Everyday sacred?

This is just a litany of boring everyday stuff... I suppose it's sacred, but it's also just a slow news day, as my parents like to say.

We got a big storm that cooled things down, finally. Here are the clouds rolling in...

I also took a photo with the contrasting blue-green of an old glass insulator (from an electric pole) I have in my window. I found it at Gould Farm, where someone must've once made it into a hanging vase. I hung it from a rafter in my cabin there because I thought it was beautiful, but my friends and I were always banging our heads on it. I never put flowers in it - they'd have to be tiny, and plus, I'm lazy and poor.

I made a quiche to eat all week. But eating a whole quiche by yourself is daunting. See, I have a bad habit of getting bored with things, and having eight slices of the same thing to finish before it spoils may not be possible. Anyone on the Block interested in helping me out? Let me know. It could use more salt, btw.


I finally used up all the hours Frank had to give me to work on his index... I did a person and places index, a scripture index, an authors cited index, and made a stab at a subject index. I could have spent like 10-15 more hours, I think (I've spent at least 38, so far). And now I know a lot about narratives of rape in the Hebrew Bible - Dinah, the nameless concubine, and Tamar, if you're curious. This is my working copy, peppered with notes.


And this is kind of gross, but I have plantar warts that I've been doing battle with for over two years now. My poor left foot. The latest remedy was recommended by the first dermatologist I've seen, just last week, after two years of nurse practictioners. He prescribed an extra strong salicylic film with lactic acid, and suggested I slap some DUCT TAPE over the top. Eat that, bandaids. It's sort of fun, actually. And I think THIS time they're going to go away. Otherwise, I have to have these awful, painful shots. No thanks.

So, that's my life lately, mostly. I think I'm going to be spoiled when I really get a job. My brother is already making fun of me. "Some of us are W-O-R-K-I-N-G." And I AM working, it's just part-time and inconsistent. I'll probably start babysitting soon to supplement things - I'll get to feel like I'm in high school again. So yeah, sometimes I'm bored here, but I also get to spend a lot of time over ordinary things, like meals, books, walks, and phone calls. It's pretty great.

Bless the Lord, fire and heat

It's hot in Chicago. It's supposed to cool down tonight... but it's been a tough couple days without air conditioning. I've inherited some disdain for AC from my dad, who loves to remember his adolescence in Iowa, sweating on his front porch, drinking lemonade, and watching summer thunderstorms roll in. My mom doesn't understand this at all. So, every year my dad puts a window unit into the living room for her, and she spends most of July and August there, reading, sleeping, and drinking ice water. She always tells the story of her first day in America, getting off the airplane in 1949 in New York City, fresh from Oslo. She was six years old, and her first breath of American air felt, she says, as if someone had just opened the door of an oven - a slow draft of hot, suffocating air. It was 99 degrees that day. Her Viking blood just can't handle it.

I'm no aficionado of hot weather, but I guess I prefer to let my body get used to it. Ever noticed how the feel of your body changes with the weather? I feel like the biochemistry of my skin shifts in the summer, and moving from cold to hot all the time screws with that. So, I have electric fans everywhere. I take cold showers. I go to the beach. I make peace with sweat. I drink ice water. And I use a trick my brother and I discovered when we were little and trying to sleep without air conditioning... you take a towel, either a full size or a hand towel, run it under the faucet, wring it out, and then sleep on top of it or under it, and the moisture on your skin combined with a fan = GREAT. I even get cold at night when I do this. Yes, the mattress gets a little damp, but it dries pretty quick.

I'm also addicted to fresh air. One of the 240 things I hated about working for the law firm was being sealed inside a high rise office building eight hours a day, especially in the summer, where it was absolutely FRIGID inside our building. I wore sweaters more in the summer than in the winter. Plus, super hot weather is sporadic in Chicago, so if my windows are sealed up with an AC unit, I don't get any fresh air when it's in the 80s or 70s.

I love winter, but I miss fresh air then, too. A coworker at Gould Farm, Tamsin, used to sleep out on her screened-in porch all year round... even in the winter. She loved it. I don't know if I would go that far, but I would feel like a bad ass if I could.

4th on the 96th

I spent the evening of July 3 with my friend Anna and some of her friends at the top of the John Hancock Building - it was her birthday. You can see the sun furiously setting behind our heads, out over metro Chicago. Most of the party stayed to watch the fireworks, but with my earlybird sleeping habits, I knew I wasn't going to make it that late AND then make the hour-long train ride back to Evanston all by my lonesome and be very happy about it. So I enjoyed the sunset and bid them adieu. I had a great time, though.

I've lived in Chicago for most of my life (saying that always makes me feel so provincial, even though it's a major urban area), but I've never been to the top of the Hancock or the Sears Tower. When we walked out of the elevator, this is what we saw - WOW. The Lake - all that blue with white boat dots - that took my breath away.

More diners, high above the city... with me looking like such a tourist and taking pictures while leaning over the lounge balcony - too bad you can't see me in the huge mirror at the top of the picture.
It was amazing to be up there and look out over the city and pick out all the things I recognize. Makes me fall in love with my hometown all over again. And there's nothing like an eleven-dollar pina colada, either.
Here you can see the dark roof of St. James Cathedral, where I was ordained last month. Nice rooftop swimming pool, too!
Even the view from the women's bathroom is amazing.

Maybe I'll have to visit the top of the Sears Tower after all... although I don't think they serve pina coladas up there.

God is good

St. X in Cute Suburban Town has asked me for essay questions and a sermon! Yippee!!!

Writing

So, as I descend into working day boredom here, I've been trying to think of ways to still feel creative and engaged... and I've been wondering if this summer would be a good time to return to the wrestling match I've had most of my life with the question of whether I'm "a writer."

People have been telling me that since I was in grammar school, when I started writing short stories, mostly about little girls. My family's favorite was "The Floppy Flowered Hat," which was about a little girl whose new hat was eaten by her pet goat! In middle school, my friend Margaret and all my classmates all got really into this fact about me and they kind of made it my "thing." Heidi was the writer. One kid, Brian Lewis, always made me promise that I wouldn't use a pen name he wouldn't recognize, so he could look for my books when we were grown ups. I messed around with writing in high school, but more in college, where I worked on the student literary magazine, did an English major, TAed a creative writing class, wrote my two theses on women's use of language (around their bodies and then politics) and read manuscripts for a professor's literary journal, The Artful Dodge.

Since college, I've messed around with words in my journals, in sermons, and in grad school papers, sort of, but I don't know if this really all adds up to "I'm a writer." I always thought that if writing really was my passion, I wouldn't be able to not do it. I haven't written a short story in almost a decade. I haven't written a poem in years. "Writer" feels like some elusive, romantic label for a person I'm not sure I ever was. Now, I feel this pressure to FIND something to write about - a topic in ministry, a passion, whatever lesson it is I think I have to tell the world about. What am I supposed to sit down at my desk and work on? Nothing like that has ever revealed itself to me. So, I'm not sure if all this business about "writing" is really part of my sense of call or just some kind of pressure that follows me around.

It was easy to "write things" when I was a kid. I just wrote about whatever was around me. I didn't mind that I was unfocused about the whole thing. I remember once, Margaret challenged me to write 100 words about a science experiment in class that was boring us to death - just a piece of potato in a test tube of water. And I did it! And it was fun. I remember she was impressed, and she was excited to watch me do it. That makes me think of preaching actually, take a random, obscure text from the Bible and find something to say about it. Some scripture can seem about as inspiring as a piece of potato in a test tube.

Blogging is really great in that way. I can write about random stuff, just like when I was ten, fourteen, and twenty. I can experiment with all of you, and find interesting things to say about ordinary sorts of things that exist around the edges of my life. I like the photography aspect a lot, too. (Actually, I started begging my dad for a camera when I was about ten, too.)

So maybe I don't need to find a Grand Subject or go searching for my Poetic Voice, so much as I'll keep doing this, writing a blog, taking pictures, and just ruminating on the world. And maybe that's the thing - that this is the kind of writing I can't stop doing?

Guess that stained glass window! 2

So, here's the complete set, for what it's worth. Maybe this is boring, but I promised, so here they are:

The Hebrew Bible Series...

Psalms, per David's harpThe Histories, per a Scroll

Pentateuch, per Moses with tablets

They're not the best pictures ever, since I again was leaning over the balcony to get them, and the light wasn't always where I wanted it to be, but bear with me...


New Testament Series...

Matthew, the Human
Mark, the Lion
Luke, the Bull
John, the Eagle
Paul, "Sword of the Spirit"

(What? No Revelation...?)

And this is my favorite... although it's actually over in the refectory:

Hooray for worlds colliding!

Guess that stained glass window!

I'm spending my days in between freelance projects... indexing a book one of my professors, Frank Yamada, is about to publish, working on the accreditation process for the seminary with another professor, Ellen Wondra, and keeping up with small editing and odd jobs for the Anglican Theological Review, where I've worked all year. I work on the index at this table in the library, usually. The table needs a new coat of varnish - it flakes off and gets all over everything. But I keep coming back because I like the space. It's a two story room (there's a better photo here, from last January), and dead quiet in the summer. There are also a set of stained glass medallions in the windows, that I like to look at when I need to take my eyes off my computer screen. Back in January, I blogged about the Moses holding the Ten Commandments, with a funny little smile. There are also medallions for the gospel writers, and then there are a couple that completely stump me. Like, what the heck is this?

Something on fire? Or shofars maybe?

And what about this??? It was further away from the balcony I was precariously leaning over today with my camera, so I got even less of a close-up. It's a set of tongs and some gemstones. I thought I was an upstanding Protestant who knew my Bible, but I suddenly feel very Episcopalian! Any ideas?

You know what? I think those upper windows are supposed to be the sections of the Hebrew Bible. The lower windows are the New Testament: the gospel writers. And the other upper-story windows are a harp (Psalms!), Moses smiling (the Torah), and something else that I can't remember. So, maybe somewhere in there we're supposed to see the prophets, wisdom literature, and the histories? Any ideas? I'll try to put in the others tomorrow, so you can see the complete set!

It's fun to blog about Seabury again... it's been a while since I've chronicled a piece of the campus here. Let me know if there are any requests out there for further things you'd like to see or are wondering about, with Seabury or funky Episcopal paraphanalia.

Summer liminality

So, I may be dumb, but my name is only in for one job right now. (Well, technically two, but I've heard the second is probably going to call someone else, and I never even interviewed with them.) Mostly, this has been fine... I trust that things will work out. But lately, I've been feeling kind of liminal, in a cramped sort of way. I know all kinds of theological thinkers say that liminality is a fertile place for ideas, change, and spiritual experience. But when you're not sure where you're going to be living in three months, all that fertility feels a little frivolous.

I suppose I should try to think over my spiritual practice, to try to tap into some of this liminal good stuff, instead of getting mired down in my boredom and frustration! That way, too, if this parish offers their position to someone else, I'll be in a better position to adapt and figure out what I will do instead. (My back-up plan right now is go back to being a legal assistant, as a temp, while I keep waiting.) I should probably be talking to God about all this. I don't know if any of you've ever tried actually talking with God about things, but it surprises me how often it actually works. I've gotten weird answers, and also very sensible ones. But often, I forget to ask.

Ten Prayers God Says Yes To

This is from beliefnet.com ... and although I'm praying for a particular job right now, it probably would be better for me to pray some of these things than, "God, please let St. X in Cute Surbuban Town hire me!"

Some of these are even kind of hard. Do I really want to be an instrument? What will I have to give up? Who would I need to become? The generosity one gets me, too - I feel pretty poor right now, but I'm really not. And praying for courage, wisdom, and peace seems so unsatisfyingly abstract. But those are the things that make life satisfying, really, rather than a new job, new car, or a cute new outfit, loathe as I am to admit it.

God, Show Me That You Exist
God, Make Me an Instrument
God, Outdo Me in Generosity
God, Get Me Through This Suffering
God, Forgive Me
God, Give Me Peace
God, Give Me Courage
God, Give Me Wisdom
God, Bring Good Out of This Bad Situation
God, Lead Me to My Destiny

for some short reflections on each, check out Ten Prayers God Says Yes To

Capture the Flag

I went to daycamp in Hyde Park when I was a kid. About twice a summer, we played Capture the Flag on the Midway, this huge open field near campus. But in 6th grade or so, I decided I didn't want to play anymore. All the girls who had already entered puberty always won at everything. Plus, we had to play with the boys. Now, a few years ago, I played a mean game of Capture the Flag through the woods and around all the houses at Gould Farm. That was wicked great. My team totally won, by the way. 6th grade was a different story. Instead of playing Capture the Flag, I'd sit with my other girly friends on the grass and we'd pick clover and make them into chains. Very sweet, right? The other kids had to run and tag each other around us. I think we must've annoyed the crap out of our counselors. We were such party-poopers. But we enjoyed ourselves.

I don't know why I'm telling you this. I do too many blog entries based on the photos I have sitting around. But that's why I took this photo - I was walking around Hyde Park last week and smelled the clover on the Midway and BAM, I was back with Vanessa Ford and Laura Donohue, making clover chains in 1988.

Summer is coming along. I've had a couple job interviews, as I've said. I have plenty of part-time work here at Seabury to keep me busy, which is a relief. I can probably stay here all summer, if I need to. There's a parish I really like, but their process will take a while, yet. I choose to believe that God has a place for me, and everything will be fine. I'm saying "no" to another parish, and I just need to find the balls to send the email. I worry I'm wrong in my judgments a lot, and I really need to cut it out. Some lessons to be learned from the Heidi who used to turn up her nose at the counselors and make clover chains just because she damn well felt like it.

Take that, Anxiety!

I've taken a week of doing mostly nothing to recover and relax after the chaos of last week and the anxiety fest following. This past weekend, my dad and I went out to western Michigan, where, for the past twenty-five years, my parents have been renting and being caretakers for a cabin called "Grape Vine." It's been a major part of childhood for my brother and me, and going back is always like being a kid again in some way. I didn't get a picture of it. But this is the beach, about 100 feet from the house:
Dad and I went to the grocery store, ate meals, read on the porch, talked about various things, took a three mile walk, and washed windows. I also took a swim! Best thing ever. It was just warm enough not to be painful, and still cold enough to be absolutely BRACING. There was no wind either, so the water was incredibly still - usually I get pummeled around by waves, but I could paddle out over my head easily, just like I was in a big dark swimming pool. Beautiful.

Here's me and dad, in hats... I realize appear to have no lips.

So, I'm feeling less anxious. My friend Heather kindly emailed and reminded me, "unknown change is a b****." But I'm getting a few more "knowns" to hold onto. I had a second interview today for one position, and I have another tomorrow. So, I have some choices, which is great. And I'm going out for gelatto with a neighbor shortly, which should be great.

Fear of change

"A monk was once asked, 'What do you do there in the monastery?'
He replied, 'We fall and get up, fall and get up,
fall and get up again.' "

Why is it so hard to be in transition? Even though all the big events are over, I'm still carrying around a lot of anxiety - about where I will work, what it will be like, where I will live, what I will do about my car... I'm just a big ball of WORRY! And I'm not usually a worrier. My default tends to be: accept what comes, stay calm, absorb everything, go with the flow, trust that everything will be fine. But in this new job I'll have, I'll have to redefine myself in a way I haven't for a long time. I'm not going to be a student, I'm going to actually have responsibilities - and a public image, even! I'm going to be someone besides just "Heidi," who can make all her decisions privately, and choose, for instance, not to show up at meetings if she doesn't want to.

What's the difference between being yourself, and adapting to your life as it changes? I feel like I'm getting a little lost in all these new possibilities, even though right now that's pretty much just three jobs in the greater Chicago area!

I've noticed, as I go through life, that I like the idea of new possibilities, but I usually don't actually stray far from my familiar people and places. Since college, I've done a lot of different things, but my body has stayed put in Monterey, Massachusetts and Chicago, Illinois (ok fine, I lived in Loveland, Ohio for 3 months). I love structure. I need a framework outside myself to keep my life in place, so that I can feel safe to focus all this ebullient and wandering energy I have on work, people, God, and myself. Right now, I don't feel too safe or structured, and so my energy is wandering all over the place, like it can't find a place to rest and settle down.

I'm trying to read Psalms and breathe and talk to people, to ground myself. But it may just be that I'm going to be like this until I sign a contract somewhere.

Let us live with uncertainty
as with a friend...
knowing we do not know is
the only certainty

(both quotes from Esther de Waal's book on Benedictine spirituality)

Ordination

St. James Cathedral, with a banner of Pentecost flames. My college friend, Jonathan, took all these photos:

Moi.

Consecration.

With my parents.

With my brother.

Me, Aunt Ann, and former Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold (who was also Bishop of Chicago).

Lunch at Greek Islands afterwards. You can see my aunt and uncle, my counsin, my brother and his girlfriend, my mom, my friend Alicia, Brent House chaplain, Stacy Alan, and my friend, Anna Brawley. That's my hand on the left.

There are a bunch more here, if you'd like to see more. I'm still sort of amazed to have been ordained. Deacon? Reverend? What? I served as deacon at my supporting parish, St. Paul and the Redeemer, on Sunday, which made it seem more real. And I had another job interview yesterday, which also helped. I still feel like myself, and yet, I feel responsible for more than I did before. I'm actually surprised to realize that I feel different... I'm still figuring out how to explain that, though. I don't believe clergy are holier than anyone else, but maybe our job training is just more deeply spiritual and personal than most people's. And I suppose we're invested with trust and responsibility for our communities, and for helping others in their relationships with God and with each other, and that's what makes me feel different - because I feel the weight of that trust.

I'm famous!

Me and a few other Seabury folks, anyway... this is from the Episcopal News Service. I'm in the background in the second photo.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_86530_ENG_HTM.htm

More graduation photos

Ian and Joseph sat next to me at St. Luke's.

My buddy, Kristin, in her sacristan duds.

My friend and neighbor, Jennifer, in her deacon robes.

I felt so tacky asking for this photo... what an Episcopal groupie! But Kris practically pushed me over there; after all, everyone else was getting their picture with the PB! So there they are: Bonnie Anderson (the head of the House of Deputies, like the House of Representatives in Congress) and the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori - two amazing women.

The PB is pretty introverted and seemed sort of lost in all the people and energy, although she's an amazing preacher and communicator. Bonnie Anderson seems more outgoing in large groups; she was full of energy and asking me all kinds of questions.

Beth and Kris.

Court and Jim.

Isaiah and his dad, Brad
(who gave me the mug, which has yet to be smashed, stay tuned).

I'm afraid I didn't take ANY photos at my ordination. More Cows and Jonathan did, though, and I expect I'll be getting CDs or something from them sometime. I'll blog about it, soon - I'm still trying to process it all, and I'm exhausted.

I'm also trying to process the fact that my little Golf needs a new transmission, and I'm not sure the car is worth it (a '99). But I'll take a week to think about it - I do love that little car.

Stay tuned

More graduation pics later... with friends, and even the PB!

Graduation without words