I don't like our church's new rector. There, I've said it. Even though she's a woman. Even though what she preaches from the pulpit isn't anything I disagree with, I don't like her. Perhaps part of the reason why I haven't posted in so long is that until I admit this fact, nothing else I write rings quite true. As I write this, I realize that my likes and dislikes and passions and irritations are just an illusion. On a purely pragmatic, unenlightened level, it's really kind of a bore disliking people. It keeps getting in the way, limiting one's options. Yet I'm still carrying this thing around, and what a wonderful set of fantasies and dramas I'm spinning as a result.
In other news, the work tunnel continues tomorrow. I took today off and slept some and made some phone calls and wrote a long email to a good friend who has Stage 3 cancer. The work tunnel is quite handy, actually. I had forgot how many excuses it provides.
Within all that, some things are still endlessly fascinating. I wish I had taken pictures of The Tent of Meeting I made out of linen and felt scraps, with an Ark of the Covenant made from two matchboxes painted gold and a pair of popsicle sticks. At the 'Tvte I am working with a product development class where the students have to design and prototype a marketable invention. They do elevator speeches and sketch model presentations, and a series of increasingly high-stakes talks throughout the semester. On Wednesdays I work with two sets of students back to back, from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night, with a two-hour break in the middle. It's exhausting (this particular assignment is only 35% of my job), but exciting to see the results of my work when the students present. Not that it's perfect. But it does make a difference.
Church, on the other hand, is the ultimate dysfunctional family. Friends on the outside ask why I don't leave. But I'm weighing one year of bad against the previous 16 years of good. And then there are the people I would leave behind. A friend who knows me well suggested that shedding all of that would make room for a major transformation in my life. I'm not sure. But Sunday afternoon I watched the Honkfest parade as it passed our church, then went out to lunch with friends and did not talk about church politics and then went for a bike ride and ended up at the SSJE monastery for Evensong. The harmonies that the monks sing are so tight and perfect that the daily office book has a tactful little note asking (basically) that we not sing along unless we know what we are doing. And it's enough to sit still and be transported. At Evensong on Sunday there were three of us women sitting silently in the choir stalls listening to the monks, and at the end I felt purified, as if the incense had gone through me and cleaned out the annoyance. I rode my bicycle along Memorial Drive and a boy about eight years old politely called out, "On your left," and passed me riding with all his might. For a moment, riding with the blue sky and the river and the slanting sun, I could see every leaf on the tree and feel my heart beating and sense my friend with cancer who lives on the Cape and whom I can't get away to visit. But for a moment it was all complete.
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