Francis of Iditerod

On Sunday Matteo brought Ducky to be blessed by Father Scott in honor of Saint Francis, who loved all the animals. Matteo was very quiet, "I brought Ducky, he's my friend." Annika was sleeping with Marin back in the back, but her "Boppy and Lolly" (puppy and lambie) were about to become more holy than before. Matteo quietly explained, "they belong to my friend (other friend -- Annika) who sleeps with them."

There were two big dogs as well as a little dog participating. Our musher friend William brought his dog Bottlerocket to the early service. Good there aren't so many musher Anglicans, it could be a whole new denominational split, but the question would be: will the people people line up with the cat people or with the the dog people?

Facebook

Okay, most of the people I talk to don't like Facebook. I can see that.

It can maybe seem a little insipid, having an on-line life instead of a real one.

It's complicated to say to people who want to be your "friend" that you don't have time for them.
But it's a little like a small town. If someone says "hi" to you as you walk to work in the morning, you say hi back, maybe comment on the weather, and maybe feel good about living in a small town.

I liked living at Holden Village in the North Cascades for just that, living with 70 people all winter long and staying current on their joys sorrows hopes dreams stories opinions families. It can be a very rich life.

And if someone slightly annoys you, you can have short encounters, or walk a route in which your paths don't cross.

And if you're having a bad day, month, or year, people figure it out and make allowances for what you need then.

Facebook does take a while to figure out, like any small town. Where do people get haircuts, where are the good playgrounds, what do you do about mold in the basement, do the moose always eat the garden the day before you're planning to harvest?

I think part of what I like is that when someone is writing to you alone, you get a little email alert, "wake up, Jeff."

Also, when you go on your wall, and there are comments on life in general, you see the person's face. Seeing a friend's face with a message sure beats getting just an idea, like this post. Wait, I'll put a photo right here. Doesn't that make a difference? (yikes, too many megapixels!)

I recently learned that you can "hide" people who are super loquatious on your "wall," so they don't come up and obscure the more humble, less expressive friends you want not to get lost in the shuffle.

What do you think? Have you tried Facebook. Does it give you more of a sense of community, does it overwhelm you, do you have tricks you use, or parts of it you discovered that seemed particularly fun or real?

Boxcar Children

A New York Times article today about books to make sure you read your kids. Boxcar Children (Gertrude Warner) is at the top of her list. I LOVE this series, written in the forties and fifties. The first volume is the best, of course. A suddenly orphaned foursome, living on their own to avoid a tyrannical grandfather they never knew. Living well on a rural railroad siding. A little suspense, with happy endings. Now that's a good life.

Makes me want to build a fort in the woods behind our house and move in.

Matteo watched the Tigger movie (Disney) last night, and the drama and suspense almost did him in. He's super-sensitized to loss and threat. He couldn't look when Pooh Piglet Rabbit faced the end-game avalanche. Tigger lost an important letter when saving his friends. Matteo couldn't let go of that, even though the Disney plot resolved it: Tigger wanted to find his family of origin, and the Disney plot carefully inserted Pooh Piglet Eeyore to satisfy that longing, but Matteo didn't buy it. He cried himself to sleep over Tigger's existential loneliness. He didn't buy Disney. He wept for Tigger, and I held him, tear welling up for his weeping. We were a sweet mess.



This is Teo's last week before Montessori begins, he's having a great time "directing" his starlet Annika in the movie of their lives. She doesn't mind doing whatever he wants. But he can't take things she has. And when she grabs something of his, it's over. The producer, Papa, gets involved: "Cut!"

Annika is loving swinging on swings, and Matteo is enjoying hitting (t-ball) and fielding balls that I throw to him on the deck. From there he can launch some pretty long throws from deep right to make the tag.

Missing Family

I'm missing Marin and the kids. They took a trip to see family in California.

I stayed behind to save money, watch chickens, feed the kitty, and hike.

Spent time in the Delta Range, 3 hours southeast of here: hiked easy access routes up the Canwell Glacier, into Rainbow Basin, up the Gulkana Glacier, and then checked out some tundra hikes along the Eastern Denali Highway beyond Tangle Lakes. For future outings with family.

Teo and Annika are hanging out on the beach in Carpenteria this morning, just south of Santa Barbara. She's delaying coming home...it's WAY SMOKY in town here. New fires since I left. Though a fine rain this morning has cleaned the air a little.

Speaking of missing family, hoping to get back east this fall for a visit to my original family. Hope we can all go, Matteo hasn't seen his sweet cousins (my brother Ron's grandkids -- maybe not exactly cousins) Mia and Cole for like 3 years. Pennsylvania's kind of not an easy access destination from Alaska. Where is?

Epitaph

Wow. Came across a history of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, with this paragraph.

"Pastor Jeffrey A. Merkel served 1983-1995 and worked to blur distinction between students and non-students. He attracted members who demographically filled in the gap between "old Incarnation members" and students in their 20s. Pastor Merkel raised the intellectual bar in homiletics and spiritual growth areas, focused on creative and innovative worship, began the Feast Incarnate ministry, led "Into Our Second Century" capital campaign that resulted in installation of the baptismal font and repairs to the building, laid the theological foundation for the immersion font in the Narthex, and promoted the congregation becoming a Reconciling In Christ congregation." http://www.uniluphila.org/Congregation/History.dsp

Notes:
Incarnation was a church in West Philadelphia which sold its building to become a campus/parish church in the late 60's.
Feast Incarnate is a meal and ministry to people with AIDS -- I had no idea it was still happening!
The baptismal font we built was a true joy, I loved getting totally wet baptizing babies by standing in 30 inches of water, holding the baby, and lowering us both in the warm transforming water, surrounded by a family and community committed to that child and its future.
We were the first Lutheran church in Pennsylvania to accept GLBT (Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgendered) people -- "Reconciling in Christ" -- sometime in the middle 80's.

Hm. Thanks Fred Wolfe, or Bruce McCullough. My name in lights.

For the sake of a worthy epitaph, guess I should have quit this life around 1996 or so.

The Less You Understand

I’m taken back to New York.
New York City.

I lived there from 1979, when I was ordained
at Saint Peters Lutheran
http://www.saintpeters.org/
as their Associate Pastor,
until 1983, when I received a call to be the Campus
and Parish pastor at University Lutheran at U Penn
http://www.uniluphila.org/Congregation/History.dsp
in West Philadelphia. I moved there from New York
the day before my big sister Judy’s
tragic, untimely death at 41.
Interesting, troubling, cataclysmic times.

One of my mentors died this weekend.
Not Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest
on whose gifts to me I’ve been meditating
since seeing him depicted in a film New Years eve,
who spoke so convincingly about God’s
deep love for people, in their brokenness,
in their weakness, in their utter humanness.

It was Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor to the poor
in Brooklyn, and then an author, and founder
and editor of the journal, First Things.
A lot of politics, church politics, national politics,
heady stuff, he was a leading neoconservative,
an advisor to presidents, including Mr. Bush.
And he was a friend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/us/09neuhaus.html?_r=1&hp
He was smart, decisive, brilliant, and in print
and in lectures, he publicly abhorred abortion,
and homosexuality. He owned a four-story walk up
on East 19th close to the East Village.
AND, he hit on me, the cad.
Unsuccessfully, I am quick to add,
And slept with a gay friend of mine
from Yale Divinity School who was staying
at my place while working at my church,
which totally freaked me out. Back then,
Murder would have surprised me less.
What arrogance. I thought him an incredible hypocrite.

That he got away with this:
loathing something publicly,
which he was, and knew he was,
and still dabbling in that thing privately,
convinced me that I was touching on a world
way beyond my ken. Like the Mafia or something.
I was in over my head.

He was never outed,
as far as Google is concerned.
The brotherhood of gay clerics...
Sad that our culture encourages,
requires this.

Everyone who lived at his four story walk-up
prayed together, morning prayer, evening prayer.
I liked it, even if it was partly so Richard could
write it off his taxes as a Christian community.
After EP there was time to relax
while Larry, who lived upstairs, made supper.
Richard loved scotch, he smoked Winstons, and back then
I shared many a glass with the assembled brethren,
not to mention smokes, and occasionally, dinners.

Mercilessly, gleefully he demolished my every argument
for anything liberal. I was out of his league.

From Garrison Keillor, another writer
who’s out of my league, on New York Christmas:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/12/24/christmas/
“...slipping into St. Patrick's for Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold I go.

“It brought back memories of Christmas Eve in Copenhagen 20 years ago and how beautiful the sermons were before I started learning Danish.

“A man gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not your own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand. Which makes me glad I am no smarter than I am.”

The more you think about it, the less you understand.
Maybe Richard’s key to the good life: a public persona
with gritty, counter-cultural screeds,
but in the everyday: sharing evening prayer,
a scotch on the rocks, a smoke, illicit love when it comes your way,
all thanks to a gracious God.
Glad I'm no smarter than I am.
Rest in peace, friend.

Losenge Sun

Still in the deep freeze.
The water vapor we all breathe out
tiptoes out our front door at night
and gets all lacey on the porch overhang
so that the warm air burgeoning out
when we walk into that bracing world each morning
shakes the snow of our own breath down on us.
We send Matteo out the door first
to clear a path for us.

Teo had his first day back at school. He and his friend Forrest were
reading books about planets when I arrived for the pickup at noon.
We headed over to the post office, as the sun’s orb slid in and out.
In the ice fog, and rising only 2 degrees above the horizon,
the sun sometimes looks like the moon, all white and hazy,
then bursts out red and robust, then turns pale again.

Driving toward our house on Birch Hill we often emerge from
the ice fog and see the sun’s full red coloring on the snow covered trees,
rosy on the surrounding hillsides, which can’t be seen at all from town
these days. It is pretty magical.

Teo loves Mister Rogers, and informed me today
that he wants to live with him. He also has grown partial to
an afternoon show called “Between the Lions,”
which teaches phonetics, I believe. Or is it Phonics?
I actually don’t know what phonics/ phonetics are,
so I’m guessing here. But Matteo learned yesterday that “ea”
is usually “long e” (beach) except when it isn’t (great).
Hm.

Sarah and Kate kept their after school date with me
yesterday at Grassroots Guitar, despite it taking
five minutes to dress down, and five to dress up again
before and after the lesson.

Kate, who’s in first grade, finally has her C Chord nailed,
and moves pretty quickly to the D Chord,
knows the Em and the A7, so she’s getting really good
and wanted to play “This Land is Your Land” and
“Blowing in the Wind,” songs I gave her when she started out
last fall, but she’s never shown interest in.
She’s been doing more of “Down in the Valley,”
“White Coral Bells,” “Red River Valley,”
and “Down by the Bay,” children’s songs
and other three-chord songs.

Sarah, her mom, had her new Martin Guitar Christmas present
which I helped her husband choose – it’s so fun to test-play guitars
and dream of having them... The ease of fingering
which a good guitar has, the sweet tone...
Now Sarah’s committed even more to getting good.
She’s working on travis picking, a rolling base line,
moving more into the folk domain.

Kate (another Kate) co-owns Grassroots Guitar,
and was Marin’s “doula” – the woman who helped her
birth Annika. She was glad to finally see me (she’s been
busy the last month I’ve been teaching there) and asked fondly
after the family. We recommend her to everyone who’s pregnant.
She was really a great help. Marin has been reminding me lately
that it was minus 44 when Annika was born last February...

When I got back from guitar lessons,
Teo was cruising around unclothed.
That’s one way to protest minus 45 outside.

I finally got to read an article about a friend of ours
who has incredible dog-whispering abilities.
Arna is my connection back to being 16 when
I was an exchange student in Sweden,
that other northern land. The photos alone
are worth opening it up. Talk about “spirituality,”
Arna shows that it’s not primarily in religion that we connect
to the deepest things that are there all around us.
(http://www.thebark.com/content/unmusher)

After supper we watched “Encounters at the End of the World,”
a recent Werner Herzog film based out of McMurdo Station
where Marin spent a couple years in Antarctica.
It is a one day rental. Had to watch it.
Herzog had some awesome footage of diving beneath the sea-ice
next to the continent. They call it “going into the cathedral.”
It was truly awesome, worth renting the film for.
The last film we saw of his was the one about
born-again bear advocate Timothy Treadwell
who met a tragic (some would say stupid) demise
in wilderness Alaska, film called “Grizzly Man.”

Herzog has a lot to say, when he narrates,
in his crisp, careful german accent.
He’s never content to stay behind the scenes,
though he never appears on camera.
Clearly he means us to read “at the End of the World”
to mean a final geographic frontier,
and also the end of human history.
In people like Tread well
and characters from McMurdo
Herzog finds people who stand on the brink.

BTW, here’s some fun art from Alaskan kids
on the “paint the plane” Alaska Air contest.
I suggest they award all the kids first place
and paint a whole flotilla of planes,
boost the economy.
(http://www.painttheplane.com/artgallery.aspx)
Helps me remember what’s great
about Alaska, and about the kids we’re raising.
They aren’t standing on any brink.