The Mysteries of ... Radicchio.

OK, I've just got a whole THANG going on here about radicchio, this week.  Bear with me.

Almost the first thing I learned, reading  Jennifer McLagan's Bitter -- I'd seen Tweets, I'd heard her interviewed on the radio -- was that radicchio is like roses; it comes in a huge range of colours and forms and variegations.  But if your food-distribution server is like ours, the kind you see probably looks like the little guys in the picture up top, there -- not as big as a red cabbage, tighter and tougher than a red lettuce.  Maybe you know it well and like it, maybe not; whatever.  In our corner of the cosmos, you can expect to pay about five (deflated, Canadian) dollars for a head of it.

But I have to step back a bit. In recent weeks I have been taking up space (= "filling the position") in an Honorary way (no filthy lucre changes hands, that is) at a parish I shall call Our Lady of the Lost and Found (with apologies to Diane Schoemperlen; whom, if you have not read, you should.  But I digress).  Up at OLLF, there, we are one of the weekly drop-off points for grocery hampers from the city food bank.  Normally we see somewhere between ten and twenty recipients.  The food comes in standard big cardboard boxes; the recipients re-pack it in their own shopping bags, or bags we provide.  We then break down the boxes, with great flourishing of utility knives, and stack them for "next week's truck."

Now if you've ever worked at or been served by a foodbank, you probably know that the array of comestibles provided is often... eclectic?  So people are quite liable to receive food that they may not even recognize, let alone like, and their children after them.  Like for instance those little narrow needle-pointed red Thai hot chili peppers?  I mean, really?  I suppose if a financially-struggling homesick person of Thai origin showed up at the depot, he or she would be enraptured.  But most of the rest of us, well, no.

But last week, the Strange Thing du jour was -- drum roll -- RADICCHIO.  Great big beautiful fresh unblemished heads of it.  Now at OLLF in the hall where the food is sorted and packed, we also have a "give'n'take" table.  You don't like Thai hot chilis, you put your package on the GT table.  And you can take anything OFF that table that you DO like.  There's a pretty good rate of flow-through; although we did have a challenging surplus of Thai hot chilis there for a while.

And last week, we had radicchio TO SPARE.  So here's where it gets kind of sticky.  I happened to be looking just as the first client strode up to the GT table and whacked down his head of radicchio.  And I gasped.  "But ... that's GOOD" -- I don't know whether I said it out loud or not. I wasn't assigning blame.  I was just so sad to see somebody who needs food rejecting or relinquishing or refusing or abandoning good food ("I like it" = "it's good" right?) -- nutritious, EXPENSIVE good food mind you...

So then I had to do the analysis.  People are allergic, sometimes.  People have dietary restrictions, sometimes.  People may not have proper food storage.  People may not have the wherewithal to store OR cook food -- they're in shelters or they're in friends' homes or they're in single rooms or they're in cheap motels.  People may not know what the heck it is that just showed up in the food hamper.

So i don't know what the answer is.  Part of me wants to set up a hot plate and a stock pot at one end of the church hall, and hurl the rejected groceries into one almighty no-two-weeks-alike slumgullion, meantime crying out in the wilderness -- "Look, look, you can eat this, this is so good, just do this and this and you've got supper tonight and lunch tomorrow...."

Then I go and pick up McLagan's book on hold at the Library, and she is rubbing my nose in it, for one delirious radicchio recipe after another comes tumbling from the pages.  I've just taken the Radicchio Pie out of the oven.  I'm working on repressing my gasps of distress on food bank days.

There's got to be a solution...

The Kraken Wakes (or at least, turns over and groans)

A short post this evening, just to say I'm still alive; coming to the end of my third "time" with St. Curious, later this week, with no very concrete prospects for further work after June 30.  Actually, I prefer the term "employment" (old joke).

For some time now I've defined my status as "semi-retired, and the rest Just Plain Tired"... and it's fairly close to the truth.  So I've been divesting myself of activities -- including pleasant ones -- that take more energy than is at my disposal at present.

Ideally, I would just sit down in a quiet, well-lit, place, and read, and read, and read, and read.

Still trying to organize the life-support activities (cooking, washing, etc.) to make that a live possibility.

But I'm not there yet.

A quiet Monday, again.

It has been a relaxed sort of day ... recuperating from yesterday's hefty drive (240 km), chatting with friends...then off to the noon hour seminar for a further reading and discussion of St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana; we're into Book Four, batting to and fro Augustine's theories about rhetoric, his rhetorical analyses of Scripture, his "helpful hints" to preachers.  One of the other attendees is a retired English teacher -- and a former parishioner of mine -- we consider ourselves to be members of the same union as St. Augustine and we have a great time with our "shared interests."  There is just one more meeting in this session, next Monday, and we were in no hurry to rush away at the end of the hour, so wound up just sitting in the empty classroom and trading stories and perceptions about the art of teaching...and students we are glad to remember.  And others.

The question had been raised earlier as to whether preaching is primarily paedagogical or hortatory.  Are we informing? or are we SWAYING people to take action?  (Or are we just being as entertaining as possible so that they don't start meditating on tar and/or feathers?)  I don't know.  I think when I preach it is always paedagogical...in fact I think the paedagogical exchange is my primary model for human connection.  Teach me something, and I'll love you forever.  If you have nothing to teach, sit down and I'll teach you something.  If that isn't on the cards either -- "get off my porch."

When we finally gathered up our stuff and took off-- I had papers to pick up, background stuff for a national meeting next week, and then looked for some lunch, wound up eating half and getting half packed up for supper, and off for coffee with a friend and instructions for dog-sitting tomorrow.  And so home.  

Evening sunshine, again...

Well -- we got through a whole day, today, without rain -- the first for a while -- so it seemed like a day to be outdoors as much as possible.
I got the last of the current list of thank-you letters written just as a robo-call came in from the Public Library reminding me that there were on-hold items to be picked up.
So with pedometer strapped to ankle (I've tried the waistband, but unable to keep pedometer in place owing to lack of...a waist) -- and bookbag in hand (water bottle, Tilley hat, sunglasses, etc.) off I went on foot to the closest branch of the library.  Picked up my four books, checked FB (the library computers are faster than my old laptop) and then on the way home popped into Second Cup for coffee, grilled sandwich, muffin, and a peaceful read of Frances Fyfield's Let's Dance -- P. D. James recommends FF's fiction (they're friends as well as colleagues) -- I think this title, a suspense novel, comes into the sub-genre of "dementia fiction."  A little of which goes a long way!
Eventually, home by way of a mailbox where I dropped off eleven letters -- keeping the tradition alive, folks!  Stamps on these: an artful combination of The Queen (63 cents) and Useful Insects (10 cents and 2 cents) to come up to the current price per letter of 85 cents (robbery).
Then unlimbered the big long extension cord, and the less SCREAMY of the two weed-whackers (how did I wind up with two weed-whackers? a mystery), and cut a swathe down one side of the back yard, grass and weeds and poplar suckers there being all about a foot or 18" tall.  It's a start.  My arms got shaky, so I stopped at that point.
And now supper -- a little stuffed veal "thing" from the supermarket -- a tomato -- some carrot and pepper strips and guacamole -- and a vegetable combination, chiefly zucchini.  
Sermon is ready for my guest stint on Sunday -- so after supper -- read, and read, and read, and read.  And maybe push the laundry, just a bit.

All you hungry campers...

"Today is Wednesday, Today is Wednesday, Wednesday SOU-OUP..."  according to the old campfire song, anyway.  No actual soup on the menu at Tether's End today.

An undecided sort of day -- brilliant sunshine very early, then heavy, racing, threatening clouds, now some of both.  Do I go out for a walk!??  Do I seize shovel and get all seriously gardinacious before my poor bedding plants die of sheer boredom??? Do I go out to the kitchen and cook and eat accordingly?  Do I burrow into this impressive heap of library books?  Do I go back to my desk and attend to the now-definitely-due thank-you letters I need to be writing?

Retirement is challenging (Platitude of the Day). On Sunday at noon I wrapped up the most recent interim appointment after three months of half-time duty in a small parish in a small town ninety kilometers from home (exactly ninety kilometers, and exactly fifty-seven minutes, every single trip).  At this point, beyond a single Sunday-supply appointment on Pentecost in another small parish, in a small town, rather more than ninety kilometers from home, there is no word of a further interim assignment.

So the cassock has gone to the dry cleaner, and the surplice is in the laundry "whites" pile downstairs, and the stoles are up on a hanger in the spare-room closet, and the prayer books and the communion kit are tucked away on a shelf, not too high. 

And I contemplate the possibility that I may now, in the fifth year after retirement from full-time parish ministry, really be, really and truly, RETIRED.  Which gives a bit of perspective on the exercise of ministry, perhaps even some of that 20/20 hindsight stuff.

I was a curate, part-time, for about four years; ten years in full-time ministry as Rector, Head of Staff, Senior Pastor~~whatever your nomenclature~~and I've been an interim parson since February 2010.  Since then I've served six parishes, part-time: three in the city, three in the hinterland.  And the difference from full-time ministry has been staggering.  I've been relaxed; I've been comfortable and unanxious; I've been -- happy! (I KNEW there had to be a word for it).

And there has also been a difference in the climate, the ethos, of the parishes I've served.  The folks have been warm, and friendly, and appreciative.  Now have I been happy because the people have been different?  Or, as I very much suspect, have the people been different because I've been giving off a very different vibe?  And if that's the case, where the heck was that vibe during the previous ten years!?!?

When I took leave of St. Thaddeus, on Sunday, we had a potluck lunch of ESCHATOLOGICAL splendour--you know, where everyone finds what s/he most enjoys--and there were PRESENTS -- a photograph of the church, and a bushel of flowers, and a beautiful hand-crafted pen -- it looks like byzantine jewelry, but it's decorated with tiny little electronic components I couldn't even name -- and a little trousseau of hand-knitted things, hot pads and dishcloths and a SCRUBBY which I can use on my saucepans or my heels, whichever needs it more. 

There were also speeches, on the general theme of "We've tried to figure out how we could JUST KEEP YOU ALWAYS" and there were very elderly retired farmers saying very quietly, "You know -- we JUST LOVE you" and the wives of elderly retired farmers telling me how much they and their husbands have enjoyed and been moved by the sermons ("You reduce him to tears, every time, Crimson").  And finally one Mother-in-Zion who leaned in close and said, "I probably shouldn't even say this, BUT -- your HAIR looks WONDERFUL."

Somehow I could not dredge up any impulse to re-assert my Personal Boundaries under those conditions.  I just sat down and mentally rolled around in the ambient goodwill and affection and praise.  Perhaps that means I really am somehow "too far gone" to exercise ordained ministry with appropriate professionalism.

But I don't really think so.  Now I will go and write some more thank-yous.

Back again...

Don't look now, but I'm blogging again.  Up at 5, blanched and peeled peaches (big BC freestone-type -- the stones may be "free" but oh boy, the peel wasn't) and put together a Dutch oven full of ingredients and made six pint jars of Peach and Raisin Chutney.  The jars all sealed.  There was a spoonful left over for me to enjoy with my lunch.  Jars are cooling on a rack in the kitchen.  Contentment.

I bought a half-case (allegedly, 10 pounds, but I think the fruit merchant was a bit generous in his measures) while I was at the downtown market in Prairie Metropolis on Saturday.  A full case was beyond me, I knew, in part because I was coming and going by bus.  As it was, I "blessed" the ones I had purchased before I finished wrastling them home.  I've eaten several "in the hand" -- and there's enough left still for at least a generous peach pie and something else, not sure what.

I'm in the "crack" between two ministerial assignments -- finished my happy summer stint with the parishioners in Intensely Orange -- Sundays only, one service, a 400 km round-trip drive through prime agricultural country as well as a small national park, so I had at least a glimpse of Bison bison athabascae  once a week -- and on the last Sunday at different points along the way I saw FIVE moose -- and at least three vast flocks of snow geese resting and fuelling up for migration among the stubble.  I'd seen snow geese before, back East on the St. Lawrence, but never on the western flyway. 

Pretty rich stubble this season too.  My summer congregation were, um, agriculturalists, and as we got on from August into September they began to smile very, very cautiously and mutter, "she...doesn't look too bad, this year..."  This unemphatic perspective translates into newspaper headlines about "Best Yields EVER"... wheat, barley, and canola...   I kept saying to myself, "There IS corn in Egypt yet..."  Must be irretrievably carnal-minded, I guess, but nothing improves a vista like the visible presence of (potential) GRUB spread over it.

So now it's time to get dug into St. Leroy's, here in town, half-time, while their Rector has parental leave.  The trick will be giving an honest half-time's worth of work AND NO MORE.  Still juggling that in my own head.  I'll see what the lay leadership thinks about priorities and necessities.

All this--and reading, and reading, and reading.  Working on understanding my OWN priorities and necessities.  I seem to have been doing that for a very very long time.

resolution...

As I've been recuperating, intermittently and spasmodically, from a variety of orthopedic nuisances, I find I have developed something between a mantra and a war-cry: "All it takes is a little RESOLUTION," I say, grinding my teeth and endeavouring to Step. Out. without limping or hanging onto things. Or falling down, for that matter.

And as I think about my blogging practice... I think that what I have to blog about, these days, mostly, is a nosegay of RESOLUTION, thus: to attain a more enjoyable level of health and fitness; to improve the comfort and beauty of a. the house and b. the yard; to become a confident dog owner; to do such ministry as I am called to do and capable of performing.

And that is the stuff of this blog, for the time being.

Today: some time in the church office, some minor correspondence, preparation for a service of house blessing for an old friend (this evening); a couple of restrained meals -- I am eating up savoury left-overs from the student supper on Sunday evening -- and the beginning of a total blitz attack on the clutter and grime of the kitchen. "All the way to the back of every cupboard and drawer" is our cry.

I was amused, in passing, to note how very very "Standard Supermarket Fare" my so-called "Mexican" cookbook (of 40 years ago) really is. Fpr example, no cumin, no cilantro -- but salt, pepper, Tabasco, Campbell's soup. Tentatively, I think it might have been more accurately called "Gringo-mergent." tasty, though, my goodness. Excellent left-overs.

the Friday Five

It's that time of year when the only new things on television are music/dance competitions (the 21st century answer to variety shows?). Yes, it's the season of reruns.

This week the clock turned back to last fall and the Glee kids went back to school and still got "slushied," and Michael hired his nephew on The Office, which was not something even he would be likely to repeat.

In honor of this annual Time Warp, please share five things worth a repeat. These could be books, movies, CDs, recipes, vacations, or even TV shows.

1. Television shows: How can any list not start with The West Wing? Great characters, great situations, and enough throw-away lines per episode to stock a whole season of any standard TV dramatic series. (Remember: "My God, King Lear is a good play..." -- "A verb would be good, sometime soon"...)

2. Books: Well -- I wish I could find a copy of Eric Mascall's Via Media; -- it can be downloaded from Google but only in the US of A, apparently.

3. Movies: A whole long list -- Song of the South--I missed one Very Anticipated showing of it the summer I turned six, because I woke up that morning with chicken pox...nearly broke my heart -- I should explain we were living in far northern British Columbia and a movie was a darn seldom thing, involving a projector and giant cans of film arriving by float plane from Juneau, very big deal indeed. But another great movie in that list was Carnegie Hall...and Kes, which is now available on DVD, worth seeing again.

4. Recipes: I wish I could recapture what one of my grandmothers used to do to a fried potato. And I wish I could recapture what the other grandmother could do with a chocolate cake, peppermint boiled frosting, and bitter chocolate topping...

5. Vacations: I would love to be going on a family driving vacation this summer... or taking a three-week trip to Italy with my children ... or planning to get on a big boat with a whole bunch of RevGals. Oh wait -- I am.

surprise...

Good news! or gnus! (see above)

I am still alive...and meditating a return to bloggery. I have been many many many miles since the last post on this blog, and the effect of the cross-country to and fro reminds me of a jest of my youth.

For years my mother employed a wonderful Finnish woman as housekeeper. We learned that English as spoken by Finnish people has certain neat features...one was the tendency to drop an initial consonant (especially "T") preceding a liquid ("L" or "R"). Hence for our Aili, people who were moving about geographically were " 'ravelling"...

And I have been much 'ravelled in the last two months.

Isn't it odd that "ravel" and "unravel" mean exactly the same thing... Huh.

So to give you the gist -- in the last eight weeks I've flown to the west coast and back; I've driven into the heart of Central Canada, and back (8,000 kilometres roughly = 5,000 miles), and I've flown into Central Canada and back...

And thought, and thought, and thought...

More, anon.

It's good to be home.

Friday, Friday

I may look at the Friday Five a bit later as the last few days have indeed been quite Olympic hereabouts.
Where I am AT, at this moment...I woke up betimes and turned off the alarm, I worked the hard Friday crossword (Thanks, friend!) on my calendar, I said Morning Prayer, two nice chunks of Ps. 119, Jacob's Last Will and Testament, the conclusion of the Passion in Matthew plus the usual 'common supplications.'
I have checked the email, lovely poem by Mary Oliver sent by inward/outward this morning; I have checked the Facebook, Olympic triumphing and weekend plans and pics of new babies (all good); I am contemplating writing a a snotty letter to the Times Literary Supplement--they don't often nod, but the editing has been a bit whoopsie in recent weeks, and in the last issue a reviewer (of Walking to America by Roger Hutchinson, which sounds fascinating BTW), describing the deaths--in Arizona--of two infants in this immigrant family, says, "the exhumation of their newly buried remains by hungry jackals marked the nadir."
But I'm having trouble starting a letter with some phrase other than, "Listen, clothhead... not jackals, nor dingoes either...we're talking KIYOOTS here, you post-colonial ninnyhammer." (See above, coyote howling in chagrin at being mistaken for a jackal)
You understand that next to defeating Americans in hockey, catching a Brit with her facts down is almost the very favourite Canadian thrill...
I have a memorial service to attend this afternoon...for an old, old lady, classmate, BFF, and sorority sister of the Rambler's late Mum. She was gathered peacefully to her rest out on the Left Coast, but there's a memorial here in Prairie Metropolis where she lived for sometime as befit that special creature known as an "Oil Wife." There was a foursome of these women, and I think there is now only one left...I'm a bit haunted by the feeling that I may be the only person left who remembers that they were friends! They scattered to the four winds after graduation in 1937...but were all great letter writers all their lives. Anyway, praise God for their mutually sustaining friendships over these many years.

Annals of Retirement, continued...

This delight came in the morning email from a friend with the heading -- "too much time on their hands" which must be, I suppose, one definition of retirement. I'm not yet quite reduced to this level of boredom (or exalted to this level of creative skill, whichever).

Reflecting upon the great celebration of T-Fig just past and remembering the principle of NOT preaching outside one's own knowledge...
I was grappling, some years ago (first or second year at MH & U?), with what to say about transfiguration when I came upon or recalled an essay by an American surgeon turned essayist (Google is not helping me to retrieve a name here), who had written eloquently about the medical procedure of "transillumination" as a metaphor for what he hoped to achieve in his writing. This caught my imagination...evoking childhood play with a flashlight -- you know, you shine it through your hand, and if you're very brave you put it in your mouth and peer into the mirror, "OOOO look at that..."

So with fear and without any very specific information, I hauled it into the sermon. And a parishioner, Very Tall Doc, took me aside at the end of the service and with great care and delicacy dealt with my ignorance... explaining that transillumination is used, medically, to examine ONE part of the human body. ONE part of the ADULT, MALE human body, in fact.

It never fails. The only time I made bold to quote a phrase in an aboriginal language, there was a native speaker in the congregation.

Excellent, excellent conversation yesterday with a couple of fellow ecumaniacs -- one local, one "import" ... most encouraging and stimulating.

I have learned a wonderful new word, receiving a bilingual message this morning from Amazon.ca, as befits the True North Strong and Free With, Thank God, an Olympic Gold Medal At Last: "Cher internaute," it began. That's what I am, I'm an "internaut" -- sounds much more intrepid than a mere "user," doesn't it?

And today... I am going to sew two dropped buttons back on my cassock. And then I shall find a suitable container, and some potting soil, and plant my nicely-rooted geranium cutting. Well, geranium "busting," actually, Nefertiti-the-Wonder-Cat having knocked the top out of my big geranium in one of her Wild Hurtles around the living room. But the broken piece did well in a jar of water on the window sill, so I have hopes of two gerania for the price of one.

And then I have a meeting.

And then I am going to attempt to cook my sauerbraten which has been "festering" in the fridge in its marinade since the weekend. I ate pancakes in a ceremonial manner at St. Curious on Sunday so I am exempt from that sticky ritual this evening.

And then I may have to find an apple and a nice sharp knife.....

more about books and other "stuff"...

The Rationale

Philip Slater
To own or possess is to monopolize the use of something permanently. Hence the need to possess betrays a degree of insecurity. Possession is a way of ensuring access to whatever it is we want to use or enjoy: we are so anxious that the object be there when we want it that we are willing to insist that it be there even when we don't want it. Thus we have food on our shelves when we're not hungry, clothes in our closets that we're not wearing, cars in our driveways that we aren't driving, and so on.

The rationale is that when we do want to eat, dress, or drive, we won't have to waste time looking around for the food, clothing, or transportation. This time saving is questionable, as we shall see, but it expresses the sense of urgency that lies behind the compulsion to possess.

Source: Wealth Addiction

I think this has a lot to do with "books on the shelf that I'm not reading -- but tomorrow or next day I might just want to"...

in which the Rambler comes out of retreat and revs up for Royalty...

Hello all.

It froze overnight, here in Prairie Metropolis. In Other Prairie Metropolis, 300 km. south, it's snowing.
"Oh what is so rare as a day in June,
Then, if ever, come perfect days."

Ha~!

I've been away at a Roman Catholic retreat centre in the suburbs (in the posh suburb, as a matter of fact), with three young men, well, younger than me, who will be ordained DV on Sunday night, one as a deacon and the other two to the priesthood.

I don't know how effective a preparation this was for them but we came away in a state of considerable charity with each other and that has to be good, right?

We had a good time and ate a lot and talked almost incessantly -- so much for silence -- and covered many topics such as the poetry (and prose!) of George Herbert and the regulations governing clerical weaponry (agreed that we should confine ourselves to inflicting BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA only in the proper mediaeval decorum)... the potentially mixed blessing of the clerical "assistant"... selected bons mots of the late Ed Friedman, and the dreadful lacunae in seminary training in the "choreography and legerdemain" aspects of Practical Liturgy. NONE of these men has had a "dry run" through the Eucharist. NONE. And it's not that they have graduated from Punkin Corners Seminary and School of Mines, not by any means.

IT IS A SCANDAL.

And it would appear that the Rambler will be doing hands-on tutorials next week...

And apparently nobody ever, ever, learns to sing any more, in preparation for liturgical leadership.

This isn't right, either.

We also went to the pub nearby on our final evening...


MEANTIME, "princess is comin'" and the cleaning up has been done and we are all in a tall state of furbishment,and have coped with the announcement that the Child Most Likely to present a nosegay--and all the child's siblings--were diagnosed on Wednesday with pediculosis...

I have a wedding at 1 p.m. today as well...good rehearsal yesterday afternoon, with a STELLAR ringbearer of maybe 8 or 9. Boys at that age are WONDERFUL. No irony. Pre-pubescent towers of strength, one and all.

request for input

Dear blogging pals and gals,

It turns out I am supposed to conduct a pre-ordination retreat here in about 3 weeks (48 hours in duration) for three men (two to be priested, one to be made deacon). I know one of them a little, the other two hardly at all.

I remember my own retreats fondly especially the first, in which I was one on one with the director.

But I have no assurance that what we did will be in any way suitable to these candidates.

If a pre-ordination retreat has been part of your experience, please, please tell me what went well, what worked, what was helpful -- and what WASN'T.

And you will greatly oblige...
the somewhat distraite Rambler.

in which the Rambler goes on retreat...

My colleagues and I are IMMURED, more or less, in an Oblate retreat and conference centre about 45 minutes' drive from Tether's End. Our numbers are swelled by clergy colleagues from the diocese just to the north of us...

I've brought a sack of work to do, and reading, and plan to take part in just exactly as much of the retreat as I find nourishing...

And I brought the laptop, so as to maintain contact with the Outer Reality.

After all, there might be a need out there to communicate with me about the latest antics of the newest denizen of Tether's End...since Saturday...with her long legs and ridiculous long tail and great big ears and hefty semi-Siamese squall. Called "Nefertiti" in honour of her elegant profile.

Kitteh pics shall ensue.

In which the Rambler is ambushed...

Attached to our parish ("Most Holy & Undivided"), we have a family of First Nations folks. The Rambler's grandparents would have called them "Indians." The Rambler has some trouble with the term "native," which to her thinking has the smell of moldy pith helmets about it, and also with the term "aboriginal," which will always evoke Australia, sorry about that.

The Rambler has a fairly lengthy acquaintance with these folks, and was asked to celebrate the Eucharist in their midst last week, to mark the first anniversary of the very sad and premature death of a son of the family. He succumbed to the cumulative effects of taxing his physical self with food, drink, and recreational chemicals.

This invitation is a huge honour...especially as the brother of the young man who died is now also an Anglican priest, and fully qualified to preside for his family. So the Rambler goes into this event quite conscious of being the senior "European Settler Person" on site, and an "elder" by courtesy.

There were 85 members of the extended family present. (Parishes who seek growth might like to ramp up their welcome to First Nations families, by the way -- a growing demographic.) The Order of Service was Book of Common Prayerall the way (i.e., "old school"). The hymns were all in Cree, with the assistance and leadership of musician friends. (By the end of the service the Rambler was feeling pretty cocky about her ability to sing from the Cree hymn sheet).

And among the 85 were THE GRANDMOTHERS. Actually they were several-times-great grandmothers (the grandmothers all seem to be about 35). And these "eldresses" line themselves up at the communion rail, behind their quiet faces, and hold out their hands... and they walk right into my heart and break it all up into little tiny pieces, and rearrange them into a better and sweeter order.

Now what is this? I suspect, a lot of it the dreaded "projection" or "transference" (maybe even "counter transference"), or "naive romanticism" or some other version of Not Knowing Any More Than I Think I Do about these people. But I want to get down on the floor and wash their feet. With tears.

Then there was the feast, great jocularity about letting the White Elder (!) serve herself first from the (tongue-in-cheek) "native fare" on offer, featuring cabbage rolls and lasagne.

But my dear brothers and sisters, there was also PIE. Made by the grandmothers. Blueberry pie. From wild blueberries picked on the reservation.

I'm not quite back to normal and I'm not sure I want to be.