I know that many of you are probably hoping to hear what it’s been like for the Bishop Coadjutor (can you tell if I spelled that right?) up in his new office, but it’s just too soon – and would also be too presumptuous – for me to comment on any of that activity from afar. And, since we haven’t yet sold our current house or found a new one in New Hampshire, I am, in a way, “afar.” But … Read More
This week I’m doing something unusual – posting an essay I wrote two years ago. As I watched my husband pack up his things to begin his new position in New Hampshire, I realized that there was at least one thing he wouldn’t be able to bring with him: the labyrinth that lies quietly in our back woods. What follows is my account of the time when he made it. This is considerably longer than my other blog posts, and … Read More
I’m feeling a little nostalgic this week — about our 18 year-old daughter who is pushing off from home and, silly as it might sound, about this nine month old blog, too. The former child runs on strong legs and is ready for bigger fields; the latter is still crawling and has an uncertain future…but has at least made it this far. My very first post here last November, also published as a column in our local paper, was called … Read More
Is it ever better to go backwards than forwards? This has been a question swinging up and down, back and forth, hither and yon in my mind over the past week. If the Consecration made our summer a bit unusual, the fact that I needed to be at school on my birthday did too. Mid-August always finds our family up in northern Vermont, and my husband traditionally plans a lovely party for me there. This week, however, I needed to … Read More
OK, so this better be good. I can’t promise you anything, really, except that it will be true. And that I’ll finally be able to work in the Olympics next time. During our 21 years of marriage, there has never been a week when I was more acutely conscious of my identity as a pastor’s wife than this past week, when I became a bishop’s wife. To be precise, wife of the bishop who has been assigned Number 1067 in the … Read More
When we come upon a contrast that’s an adjacency — two very different things side by side, co-existing in harmony — we can often find some delight in observing it or perhaps even living in it. When, on the other hand, we see or experience a contrast that resembles a head-on collision, it’s more likely to be scary than delightful. Such was the case several days ago when I, driving a recently repaired Honda Civic, rounded a curve on a … Read More
It doesn’t surprise me one bit, and I know it won’t surprise you either, that my recent Road Trip in the Heartland (starting and ending in Indianapolis) provided about as many examples of my beloved side-by-side contrasts as there were corn stalks needing rain. I’m choosing just one to think about right now. How close together or far apart are “extraordinary” and “ordinary”? How about “The Greatest” and “The Normal Person”? During our second stopover in Louisville, Kentucky, my son … Read More
It’s Convention time, all across the land, and my son Henry and I are getting a pretty good education in what goes on at these multi-day, resource-intensive, hotel-based, name-tagged events as we take our road trip through several states. We started out in brutally hot Indianapolis with the Episcopalians, there assembled for General Convention (which occurs only every three years). Here we had some familiarity, of course, relating to our close relative who is directly involved — indeed, is being … Read More
In keeping with my theme of contrasts, of one thing side by side with a very different thing, I offer an image: large dog lying near person working at sleek computer. Dog – a black one with tall ears – is patient for good long time, but eventually he rises and comes over to his person; wet nose pushing lovingly against person’s arm. Dog thereby interrupts person’s struggle to find the right words at the computer by saying, in his own … Read More
It’s been wonderful having our older son home with us for a couple of weeks, just in time for the NBA playoffs. I love joining him in front of the TV, partly just to be with him and partly because he’s kind to me when I ask him basketball questions. Recently I learned more about the bank shot (a jump shot that goes in off the backboard – embarrassing unless you call it first), about the foolishness of fouling a … Read More