8 minutes before midnight

It is almost 2011. Bern and I didn't go anywhere. We hate going anywhere on New Year's Eve.

There's so much to say about a new year--possibilities, promises, resolutions, all that.

But I noticed a piece of paper Bern had put on her little computer space. It was about a lost dog.

LOST DOG! (it said) REWARD

on it went:

SADIE, a blond, 40 pound Lab mix, escaped from...

on and on it went. Bern took this down from somewhere because the picture of the dog was so similar to our dog Sadie, BB before Bela, who was a Lab mix--Lab and cockier spaniel, go figure and ponder that--who we loved, loved, so profoundly loved. And our Sadie was dead and some other person's Sadie was missing. Painful it was, but she kept it.

So the new year will begin and there will be lost dogs.

Maybe that is how we should approach this new year--knowing there will be 'lost dogs', lost love, lost loved ones, lost stuff, lost and not forgotten, lost and forgotten, lost things.....Like the sheep and the coin and the son from the Gospels, like that.

2011, like any other year, will be a year of loss.

Loss is, it seems to me, a part of life and reality and 'what IS'.

So celebrate and rejoice.

And ponder what last year's losses were. And what this new year's losses might be.

it's now 12:05, my computer tells me.

Happy New Year to you all. It is now 1-1-11. What a remarkable moment.

Watch out for lost things in 2011.

The $9 two dollar bill

I just saw an ad on TV, during the UConn Women/Stanford game--Go Stanford!...except I wanted WVU's women to end the streak in Feb....

Oh, well.

Anyhow, you can, for a short time, get a $2 bill for only $9 if you call right away. The regular price is $30 for a 2$ bill, so, what a deal....

Bern has a theory that I can't fault--we are being sold stuff we either already have or don't want.

And we keep buying.

and buying...

and buying...

Well, maybe we'll restart the economy and lower the national debt by buying $2 bills for $9, plus shipping and handling.

Who knows? Something to ponder....

5th day of Christmas

The Christmas Cards I've used for several years are from Michael Podesta in Carrolton, VA.

They say the following:

"If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things and again with things. if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action. When will we have time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi? Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds? Or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary? For each one of us there is a desert to travel, a star to discover, and a being within ourselves to bring to life."

Instead of Five Gold Rings, I give you that to ponder on this 5th day of Christmas.

Happy Christmas--5 of 12 days in.....

five golden rings

It's the fifth day of Christmas--happy 5th Day of Christmas.

I've been taking a few days off from writing anything--including the Castor Oil Tree.

I'm at a hard point in my writing about my priesthood. It's a chapter about some very nasty things that happened at St. James in Charleston WV. I just don't want it to be too judgmental. So, it is slow going.

On the Canal today a guy stopped me because I had on my West Virginia University jacket. A guy from the Soup Kitchen gave it to me because he knew I went there. He told me he bought it at the Mall. I'm sure he stole it somewhere. But it is very warm, so I wear it walking the dog on the Canal.

The guy saw my jacket and asked if I was from WV. Well, of course I am. Wearing that jacket makes that clear, I think. (You may not know it, but advertising that you're from WV isn't easy--just like it took me 30 years to admit how much I like country music....)

The guy told me about his grandson (8), who is quite an athlete and his granddaughter (11) who is musically talented. The boy's parents want to keep him from playing football, though he wants to. The guy said, "I told him, wouldn't it be great if the first day you played 2nd base for the Red Sox, your sister sang the National Anthem?"

"No," his grandson said, "what I imagine is when the New England Patriots choose, in the first round, Jake, the running back from West Virginia University."

He told me Jake liked the Mountaineers' uniforms. I had to admit I'm a long time Chicago Bears fan because I love their home uniforms--black helmets and jerseys and white pants with orange and white numbers.

So, what do you know. WVU may have a running back in 10 years or so from Cheshire. I'd like that.

Christmas memories

Since I don't have any Christmas Eve services this year--which feels odd--I've been sitting around, looking at the tree and remembering.

Two things my mother always did:

She would buy small, impersonal gifts--salt and pepper shakers (a big deal in my family, several people collected them), towels, a box of candy, stuff like that--and wrap them with a blank name tag (everyone used name tags then). If someone brought her a present she hadn't expected, she'd go into the bed room and write their name on one of the tags.

She would try to save the Christmas wrapping paper for next year. That was maddening to a child, having to unwrap carefully, but she was way ahead of the recycling awareness of today.

Have a great Christmas.

Christmas

It's the eve of the eve. I'm really remarkably ready for Christmas this year.

For the first time in decades, I'm not worrying about the Christmas services. I have a bit of nostalgia about it--there was a real 'rush' about those Eucharists and a real commitment to making them special, wondrous, unforgettable.

I never fretted much about the C&E crowd--"Christmas and Easter" parishioners or visitors. In fact, since they wouldn't be there much at other times, I always wanted to make Christmas and Easter astonishing for them.

But this year, I'm not fretting at all.

In fact, I'm wondering where to go to church or if I will go to church at all.

If it weren't for John's dinner party, I'd go to St. Peter's in Cheshire, probably to the second of the three services. In the early evening using Rite One. That might be soothing.

But my friend, John, has a dinner party on Christmas Eve. I've never gone to it and this year we can. His plot is to make people go to Midnight Mass with him at Christ Church, New Haven, the best Anglo-Catholic parish in the diocese. I probably will. It will be a show of great proportions with incomparable music and lots of incense.

Christmas on Saturday was always my greatest nightmare as a parish priest. It meant having two or three services on Friday, a Christmas Mass (hence the word: "Christ-Mass") and two services on Sunday with only the most committed 'church rats' there. Lots of work and no time to really celebrate for me.

This year I don't have all that. I truly look forward to it.

Our trees are trimmed. There are gifts (Bern and I only give each other things we've made--she does some remarkable arty thing for me and I write her a poem or a story. This year, not worrying about 'churchy stuff', I wrote her two stories and bound them in the kind of book you use for photographs. They are a little hokey--since Christmas is, after all, the permission to be hokey and sentimental. But they are good, I think. I hope she loves them.

For the last week and a half I've been barred from the TV room on our second floor because she was working on my present. I don't watch morning TV anyway so it was no problem, especially since the things she's made for me in the last five years (since we've been doing this 'make something Christmas') are all now hanging on the walls of our house. She may have missed her calling. Or, perhaps, found her calling in the things she makes for me in multi-media forms.

Josh and Cathy and the girls won't be here for Christmas. They came here for Thanksgiving and alternate years. But since Cathy's parents live in Baltimore, Josh's family is having its first "family Christmas". They have a tree and 3 girls and we sent them some of the family ornaments. We'll go down on Jan 6--take care of Tegan on Fri (Cathy will give the nannie the day off) and have a second Christmas with them.

Here in Cheshire it will be quiet and sweet. Mimi will be here, but not Tim (her partner) since his parents are moving to Florida and he promised to help them pack over Christmas. The only other person with us will be John, my friend. He always comes for Christmas dinner.

It will be quiet and sweet. Since Mimi is the introvert of our two kids, we'll be able to be with her completely, though she can stay only a little over a day. She works for the American Ballet Theater and they're in the midst of a performance run. But it will be lovely, quiet and sweet.

May I wish you that, more than that, of course, but at least that--May your Christmas be lovely, quiet and sweet.

And may Santa and the Christ Child bring you gifts you didn't expect or knew you wanted....

Noel.

And, as my friend, Ann's card said this year: "Lang may yer lum reek."

That is, the card says, an old Scottish New Year's greeting: "Long may your chimney smoke...."

Not a bad wish in this weather.

Merry Christmas. May Light and Joy be your companions this Christmastide....

hat hair

If hat hair were fatal, I'd be a dead man.

The first mistake was a haircut. I had a hair cut a couple of weeks ago since not having one for seven months or so. My hair was down to my shoulders but too heavy to curl. So, on a whim, I had it cut.

I had forgotten something I learned long ago: No Good Can Come Of Haircuts.

(The truth is: really long hair is great to grow but not so great to have.)

Whatever the hair cutter did--and she did what I told her, leave it just over my ears and long enough to curl in the back. She did that. And the first day I really liked it. Then the terminal hat hair sat in. With my long hair, most of it wasn't under the hat and stayed normal. Now, after the hair cut, my hair is immediately transformed into little, hair sized worms, that lay close to my scalp and (I believe) are sucking out what is left of my brain.

So, I decided to wear my cap everywhere, inside and out. Which, oh, by the way, made the hat hair even worse.

I am pondering all this because I just took a shower and my hair is full and wild and out of control, moving away from my head as hard as it can. But as soon as I put on my hat, I know I'll have worms on my head....sucking brain matter that I actually need....

So, I think I'll grow my hair really long again. By the time its a good length, I won't have to wear a hat. That will be good.

I do love a healthy head of hair....