The Saturated Spaces

Enright's opening essay on Atheism refers to organized religion as "anti-human, unsympathetic and unforgiving". I have not been this troubled by such an absolute misunderstanding in years.

Mister: Ok, see you soon.
Me: Ok. Don't flirt with any of the girls without pants on.
Mister: Wha-? Pants? What?
Me: The girls. They don't wear pants here.
Mister: ---
Me: They wear leggings. And stretchy pieces of fabric that resemble skirts. Those gals are trouble. The ones wearing pants, on the other hand, they're ok. You can flirt with them.
Mister: Right.

Below, some assistance I'm convinced needs to be made as a billboard.

Writing helps me pay attention to best things in my life.

Yesterday we were at church. Not our regular church but the oops-we-slept-in-church down the street. It's a fine church. The boys choir is exceptional and the priest is lovely but it feels a bit like a social connector for lifers.

So here's something of a confession: Sunday is my least favourite day of the week. Unless I'm sitting in a charismatic service being highly entertained (and thus highly troubled) I will fall asleep. And I'm not talking about the lazy blahs that come from a late night-before. My head will start bobbing and I will fall asleep, as I usually want to do every other day of the week between the hours of 10am and 4pm. I love me my one-hour Anglican services with extended times for prayer sitting down. Not so easy to hide from the Orthodox. I fall asleep standing. I have scared myself numerous times. I have left to "go to the bathroom" making sure it is after the homily (the 10-minute sit down time) only to end up in my car napping in the back seat with my alarm set for 15 minutes.

Anyhow, yesterday. I'm sitting waiting for the service to start knowing that it's going to be a haul and I smell the incense - the incense that welcomes me every Sunday. And it strikes me that in times (years) like these when my head is elsewhere that I still have my senses. Good enough? No. But good. And recognition leads to thinking. The fragrance is a sign of His coming. He will be here. He's just in the foyer. I can smell His Spirit. And it's followed by His song. And I'm sitting in a room built for Him. I see the stained glass coloured by Light. And we taste Him in the Mass.

Church for me is not a desire but a discipline these days. It's socially straining. It forces me into the world. When I don't have to, I usually don't. Thank God for marriage.

The past two weeks have been jarring. Was able to process some of my more confusing thoughts with mom over Skype the other day. The news hit me much the same as way as hearing about Michelle's death. Firstly, there is the most obvious of facts: that someone healthy, seemingly happy, engaging, with a full and active life filled with friends and with family, is gone. Not from a chronic illness that loved ones were expecting (not that makes loss ANY easier). This was sudden. And more so unexpected. We were in a sort of shock. The jolt through my body. The circles and circles of thinking.

I am fortunate to know death it on very rare occurrences. And so when I hear about death, it is, more often than not, a distant thing. Maybe like a story. A faraway thing. It does not touch me and therefore it takes on the shape of a narrative. I try to dwell on these faraway losses in order to honour those who have died but that is not always possible. Proximity plays a huge role in all our life experiences.

So when something is close, it becomes an experience. It becomes something I could have been even closer to were circumstances different. It becomes something I can imagine myself present to. When I think about Michelle, I think about how I was a part of her experience just as her murder was. It happened in real time to her. This is not a story. She experienced all the things I would have experienced were I in her place. And when you're close to someone, you can, in some ways, imagine yourself in their place. Close. Real. You can imagine their own thoughts playing out which is chilling and painful. The loss is bad enough. Knowing they experienced something beyond comprehension is another thing altogether.

Suicide is the deepest despair. For people who do live for and love their friends and family, it is only and all the deepest and most penetrating despair. We'll never understand this. We don't have to, really. But I pray for the dead now. I do so unapologetically. Why not? It's honest.

G: I'll be right back.
A: NO! Where are you going!?
G: The bathroom.
A: AGH! PUL-EEZE hurry back. I'm feeling unstable.

Sometimes it's just that important to have your soul mate within arm's reach. Granted, my instability at that particular time was based on a sudden and completely irrational fear of me plagiarizing my most recent essay thanks to a stupid article I read only hours before about someone who failed to reference something properly. But it's fun to want to be with your spouse. I like wanting him around.

A day shattered by death. Feeling powerless and so far away. GP might be going back sooner than expected for the funeral. I can't talk about how this is swimming in me. I don't want to say anything. My voice sounds stupid. But what I feel is only similar to a shock of some sort. A silencing and painful slap that reminds me of how far away we are. I put myself in the past - my time spent with her was I'm certain more meaningful for me than anything - and wonder at my blindness. Time and space - stupid, stupid, stupid.

Where we are.

Ringing in 2013 from John o’ Groats in a castle, with friends, and strangers, and Scotch. A little guide to Hogmanay.

gp: Hello. Guess what. I found quinoa!
me: Really? That's great. Where?
gp: Yeah. In the health food store.
me: Wha...health food store? Where is it?
gp: In Stinky Alley.

There's no real connection between health and and poorly named street. But there's a health food store and there's an alley called stinky and I find that mildly amusing.

After a couple months of getting my own way in church selection, GP and I went to St. Nicholas this morning. It seems silly now but to come across a humble little parish, much like the mission churches in the Vancouver area, was a bit of a surprise. If it's church and it's in England, should it not be grand? The modesty of St. Nicholas was a familiar comfort.

An unfamiliar thing was the number of Russians. Less converts. More cradle Orthodox. The service was in both English and Russian. I wore a scarf. But oops, I was wearing pants. And lots of eyeliner - trying out a new look.

Probably the most memorable point in the service was the dismissal. After the weekly announcements were made the Archpriest confronted his congregation with something I hope and pray I will never forget - something I hope I will change, with God's help. An attempt to paraphrase:

If you arrive late to church, you should not dare to take the Eucharist; The Eucharist is a face to face encounter with the King of the entire world and it should be the most important moment of your entire week; And if you are late, you miss the confession; The only excuse for being late is for parents with small children; You must prepare for the Eucharist. This means resolving conflicts with each other and with your family members in advance.

Love people. 

I've taken to ducks. Here is my newest favourite friend that likes to chill on the stream we cross on our way to the Department. He is a Mandarin, a perching duck from East-Asia. A perching duck is a category of duck named after a tendency to perch in trees. Isn't he pretty? His girlfriend is also cute - soft grey. I will try and get a picture of her next week if they are around. But of course professional pictures online are so much better and I could stare at them for a long, long time. It's also noteworthy that they are endangered in Asia. There are 7000 in England.

Reading is a student town. I'm seeing what this means. It means drunk. And on Monday nights it means what I can only describe as dress-up pub crawl sing-song. Each Monday night between 9 and 11 the manly chanting can be heard up the street. It grows louder and eventually the crowd starts passing by our window dressed in some thematic get-up. Gradually the mob dwindles ending with a few stragglers. Tonight's theme, as far as I can tell, was newsboy: walking shorts, argyle, dress shoes, suspenders, flat caps, tweed. And for some reason, they were tied by the wrists in groups of three. Sometimes there are girls with them, hanging off their backs in teeny shorts. Tonight, not so much. A frat perhaps?

So, that's the unsavoury part of the city. Here is what GP and I discovered this weekend!

The Reading Abbey was built in 1121, was founded by Henry I, and is only a couple of block from our apartment. It was one of the most important abbeys in England not to mention one of the wealthiest. It was a pilgrimage site and had St. James' hand among it's 200+ relics. I think King Henry I was/is? buried there. Sadly it was ruined - part of Henry VIII's attack on monasteries in general. And it was never restored. The ruins are still there, weather worn and hard to miss. BBC's article is better than mine. After our wintery walk along the Thames we came upon that which I thought was on the other side of the city! We'll be returning for a more thorough exploration/reading-of-the-plaques.

Our projects' deadlines are deceiving in that while there are no more formal milestones we are expected to apply the feedback from the critique in our final show at the end of the year. The project does not really end. But this is good. The enthusiasm I feel for making something better is amazing. I actually have the fuel to keep caring. It's incredible.

Greg forwarded this lovely little piece from Richard Rohr': 

"So how do you communicate to others what is inherently a secret? Or can you? How can the secret become “unhidden”? It becomes unhidden when people stop hiding—from God, themselves, and at least one other person. The emergence of our True Self is actually the big disclosure of the secret. Such risky self-disclosure is what I mean by intimacy, and intimacy is the way that love is transmitted. Some say the word comes from the Latin intimus, referring to that which is interior or inside. Some say its older meaning is found by in timor, or “into fear.” In either case, the point is clear: intimacy happens when we reveal and expose our insides, and this is always scary. One never knows if the other can receive what is exposed, will respect it, or will run fast in the other direction. One must be prepared to be rejected. It is always a risk. The pain of rejection after self-disclosure is so great that it often takes a lifetime for people to risk it again." 

So the man is BACK! And he took me away for a weekend in the Cotswolds. Have pictures. Will show. For now verbal updates are pretty much just a gushing over my mister who speaks the love language of "gift giving." (yesssssss!)

The Cotwolds - you're wondering what this looks like. Maybe you're not. Pretend you are. The picture is easy. Think hunter green wellies worn by weathered men walking their spaniels and hounds through misty fields along slow, small rivers over which arch old stone bridges. The thatched roof. The church steeple. The mill. The ducks. The pheasant.* The sheep inside stone fencing. The endless landscape. In short, think the Shire but human-scale and no round doors.

GP is a sharp one. He knows all too well we're in the most gastronomically challenged country on the planet. So he books us into a foodie B&B (mind the "modern" "sculpture"). Delish! We were welcomed Friday evening to dinner plates prepared cold and placed in a fancy foodie fridge in the main farm house for us to retrieve as we wish. It was comprised of my very favourite tastes ALL of which were sourced locally. Homemade breads and Cotswold butter, hams and cheeses from the farm, preserves and salad from regional orchards... Bliss.

An aside, I had blood pudding. Had I not known I would have ate the entire little disk of "ew". It was flavourful and ignorance would have been bliss. And 

*I had a goal to eat a pheasant. Tasty bird!

“It’s just life.” My mom gets credit for this bit of wisdom. The following has a million holes but it's a start.

You only have one life. I only have one life. Yet, the human story includes billions. Each are of inestimable significance and value. Each is as precious to the beholder as mine is to me. And throughout history each life is swept away in what seems like a breath -- by old age or otherwise. And mine will too. Probably by cancer. Or the Big One. Or crossing the street in a country that clearly has it out for pedestrians. In the end, my singular life be one more story along with everyone else's. Everybody's life: a big deal and no big deal at the same time. Precious in one way. Fleeting in another. Two qualities worth recalling from time to time, I figure.

"It's just life" has informed choices I have made. It has informed, most notably, the big ones. At times, I have wondered at the gap between what is normal and obvious to me and what it difficult to others. And that's where things get tricky. People talk. Typically it has been not upsetting but somehow this week, for reasons I do not know, it has been nice to be far away from the distancing the talk has made.

Far away from the distance. I like that.

"It's just life" frees one up to hold out for depth -- with another and with God. I am open to a future that could look like anything and the not-knowing is a comfort to me. The mystery, knowing it's God's, feels a million times more homey than does "the plan." I desire more and more for my sense of security to reside in the stable places: with the someone who loves me and with the God who gives Himself to, and for, His children.

An admission: "It's just life" does break down. I fail to see the fleeting quality of my life when I'm starting a new job, meeting new people, reading a menu, paying a bill, buying jeans, or as was the case yesterday, running high street errands on a Saturday afternoon. Hell. All and every bit, a hell.

This week was very, very good. Why? Because I'm making friends. I suppose I've been making friends all month, but this week I got less weird, which always makes getting to know people much easier.

It was also good because I my greatest fear (presenting concepts to David Pearson and Fraser Muggeridge at the same time) was unfounded. I haven't felt this capable since 2004. That's not an exaggeration. How I can sell an idea to two of the top book designers in Europe and not to a certain institution that will go unnamed is beyond me.

On 31/10/12 10:00pm, "andrea pennoyer" <???@???.gmail.com> wrote:
Hi love. Going to bed soon. We have process due tomorrow with David Pearson. He's famous. I'm calm. It's strange.

On 31/10/12 10:54pm, "gregory pennoyer" <???@???.gmail.com> wrote:
You're calm because THIS is YOU! Sleep well. Just one more week.  G