Fluff

My co-worker remarks on our lunchtime walk to the sandwich shop:
"Where i come from [Arizona] things don't fly around in the air
I mean, dust does,
but not, like, plant fluff"
And I notice that some plant is reproducing madly all around us as bits of white fluff waft by on the barely noticeable breeze.

Anniversary

Today is the 15th Anniversary of our wedding. The boy is going to his friend's for dinner, and we are going out to eat at a place where you can't even color in your menu. And I'm humming to myself "Fine Again" by Liz Phair:

Everyone wonders
How we stay in love
And I tell them
That it's hell when it's bad
But it's good
Good
So good when it's good
And boy it is good to be back
To be back
To be back

Happy Anniversary Honey.

My New Church

I have amazing news. Last week I was called to be the Parish Minister of a church about 30 miles from my home. They are celebrating their 200th anniversary this year, and own two historic buildings. Most importantly, they are a really cool group of people. There are less than 50 souls all together, which will be an exciting challenge for me, since I have never served a "Family Size" congregation. There are about a dozen children who participate, and it buoyed my spirit to see how well they were integrated and embraced by the whole congregation. I had crossed my fingers that I might find a small congregation near Ithaca to serve once we decided this would be our new home, and my wish has come true. More, they are active and caring and creative and even have a drum circle!

The settlement begins August 1, but I am already ordering books on small church ministry. The commute is not ideal, and I regret the enlarged carbon footprint, but the drive is amazingly beautiful, and the little winding 2 lane route seems more restful than rush hour on the 101 or the 880 in California. (Auto Mall Parkway). In many ways this church is a foil to the last one I served. It will be a half time position in a part of the world with a slower pace of life. I will be the only paid staff of the church, so the office is empty most of the week. They kindly agreed to install a broadband link to the office so I could check e-mail while in the office; previously the church had no e-mail. (After the 100 e-mails a day I am used to in church life, this may be the biggest change of all). It is also an isolated liberal enclave in a conservative county. To quote the good folks of Monty Python's Flying Circus "Now for something completely Different."

Spring Fever

Suddenly I feel everything has to happen in the spring. No time! No time! Even as we celebrated Earth Day at the end of April, I still had a sluggish winter sensibility. But in 2 short weeks of sun and warm afternoons, I must have picked up some of the frenzie of the plants in my neighborhood. Now I understand that with such a long winter and such a short growing period, all these plants have all their growing, flowering and seed-making to do, and suddenly they are all doing it right NOW. Even on Earth Day, when we celebrated in a sacred circle in DeWitt Park and were blessed with a day of glowing sun and surrounded by the flowering trees of early spring, the pastel petals only served as contrast to the dormant trees all around them. The sky was open and life was spare. Now the canopy is growing in around us, and I remember my one New York summer, the unstoppable verdure, and I see how much work these plants do in the spring.

And me, with my untouched garden; a few bushes and landscape rock put in by a seller trying to flip the house quickly, and the weeds growing like their lives depended on it. Remembering my garden in California which I used to plant all year round except in the rainiest times, I looked forward to gradually filling in my garden over the next few months. But Yesterday my neighbor told me, as she rototilled the whole front plot in front of her house, that by July 4 many local nurseries start to close up. That the whole vision for the year must be laid and planted in the spring. I couldn't sleep well last night. Suddenly each beautiful spring day is precious and fleeting. No time! No time!

For today

For all of today here is my favorite poem
found in an old Starr King Catalogue.
It is written by Holly Horn.

To surrender oneself willing to truth,
to earn it,
in every sense, to allow
a voice to the great unbegotten
mystery and, beyond that,
to listen,
is asking for trouble

Don't doubt it. But prepare for the aftershocks.
Store water, and cans of tuna fish.
Plan an escape route, and a rendezvous point.
Write messages with lipstick on the bathroom mirror
reminding yourself...
where the flashlight batteries are stashed, and how to find the pole star.

Keep a list of essentials
posted on the refrigerator: poetry, theology, an aria--
whatever works:
a ticket to Ravenna,
a menu from Provence,
a ballad to be sung at the tomb of Rachel.

And plan to go.