has no end. . . . I carry with me a strength that comes from survival and a tenderness that comes from loving, losing, searching, and remembering.

Across Pretend Borders

I had an unexpected and wonderful exchange last night which caused me to take a look at my email inbox this morning.

I read a lot of religious blogs ~ no surprise there ~ a few of which are listed in my links. Many of them reflect occasional or, sometimes a lot of, defensiveness, hostility, and anger. Sometimes you know it's coming, because that's just who the writer is. Nothing he or she says could possibly induce you to view the faith reflected in his or her writing as something desirable or even worth exploring. Sometimes it's a surprise. There's a blog written by a woman of a somewhat different persuasion than mine whose writing I've enjoyed tremendously, but twice in the last week she's revealed another side in the form of biting remarks pertaining to my own perspective. (No, I've never linked to her blog.) I'll still read her, because I'm curious about her journey and hope it goes well, but the pleasure is gone.

As for myself, I'm thinking about abandoning my pseudonomynimity (too many syllables?), which has caused me to realize that sometimes I am a bit too uninhibited. Perhaps the name Gannet Girl enables me to believe that I can hide behind a multitude of sins. I do think that I may have written things that might on occasion hurt one or more of the individuals whose name pops up in my mailbox, so some culling is in order.

My inbox for the last day or so? (And this is only one of the four. An older ones contains most of the ads and the emails from my long-lived moms' group, my seminary mail contains most things school-related, and a Gannet Girl account contains blog stuff.) In this one: A few inward/outward and Sojourners daily mailings, some of which I'll get to and some of which I won't. Several digests from Parents of Suicides, most of which I will delete because ~ too much. A Benedictine monk. Two Jesuit priests. Two Presbyterian pastors. A friend from church seeking to confirm a presentation. Two people connected to my spiritual direction program. A good friend about a book club selection. Several church friends about the upcoming year's adult education program. Dell, McAfee, and Borders. (The latter three always show up eventually.)

What does your inbox say about your life? I hope that mine reflects openness and curiosity on my part. It for sure reflects a host of different people with whom I am connected in all kinds of ways and who all represent the generosity and care extended to me over the past year. (OK, maybe not Dell and McAfee. But even they make it all possible.)

Old Town Cafe

If you're headed for Portland, Oregon, then I suggest a meal in Scappoose!

Lisa and I "met" on AOL Journals back in the old days, four or five years ago. She's a wickedly incisive writer, whether about the pitfalls of the Republican Party or the pitfalls of small business ownership ~ and she's a fabulous cook. I've missed her writing since it's taken a back seat to the restaurant, so I was grateful for the chance to relax after the plane trip west and catch up a little.

That's the Lovely Daughter with the proprietors in the top photo, and the Lovely Daughter with her momma in the bottom -- and, oh, yeah, her dad and brother and grandparents, too.

Graduation Summary

Fabulous lunch at the Old Town Cafe with Lisa (one of my oldest blogging friends) and Matt.

Columbia River Gorge - I hiked to the TOP of Multnomah Falls!

Gardens all over the place.

Lauds at 6:30 am with the monks at Mount Angel Abbey.

Phi Beta Kappa Luncheon.

The Lovely Daughter is a cum laude college graduate!!!

Haystack Rock and birds, birds, birds ~ including harlequin ducks (here).

And then ~ Gregarious Son and I caught the Lovely Daughter's little tiny cold and got so so so sick. All we can figure is we got a ten-fold wallop from an Oregon virus we hadn't encountered before.

So . . . when I get better: pictures of my own.

Prayer in the Middle of the Night

There are a lot of wonderful things about this post and I just want to share it.

I've been looking around for Benedictine blogs for awhile. Partly because I think that prayer is the most interesting, absorbing, challenging, engaging part of life. Partly because I've been interested in the monastic experience for a long time ~ I've read the same things everyone else has, Kathleen Norris, et al.; I enjoy time with the Carmelites; and when I saw Into Great Silence I knew that I had found my calling ~ if only I were, oh, you know, male, single, Catholic, in France, not quite so taken with teaching and preaching, and more tolerant of winter. And partly because of that grace-filled afternoon last fall at Mount Angel Abbey.

Anwyay. The post is about what prayer is and how it can matter. It's terrific.

And PS: For reasons beyond me, my links don't show up in color, so I'm italicizing them and changing the font.

A Gannet Gift

A gift from Stushie.

Now, if this gannet is off the coast of North America, it is flying into the sunrise; if off the coast of Scotland, into the sunset. It has been my joy to watch gannets from both vantage points and I have decided that in my both/and life, which these days is more intensely both/and than ever before, this particular gannet is flying both ways at once.

Stushie is, I think, a bit less both/and than I am. But this is what happens when you release a gift, whether of words or art or music or birds: others embrace meanings you had perhaps not imagined. And perhaps all manner of things shall be well. I am grateful for the hint of that possibility, as unlikely as it seems.

Thank you.

Book-Ends

At a time in my life when I have not been much of a friend to anyone, a time when I am at best vaguely conscious of trying not to suck up all the air around me, I was startled and honored to receive the Friends Award from Kate, Diane, and Purple:

"The Friends Award isn't about being the most popular blogger or having the most read blog. It is just because you consider the author a friend. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

This is a hard one -- eight means a lot of links to cut-and-paste. I'm focusing on some of my longterm blogging friends, and thinking that maybe I need to invent my own award for the new ones. A number of people have shown up here in the past few months and some have stuck around, and I've been very grateful for their support. So maybe in a few weeks... .

But for now: mostly old and not-quite-so-old friends:

Lisa at Coming to Terms ~ perhaps my blogging friend of longest standing; we discovered one another back in the early days of the old AOL journals and found an instant rapport.

Kat at Walk with Me ~ another AOL-er with whom I felt an immediate connection: the walks, the photos, the birds, the family.

Judi at Judith HeartSong: An Artsy Blog ~ artist exraordinaire; somehow in the move I lost track of her but I've been getting re-aquainted with her wonderful work and the story of courage and resilience behind it.

Cynthia at Sorting the Pieces ~ as I make this list, I realize that AOL brought me the friendship of women of extraordinary grit and beauty, inside and out, and Cynthia is another whose responses to the lousy hands life deals leaves me astounded and grateful to know her.

Known as Joan Calvin at PresbyOpia ~ one of my newest blogging friends, and I'm going to offer her a friendship award, since we've recently met in real life and discovered how many things we share.

Quotidian Grace, who I think just may be my oldest RevGals friend, and whose graciousness and good humor permeate Presby-land online and in real life.

PresbyGal, who does, all the time as far as I can tell, exude the warmth and kindness that a friendship award is all about, along with wit, talent, and energy.

Stratoz, who makes beautiful stained glass and sees his whole life as pieces merging into a work of art.

And Michelle of Quantum Theology ~ off on a retreat for now, but still posting some of the most elegant writing to be found online.

OK, that's nine ~ so what? ~ if any of y'all want to nominate eight MORE, go for it!

The Five Ws

Remember learning the five Ws in elementary school? Who? What? Where? When? Why? And then sooner or later a teacher would add How? to the list, destroying whatever incipient leanings toward alliterative skill you might be developing.

Perhaps those words still constitute the basis of a decent story. I've been looking over some of the blogs I read, and I see that people are beginning the end of the year routines, looking back and looking forward. I have no idea how to do that this year. I don't know whether I will ever know how to do it again. I have no sense of the who-what-where-when-why-and-how of my life. They all run into and pour over one another, and there are holes where smooth transitions should be. I can't make an intelligible narrative out of my life.

The death of a child is so disorienting, so destructive of all that has been and might have been expected, that end-of-year reflections and new-year resolutions seem ludicrous, at best. My life is an odd and confusing mixture of before and after. I still have two beautiful, loving, living children, badly bruised but nevertheless lights of hope in my life. I have returned to my classes and been invited to participate in events that matter to me, and I am proceeding in the ways that I can. I sense that my priorities are shifting in drastic and unpredictable ways, and that perhaps my sense of what matters and what doesn't is being refined in a manner that will enable me to focus the rest of my life in meaningful ways. I struggle mightily to come anywhere close to what six months ago I might have regarded as a reasonable day's work, and I still find large group interaction oppressive and unmanageable, but at least now I want to be part of things again. The letters and cards I receive almost daily remind me that I am surrounded by extraordinarily kind and giving people, people who in this most un-ordinary of times have risen to exceptional levels of generosity and sacrifice.

I suppose that, in the end, the narrative will be about that irritating sixth word, that How? How do you navigate a life that in the course of one phone call was transformed from still water into tsunami ? How do you start all over and create life out of dust and ash?

Some months before our son died, I had begun to wonder whether Search the Sea had run its course. The insistent sense of "search" seemed to have faded and been replaced by a sense of assurance that I was indeed launched into the channel that I would follow for what I hoped would be many, many years. I didn't expect it to be without twists and turns, and I knew that sometimes it would be glassy and smooth and sometimes more akin to the perfect storm, but I was confident in the way itself.

Now: Who knows? Not me.

I don't know whether many people read my Advent blog, but tomorrow I am starting a new one for this next year. I'll keep Search the Sea for now, but I'm going to write about the difficult stuff, to the extent that I can, over at Desert Year. I'll cross-post when it seems appropriate, and maybe everything will end up there eventually. Chalk it up to a life too fragmented for me to comprehend or weld into coherence, at least for the present.

RevGals in Real Life

My first RevGals meet-up! ~ it was my pleasure to get to know Joan Calvin over a hot chocolate (mine, of course) and a latte this morning.

We took the requisite shoe portrait, despite the obvious fact that both of us were going for pre-Solstice practicality over fashion. I'm the one with the contorted ankle and the Elphaba socks.

Friday Five

I had been thinking that I might do the RevGals' Friday Five today, but it's about cooking and baking and kitchen appliances, so I have virtually nothing to contribute. And I have a bad cold, so no one would want me to produce anything relative to food even if I could.

Herewith, then, five (or so) things on today's to do list in lieu of contemplation on the subject of food processors:

1. Some laundry.

2. Wash last night's dishes and clean up the kitchen.

3. Watch Into Great Silence and 4. try to figure out way to become Carthusian monk in French Alps.

5. Go and see spiritual director.

6. Sleep a lot.

7. Send {{{{{virtual hugs}}}}}to Jennifer and others who have shared their stories of loss over the past months.

8. Find today's art: Antonia MacGregor, Stained Glass Abstract of Sea, here.

Housekeeping

If you've been around much, you may have noticed that I've been fiddling with my blog. I can't do much of what I want within the confines of blogger templates -- not enough color and font and sizing and layout choices. I think I've conceded defeat and concluded that the best I can do is change the colors to reflect the reality of winter.

I finally got with the rest of the world and signed up for bloglines, which so far has only worked about 30% of the time. There are a lot more blogs on my account than on the spiffy list here, the one that offers hints of what folks are writing about, but there isn't room to list them all on the blog. Since bloglines is down more than up, I am still making frequent rounds. And I haven't gotten everything onto one list or the other yet, which means I am still missing some blogs I love. All in due time.

And no, I never did figure out Big Pictures. Apparently the key is a flickr account, but the last thing I need is something new to keep track of. There are some Big Pictures showing up here when I link from other sites, but I have no idea how that is happening.

Blogging has turned out to be something of a long term activity for me. I like the variety of stuff out there. I like making friends whom I would be unlikely to encounter in real life, if for no other reason than that they live in Tennessee and Oregon and Texas. I like being able to process my own life stuff with a little feedback, and I'm amazed by the commonalities some of us uncover despite different experiences, politics, theologies, and values. I'm often sorry when I read and comment on a blog for awhile with no return visits, but then it's kind of interesting to speculate (for a minute anyway) why someone whose writing and/or life I find intriguing finds mine to be of no interest whatever. On the other hand, the support extended to me in the past months, some from bloggers I've known for years and some who have just shown up, has been moving and much appreciated. I have felt surrounded here in the virtual world as well as out there in the concrete world.

I've been self-censoring a lot during this time period. There are a couple of posts coming up that veer close to reality, which tends to lurch back and forth between despair and hope. But much of what I have to say these days would melt my laptop into a little heap of smoldering metal. When I think of the word housekeeping, it seldom refers to cute little redheads wielding umbrellas against the rain. Marilynne Robinson's novel of family disintegration and survival skills is more like it - once the train plunges into the depths of that icy lake, all bets are off, and chaos and tenacity vie for supremacy in the life of the human family. Yes, that's closer.

But for today, changing the colors is the best that I can do. And the redhead is sweet. I might have been a little like that at six.

A Thank You, via Willamette Unversity

I am extremely fond of beautiful Willamette University, where the Lovely Daughter is a senior. Recently named one of the best urban walks in Oregon, the campus boasts magnificent sequoias, numerous gardens, and a small stream running through the center:

One of my favorite Willamette places is the rose garden on State Street, just across from the capital building. As I wandered there ten days ago, I thought of my new blogging friend ~ master gardener, gifted teacher, Ignatian co-conspirator, and artist ~ who had sent me a handcrafted stained glass piece as an offer of consolation in this bleak time. If the winter light around here ever co-operates, I'll post a photograph. In the meantime, images of roses in gratitude for a gift of light:

Expanding

I'm venturing, in a tentative kind of way, out of anonymity and into the arena of ecumencial and interfaith dialogue to which I am increasingly and insistently called.

I'm setting up a new blog, to which I will refer here only on rare occasion, such as this one, in the form of an invitation to email me if you want to read it. I'm keeping this one for the personal reflections on all topics that come to mind, and so I'm sticking to my pseduo-anonymity here, and I'm not linking back and forth.

Will I come to regret this? Only time will tell. There are some either/or folks in my world who don't necessarily welcome the both/and-ness of my perspective. But really, a girl can only be who she's called to be.