Keep Watch

First Sunday in Advent and St. Andrew's Day

I came home from a sunny and unusually warm thanksgiving holiday to icy roads and snow covered mountains. Our flight was delayed some and we ended up not arriving home until almost 1:30 a.m., so today was slow-going and I slept in til nearly 10:30 a.m. That doesn't happen often! I managed to get everyone fed, dressed and out the door by 2 p.m. and we did our Giving Tree shopping for the church and quickly ate a meal as we headed out to evening Mass.

The black ice and holiday weekend meant low numbers at this Mass, so I ended up being asked to be a eucharistic minister, something that happens only about once or twice a year, and No. 1 was asked to be a Lector. She did a great job and I nearly had an anxiety attack about serving Communion, but made it through. Keep watch! is what I remember of the Gospel. The homily was about not waiting until it is too late to show people love.

I noticed a woman in our parish wearing a lace veil but with denim jeans. We must be one of the few regions of the country where that makes sense. Almost every woman I know who wears a veil for Mass (and none of them are at our parish, most are online friends), wears it for Modesty, as part of feminine dress, so she's wearing a skirt or dress as well. I didn't want to put her on the spot about her choice, so I didn't ask her why the veil, why the jeans? Maybe it was simply too cold and she didn't have a clean skirt. But I could imagine wearing a veil with jeans implies something different; a heartfelt belief in God's true presence at Mass in Communion. It makes perfect sense to me anyhow.

After Mass, we came home and lit our Advent wreath, said the prayer for the week and I gave each of my kids their chocolate Advent calendars. We had a little wrangling over who got which design so I told each of them which I had picked for who and then they decided whether or not to accept my choice. The younger two ended up having to play rock, paper, scissors, to decide who got the calendar with gnomes and a giant tree house. The loser graciously accepted the decision and I complimented her on not losing her cool.

After that, we had our St. Andrew's Tea, which was just cocoa and thistle napkins around the advent wreath. We wrapped our Giving Tree gifts and I'll drive them over to the church when the streets have thawed out this week. No. 3 was especially good at wrapping; her gift looks really artistic. I'm afraid the poor kid who gets the stack of books she requested is going to be in for a lot of work to dig them out of the layers of paper and packing tape I used.

Kids are hoping for a late-start notice from the school district in the morning. Our area just isn't equipped to deal with icy roads and snow that lingers. So many hills and so few de-icing machines. I wouldn't mind a late start myself!

I started reading a new book on the airplane. I think this makes the fourth or fifth book I'm in the middle of. The Martian by Andy Weir is a straight up science fiction novel, with realistic science and surprisingly gripping narrative. I would never in a million years be able to understand the math and chemistry going on in this book, it's like the mother of all McGuyver situations, a Crichton adveture and a Sherlock style intricate puzzle to figure out, but it's totally enjoyable even without understanding all that. It's rare to find novels like this being printed now. The SF/F market is really heavily taken over by media tie-ins and fantasy novels (in science-fictiony settings or otherwise). This is more like classic Sci Fi of the 1950s but without the dated stereotypes and with up to date technology. I'm looking forward to finishing this one.

Letters Home

I'm mailing out cards for family and friends we won't see around the table at Thanksgiving, which is quite a few, as we are spread out all over the USA. I'm not sure what it is like to have all your relatives and in-laws living in the same town, but I imagine it must be nice to be able to visit with everyone at some point during the holidays; catch up on the family news, give hugs and hold new babies in person, trade advice and humorous stories. As families get smaller and live further apart, no wonder family ties get looser and hometowns less important.

Over the years, I've done some thinking about why Americans are the way they are: in a hurry, moving frequently, less connected to the past and to family, endlessly consuming and materialistic, youth-oriented, all that stuff we complain about. I think it's just that we are a young country that happened to build on the industrial age and all the advances in speed in just about everything.

We traveled faster, communicated faster, built fortunes faster than in previous centuries and the landscape and communities were new too. All that made suburbia and social mobility possible, almost required. If the economy is bad in one place it's assumed you should pack up and move where the jobs are, very little respect is given to the idea of wanting to stay where your people came from, because probably your parents have picked up and moved for retirement, your sister and brother went to university elsewhere and settled in another town for good schools, and so on.

Suburbia implies impermanence. Modern houses are not built to last more than a generation or two. And who stays in the family house more than a generation these day? We change houses with phases of life. My grandparents' houses are both in neighborhoods that are now much more urban than when they set up house there. (For Seattleites, one is on Roosevelt Way and the other on 35th Ave. SW, both now busy arterials where street cars used to run down the center lane.)

In older countries, neighborhoods are longer established and more stable. With time, beautiful established neighborhoods can be cultivated, but we have to value them and stay there to make it happen. One of the themes of my life is making a commitment to stability. Benedictine monastics take a vow of stability, to live in one community, to submit to living under the Rule of St. Benedict, under the authority of the abbot/abbess. I often ask myself if I can make that commitment to stay here and be that center for my children, the home place they can come back to throughout their lives, and their children's lives. Can I say no to being a nomad?

~

Here is a little poem I wrote, part of a longer set of verses about all the months of the year.

November 1 is winter's start,

This month remembered all souls in our hearts.

Through prayers now we our love we send,

And give thanks to God at harvest's end.

And to end, a favorite picture of No. 3, enjoying the first snow of the year a decade ago. Can't you just feel her excitement? This winter's forecast is for wet and gloomy but not freezing weather, so probably no snow this year. Hard to believe how much snow some parts of the country have gotten already.

November 2005