I wrote about my favorite story for Good Friday: The Grail, Sir Parzifal, and the Fisher King.  I did a short, off the cuff homily on it a few Good Fridays ago, and finally got around to putting it in down on (e-)paper.

I woke up this morning remembering the large family reunions my mom's family used to have. We'd rent out all the cabins in a cave-riddled state park in Indiana (my mom's family is HUGE - I am the oldest of around 40 first cousins) and go spelunking and playing capture the flag together.  We'd swim in a river, right below the waterfall.  We'd try to be really quiet in the morning to see if we could avoid startling all the deer.

My cousin Jeremiah was my closest male cousin.  He was closest to me in age, and we just clicked - every time we got together for a reunion we'd hit it off all over again.

I just learned that Jeremiah was killed in Iraq (next of kin have been notified, obviously, since this article was published).  He was not a soldier, he was a teacher.  A missionary teacher at a Christian school. Pictures on his Facebook page show him in dishdasha and kaffiyeh.  Apparently he was killed by one of his students, who then shot himself.  God only knows why.

Tua had another round of tests yesterday and then met with the nephrologist, and the new meds are working!  Which means they've at least temporarily halted the kidney decline, which means no need for an immediate kidney transplant (or even worse, dialysis!).  The doctor's 99% sure Tua will need at least one new kidney at some point (transplanted kidneys only last about 30 years, a scary-ass fact I recently learned), but he's also pretty confident that new medications and techniques might make future transplants last longer.

Still, don't forget to register online as an organ donor.  :)  It's much more effective than the "organ donor" symbol on your driver's license.  

Today is also Bisextile, or Leap Day, the day I proposed to Tua.  So while we were engaged 8 years ago, it's only the second anniversary of our engagement, or, as Tua calls it, "announcing our candidacy."  (Somehow along the line we adopted campaign lingo for our marriage - we were, after all, married in an election year.  Which means every presidential campaign cycle we get to shout "Four more years!")

And tomorrow is the feast day of St. David, the patron saint of Wales.  We will make leek-and-potato soup.

I can imagine a better way to celebrate Lent than self-denial and body-negativity.  Ashes and Earth: Practicing Resurrection in Lent.

Two recent posts: One on handmade presents, another on the return of wild turkeys to our woods.

One a Vermontization of the Celtic Deep Peace blessing.  The other a somewhat disjointed meditation on the joy of the young farmer movement.

So I finally wrote about how it feels to be one of the "barren" women in the Advent season, and though it's not received a single comment on the site itself, I keep getting FB notes and emails.  I had *no idea* so many other women were struggling with this.  Sometimes simply with the judgments that one receives for choosing not to procreate, sometimes with comments like "When are you gonna get married and give me grandkids?"  Sometimes with the inability to conceive and the grief around that, and the fact that no one wants to touch it.  It made me remember my dad saying he took a professional pastoral development workshop on helping couples with infertility, and helping churches deal sensitively with that while also celebrating pregnancies and births for other couples.  Because while it's easy for communities to celebrate with the birth of a new child, those celebrations can further alienate people working through the grief of childlessness.  And it's hard - really hard - for communities to name that grief and not try to "Jesus it away."  

But reading other Christian women talk about how affirming the Women's Seder was for them, I want to think about how we can create a Woman-affirming Christian festival.  It's challenging partly because of how much less community- and family-centered Christianity is.  And a lot of the Christian "feminist liturgies" I've looked at are clunky and much too obviously trying to compensate.  Whereas the Women's Seder names women's oppression and neglect with a joyful ferocity.  It relies on the standard (and awesome!) Dayenu, old folk songs, and Debbie Friedman's newer songs, some of which are clunky, too, but some of which work really well because of the way she draws images and turns of phrase from the Bible and Jewish poetry and song.  Also, while the Passover is an obvious choice for a festival for lesbians' and straight women's exodus from patriarchy and homophobia, this is one instance where Easter as a parallel doesn't seem to fit . . . or does it?  Hmm . . .

I am thankful for:

three potential indexing clients last week
the beginning of mukluk season
chosen family
medicine
music
cats and chickens
a place to live
Tua
good food and good land

I've always wanted to post pictures on LJ but didn't want to add ads.  

Photo Introduction and Orientation, though I should perhaps have called it Pretties and Kitties.

Still, posting-of-photos-on-LJ-problem solved!

by Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer

Praise be that this thin mark, this sound,
Can form the Word that takes on flesh,
To enter where no flesh can go,
To fill each other's emptiness.

To the Words and How They Live Between Us,
And To Us and How We Live Between the Words.

And in between the sound of words,
I hear your silent, sounding soul
Where One abides in solitude
Who keeps us one when speech shall go.

To the Words and How They Live Between Us,
And To Us and How We Live Between the Words!