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revdorothyl at 07:02pm on 05/09/2005
revdorothyl at 07:02pm on 05/09/2005No word yet on any additional students for my course (anyone who might be taking advantage of the university's offer to admit displaced college students at this late date), but I might just get a surprise when I show up for my next class on Wednesday.
I'd had a sermon all written out for yesterday morning (done more than a week ahead of time), but realized as Sunday morning drew closer that there was no way I could preach on anything BUT Katrina.
The lectionary lessons from Exodus 12 (institution of the Passover, so very appropriate to talk about hurried departures and great suffering and wandering as displaced persons, etc.) and Romans 13 (love your neighbor as yourself fulfills the whole law) provided a good start, but I had to ditch my carefully developed sermon on Matthew 18 (making peace within the church, when one member wrongs another). Anyway, I'm afraid my thoughts were still too disjointed and raw to be helpful or even edifying. Call it "sermon tartare."
However, nobody seemed to mind my crying my way through the last 5 minutes of it, so maybe it was cathartic for people who wanted to have a good cry themselves, but couldn't quite let themselves fall apart like that. Maybe. I, at least, am long past the time when my propensity to cry whenever anything touches me, emotionally, made me feel shame or distress. I can't beat it, so I might as well just let it happen, and keep on preaching or singing in spite of the water running down my face. At least I don't usually lose my voice when I cry. That would be a problem in the pulpit.
Meanwhile, I'm back to walking (for the foreseeable future, I hope!).
I walked around a nearby lake (my standard 3 mile hike) for the first time this summer on the morning of August 23, and then went back on Aug. 24, but after that I was getting up too late or the days were already too hot and humid by 7 AM for me to go back for a while.
However, with all the horrors in the news this past week, I desperately needed to clear my head, somehow. So, telling myself that it would be criminal not to get some exercise on one of the first mornings we'd had in a long while with a temperature under 70 degrees, I got my rear in gear again this past Saturday morning. While on the trail, I found myself suddenly remembering most of the lyrics from a MAD magazine musical satire of The Lord of the Rings from back when the Ralph Bakshi animated version was in theaters (lyrics I'd been unable to remember more than a few words of, during a conversation a week earlier). I'd forgotten how much buried stuff comes to the surface when I'm on the trail, and most of it stuff that I'm glad to remember.
I went back even earlier this morning, to enjoy the even cooler temperatures just after sunrise today. And I was amply rewarded for my modest attempt at getting some exercise. I saw 12 deer while making my circuit this morning, including one baby so young that it still had its spots and seemed shaky on its feet -- that's not the most I've ever seen on one walk, but it's awfully darn close, and it's the most I've seen (and the first babies I've seen) in several years, at least. There's something about baby deer feeding next to the trail that seems like an affirmation of life, somehow, and apparently I needed that.
After my head-clearing walk on Saturday, I packed up a large box of food I'd picked up specially at the grocery store on my way home (lots of pop-top cans, for folks who may not have a can opener handy, and other convenience foods requiring little or no preparation or additional equipment), which made me feel a bit more useful, Katrina-wise. I'm taking that box and any other supplies on the "most needed" list that I can scrounge together to one of the many drop-off sites on campus tomorrow, so they can add it to the Second Harvest Food Bank shipments going South.
I guess it's like walking: I can't do much, right now, but even the little bit I can do sure makes me feel better, and a bit less homicidal when I hear about the latest evidence of official incompetence costing lives.
I'd had a sermon all written out for yesterday morning (done more than a week ahead of time), but realized as Sunday morning drew closer that there was no way I could preach on anything BUT Katrina.
The lectionary lessons from Exodus 12 (institution of the Passover, so very appropriate to talk about hurried departures and great suffering and wandering as displaced persons, etc.) and Romans 13 (love your neighbor as yourself fulfills the whole law) provided a good start, but I had to ditch my carefully developed sermon on Matthew 18 (making peace within the church, when one member wrongs another). Anyway, I'm afraid my thoughts were still too disjointed and raw to be helpful or even edifying. Call it "sermon tartare."
However, nobody seemed to mind my crying my way through the last 5 minutes of it, so maybe it was cathartic for people who wanted to have a good cry themselves, but couldn't quite let themselves fall apart like that. Maybe. I, at least, am long past the time when my propensity to cry whenever anything touches me, emotionally, made me feel shame or distress. I can't beat it, so I might as well just let it happen, and keep on preaching or singing in spite of the water running down my face. At least I don't usually lose my voice when I cry. That would be a problem in the pulpit.
Meanwhile, I'm back to walking (for the foreseeable future, I hope!).
I walked around a nearby lake (my standard 3 mile hike) for the first time this summer on the morning of August 23, and then went back on Aug. 24, but after that I was getting up too late or the days were already too hot and humid by 7 AM for me to go back for a while.
However, with all the horrors in the news this past week, I desperately needed to clear my head, somehow. So, telling myself that it would be criminal not to get some exercise on one of the first mornings we'd had in a long while with a temperature under 70 degrees, I got my rear in gear again this past Saturday morning. While on the trail, I found myself suddenly remembering most of the lyrics from a MAD magazine musical satire of The Lord of the Rings from back when the Ralph Bakshi animated version was in theaters (lyrics I'd been unable to remember more than a few words of, during a conversation a week earlier). I'd forgotten how much buried stuff comes to the surface when I'm on the trail, and most of it stuff that I'm glad to remember.
I went back even earlier this morning, to enjoy the even cooler temperatures just after sunrise today. And I was amply rewarded for my modest attempt at getting some exercise. I saw 12 deer while making my circuit this morning, including one baby so young that it still had its spots and seemed shaky on its feet -- that's not the most I've ever seen on one walk, but it's awfully darn close, and it's the most I've seen (and the first babies I've seen) in several years, at least. There's something about baby deer feeding next to the trail that seems like an affirmation of life, somehow, and apparently I needed that.
After my head-clearing walk on Saturday, I packed up a large box of food I'd picked up specially at the grocery store on my way home (lots of pop-top cans, for folks who may not have a can opener handy, and other convenience foods requiring little or no preparation or additional equipment), which made me feel a bit more useful, Katrina-wise. I'm taking that box and any other supplies on the "most needed" list that I can scrounge together to one of the many drop-off sites on campus tomorrow, so they can add it to the Second Harvest Food Bank shipments going South.
I guess it's like walking: I can't do much, right now, but even the little bit I can do sure makes me feel better, and a bit less homicidal when I hear about the latest evidence of official incompetence costing lives.
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