Ash Wednesday, part 1

I have just come from joining an Ash Wednesday celebration at St John the Divine, an Anglican church in downtown Victoria that I quite enjoy.
I couldn't help but notice as I walked in that I was severely tipping the age balance: except for an eight year-old, the person closest to me in age (I'm twenty-five) was about fifty.
I was so thrilled to be in the midst of liturgy on an otherwise dreary weekday. Our non-denom, laid-back, pastor-wears-sandals-with-socks-and-some-kids-have-blue-hair church is in the process of introducing liturgy to our services, and we had a meeting this week during which we discussed the reasons to do so. How to explain liturgy to the kid with blue hair? I felt I came across the only necessary reason this morning: to hear more Scripture. We heard from everything--OT, Psalms, Gospels and Epistles. I drank it all up like the parched peace lily I watered yesterday. At our church, at most, we'll hear the passage that's being preached on, and maybe another companion reading. Not enough. Not enough. Cannot express to you the delight I felt when I saw a tall woman in her seventies walk up to the lectern with the help of another lady, same age but a full head shorter, and began reading in a loud clear voice from the book of Joel. "Return to me with all your heart."

(I have more thoughts--on the ashes themselves--but my library internet session is about to run out. Stay tuned for part two.)

About shovels

Last night, at our weekly post-church gathering at the pub--sometimes I wonder if we don't go to church just in order to find out if everyone is going to the pub after--and our services start at six-forty-five and end about eight-thirty at night, in case you're thinking we're a bunch of Sunday-afternoon lushes which, quite frankly, I can't claim we aren't--my friend Darren, the prophet recently flown in from England to smack us around (bless his cotton socks) was telling us about his morning's visit to his old, messed-up church (come on, you all know the type.) Apparently they do have some clue, because someone there spoke up before the congregation, saying there was a mocking spirit there that day--yep, that would've been Darren. And there were plenty more mocking spirits at the pub, when Darren shared with us the call to worship he'd heard that morning. "Let's take up our shovels of worship, so we can dig our wells to Jesus," which presumably trailed off into something about streams of living water, though I personally wonder if the shovels wouldn't be more useful to dig themselves out of all that bullshit. Anyhow--we had a good laugh, I thought I'd share.

And here is an excerpt of a poem by Roo Borson, probably my favorite Canadian poet (she'd have to slug it out for the definitive title with Don McKay, but they're good friends and I expect they won't want to go there), which illustrates the proper way to use shovels in poetic imagery.


The heart is a shovel leaning against a house somewhere
among the other forgotten tools.
The heart, it's always wanting to dig up old ground,
always wanting to give things a proper burial.


Well, it's two o'clock and I'm still in pyjamas. Time to go out and walk/run on the paths, the woods' path, the fields' path.

All hail the arrival of the site meter

Do me proud, guys. Click away.

Never thought this HTML stuff would be so fun.

No title for this post, or for the poem, either

It's been a challenge to make room in my life for this new venture, this blogging. (My friend Stephanie strongly objects to the term "blog," which she finds inelegant. A little too phonetically close to "blah," I suppose. She suggests "wlog.") But I'm happy to say that a new, faster internet connection is on the way, that I have a new lamp for better late-night typing light--this should make for improved ease and frequency--and that this morning there were eight swans on the pond. There is a mean-looking spider stuck in my sink--I keep forgetting Annie Dillard's advice to leave a towel hanging over the side so they can climb out--and the mice are rustling under the sink again. In the bush--well, this is hardly the bush really but it ain't town either--the question "Who is my neighbour?" takes on a whole new meaning.

I thought I would post a poem, just for kicks. Suggestions for a title are welcome.



I woke heavy, ashes
in my mouth, smoke
from the previous night
still hugging my head.
I take my worries to the chair,
bid them to sit down:
snare of debt tightening,
and I despair that I can ever
love wisely.
My salvation: countless mornings
have perfected the habit
and I open the Bible,
words of Christ in red:
"Worry not." He calls me
"child." And though
He says nothing about the robin,
I know I am to turn
my attention to it, taking
the rain as an invitation
to wait patiently, precisely,
on the green, sopping lawn.

Excerpts from Fanny's commonplace book

"If you could understand a single grain of wheat you would die of wonder."
-Martin Luther



"What I know of the divine sciences and the Holy Scriptures, I learnt in the woods and fields. I have no other masters than the beeches and the oaks."
-St Bernard of Clairvaux


"The natural object is always the adequate symbol."
-Ezra Pound

To be or.... (what are the options, really?)

Two passages quoted in M. Basil Pennington's Centering Prayer:


"Let us applaud and give thanks that we have become not only Christians but Christ himself. Do you understand, my brothers and sisters, the grace that God our head has given us? Be filled with wonder and joy--we have become veritable Christs."

-St Augustine (italics mine)



"There is another story told of a rabbi--Rabbi Zuscha. On his deathbed he was asked what he thought the kingdom of God would be like. The old rabbi thought for a long time; then he replied: 'I don't really know. But one thing I do know: When I get there, I am not going to be asked, "Why weren't you Moses?" or "Why weren't you David?" I am going to be asked, "Why weren't you Zuscha?" ' "

Some geographical considerations

Welcome to my home.

I live in Victoria, on the southmost tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. And before you jump to weather-related conclusions, let me say that it is snowdrop and cherry blossom time here in Victoria, and that on the pond across the road from my little cottage the geese have picked up their activities again. There were six swans this morning on the far end of the pond--a good day for swan-watching--and an assortment of mallards, buffleheads and canvasbacks. I think I saw the bald eagle causing trouble, but it might've been one of the neighborhood turkey vultures. Yesterday there were about five dozen robins in the sopping wet horse paddock at the end of the property, pecking at the ground like chickens. There are, sadly, no chickens on the property. (I like chickens--they make good financial sense, you give them used teabags and they give you eggs, plus my friend Matthew--of theoloblog fame--has once deemed me the Queen of Chickens based on the way the chickens in his backyard behaved towards me, which i thought at first were attempts to eat my toes but apparently this is the highest form of chicken worship.)

Very soon I will put on my boots and put rubber sole to drenched ground and go walk the fields round about the pond and beyond, for there is some sunshine out there today and friends, we get cruelly little sunshine here this time of year. But as someone once said to me, hey, rain may be depressing but at least you don't have to shovel it, and out of respect for my parents who are labouring under the yoke of Montreal winter and will not see a cherry blossom for many a month, I will not complain.

I will finish my toast with strawberry jam.

This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and get on with it.

Well, here I am, after four days of struggling to find just the right name for this blog. Finally I realized I should just get online and get on with it. Just as a child grows into the name it's given, so will this blog. But I thought I should list here some of the rejected contenders, as this might give a broader view of what exactly I mean to do here, which in turn creates the illusion that I know exactly what I mean to do here. (One thing I definitely mean to not do is forget I started this blog and be untrue to my audience--yes, I mean you there with your coffee cup and rumpled hair, I will not let you down.)

So here they are, in order of typing:

Consider the Lilies

Musings of a Pond-Gazer

Swan Count (note that I have used these in the description so all's not lost)

Among the Amazements (anyone who can find the Mary Oliver poem this is taken from wins a prize.)

Sayings and Prayers of the Mad Farmer

...and my favorite rejected is Three Chords and the Truth, which was someone's description of country music, and is also a great formula for the essentials of faith: three chords, G C and D, God Christ and the Holy Dove. But as I am only beginning to seriously scratch at my guitar (and seriously annoying my cat, which isn't too promising a sign) I figured it would be a little premature to hold a country music banner over this site. So.

And thus I take a slightly hesitant but hopeful step onto the web.