today is Saturday, December 29th and it is nearing the day when we say goodbye to the year 2012 for keeps. Where to begin... John's bday is the first significant day for me in any year. John turned 19... he was back in school, so we had to send his bday gifts to Santa Cruz. I remember he said it was awkward and that he tried to hide out from his friends because he doesn't like a fuss made. He is true to himself. Then our friend Terri was very ill, dying from cancer still fighting it with chemotherapy. Tommy was in New Haven, enjoying his year w the forestry students. Billy was enjoying his new job with First Solar... still in Oakland I think. Robbie was in Pasadena working for Ubersocial and we had new years day w them in their apartment overlooking the Rose Bowl Parade. What a kick that was.. with their friends, Dave and Elliot. Oh God help me to remember and to savor the moments of together ness and affection. and God bless everyone who is trying to be fully human in the midst of a world freckled with lesser gods. (btw: Danny the Dog, has been a constant buddy... only a few trips to the vet, incl one when he "ate something on a walk w/ Edward" .. but he has enjoyed his walks off leash so much in the park near our house, hallelujah, happy dog and me). Our friend Terri left this earth (but she is near!) in March (26?) and we moved into our house in Oakland a week later. Her memorial service was the day before we moved actually. Pete was involved in the settling of the estate, which involved trips to SF to see Terri's attorney. We were called into action more also with her actual hospitalization and her death because she had no spouse and no one to advocate for her... her friends in the end. She was too big for this world! May, Tommy turned 28 (1984) .. don't know where he was.. oh yeah, Greece for a friend's wedding (George and Ann) and then he spent the summer in Norway, where he could hardly afford to eat. Billy joined him later in the summer and they traveled to Iceland on their way home. July we celebrated Tom and Jackie's 60 wedding anniversary at Sea Ranch with everyone BUT Tommy... We were in three houses... and we were able to have a nice dinner at our house (Sugarman) and a fun trivia night with ?'s about T and J. Sweet! That was a few mos before Jackie left this earth. (She is still with us) She and Tom came over to give us an anniversary card on Aug. 7th and that was the last time I saw her intact. She had a stroke a week later, the day before we flew home from Washington state. Then she stayed in the hospital until she died on Aug. 26th.. her funeral mass was Sept. 2 or 3rd? In the midst of it all, Tommy flew home from NH, CT two weekends in a row. So he was able to say goodbye in person and then for the funeral too. Billy was an ace all the way.. present up close and on duty. It was a blessing to have all the boys, but he was on the frontlines. Robbie flew up... as did Martha? Was Martha already here for her job? Maybe. (Nanette left this earth three days after Jackie did) Robbie moved up after a few weeks (long) interviewing w Google while Martha was working and commuting at/to Wildfire, then Google. Tom began having meals with us immediately after the girls left for their homes. Initially, we drove him, then he drove over and then we drove him home, and now, he has lost his license, because he fell asleep at the wheel... Amy and John G. are with him now and will be for a few wks and then we will be his go to team. John's second yr at SC was challenging too.. he is still sorting out a major course of study. Thinking about mathematics... broke up w/ his girlfriend, with whom he climbed Half Dome in June just before the Sea Ranch trip. He cherishes his friends. We have been pouring on the support and the TLC as best we can, to help him through these developmental humps. Big stuff... I am SO proud of him. Highlights: tea w/ Martha for her bday at the Sheraton Palace... my mother's 78th bday dinner at our house ... the trip to the Olympic Peninsula.... settling in to the new house... our open house w/ friends (sweet)... nice hot soaks in our bathtub... losing 10 lbs!!...
getting a new bed (comfy for the first time in a LONG TIME)... dinners w/ Sally and Jeff... listening to Michael Sweeney, OP in both his Lent talk and his Advent talk.... praying w/ the St. Augustine community... communion w people in the hospital. How can I say thank you enough? Life is a glow with potential .. radiance. (Ah, new life too: Lucca Barsotti, Eva Payapilly, Emma Robinson, and Lola, who is three soon). and the misc. babies I've met in my travels, incl the newborns at the hospital. Gratitude for the 3rd-5th graders we get to spend time with on Sundays too~ and  the beautiful sunsets here we can see, after 9 yrs of being beneath the hills of Moraga at sunset. GIFT.
Thank you God, for this year of blessings... your always being with us... especially thankful for the times when the going has been rough. I have felt your constancy, your strength, your peace. No really I have... just wish I didn't have to dig so deep to find it... be with us and with me, this new year of 2013.. and strengthen me for the journey. In ways it is easier, in ways it is not easier. Be with me, please. and help me to be with you. Amen.

November 27, 2012 Tuesday
The readings from the scripture today are a little harrowing. I likened the Sunday readings upcoming to the kind of dread of childbirth. Especially if one knows from a previous baby what to expect, the descriptions in the book of Revelation don't seem that outrageous. They seem pretty spot on.. it's going to be cataclysmic!! So, get ready, the author says. Nothing is like childbirth... and every woman , unless she's been anesthetized, recalls the experience in living color. It is an out of body experience. maybe the definition of such. Nothing is ever the same again... and the process itself is so powerful that one feels especially grateful to have survived it.. So, I'd like to liken the anticipation of this year's celebration of Christ's birth to the anticipation, the dread and fear, of the overwhelming miracle of birth.  The anticipation is awesome... awe inspiring. Let the anticipation begin! I don't know why this doesn't post on my blog...

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Let all who worship the Lamb, come to the Feast... or something like that. Ane stand erect, holding your heads high... from the gospel. Scenes from the Book of Revelation... of destruction and devastation, but that is only for what is not worthy of us human beings. Babylon... that crazy city where all kinds of abominations were happening. So, my take on this is: keep awake and alert to the good, do good and stand in awe of God's blessings, and stand ready to respond to the call and to participate in life. The Pineapple Express is coming through the Bay Area and while there are mild temperatures, things are moving.. the air, the clouds and the sun is somewhere up there, obscured by the moisture in the sky. Rain later today. There is an air of expectancy that comes with this for me. Is it ironic that I lost my credit card? Hmmm. I'll ponder this...

May 16, 2012 Wednesday

Make my faith new! "We should praise God, our Lord, and Christ and the Holy Spirit for all that they have done and do for me and all of creation. The part that caught me: praise God for making me in his own image, a child of God. that one always catches me... to be reminded that I am more than my pettiness, my jealousies, my small thinking. I am also other than my strengths, which are in fact given on loan. "I will praise you Lord, I will praise you Lord, in the assembly of your people, your people, in the assembly of your people, your people, I will praise you Lord." I was caught recently by a painting I saw in Phoebe Hearst's Anthropology Museum at CAL. It was called "Evening Chant" and it was a painting of Native Americans seated and standing together singing with faces upturned to the sky as the sun set. It evoked that sort of praise of the Divine Creator. I discovered another song recently in a book Pete gave me, called Gloryland.   I'd met the song years ago when I was a young Girl Scout. It is in fact a negro spiritual... "way beyond the blue" expressing the hope, the knowledge that one day we will be saved from this life. So, I'm thinking I need to sing more and sing my praises to the Lord. The end. Going to find a songsheet I stole from church, wink.

saturday, January 7, 2011

The day after the calendar feast of the Epiphany and the day before the Church celebrates the feast of the Epiphany on Sunday. I walked our wise men/kings from one end of the book shelf to the manger scene yesterday morning. The walk was like the walk that I used to move Barbie across a floor or the Little Tikes people when I played with our boys' toys. Something in the gesture of tapping the bottoms of these plastic creatures tiny step after tiny step across the wood of this shoulder high book shelf finally reaching the place a few inches away from Mary and her baby and from the (in my imagination) smelly stable where the donkey and the cow rest near the holy family... evoked a quick series of sensations and thoughts. The smells of the place. The effort required of the three kings as they traveled to this place on camelback. The yearning of man throughout history for a Savior. The magic and miracle of seeing truly for the first time the tiny infant, newborn fresh from eternity .. a gift to us here already on earth. The joy of discovering for the first time the miracle of a child.. an awareness that this child is extraordinary.. and will reveal truth to us. about who we are.. children of God, all of us. Part of me wonders: does a child absorb or ingest on a spiritual level the hopes and dreams of its parents and its community. Does a child sense the deepest desires of its mother and father and then live into those dreams? and if a child is fed, emotionally, spiritually, physically and psychologically, does that child then have the freedom to embody and live out those yearnings and that vision? I know better than to credit the human family for all of its children's choices. There is the divine spark within each of us that inspires us to unique responses to the moment by moment callings. I'll call that God.. cuz that works for me. Back to the stable.. and the awestruck three kings... how lovely for Mary and Joseph to have company, and to have them admire their baby. How affirming to have the older generation seek out their child and discover in their very own child, baby Jesus, their hope fed. AS one priest said in this mornings video reflection: now the feast may begin! (The reading for today was about Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding feast.) That little baby grew up to be that miracle worker... so that we could have endless joy.