Uncategorized | dual personalities

December 8, 2017

“You don’t know how it feels to be me”*

by chuckofish

‘Tis the season when we all need to take a chill pill and go easy on people. Everyone is stressed out. My DP had some good holiday advice a few days ago and here are a few more things to keep in mind.

First of all, try not to think of all this yuletide preparation as a burden. If it is a burden, you have put it on yourself. Personally, I love getting ready for Christmas, especially the unpacking of the ornaments and decorations, the new and the old. For me, it is a gradual process. There are no deadlines. If something doesn’t get put up this year, so be it. No one will care or (probably) notice. And it will all be lovely.

If no one invites you to a party, have your own. We don’t have a lot of friends, but those we have will all be coming over to our house on the Saturday before Christmas, and I’m sure they are happy about that. We can get dressed up and twist the night away…at least until 8:30 p.m. when we all turn into pumpkins!

Put money in the Salvation Army red kettle every time you see one! Have your cash ready. Don’t view those bell-ringing Santas as an annoyance. The money goes to a good cause.

4edd26755c610.image_.jpg

Watch some Christmas movies! For me at least, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without The Bishop’s Wife (1947) and White Christmas (1954) and 3 Godfathers (1947)! Unimaginable. If Danny Kaye can’t put you in the holiday spirit, no one can.

Go to church–at least once! Remember that Jesus really is the reason for the season. The rest is all hype and advertising. We are celebrating with a Festival of Lessons and Carols at our church this Sunday evening. Check and see if there is a similar service in your neighborhood. If you can’t actually attend one, listen to the King’s College, Cambridge service which is broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 on December 24. The service is also broadcast on Christmas Day, and at various times on the BBC World Service.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

²The same was in the beginning with God.

³All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

⁴In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

⁵And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

⁷The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

⁸He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

⁹That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

¹⁰He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

¹¹He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

¹²But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

¹³Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

(John 1: 1-14, KJV)

Have a good weekend! The wee babes (and their parents) have been sick this week. We’ll see them on Saturday when we go to their mom’s graduation–she’s getting her EdD!

*Tom Petty

P.S. I had to include this photo which was posted on Facebook by my friend Carla. It is a Christmas greeting from Christ the Redeemer Church in Pelham, NY where her son is a seminarian intern (3rd from left). Episcopalians know how to amuse themselves.

6 Comments

December 7, 2017

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”*

by chuckofish

“Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal security. That night she had a new consciousness of the country, felt almost a new relation to it. Even her talk with the boys had not taken away the feeling that had overwhelmed her when she drove back to the Divide that afternoon. She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”

–Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

Today we toast Willa Cather (1873-1947), whom we love, on her birthday.

The painting is “High Plains — Range Land,” an oil on linen painting by Raymond J. Eastwood.

*William Wordsworth

2 Comments

December 6, 2017

Mid-week look back

by chuckofish

Back in December of 1866 a group of men and women met at the home of William H. Colcord to form a church which would become one of the largest and most influential independent Protestant churches in the city, Pilgrim Congregational Church.

A Gothic-style building was dedicated in 1872, but the growing congregation moved to its present location at Union and Kensington in 1907.

The “new” building, an imposing pink granite structure designed by Mauran, Russell and Garden, is not what I think of us as your typical Congregational church, but this is not New England. The OM’s grandmother attended church there, as did his mother growing up. His parents were married there. I remember going there once. The OM says it was to hear John Anderson, the presidential candidate, speak in 1980, but I have no memory of that event.

Anyway, the church still stands near other distinguished west-end institutions: Soldan High School, designed by William Ittner and attended by Tennessee Williams,

4b4f6dd72e99782ae1522f11799222da--boulevard-st-louis.jpg

Union Avenue Christian Church,

Westminster Presbyterian,

and the former Young Men’s Hebrew Association headquarters.

e7bf45760efec5baaf564770712aa22b--st-louis-mo-built-environment.jpg

The neighborhood is much changed from its former heyday, but the churches keep going. Union Avenue Christian Church is now the home of the Union Avenue Opera, and the church is still vibrant with a strong commitment to remain as a faith community at their urban location.

O Lord Jesus, with whom we have passed another Christian year, following thee from thy birth in our flesh to thy sufferings and triumph, and listening to the utterances and counsels of thy Spirit: Even thus would we also end this year of grace, and stand complete in thee our Righteousness; humbly beseeching thee that we may evermore continue in thy faith and abide in thy love; who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

–Henry Alford

We all need to hang in there.

(The photos of Pilgrim Church are from Chris Naffziger, St. Louis Patina; the rest from google)

2 Comments

December 5, 2017

Love is gonna blow my way

by chuckofish

Yesterday was one of those days at work when I was busy from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm and I finally hit the road. No lunch, no break. I was happy that over the weekend daughter #1 had showed me how to sync my phone and use Amazon Prime to play music in my car, so I listened to Steve Earle on the way home.

This song made me happy:

Enjoy your day!

5 Comments

December 4, 2017

“Yea, amen! let all adore thee”*

by chuckofish

Well, I bought our wreath from the Boy Scouts, our two trees from the Optimists and daughter #1 and I put up the outside Christmas lights. Mission(s) accomplished!

Quelle busy weekend, but, in fact, very fun. We babysat the wee babes on Friday night and managed to wrestle them into their pajamas and bed. On Saturday, daughter #1 and I went to our church Christmas bazaar and cookie sale where I got a few used books and rescued a treasure or two.

Then we went to the birthday party for the wee babes who were, it turned out, not in the mood for a big noisy party. They both suffered major melt-downs from the get-go. C’est la vie.

Screen Shot 2017-12-03 at 3.48.12 PM.png

Screen Shot 2017-12-03 at 3.48.30 PM.png

They are both teething ferociously and life is hard right now. Well, on to Christmas and more photo ops.

We came home and watched Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and drank wine and had a chip-fest. Perfect. We even watched one of the special features and found out, among other fun facts, that Edmund Gwenn really filled in as Santa at the 1946 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, including addressing the crowd following the parade. That is pretty cool.

Church on Sunday was Advent I and we sang some good Advent hymns.

Turn up the volume and listen to this wonderful rendition of a great Charles Wesley hymn!

And the super moon was really awesome!

Happy Advent!

*Hymn #57

4 Comments

December 2, 2017

Teach me to travel far and bear my loads

by chuckofish

It’s December and the pre-Christmas mayhem has begun, but I’m not letting any of that get to me. Nope. This year, I’m just going to enjoy everything. I might even start playing Christmas music today. There’s no big trick to maintaining the Christmas spirit. Just remind yourself of what’s most important — the birth of Jesus — and choose to celebrate that every day.

Keep it simple.

Don’t compete with the neighbors, and try not to get annoyed if they go overboard. Even so, no amount of neighborly love obligates you to help put up or take down their excessively ornate decorations.

Holiday Decorations in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn — Image by © Andria Patino/Corbis

If the light shines into your bedroom window and prevents you from falling asleep, it’s okay to ask them nicely to turn off the lights at midnight. You might mention that doing so will reduce the electric bill 🙂

Don’t stress over Christmas presents. It really IS the thought that counts. Most people just want to know they’re loved and that you think about them. They don’t expect you to come up with that one, perfect present every year. Ask yourself what gift would improve the other person’s life, and get that. Socks and a heartfelt card may be just the thing.

Cultivate repose. Find the time to read some poetry and contemplate the season. Let’s start with “December Stillness” from Siegfried Sassoon.

December stillness, teach me through your trees
That loom along the west, one with the land,
The veiled evangel of your mysteries.
While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down
Deepens, and dusk embues me where I stand,
With grave diminishings of green and brown,
Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;
And let me learn your secret from the sky,
Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds
In lone remote migration beating by.
December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,
Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

We all carry a load and have far to go, but if you remember what we’re celebrating, you’ll find your burden isn’t so heavy and the distance not so long.

I’m off to bake some banana bread to take to the “greening of the church” party this afternoon. Then I’ll do some Christmas shopping and some decorating around the house. Tomorrow we’ll go to church and to buy our Christmas tree. I think it’s going to be a lovely weekend!

3 Comments

December 1, 2017

Put on the armor of light

by chuckofish

Boy, this week whizzed by, didn’t it? I am really looking forward to the weekend. The OM and I are babysitting tonight for the wee babes and then we are celebrating their first birthday a little early on Saturday. Daughter #3 has poured her creative powers into planning this party.

Screen Shot 2017-11-30 at 10.57.09 AM.png

(I might be rolling my eyes just a little bit…)

As far as Christmas shopping goes, I am in pretty good shape and will spend some time this weekend getting things organized in my off-limits gifts closet. I will endeavor to get the outside Christmas lights up and maybe, if the weather is nice, I can convince the OM to go with me to buy Christmas trees.

Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent, but Advent Lessons and Carols are not until next weekend at my church.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

It may be time to break out the Christmas DVDs this weekend as well. Speaking of movies, last night I got to see a movie on TCM that I have wanted to see for years and years–Wee Geordie (1955), a British film starring Bill Travers in the title role as a Scotsman who becomes an athlete and competes in the hammer throw in the Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

I remember my mother telling me about this movie when I was young. She had seen it back in the 1950s and loved it, largely because it was filmed in Scotland and the scenery is awesome. It is similar to The Quiet Man (“What The Quiet Man does for Ireland…Wee Georgie does for the Scots…”) in that it is filled with eccentric, lovable characters who live in an idyllic small village. Bill Travers plays the adult Geordie who has spent years following a body-building regimen and becomes a strapping 6′ 6″ specimen, coached by the local minister in the art of hammer throwing. He is very appealing.

d3bb7dcf778f6377ae8f8d16255036ae--hammer-throw-jamie-bell.jpg

And, boy, he looked great in a kilt! Well, if you ever get a chance to see it, do so! I loved it.

Have a great weekend!

5 Comments

November 30, 2017

Thou my soul’s shelter, Thou my high tower: Raise Thou me heavenward, O power of my power*

by chuckofish

It is the last day in November and I have been meaning to mention this tidbit of flyover Episcopal church history all month…Four years before St. Louis was chartered as a city in 1823, Christ Church was organized by 26 people who assembled for a service in a building that previously had been a dance hall and a courtroom. That worship service on Oct. 24, 1819 was the first for an Episcopal-Anglican congregation west of the Mississippi River.

On November 1, 1819 a charter was circulated by Col. Thomas F. Riddick for the first Episcopal church west of the Mississippi. Almost 50 signatures were obtained for the document, including those of some of the city’s most prominent citizens–Gen. William Clark, Thomas Hart Benton, Alexander McNair, Frederick Dent, John O’Fallon, James Clemens, Jr., and William Carr Lane, who in 1823 would be elected first mayor of St. Louis.

Nearly 50 years and two church buildings later, the growing congregation constructed a permanent church at their present location. It was designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 1994. Christ Church Cathedral is now headquarters of the Missouri diocese of the Episcopal Church and ranks among the finest English Gothic structures in the nation.

Screen Shot 2017-11-29 at 9.31.20 AM

I was sorry to miss this special service and the “Chat N’ Chew” (!) in the Nave with Esley Hamilton, historian and preservationist, as guest speaker that followed. That was a busy weekend and I couldn’t pull it off.

Of course, there was nary a mention of this milestone in our local paper. 150 years! Oh well, I suppose they think no one cares about the history of a small (and shrinking) denomination like ours. And they are too busy feeding us headlines about Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, et al.

Well, I certainly hope I am around in two years to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Episcopalians in this city!

*Be Thou My Vision, hymn #488

2 Comments

November 29, 2017

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

I am reading a bunch of different things.

You will recall that My Friend Flicka, written by Wyomingite Mary O’Hara, was mentioned a couple of times in a Longmire mystery…so I felt I should read it since I never have. Written in 1941, it tells the story of Ken McLaughlin, the son of a a Wyoming rancher, and his horse Flicka. It was the first in a trilogy, followed by Thunderhead (1943) and Green Grass of Wyoming (1946). The popular 1943 film version featured young Roddy McDowell.

MV5BMTk3MjUzMDE2OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTYxODE0MQ@@._V1_UY268_CR3,0,182,268_AL_.jpg

They re-made Flicka in 2006 with a girl protagonist (of course) and Tim McGraw as the father. Oy.

Anyway, the book is very well-written and quite sophisticated for a young adult novel of that era–there is a graphic scene of yearlings being gelded which I could have lived without. Furthermore, Ken’s mother is a Bryn Mawr graduate and they are Episcopalians! But I’m just not that interested in horses, I guess, because I’m not sure I will trudge on to the end.

I am also re-reading Mere Christianity, which–no surprise–is really good!

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

When I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, I read Jan Karon. So now I am reading These High, Green Hills.

Lunch at the Grill, thought Father Tim, was what kept life real. He had to confess, however, that he could hardly wait to get back to the office and finish the C.S. Lewis essay entitled “Thought, Imagination, Language.”

I also recently re-read The Free Man by Conrad Richter. It tells the story of Henry Free, a hard-working Palatine German who comes to farm in Pennsylvania but is tricked, along with many of his countrymen, by the British, and is sold as an indentured servant when he arrives in America. He escapes and thrives and eventually fights for liberty on the battlefields of the Revolution. The book did not receive good reviews when it was published in 1943 during the height of WWII. I am not surprised, since the British–our allies!–are the bad guys. It must have been shocking and somewhat distasteful at the time. The lesson here is an important one though–the British are not always the good guys and the Germans not always the villains.

I admire Richter and his spare, but beautiful writing a lot. He is an all-but-forgotten writer these days, but I read that they are re-making the Awakening Land trilogy for television. Frances McDormand is going to play Sayward Luckett, the main character, which could be good or bad. Perhaps it will encourage someone to go back and read the books.

Screen Shot 2017-11-28 at 9.43.07 AM.png

What are you reading?

The painting at the top is “Evening at Home” by Edward John Poynter (1836-1919)

5 Comments

November 28, 2017

Happy b-day to our brown-eyed handsome man*

by chuckofish

Today is the boy’s birthday–he is 31! Happy birthday to our brown-eyed handsome man!

Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 1.02.42 PM.png

Here he is back in 1987 with the OM.

Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 9.12.24 AM.png

Perhaps he reminds you of someone?

Yes, it is rather amazing.

Here are a few more pictures which show the similarities…

Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 10.08.18 AM.png

As you can see, the boy was on the go and getting into mischief just the way the little bud does. Two peas in a genetic pod.

Lottie says, “What about me?” Well, we know she is the apple of her daddy’s eye, probably because she looks like her lovely mommy.

Anyway, we celebrated the boy’s birthday on Sunday night. But we will raise a toast to our wonderful son as he turns 31 tonight. I thank God every day for him and for being his lucky mother.

*”Brown-eyed Handsome Man” by Chuck Berry

5 Comments

Category: Uncategorized

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish