The Prodigal Priest...

Regular readers will probably realize that I've been taking my last week of vacation seriously. I really tried to avoid the church as much as I could. Alas, there were two important matters that did require my attention at the parish, but mostly I've just been taking care of errands and resting.

The big news is that we found a place to live. We decided to rent another apartment as we were having no luck finding a place in our price range anywhere near downtown. Renting we could spend a lot less and get something very nice and very close to the church. What we found was 20 McMaster Avenue. It's a house that was divided into two units. We'll have the ground floor and part of the second floor: 3 bedrooms with two full baths. We also have exclusive use of the backyard. You can see pictures on Betsy's Blog.

I think the cats will like the place, too. A few days ago Denise got out without her collar. Her collar has a bell on it that makes hunting more difficult. Sure enough, when she came back from her unhampered patrol she was holding a live mouse! She was so proud of herself. She strutted over to a corner of the kitchen holding her new toy, put it down, and then laid down next to it. The mouse sat there, stunned, for a few seconds and then made a run for it. Quickly but casually, Denise stood up and batted the mouse back and forth between her paws. By this time James caught on and wanted to play, too. When he got a opening he grabbed the mouse in his mouth and dashed away. I followed, and he seemed to realize that I was going to take his new toy away, so he stayed out of reach. Eventually I managed to get the mouse away from him and took it outside. Both cats were quite pleased with themselves.

Then, today, Denise brought a live pigeon into the house! It was still alive, but probably injured since it didn't seem to be able to fly. Betsy and our neighbor friend managed to get the bird outside. Sadly, we don't have pictures of either kill, although I'm very proud of Denise's skill. I'm sure she thinks that she is doing a great job defending us from the wild animals of Toronto.

BTW, I finished the video game "Grand Theft Auto IV." Well written, engaging. But it's definitely not for kids! Next up: Madden '09. My vacation isn't over quite yet...

-t

Ear Licking

Denise, my cat, has been especially affectionate with me since Betsy has been gone. Early this morning (circa 6 A.M.) she kept poking me in the head with her paw to wake up and pet her. This I did, but I'd quickly drift off to sleep again. But her tongue in my ear sure got my attention. Rest assured, having my cat's tongue in my ear feels as weird as it sounds.

Luckily, we've got some friends coming to house-sit while we're in Turkey to keep the cats company. I hate to think what they might do in desperation without some human contact.

The house is now back in order. I know Betsy was only gone for about two-weeks, but that's plenty of time for stuff to get messy. Not dirty, really, but just messy. There were a lot of things that needed to be put away or straightened up.

Today much running around and doing last minute errands....
-t

Gardening

Today I slept in--then took one of cats, James, to the Vet with Betsy for his "operation." Did you know that when you adopt cat from the city pound they actually require you to sign something that says you promise to have the animal spayed for neutered. Still, I feel a little bad about taking my boy for this surgery. Can anyone say, "Transference?" Anyway, he'll be there overnight for blood work and fasting and then have his surgery tomorrow and stay the night. We'll pick him up on Wednesday. I feel bad for the little guy, but I think he'll be in good hands.

On the way home Betsy and I drove by some properties that we are thinking about. We don't know if we'll be able to stay here on Farnham past this summer--so we are exploring our escape options.

Once home we set to work on the yard. While Denise was given the special dispensation to explore the backyard, Betsy and I se to work on various projects for a few hours. I'm finally starting to see some sprouts from the grass seed I put down a few weeks ago, and that's a relief. I found myself wishing I had my dad's Rototiller.

Now we are getting ready for supper. Denise, tired from her adventures, is curling up next to betsy on the couch.

-t

Another Day

Denise is slowly warming up to James. She allowed him to sleep in the bed with us last night--Denise was in her usual place between Betsy's ankles, James was just above our heads. Early in the morning Denise sulked downstairs while the kitten licked by nose and generally made himself adorable. Denise thinks kittens are obnoxious. When I came home from work, they were much closer. They even touch noses sometimes, but other times Denise still complains about the kitten. BTW, the kitten is easting at least twice as much Denise.

Contemplative Eucharist went well this morning. Then I've spent 2 1/2 hours returns calls and e-mails. Amazing how much of this job/vocation is spent communicating with people. There is some time spent making decisions, but mostly I just relate to people, share ideas, coordinate activities, etc.

Got a call today, for instance, from someone who wants to make us an Out of the Cold Program location. OOTC provides weekly meals for street people here in the GTA. A variety of churches and locations provide venues for the weekly meals. COTM was once such a place, but stopped because of low turnout and volunteer burnout. Apparently another church is being renovated and so they are looking for another place in our area to host the meals. I feel this may be a stretch for us--our facilities are already being used 6 nights a week! But I agreed to meet with the coordinator to see what's possible.

The other day I saw a ministry (not at COTM) that has been non-functional for at least four years. It started at an outreach ministry, but then the neighborhood changed and it became non-relevant. But the congregation can't let it die completely, so it continues to drain resources from the host church despite the fact that it is no longer serving many people. This is a classic situation in churches. We have a hard time cutting off dead limbs. "Pruning"--they call it in the Diocese. Sometimes I notice a lack in courage on behalf of congregational leaders to call a dead thing "dead." Sometimes we worry that the volunteers will feel bad if we dismantle the programs that they are barely managing to sustain--but my experience is that such volunteers are usually relieved to be relieved of ministries they know have become irrelevant, they just needed permission to let it go. But it takes skillful discernment to determine when people are sustaining ministries because they love them and when they are doing it because they think the priest/church wants it to continue. Luckily, I haven't encountered too much of that at COTM.

Lots of craziness at COTM today. I'm realizing that I need to be more sophisticated about managing my time now. There was a time when it was not very valuable, but now it's valuable not just to me, but to other people, as well. So I've got to manage my calendar with more care. At SMM I always felt that my primary value in ministry was celebrating the mass, and as long as I did that in a certain way, I was interchangeable with any other priest that agreed to conform to particular ritual rules. There was always a tension between the individualism and special skills that that people wanted to see from me and the conformity to a particular model of priesthood that was expected from other quarters. Now, I get to be myself and my own kind of priest, and that is truly mind-blowing. I'm growing more every week as a priest and as a christian now than I was in a year at SMM.

This is not saying anything negative about SMM. There are times and ministries where being faithful means waiting. God answers "Yes," God answers, "No," and sometimes God answers, "Wait." More than once at SMM I quoted the Milton poem that has that line, "They also serve, who only stand and wait." I was preaching not only about my own ministry, but that of the parish that was clearly waiting for it's new mission to emerge. It was beginning to emerge as I left. I saw glimpses of it in the Capital Campaign and other initiatives. But waiting is hard when you are 30!

So now I'm at my own place and the voices are saying, "now, now!" and so I'm starting to run late for things because I have other places to be, other fires to start. This is my ministry now, lighting the fires that I hope will burn bright on the hill.

-t

James

Here is our new kitten, James. He's adorable. Denise is not completely happy about our adoption, but she's getting used to it. The thing that amazes me about James is that he has only had a body for something like four months, so he's still really awkward about jumping and running and stuff, which is very cute to watch.

Trad-Com (Traditional Communion) service this morning. That went well, though following the BCP to the letter still irks me a little. I'm looking forward to making a few changes in the future that will be a reasonable compromise between the BCP Communion liturgy and the current liturgical theology of the Christian Church. We'll see....

Had lunch at the U of T Faculty Club with George Sumner, Principal of Wycliffe College. Very enjoyable. He did his Ph.D. at Yale and his daughter is an undergrad there, so we swapped a lot of stories about old blue. We ended up sharing quite a bit about our preaching styles, which was interesting. We also discussed the future of Messiah, etc. There is a historic connection between our two institutions, and so perhaps there are possible collaborations in the future, we'll see.

Productive staff meeting this afternoon. Lots of exciting initiatives in the works. I'm aware that in about 6 months from now our staff meetings will be less about the mechanics of what and when and more about the dynamics of who and why. It was interesting that this occurred to me very strongly during the staff meeting. I mean, what we are doing now is the right thing for this moment, but it's how we will do our jobs in the future--nice to realize that.

-t

Day Off

It's my day off, and I almost went in to church. A handy man was doing some work for us and I almost went in to supervise, but then realized it would by my umpeenth Monday going in "for just a few hours." So instead I did a little work on the car (new wipers and headlights) and watched DVR'd football. I saw the New England comeback last night, but the Sunday night game of the Eagles vs. the Cowboys had to wait until today. Both games had the outcome I wanted, so that was pleasing.

I picked up Betsy at the airport Sunday night without incident. She had a good trip seeing her family. I was very happy to see her coming home. While I waited for her to get through customs, I noted the remarkably similar attitude of all the people coming through the International Arrivals checkpoint: a mixture of exhausting and relief. So I picked her up and brought her home. Anna had prepared a nice supper of pork roast and potatoes.

Betsy encountered a surprise when she came into our bedroom--a kitten named James. I adopted James while Betsy was out of town. He's an adorable 4 month-old "Domestic Medium Hair" tabby (white and brown). I'll post a picture in tomorrow's blog. I got him at the Toronto Animal Shelter. It's a much better facility than I expected. The cats their have much better life than I thought thanks to the tons of volunteers that come in shifts to play with and groom the cats. Denise is still getting used to "the intruder," but I think they'll work it out soon. They spent the first 3 1/2 days separated, but I decided to turn them loose on each other today. Denise still hisses when the kitten gets within 5 feet, but neither wants a fight, so I think it will work out okay. But I know that both want to sleep in our bed with us, so that will be an interesting challenge tonight!

-t

Fresh Start

I spent today at a monthly meeting of Fresh Start, which is a Diocesan program for priests starting new positions. It meets monthly to discuss church transition theory, learn skills, and share stories. Much of the value comes from being able to hash through actual cases in a high-trust, collegial environment. It involves several people that I know, including Lisa Newland (St. Matthew's, Oshawa), John Stephenson (St. Timothy's, Agincourt), and Drew MacDonald (St. John's, York Mills). Thoughtful group--exactly the kind of people to do some serious pastoral problem solving.

The "old" Rectory is still causing me heartburn. I'm meeting with someone tomorrow about it and hopefully we can come up with a plan. Stay tuned.

My mom is coming this weekend for Canadian Thanksgiving--should be lots of fun to see her. This will be the first time she has seen the new house. We are planning to do the whole turkey thing. It's not thanksgiving without Tryptophan.

Tryptophan is the chemical in Turkey that makes you sleepy and promotes feelings of well-being. Here's a snippet from Wikipedia:

For some time, tryptophan was available in health food stores as a dietary supplement. Many people found tryptophan to be a safe and reasonably effective sleep aid, probably due to its ability to increase brain levels of serotonin (a calming neurotransmitter when present in moderate levels) and/or melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone secreted by the pineal gland in response to darkness or low light levels).

Clinical research tended to confirm tryptophan's effectiveness as a sleep aid and for a growing variety of other conditions typically associated with low serotonin levels or activity in the brain such as premenstrual dysphoric disorder and seasonal affective disorder. In particular, tryptophan showed considerable promise as an antidepressant alone, and as an "augmenter" of antidepressant drugs.

Tryptophan is also available as a prescription ("Tryptan") and is mostly used by psychiatrists to augment other anti-depression drugs. So eat your turkey!

I'm thinking hard about adopting another cat. Denise is absolutely thriving in our house and I think she'd love to have a companion to be with while we are away. There are many cute kittens available and it's hard not to be seduced.

That reminds me, I need to get some fish and some plants for my office. If you want growth you need to orient yourself to living creatures.

It's a slightly odd Gospel lesson this Sunday. And I'm supposed to do something with the kids. It's the parable of the mustard seed, so that has potential, I suppose, but what to do with the rest of the passage? Hmm.

-t

Denise's Grand Escape

Denise, our cat, made a mischievous discovery yesterday. We had her in a harness with a 20 foot lead tied to a fence in the back yard. Betsy was back there with her, when suddenly Denise just bolted across the lawn until the lead ran out and the safety harness gave way under the force. Free at last, our little kitty climbed a nearby tree. Betsy came and got me out of the shower with her concern that our furry child was in jeopardy.

I told her that I was pretty sure that Denise would be able to climb down from any tree she could manage to climb up. She is, after all, an experienced climber. I saw her slip once while climbing a folded up wooden step ladder. She ended up hanging on under a rung upside down--and she still managed to climb back onto the right side of the step and climb the rest of the way down. So I thought she would probably be okay.

Sure enough, there was Denise a good 25 feet in the air crawling out onto a limb having a grand old time. Once she had enough she made her way back down with some impressive and creative moves. At one point she shimmied down the trunk backwards. I took her off a low branch despite her complaints and took her inside.

Hard to know how to balance giving creatures freedom to explore and take risks versus protecting them from making costly mistakes. It's the classic parental dilemma, I suppose, but it also comes up a lot in any kind of teaching or care-giving or pastoral situation.

-t

Betsy's Back

Betsy, my wife, has returned from her studies in Ireland. Having her home is great. Funny how in some ways it seems like she was never gone. But in other ways it seems like everything has changed since she left. Maybe I inhaled too many fumes while furiously cleaning the place for two days.

Denise is particularly happy to have Betsy back. She demonstrates this by jumping around and being more talkative than she was a few days ago. She also follows us around from room to room, eager to keep the pack together. Our cat got lonely with me gone most of the day and no one at home to play with.

Last night we celebrated my appointment with a Taco Casserole and very nice bottle of champaign. After we finished it, I put it on a bookshelf next to the bottle that we used to celebrate Betsy's admission to the U of T more than two years ago. Hard to believe it's been that long since we left New Haven to come to Canada.

We've been listening to the new Harry Potter book on Audiobook. This is our tradition when it comes to the Harry Potter books--I've never actually sat down with the actual printed books. It's a good story with plenty of potential as sermon material. Lots of spiritual themes like sacrifice and love and providence.

A couple of pieces of my preparation to go to Messiah are starting to form up. One is to review as much print material as I can handle. Soon I'll be pouring over Vestry Reports and Histories of the parish. I've also got a meeting coming up with the Music Director. I'm thinking of burning a CD for him of some of my favorite songs--we need to familiarize each other with our musical tastes and styles. But I expect to spend much of our first conversation simply talking about church music and what it means to us. In particular, I want to know what makes him really excited about Church music.

I remember when Stephanie Martin first came to SMM and I spent a good deal of time learning about her vision of Church music simply by talking about what we each liked and disliked. We also looked over various hymnals and other resources for ideas. That kind of blue-sky dreaming and musing is a critical kind of exercise to do in collaborative projects like this, I believe, especially when the goal is to create something fresh, exciting, and new. I did something similar with an artist named Jennifer Mitchell whom I've commissioned twice. First she created an Advent-themed Raredos for our side chapel. The second time it was to make a Lent-themed one for the same space. Both were a success and really helped to pull those seasons out of Ordinary Time. Just for kicks, I'll end with pictures of those two pieces...



-t

21st Century Evangelism

Here is a picture of our cat, Denise, for no apparent reason...


She makes our life better through her ministry of cuddles.

Last night I was an a dinner party with two other priest-couples. Lots of talk about Church politics and mutual contacts. I take these kinds of opportunities to ask priests more senior than myself about how they handle two issues: evangelism/church growth and lay leadership development.

Nothing much came out of a conversation about the evangelism issue, except all of us venting our frustration that so much of the conversation in the church these days is about shrinking and closing places.

I was interested to hear, however, that one of the priests there met with his Wardens at least once a week. "I'm lucky," he said, "they can meet in the middle of the day." This would be difficult to pull off with the schedules kept by most Wardens. They tend to be busy, working folk with tons of responsibility. But the advantage would be that they can really keep track of the daily changes and chances of church life. He also told me that he does some spiritual work with his wardens with prayer and study. Good to know. I file these kinds of reflections away for further thought. Every church requires different styles of leadership at different times. But the more options you know, the more adaptable you can be.

I began filming a tour of the church today. This is my second run at the project. I'm discovering that it's actually very difficult to talk articulately while on camera. Probably be easier if I was actually showing someone around the church for the first time. Or I could film someone who knows a lot about the place and keep them going with helpful questions and such. See--I'm learning. New wine for new wine skins! I need to write a white paper on "The Media Savvy Church" one of these days. I have little doubt that this is part of the key to "solving the evangelism problem." We have to learn the languages of our mission field....

-t