Thank you, thank you, thank you

Sabbaticals make sense only in the context of work. You have to have something to step back from; something from which to rest. It is true. All work and no play makes Dan a dull boy. I believe I have "played" enough to set any dullness on the run for some time to come.

I am ready to return to my work in and among and with all of my friends at First Church. I am rested and relaxed and renewed. My current state of mind, body, spirit, and soul is the product of my sabbatical. All of the travel and learning, playing and pondering, exploring and rethinking has more than filled my cup.

Some thank yous are in order. I am deeply appreciative to First Church for the time away. You are a visionary congregation that cares deeply for its leadership's vitality. I can't thank our staff enough for stepping up and filling in the gaps left by my extended absence. Thanks to my family for enduring my peripatetic ways. I was in and out and in and then out again quite often. Such an odd schedule generates unique strains on family life. I have thanked my sabbatical advisory panel before -- Bill, Woody, Mary Bruce, and Rossi -- but I'll do so again. Thanks. Your advice in helping me to develop and fine tune the form and shape of my sabbatical was and remains invaluable. In the late winter of 2006, I came to you with assorted notes on the staff. I hummed them for you. You listened. Your orchestration gave the notes a rhythm and a melody. The Lilly Endowment obviously concurred in awarding me a National Clergy Renewal Program grant to pursue some of my passions. Thank you Lilly.

I rediscovered something while away. I knew it. But would forget it occasionally for reasons of uninterrupted proximity. First Church is more than the place I work. It is home. It is my family. It is where my friends are. Not every minister can say these things about his or her place of ministry. I am blessed. Thank God.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

This may be the final posting to this blog. As I indicated earlier, blogging has been a great way of thinking aloud with you. Once I have reentered the hustle and bustle that is life and ministry at First Church, I will create another blog. I have yet to land on a name for the new blog, however. Any suggestions?

Lists

In less than two weeks, October 8th to be exact, I will be back in the saddle at First Church. I'm looking forward to it. I've been away for the right amount of time. I truly entered a rhythm of a different order, a sabbath rhythm. Heart, soul, mind, and body feel refreshed, renewed. My slumber is deeper, my rising in the morning is quicker, my enthusiasm for living is heartier.

Over the past several days I have been giving some thought to my sabbatical. There are words out there to describe it. I've used a lot of them in this space already. However, the current words, at least for the moment, are failing me. I'm not sure what this means.

I've long been a fan of lists. Lists of books, of songs, of historical figures, great baseball games, places, etc. Sometimes lists make sense. Other times they do not. Sometimes they do, but it's not apparent upon the initial read through. A second or third reading is necessary for the sense to emerge.

Here are a couple of lists I have assembled. By the way, I assemble lists as one method by which to push through writer's block. I've been known to do this when crafting a sermon.

List one is of places I've visited while on sabbatical: Cooperstown, NY; Maryville, TN; Nags Head, NC; Oxford, England; Glasgow, Scotland; Edinbrugh, Scotland; Melrose, Scotland; Pitlochry, Scotland; Inverness, Scotland; Invergarry, Scotland; Fort William, Scotland; Ballachullish, Scotland; Boston, MA; Lenox, MA.

List two is of words that I have collected. I have developed the habit of writing down words that are new to me. It's one way of reminding myself of the paltry percentage of words of our wonderful language that I know and use regularly. I can always know and use more. Here it is: penannular, virescent, periglacial, celerity, contumacy, enfiladed, fatuities, propinquities, compunctions, disported, ormolu, embowered, inanition, benison, chiliad, adipose, bedizened, imprecations, vaticinations, onanistic, auriferous, tyro, niggled, priapic, foofaraw, adumbrated, ratiocinator, pantechniconic, trochaically, aitchless, advoirdupois, bloviate, cynosure, gonfalon, fissiparous, sinistrality, uxorial, matutinal.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Assorted Pieces of Information

I have three short weeks remaining in my sabbatical. Where have the previous thirteen weeks gone?

My days between now and the time I return to my work at First Church are filled with play (fishing -- tough going given our drought -- and golf -- I have shaved a lot of strokes off of my game), reading and writing, and practicing both the guitar and the bagpipes. At some point in the near future, I will attempt to put into words some of what my sabbatical has meant for me. There have been a lot of notes in this sabbatical song. I want to order them into a lyrical melody, a singable tune.

I kept you abreast of some of what I have been reading in areas pertaining to pastoral leadership, worship, and theology. I thought I'd list some of the other -- namely, recreational -- books that I have read. In England, I discovered the British crime novel. I was introduced to two authors: Colin Dexter and Ian Rankin. Dexter's main character is Inspector E. Morse of the Thames Valley Police. His setting is the city of Oxford and its environs, mainly the many colleges of Oxford. I've read and would recommend, if the genre appeals to you (and even if it doesn't, Dexter's use of the English language is worth reading for its own sake): Last Bus to Woodstock, Last Seen Wearing, The Riddle of the Third Mile, and Death is Now My Neighbor. Ian Rankin's main character is Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh Police. His setting is Edinburgh. I've read and would recommend Knots and Crosses, his first novel. Rebus is less literary than Dexter, for my taste. His strength is the countless ways he describes his home city -- he well captures its people, its architecture, its weather, etc.

I reread Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. I may have said this in an earlier post. I reread it primarly because it is set in Christ Church, Oxford and Oxfordshire before, during and after WWII. On the lighter side, I reread P.G. Wodehouse's Summer Lightning. It's laugh-out-loud British farce with very silly characters and equally silly plot twists.

In the area of history, I read John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. My visit to the JFK library in Boston with Molly prompted this read. Additionally, I read Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007. Reading a review of the book in The William and Mary Quarterly, the College's journal of early American history and culture prompted this read. The book is a project of four historians -- Ronald Heineman of Hampden-Sydney College, John Kolp of the US Naval Academy, Anthony Parent of Wake Forest University, and William Shade of Lehigh University. The book was published by the University of Virginia Press to commemorate Virginia's 400th anniversary. In my humble opinion, this book should be on the shelf of every Virginian. Valley Virginians will be interested in the chapter on the rise of the Byrd Organization, 1915-1930, following the death of Senator Martin in 1919. All Virginians should reacquaint themselves with Virginia's painful and shameful history of massive resistance and racial desegregation. This is well chronicled in the chapter entitled The Politics of Race, 1945-1960.

That's if for the moment. Peace.

Thoughts on The Emerging Church

It's raining and looks as if it will do so all day long. I can neither fish nor golf today. I will think and write.

This is a week of reading in new developments in ecclesiology. That's a fancy way of saying, what churches are saying and doing currently as they seek to be faithful in contemporary culture.

I will call your attention to Dan Kimball's The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations. Kimball is the founding pastor of Graceland worship services at Santa Cruz Bible Church in Santa Cruz, California. [I've linked Dan's site to my blog. Scroll down to "Links worth visiting."] You've got to love the title of the services. I could not find anywhere in the book whether or not Kimball is an Elvis' fan. If he is and came right out with it, I would have reviewed his book even more favorably.

Kimball's book is thoughtful. He is a keen student of sociology and theology. He enlisted some heavy hitters to write the book's foreword: Rick Warren and Brian McLaren.

The word emerging is central to Kimball's ecclesiology. Emerging, simply defined, is that which is newly formed or just coming into prominence; coming to light or being discovered. Kimball cautions that there is no single model for the emerging church. For the most part, the emerging church is a mindset. It is a mindset that moves beyond measuring success by counting the three B's -- building, budgets, and bodies (all of which are necessary, but not the main point) or having an alternative worship service that is the buzz of the town (very helpful, but far from an end in itself). Rather, success in the emerging church looks at the "practices produced in the called people of God as they are sent out on a mission to live as light and salt in their communities."

Kimball quotes J.R.R. Tolkein: "Not all who wander are lost." He lists the numerous arguments made by the faith's detractors: Christianity is a human construct; Christians are close-minded and judgmental; Christians are arrogant to think that they and they alone have the only true religion; and so on. To each of the charges, Kimball answers guilty to a point, sometimes, and sometimes -- sadly. However, for those interested in scratching the surface there is more.

Kimball does a nice job of summarizing the shift in worldviews, especially as it pertains to the issue of authority. In the ancient world (2500 BCE to 500 CE), authority was in the revelation given through the oracles, poets, kings, and prophets. In the Medieval World (500-1500 CE), at least in the West, authority was in the Bible but only to be understood as taught through the church. In the Modern World (1500-2000 CE), authority was in reason, science, and logic and for Christians was in the reasonable interpretation of the Bible. In the Post-Modern World (2000+ CE), authority is suspect and purported authoritative texts like the Bible are open to many interpretations as are all religious writings.

So, how is the church to be the church in a post-modern era? Excellent question. There are scores of answers. Kimball does not so much offer an answer as he does a series of observations that will hopefully help each of us along as we make our way toward answers we can call our own. As you can see, he is very post-modern an emergent. Kimball notes:

1. We cannot assume that everyone is going to learn, relate, and think the same way.
2. We cannot blame emerging generations for believing what they believe.
3. We should not expect post-moderns to one day "grow up" and become modern. (This has been my secret fantasy for a number of years now. Hello, my name is Dan M. and I am a modern.)
4. Modern leaders may have a difficult time understanding post-Christianity. You're telling me! Kimball has some words of compassion here. He writes: "This doesn't mean you're not hip or contemporary, and by no means does it mean you are outdated (Thanks). It simply means you have been born and raised with a modern viewpoint. God will continue to use you in great ways to reach those who think like you do (Does this mean I am going to either bore or annoy those who do not?). But there are other ways to think."

Kimball quotes Mahatma Gandhi: "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

I could obviously go on. I think I will end, however, with Kimball's close listening to how the word 'church' is used. Church is where we go or attend or belong. It's a place where things happen -- worship, education, fellowship. Grammatically speaking, church is a 'place-where.' It's a place-where, like a store, one goes. It's a place-where, like a theater, one attends. It's a place-where, like civic club, one belongs.

Kimball distinguishes between the 'consumer church' and the 'missional church.' The consumer church is seen as a dispenser of religious goods and services. People come to church to be fed, to have their needs met through quality programs, and to have the professionals teach them and their children about God. The missional church is seen as a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Bible that supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week. As you can see, there is quite a difference between the two understandings.

To those who have posted comments on my blog, thank you. Also, many of you have spoken to me while I have been in the community the past several weeks and have told me you are reading my blog. Thanks. You have also told me that you have not left a comment because you didn't want to bother registering a username and password with Google. I understand.

I am enjoying the 'thinking aloud' aspect of my blog. I am toying with maintaining another blog upon my return. The task requires time and discipline. I can see countless benefits for enhancing preaching, teaching, Disciple classes, etc.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Thoughts on Becoming a Blessed Church

This has been a week of reading in the area of pastoral leadership. Each book reads like the one before it. Perhaps, per King Solomon, there is nothing new under the sun after all.

The Christian faith is ancient. Its foundational texts are equally ancient. The faith's collected wisdom, honed and sharpened by each succeeding generation, sounds familiar because it is familiar. The issue is not not knowing. We know too well. It is the doing. That said, here are some thoughts on N. Graham Standish's book Becoming a Blessed Church: Forming a Church of Spiritual Purpose, Presence, and Power.

Standish is the pastor of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Zelienople, PA. His area of expertise is pastoral leadership and spiritual formation. His book on first read is a Rick Warren purpose driven "me too tome." I had to set the book aside for a day and ask again what his point was and how it differed from Warren's work.

Standish's book is filled with "this is what we did at Calvin Church and it was a huge success" type stories. His preacher training leads him to over illustrate each of his points. Many of his points, however, are worth noting.

Standish's main point is this: Studying and speculating about God has its place, but it is insufficient; encountering and experiencing God is essential.

Standish surveys the literature on why some churches are thriving while others are on life support. Too many well-meaning and best-intentioned analysts find their answers in theology. Not so with Standish. He writes: "When it comes to theological positions, I've noticed that there are many growing conservative and liberal churches, just as there are many declining conservative and liberal churches . . . . What I have consistently noticed in almost all thriving congregations is that what makes a difference is the extent to which the community is open to God at its core." The breadth and length of Standish's book is an exploration of what a community that is open to God looks like. He uses the word blessed to describe it.

Standish makes a series of simple statements as to what a blessed church is:

The blessed church:

1. Sees itself as the body of Christ.
2. Has a vibrant sense of faith, hope, and love.
3. Is filled with God's purpose, presence, and power.
4. Embraces the sacred.
5. Is not afraid to serve God in its own way.

To be expected, leadership, both clerical and lay, plays a key role in a church becoming "blessed." Good leaders, according to Standish, ask first, last and always, "God, what is your call for us?" and then point and motivate people to go where God is going, not necessarily where the people want to go. In Standish's words, "The best leaders encourage people to want what God wants."

A lot of books on leadership paint only the rosiest of pictures. Standish notes that sometimes, even with the best of leadership, things go awry. No one, of course, fails on purpose, especially in church life. People are motivated to give God and their fellow believers nothing but the best they can offer. And still, failure can and does ensue. Sometimes it's a matter of not knowing how to do something or trying to do too much or losing sight of the goal or lacking confidence. Good leadership owns failures and sees them as a window on a new opportunity and never as a measure of the value and importance of the persons involved. There is a word for this, it's compassion. Jesus did not give up on Peter nor should we give up on one another.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

A More Profound Alleluia

The title of today's post is borrowed from a book by the same title edited by Leannne Van Dyk. The book is the product of The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship [I've linked the Institute to my blog. See below]. It is a collection of essays by different scholars. The book is a solid primer for what is going on theologically in Christian worship.

I came away from the book with some new thoughts on old issues as well as some good ideas for enhancing worship. John Witvliet, the Institute's director, has found it helpful to assign a hymn text each week for private and/or group reflection prior to the upcoming Lord's Day worship. Come Sunday, the congregation sings in corporate worship the words it has studied individually all week long. It makes a difference.

A lot is obviously going on in public worship. Of no small significance is the correction of our misperceptions of God's character. Personally, in any given week, I am bombarded with all sorts of notions about God that are pretty far off the mark. I suspect something similar is true for you. I need to show up Sunday to be retethered to who God really is. That's what worship does for me. It retethers me to God.

In a chapter entitled "Confession and Pardon," William Dyrness of Fuller Seminary uses the term "worship reluctance." We are reluctant to worship because it doesn't come naturally for us. For Dyrness, our natural inclination when it comes to worship is to stand back or outside because we don't feel we are good enough or we are overwhelmed by our sense of failure or we feel we are too good and have better things to do.

Dyrness quotes Will Campbell's famous nine word summary of the Christian faith: "We're no damn good, but God loves us anyway." He also quotes a short poem written by a teenage girl:

Don't criticize.
Don't analyze.
Don't even try to sympathize.
Don't say you understand because you don't.
Just hold me in your arms for once.
And love me as I am.

Like mommy used to do
Before the world grew up on me.

In exploring the matter of sin as the thing that gets in the way of our worship of God, Dyrness covers familiar ground -- sin as distorted will or misplaced desire (Augustine); sin as broken relationships (Contemporary Protestantism). Dyrness summarizes his position regarding the place of confession in Christian worship this way: "Confession is not only a necessary part of worship, but also provides a healthy orientation to reality."

Van Dyk, the book's editor and dean of Holland, Michigan's Western Seminary, is the author of the chapter entitled "Proclamation." She writes, "For some, the worship service is a revelation: they see and know and experience God in worship. God is there! For others, the worship service reveals nothing. God is absent. God remains obscure, unrecognized."

Van Dyk notes that the triune God of biblical Christianity is "unavoidably veiled and hidden." And, yet, God chooses to reveal the divine self in God's time and in God's way. Van Dyk tells this story. She was expressing to a friend her frustration about worship that is often tedious rather than transcendent. Her friend, a Christian pastor, said: "God sometimes chooses to be present in odd, offbeat ways to a particular person. God came to earth in a messy, ordinary birth. Sometimes God will reach out in something totally ordinary, something messy even, in the worship service -- a sullen kid, an old, lingering argument between two church leaders -- it can by anything, anything 'human' -- because that's the way God comes to us: God comes to us in human form. That's called the Incarnation. The thing is, you have to be alert to how God is going to speak to you, because if you're not alert, if you're not ready, you'll miss it. You have to go to church expectant, ready to catch what God is going to say."

I am aware that this post is getting longish. I'll end with some thoughts on creeds. The writer of the chapter on creeds is Ronald Byars of Union Seminary in Virginia. Byars remarks that "many North American Christians . . . live with an underdeveloped ecclesiology -- that is, an insufficient doctrine of the church . . . Our deep individualism makes all this togetherness hard for us." For Byars, the recitation of creeds in worship is where we begin to develop our ecclesiology.

I like Byars' take on creeds. We don't have to swallow our questions. We need not stifle our dissent, as if Protestant Christians could. Byars writes, "When we grow into the church's faith, we reserve the right to understand it differently than some others may understand it, as well as the right to understand it differently than when we first encountered it."

That's it for the moment. Peace.

For Your Information

File this under proud papa. As some of you may or may not know, our daughter, Molly, is a staff reporter for her college's daily online and monthly newsmagazine, the DOG Street Journal. DOG stands for Duke of Gloucester Street, Colonial Williamsburg's main pedestrian thoroughfare anchored by the Colonial Capital Building at one end and the college's Sir Christopher Wren Building at the other.

Molly's story received top billing today and this month. I've linked it to my blog. Enjoy.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Thoughts on McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus

I've been in Winchester this week. I've been reading in the area of christology. One particular book held my attention moreso than others, Brian McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus. The book is as much apology as it is christology. What follows are some of my notes on his book with an occasional observation on my part. If you do not know who McLaren is, I've linked his website to my blog [See "Links worth visitng" below].

McLaren penned his book in 2006 to better understand Jesus and his message. He had become disillusioned by persons who had become convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had figured both Jesus and his message out and, in McLaren's words, had "reduced [Jesus and his message] to their own kind of mathematics. It's these three concepts or those four steps or this simple five part formula, no more sophisticated than an elementary equation."

For McLaren, the church's conventional versions of Jesus have failed to do him justice. Conventional versions fail to see Jesus in his native wildness and original vigor. According to McLaren, Jesus and his message are better than anything we have heard or understood or figured out so far.

Early on in the book McLaren observes that "the portrait of Jesus I found in the New Testament didn't fit with the image of Christianity projected by religious institutions, charismatic televangelists, religious spokespeople in the media -- and sometimes my own preaching." So, he suggests a reappraisal.

McLaren's reappraisal follows familiar lines. He looks at the political and religious climate of Jesus' day. He pushes himself and his readers to fully understand the "interpretive grid" used when reading scripture. We all have one. Our grids help us to see some things all too clearly while blinding us to other things altogether. The zealots wanted Jesus to be a zealot who advocated rebellion and revolution as they did. The Sadduccees wanted Jesus to be a Sadduccee who advocated a go along to get along approach when it came to relating to the Roman occupiers. The Pharisees wanted Jesus to be a Pharisee who advocated an external religious purity and rigor. And so on. The story is familiar. Jesus is cast as one of us.

Jesus resists. We cannot change him. Rather, he invites us to change, which is what repentance is all about.

McLaren makes a lot of the fact that Jesus preferred to get his message across in parables. For McLaren, "parables entice their hearers into new territory . . . [and we] can respond with arrogant and impatient anger (I have no idea what he's saying. This is a waste of time!), which makes you walk away. Or [we] can respond with eager and curious humility (I can't let this go. I must know more!) . . . [P]arables have a capactiy that goes beyond informing their hearers, parables also have the power to help transform them into interactive, interdependent, humble, inquisitive, and persistent people."

Parables invite their hearers/readers to reconsider their world and consider a new one, to admit that what is known may be incomplete or wrong, to give life a second and third and fourth thought, to think. As much as we may want fast, painless, effortless information instead of slow, energetic, engaging transformation, that's not Jesus' way or message. McLaren writes, Jesus' message comes "not as a simple formula or list of information and not as angry ultimatum, but instead as a secret hidden in a parable, like a treasure hidden in a field, like a seed hidden in soil, like yeast hidden in dough."

McLaren draws on the writings of a lot of my heroes -- C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, Walter Wink, Walter Brueggemann. If I am not mistaken, Rich's Faith Stretchers book study has either read McLaren's book or are slated to do so this year. A very wise choice. There is a lot here to absorb and utilize.

McLaren, in the book's afterword, includes the poem by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, "A Future Not Your Own." It's a poem well suited to sabbaticals and to sabbatical blogs.


It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confessions brings perfection . . .
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results . . .
We are prophets of a future not our own.


That's it for the moment. Peace.

Boston, Part III

I'll save the baseball non-enthusiasts game detail, although I enjoyed trying my hand at sports writing. It was an afternoon game, a pitcher's duel. Few hits and fewer runs. The Angels went up early and stayed up. The final score was Angels 3, Sox 1. It was a four game stand, we saw three of them. The teams split. The Angels held their ground against the Mariners. The Sox held theirs against the Yankees. There are 38 games left in the 2007 season. Hold on to your hats.

Two short notes.

Note one: On Saturday we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum out Huntingdon Avenue. It's around the corner from the Museum of Fine Arts and next door to Simmons College, Northeastern University, and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Given the number of schools in Boston, it appears that everything is next to one.

Gardner was quite the collector. In time, her collection became so large that in 1917 she designed and built a renaissance-era Venetian palace in her beloved Boston to house it. There are more than 2,500 objects - paintings, sculpture, furniture, textiles, drawings, silver, ceramics, illuminated manuscripts, rare books, photographs and letters - from ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy, Asia, the Islamic world and 19th-century France and America.

Note two: Woody, Bill, Mary Bruce, and Rossi, my sabbatical advisory panel -- thanks again for the moleskine and the field glasses. Both have been considerable help in my efforts to "see the world with new eyes." They were both used extensively on this leg of my sabbatical. Here is one of the entries I made in the moleskine from the JFK Library. Kennedy was asked how he became a war hero. We all know the PT 109 story. Kennedy replied, "It was involuntary. The Japanese sunk my boat." I am currently rereading "Profiles in Courage" as a result of my visit to the library and museum.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Additional photographs will be forthcoming.

Boston, Part II

A blustery summer day. I started the day in shorts -- short pants and short sleeves. After a short walk to the T stop to meet Molly's freshman year roomate from Mount Holyoke, I thought better of my choice of dress. Given the briskness of the wind from the north, long pants and long sleeves seemed the wiser choice. Still, plenty of bright, bright sunshine. By game time, the winds had diminished.

We walked the length and breadth of Newbury Street -- street musicians, artists displaying their work, art galleries, sidewalk cafes. By lunchtime, we settled on Joe's. After lunch, we strolled through the Common Garden, up Beacon Hill and around Louisburg Square. The narrow streets and red bricks and leaf-canopied sidewalks embraced us like an enthusiastic and friendly two-handed handshake.

The evening Sox game could not have been more dramatic. It's 5-2 Angels, bottom of the fifth. Schilling, the Sox's aged starter, has been giving up too many hits and too many runs. However, the bases are now loaded for the Sox. Ortiz is at bat. Ordinarily, he would be walked. Not an option. There's no open base. First pitch, Ortiz, injuries and all -- he will have knee repair surgery in the off season, launches the ball well into the right-field grandstand, at least as far as the lone red chair signifying the distance of Ted Williams' longest ball. Grandslam homerun. Ortiz has done this before, numerous times in fact. Gone is the Angel's lead. It's now 6-5 Sox. Boston goes on to win it 10-5.

Schilling was the starting pitcher and ended up getting the win, not because of his stuff, but because of his team's offense. Our seats were first row, right-centerfield, looking into the bullpen. In addition to watching Schilling warm up, we watched as well the middle relievers and closers warm up -- Timlin, Okajima, and Papelbon. Papelbon's boyish charm and 29 saves on the season electrifies the crowd like nothing else. He picked up save number 30 this night and kept his earned run average fighteningly close to one.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Boston

Molly and I got into town late on Thursday evening. Our evening meal was at Maggiano's, across the street from our hotel, the Park Plaza.

Yesterday, we took the T to the JFK Library and Museum on Columbia Point adjacent to the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Boston. I. M. Pei's design is striking. We had lunch in the cafe. Our view out of the very large wall of glass was the Boston skyline to the left and the Boston Harbor with its numerous islands to the right. The sky was a clear blue with the occasional fair weather summer cloud.

In the late afternoon we made our way to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market for window shopping, people watching, and gelati eating. We avoided the T at rush and walked back to our hotel via the Washington Street pedestrian mall.

The Red Sox v. Angels game at Fenway was a thriller. Beckett, the Sox's starting pitcher, turned in an admirable performance. He left in the seventh inning having allowed only two runs, one of which was unearned off of an error on the shortstop, Lugo. He struck out eight, walked one, and gave up only five hits. It would have been nice if his team could have provided him with some offensive support and some decent relief from the bullpen. The offensive support would come, not so the relief.

Jump to the bottom of the eighth. The score is now 4-2 Angels. A flurry of hits, including back to back doubles by Ortiz and Ramirez, resulted in a score of 5-4 Red Sox. Sadly, the top of the ninth followed with very lively and very big Angel bats, namely Vlad Guerrero's. There is a reason the Angels are on top of the AL West. Guerrero's two RBI double off Sox reliever Eric Gagne put the the final score at 7-5 Angels. The Sox produced two ejections in the bottom of ninth, Manager Terry Francona and First Baseman Youkilis, but no runs. The arguments centered around whether a pitch to Youkilis was a third strike or a foul tip. The first base umpire, to whom the plate umpire appealed, was of the opinion that it was a strike. Francona, Youkilis and the replay on the centerfield jumbotron were of a different opinion altogether, one based in fact rather than fiction I might add.

Molly and I walked the mile and a half down Boyleston back to our hotel.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Thoughts on Current Reading

I just finished reading Kevin Lawson's book HOW TO THRIVE IN ASSOCIATE STAFF MINISTRY. The presbytery should require the text for any and all associate staff positions. For the most part, Lawson confirmed for me the reasons why, after more than twelve years now, I still sense a profound call to serve God and neighbors in and through First Church.

For starters, there are the work relationships. Among and within the staff and elders, there is a high level of trust, encouragement, affirmation, and loyalty -- fruits of the Spirit all -- as well as feedback and evaluation. We cooperate rather than compete. What I am concerned about, you are concerned about. What you are concerned about, I am concerned about.

The high value that is placed on each and every ministry, rather than only a few, stands out. There is no unimportant work at First Church. Additionally, First Church's commitment to growth and learning for its leadership -- this sabbatical is a case in point -- and its commitment to people over programs contribute to health and vitality. So too does the church's general openness to new ideas and approaches.

I could go on, I guess. However, I don't want you to feel schmoozed. Nor, do I wish to jeopardize your saintly humility. But I do want you to feel affirmed. I cannot begin to describe how affirmed I feel at the moment. Thank God and thank you.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

PS: Molly and I set out for Boston on Thursday. We have tickets for the weekend's three-game Red Sox homestand against the LA Angels at Fenway. The Sox are on top of the American League East. The Angels are on top of the American League West. We may be witnessing a rehearsal of the 2007 American League Championship Series. In addition to baseball, we will be touring the JFK Library in Boston and Edith Wharton's Berkshire Mountain home, The Mount, in western Massachusetts.

Final Remarks on Scotland

Have I traveled to more than just another continent? Another planet perhaps?

The Western Highlands and the Hebrides have an other-worldy appearance. I had to consult a guidebook or two to better understand what I was looking at. Scotland's rocks display three billion years of geological time. Pretend you are looking at Scotland from a bird's eye view. Hold your left hand out and allow it to superimpose itself over your view of Scotland. Spread your fingers and thumb slightly. Your thumb is England. Each of your four fingers is one of the four faults that define Scotland's geology. Your index finger is the Southern Uplands Fault. Your middle finger is the Highland Boundary Fault. Your ring finger is the Great Glen Fault. Your pinky finger is the Moine Thrust.

Our coach travelled the length of the Great Glen, from Inverness to Fort William. The Great Glen is a glacial rift valley that was created when the landmass split and moved about 400 million years ago. There are four lochs in the glen -- Loch Ness, Loch Och, Loch Lochy, and Loch Linnhe. Our hotel in the glen was at Ballachulish on Loch Linnhe.

We left mainland Scotland, which is an odd remark given that it is a part of the British Isles, at Mallaig and ferried to Skye, the largest of the Hebridean isles. Skye never freezes. Given the fact that the temperatures during our visit in early August never rose above 60 (F), I have my doubts. However, this is in fact where the Gulf Stream winds up after bumping gently against the Irish coast just across the way.

On our journey south to Glasgow, we passed through Glencoe. Our final full day in Scotland was a day of contrasts. We went from Scotland at its most rural to Scotland at its most urban. Glencoe's scenery is mesmerizing -- craggy peaks and moss covered ridges spewing rivulets of water. Glencoe's history is appalling. It is the place where the name Campbell became synonymous with betrayal, murder, and treachery. In 1692, Clan Macdonald, suspected of Jacobite sympathies, was late in registering its oath of submission to King William III. Clan Campbell was enlisted by the throne to punish the Macdonalds for failing to submit by the January 1, 1692 deadline. The Campbells arrived in Glencoe amidst a brutal blizzard. The Macdonalds took their fellow Scotsmen, Campbells, in and provided them with food and lodging until the winter broke. At dawn on 13 February, the Campbells repaid their hosts with death and destruction. Thirty-eight Macdonalds were killed. Countless others fled and died of exposure.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

More on the Highlands

In the late spring of 1815, three brothers, all McCoigs, although they spelled their name MacCuaig -- upon arrival it was respelled phonetically, the Mac became Mc and the Gaelic dipthong uai became oi, for reasons God alone knows the g was retained -- all young men in their twenties, John, Malcolm, and Neal emigrated from Inverness. They boarded a ship docked in the Moray Firth and sailed east into the North Sea, then north around northern Scotland's Cape Wrath, and then south with the Outer Hebrides on their starboard side and the Inner Hebrides on their port side. At Barra, they would set a course west for North America. In several weeks, they would land in the port of Charleston, South Carolina. From there they made their way west to the Carolina highlands where they found a people and a place that looked and sounded like home, but warmer and sunnier. Compared to the Scottish Highlands, a lot of places are much warmer and much sunnier.

We stayed at Inverness' Royal Highland Hotel for two days. It was built when the rail line pushed its way north during the Victorian era. From Inverness, we visited Culloden Moor, whose April 16, 1746 battle bears its name. The Catholic Highland Jacobite rebels, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie aka Charles Edward Stuart who aspired to restore the Stuart monarchy with himself as king, were massacred by the Protestant British government forces of the Duke of Cumberland. The battle marked the beginning of the end of the clan system of the Highlands. It also resulted in the suppression of Highland culture for more than a century -- no tartans, no bagpipes, the heavy taxation of whisky. The moor was a desolate place in 1746 and remains so in 2007. In 1746, the MacCuaigs were en route to join the battle on the side of the Jacobites, not because they were Catholics, but because they were Scottish and the government forces were English. They never made it and lived to tell the tale. No prisoners were taken. The battlefield wounded were killed.

We made two additional side trips from Inverness as well. One to Cawdor Castle, the fictional home of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and the other to the neolithic rock formations, the Clava Cairns. The Thanes of Cawdor have inhabited Cawdor Castle continuously since the fourteenth century.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Back Home and Photographs as Promised

We got in yesterday, early evening. Smooth flights all the way -- Glasgow, London, DC. Our highest temperature in Scotland may have been in mid-60s, tops. The heat and humidity of the parking lot at Dulles was a rude awakening, a shock to both body and spirit.

As promised, I have posted some new photographs to my blog. They are at the right. I added significant places to my odyssey while in Oxford and Glasgow. I took numerous photographs while in Edinburgh and the Highlands. I hope to post some of them over the next several days. I will also post some new narrative as well.

Momentarily, I will make my way to Williamsburg with a Jeep loaded to the gills to assist Molly as she moves into her apartment.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Edinburgh and the Highlands

International travel for an extended period of time renders time itself nebulous. Hours and days and weeks loose their form. Their definitions are, at best, vague. I like the sensation, especially here in the Highlands where the sun rises too early and stays up long past when it should have set at ordinary lattitudes.

International travel also is a feast of the senses. Scotland is a place to behold with the eye -- the green of the hillsides, the pink of the heather; to embrace with the ear -- the lilt and cadence of the speech, the warmth and brilliance of the piper's cane reed sounding in the glen; to savor with the tongue -- the saltiness of the brown gravy that bathes each and every meat dish, the distinctive and unmistakable sage that makes both haggis and black pudding equally palatable; to feel upon the skin -- the fresh westerly breeze blowing hard and long from the North Atlantic across the Irish Sea and rushing through the Great Glen; to envelop with the nose -- the rich scent of grasses and mosses of an ancient soil shaded by stands of sturdy conifers.

I met Lisa, Molly, Patrick, and Lisa's parents -- John and Joan in Edinburgh early afternoon on Saturday. The train ride from Queen Street Station, Glasgow to Edinburgh's Waverly Station was easy and straightforward. We stayed in a hotel in Picardy Place at the top of Leith Walk, a short walk from the Royal Mile.

On Saturday afternoon, we took a guided tour of the city and Edinburgh Castle. Edinburgh is an interesting amalgam of historical epochs. The promontory upon which the castle rests has been occupied since the Bronze Age, roughly 1,000 B.C.E. King David I of Scotland founded Holyrood Abbey one mile to the east of the castle in the 11th century. James IV (1488-1513), who built Holyrood Palace, established Edinburgh as the Scottish capital. By the 1700s, Edinburgh had become less than livable. It was overcrowded, dirty, and difficult. Georgian New Town, just to the north of the city center, was laid out and developed.

In the morning on Sunday, we toured Holyrood Palace, Queen Elizabeth' II's official residence in Scotland. In the afternoon, we went south by coach to vist Sir Walter Scott's home, Abbotsford, as well as nearby Melrose Abbey. Scott (1771-1832) was born in Edinburgh and trained as a barrister. His Waverley series created and pioneered the historical novel in western literature. Central to Scott's fiction are images of a heroic wilderness and a romanticized view of clan culture. As an American school boy, I can vaguely remember having to read Scott's Ivanhoe.

Melrose is a stunning Border Abbey. It was built by the Scottish King David I in 1136 for Cistercian monks from Yorkshire. English armies ramsacked it regularly, most notably in 1322 and 1385. The abbey was dealt its death blow in 1545 by Henry VIII's forces. The Scots failed to ratify a marriage treaty between Henry VIII's son and the infant Mary Queen of Scots. In 1920, archaeologists found an embalmed heart that is believed to be that of Robert the Bruce's. Robert decreed that his heart be taken on a crusade to the Holy Land. Records indicate that it was. Its bearer, Sir James Douglas, was killed in Spain. However, his attendants bore the heart back to Scotland and oversaw its entombment at Melrose.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

PS: As I indicated, I am in the Western Highlands. I was in Inverness for two days. I will be here for two days. On our way north from Edinburgh we stopped off in Pitlochry for lunch and a visit to Scotland's smallest distillery, Edradour. The jaunt by coach has been a journey of superlatives -- Scotland's largest loch, Ness; Scotland's highest peak, Nevis; Britain's last battle on its soil, Culloden; and so on. Tomorrow, we make our way by ferry to the Isle of Skye, one of the inner Hebridean islands. I will post narrative and photos in due course. Thanks for reading.

Glasgow, Part II

I am posting narrative that I wrote Thursday of last week. I have been busy touring the Highlands. I am posting from my hotel, the Isles of Glencoe. The loch below my window gently laps the shoreline. The peaks of the Nevis range are shrouded in clouds. If time allows, I will post narrative from the past several days.

It’s midweek. The schedule here is very similar to the schedule of the faculty’s North American school at Shenandoah University. There are three or four lessons daily, each lasting an hour, with the expectation of three or four practice sessions daily, each also lasting an hour. The instructors, except for one, are different.

I was sorted into the D group. E is beginners, A is advanced pipers. D is for advanced beginners. C is intermediate pipers and B is advanced intermediate pipers. I was pleased. In a year’s time, I have moved from beginner to advanced beginner. There are five students in our group, three adults and two teenagers. The nationalities include two Scots, one English, one French, and me, the American. The Frenchman is a sixteen-year-old boy from suburban Paris. A five student to one instructor ratio works nicely.

We have worked hard. We are introduced to a tune a day. The tunes to date are The Old Rustic Bridge, The Weary Maid, and O My Love, which is a very nice Hebridean slow air. Bridge and Maid are marches. My technique is progressing. My timing is admirable, most of the time. The memorization of tunes that is expected in a short period of time needs work. I have been assured that once I have memorized upwards of 20 tunes or more that memorization will come more readily because I will be in the habit of doing so. We’ll see.

There seems to be two schools of thought on taking up an instrument as demanding as the bagpipe in adulthood. The one school is the “are you out of your mind” school and the other is the “go for it” school. Locally, there are some pipe majors who will not even bother taking on adult students. I am glad I have not run into any personally. I don’t need the discouragement.

As for transitioning from the practice chanter to the pipes, it’s coming. Slowly. I had a good lesson today on maintaining bag pressure. Very helpful.

The Piping Centre has a lot of steps. It’s a converted cathedral, formerly St. Stephen’s. It houses a piping store, museum, administrative offices, library, classrooms, practice rooms, auditorium for performances, restaurant, and hotel. My room is quite comfortable. The meals in the restaurant have all been as satisfying as they are expensive. The expense is a function of a lousy exchange rate and the fact that the Centre is located in the theatre and university district of the city’s centre. The fare is thoroughly Scottish – bangers and mash (sausage and potatoes), fish and chips, meat pies, and a lot of different soups.

One of the instructors, Paul Warren, is highly enthusiastic. His love of music and the highland bagpipe is contagious. His philosophy of music is instructive. For him, a musical score is one person’s idea set down so that others can enjoy it. A person’s chosen instrument is his or her tool for expressing the idea. The idea should be internalized. After all, music is not something on paper. It is ultimately something in the musician’s heart. It’s passed from heart to heart by way of a score. Once in the heart, it has to come out and be shared with others. There is a sermon in there somewhere. All of this is something most of us know, either wittingly or unwittingly. However, it’s nice to be reminded of it now and again.

The family – Lisa, Molly, Patrick, and Lisa’s mom and dad – arrive in Edinburgh on Friday. They are taking an overnight flight out of Dulles. I will be taking the train over midmorning on Friday. Glasgow, one the west coast, and Edinburgh, on the east coast, are only 46 miles apart. It will be nice to see everyone after two weeks away.

That’s it for the moment. Peace.

Glasgow

I made it. The trains, as you know, from a previous post did not run. The rails were submerged. They may not be usable for upwards of two weeks or more. It was a very long bus ride, nearly ten hours. The congestion on the A6 through the heart of England into Scotland was severe. It looked like I95 south of Washington during a summer rush hour with vacationers and commuters all going in the same direction on a Friday afternoon. The extent of the flooding was evident along each side of the motorway. Rivers were well beyond their banks. Planted fields and pastureland alike were underwater. Some towns have been completely cut off, especially Tewkesbury. Others are without, and will be for a time, both water and power.

Pipe School is demanding. The memorization required is a little more than I am accustomed to, but, in time, my feeble brain may muster the energy to pull it off. Regrettably, the workload has allowed only the shortest of walks here and there in Glasgow. The Piping Centre is near the Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University. The main building of the Art School, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau style, is impressive. It sits on a high ridge in the heart of the city. Its view of the city, and especially of the Clyde River, is memorable.

Glasgow feels like San Francisco on the back of one's calves. It also takes its toll on the neck. The ground floor of many buildings look quite modern. To appreciate the city's Victorian past, you have to look up to the first floor and beyond.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

The Summer Floods of 2007

My stay in Oxford was extended by a day. I am hoping that is all. Not that I don't love Oxford. It's that I want to get to Glasgow to begin piping school.

The trains were suspended on Saturday because of the unprecedented heavy rains. The rails are underwater in the north and west. So, plan B. My hope is to catch a coach from the Oxford Station for Glasgow. I would much prefer a six hour train ride over a nine hour bus ride, but sometimes we simply do not get what we want. And to think that I believed that we did for such a long time.

To the Scotland pilgrims who are coming over on Friday, pack warm things and things that can keep you dry. The pattern, at least for now, seems to be a cool and wet one. Of course, things could change and do. Let's hope and pray that that is so. The floods have done more than inconvenience my travel. They have left a lot of people homeless and unemployed.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Part VII

By all accounts, I should be on a train headed north to Glasgow. I was looking forward to the eight-hour ride through England's Midlands and North Country, across into Scotland's Borderlands and Lowlands. The weather dictated otherwise. The hard rains and swift winds Oxford experienced on Friday were even harder to the north.

I arrived at the rail station in Oxford by taxi. I quickly learned that rail and coach travel north had been suspended until further notice. Flooding was extensive. Non-essential travel was discouraged. I took another taxi back to Christ Church. With the aid of a very helpful college porter, I made countless calls and discovered that rooms were being booked up rapidly. Unfortunatley, I could stay on at Christ Church. The next week's Oxford Experience was full. No room in the inn there. In time, I got a room at the Macdonald Randolph, a quarter-mile up the street from Christ Church. My rail ticket is good for six months. So, if the rails are above water and clear for tomorrow, I will be on my way. If not, I will sit tight for another day. I was regretting that I was unable to get out to Blenheim to see the Duke of Marlborough's palace, one of England's grandest and most impressive, which is also the birthplace and childhood home of Sir Winston Churchill. That may be my itinerary for tomorrow. If not that, then something else. There are plenty of good plan Bs to take up.

Last night was the farewell dinner in The Hall. Linen, crystal, silver. Dress was formal. It was a multi-course affair: scallops and fish with roe for the first course, pheasant with potatoes and greens for the next, dessert was a lemon and black cherry mousse with a heavy whipped cream topping followed by port wine and chocolate.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Part VII

I am sure learning was this much fun when I was younger, but I can’t remember.

Today in class we shared our ten metaphors of a famous person. It was very informative. Here is another one of mine that I was quite proud of: “He is the salted ham that leaves you thirsty and the ill-tasting tap water that will not quench the thirst.” One more: “He is a street, whose directional signs have all been changed by pranksters, upon which everyone now becomes lost.” Our goal was to craft metaphors written so well that they did not need explanation. Additionally they had to be true for the person about whom we were writing.

We compared and contrasted the difference between authors showing readers something and authors telling readers something. We looked at the techniques of description, narrative summation, and immediate scene. Our evening’s assignment is to write a six-line immediate scene. Immediate scenes are the portions of any piece of prose where the action occurs before the reader’s eyes. The rule of thumb is if you can film it, it is an immediate scene. Many novels use narrative summaries between immediate scenes to tell their stories.

It’s Friday. The day did not break. The clouds that rolled in sometime during the night remained low and heavy. The rain was steady and unrelenting. I’ve discovered that Englishmen and Englishwomen, in the face of such weather, simply remark, “Lovely weather.” They are the lords and ladies of irony.

Last evening I went to see “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the gardens of Oxford’s Wadham College. The actors were from major theater companies throughout the United Kingdom, most from London. It was well done. The director exaggerated the physical humor aspects of the play to the crowd’s delight. I tried to remember the last time I belly-laughed at a Shakespeare production. It was nice to hear the play’s language spoken so well by native speakers, not that Americans are not native speakers of the English language, but you know what I mean.

In the afternoon, whose weather was unnatural (that’s the English word for clear, sunny, and warm) I visited the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Bodleian Library’s Italy’s Three Crown’s exhibit. The Christ Church mathematician Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, frequented the Museum of Natural History often. It is where he got the ideas for the characters that inhabited the adventurous stories he told the college dean’s young daughter, Alice Liddell. The flamingo croquet mallet and the hedgehog ball were there. So too was the dodo and the duck, the tortoise and the owl and so on.

The Three Crown’s exhibit featured the three earliest and most influential Italian writers – Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. On display were original manuscripts as well as first printed editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1306), Petrarch’s Book of Poems (1336), and Boccaccio’s Decameron (1349). I discovered that the Bodleian contains one of the most important collections of Italian literary works outside Italy.

Believe it or not, there was still time to sit quietly and read in the Meadow Quad’s walled Master’s Garden. From my perch, I could see the spires of the chapels of at least six colleges. At six o’clock, their bells all begun to toll at once, just enough out of sync with one another on the hour as to provide an enchanting echo effect.

That’s it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Part V

Class continues to be engaging and stimulating. Today we took a new approach to character description that moves beyond, "He was a tall dark stranger," to highly metaphorical speech. It took some getting used to. Once I got the hang of it, I liked it. Here's one of mine: "He is a moss-coated stone lodged deep in the mud, a cymbal sounding off beat and out of time." The idea is to show your readers qualities of characters using multi-sensory metaphors rather than telling them informational details about a character.

In the afternoon, I took a bus to nearby Broughton Castle in Banbury, Oxfordshire -- about an hour north of Oxford. The house is a medieval manor house, later transformed into a Tudor mansion. The house is surrounded by a wide moat and parkland. One of the house's early owners, a baron, witnessed King John's signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. The house is also historically significant as a parliamentary rallying place in the 17th century. There are numerous impressive portraits of Oliver Cromwell in the house, which was besieged by the royalists during the English Civil War. The house's walled garden, The Ladies Garden, a full acre in size, is filled with sculpted boxwoods, old rose varieties, herbaceous borders and shrubs. By the way, Lord and Lady Saye and Sele still reside in the house. Today's weather was remarkable -- bright blue sky, billowy white clouds, brilliant sunshine.

This evening I attended Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral. Very high, very formal and very moving. I had never heard four-part choral music sung quite so exquisitely, reverently, and joyfully. The setting, a 14th century cathedral, probably contributed to the worship service's effect on me. The prayers for peace were particularly moving.

Dinner followed worship which, in Anglican fashion I suspect, was followed by a Scottish whisky tasting led by the Steward of Christ Church. I learned a great deal. One of the things that I learned is that whisky is okay, but I couldn't make a habit of it. The gentleman I sat beside, director of the Christ Church Choir, is originally from Scotland. He chided me for not finishing each and every sample as he most certainly did. Doing so would have involved downing no less that eight or more ounces of whisky, which would have been far beyond my tolerance.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Part IV

Another full and satisfying day.

In writing class we read brief narratives we had written using ourselves as one of the characters in the story. The goal was to be persuasive. Truthfulness was not necessary. Credibility, however, was. The class then discussed whether the author was telling the “truth” or not. If you said a writer’s story was true, you had to defend your estimation. If you concluded otherwise; false, you had to defend it as well.

Our criteria for evaluation included questions on the order of is the story credible? Is there adequate suspense? Is it informative? Is it located believably in an historical era? Are the details sufficient? Is there humor? What about the rhythm of the language? Does it raise questions that matter to the reader? What is the atmosphere? Is the hero/heroine up to the task?

In the words of Mark Twain, “I told the truth, mostly.” The class determined that I was believable.

We then turned our attention to lipograms as a way of getting the brain to fire in new and different ways. A lipogram is an ancient literary form, usually verse but not exclusively so, where the author disciplines himself or herself to write a set number of words on a particular subject avoiding the use of one or more vowels. We had to write 50 words, no more or less, on the subject of high heeled shoes without using the letter “e.” We also had to write 50 words, again – no more or less, on cars without using either the letters “a” or “i.” If you love words and are looking for new brain workouts, try this one.

We also worked on several scrambled acrostics. Each student wrote each letter of the alphabet in random order at the top of a sheet of paper. He or she then placed the paper on a table in the center of the room. Each student then selected a sheet other than his or her own in order to write a 26 word poem or narrative using words that began with the letters in the order in which they appeared. For example, if I picked up a piece of paper and the first letters among the 26 were I, W, A, D, S, N, then I could write something like “It was a dark, stormy night” a la Snoopy of Peanuts fame. The results in the class were impressive. I was proud of my contribution. Again, the goal is to kindle and foster creativity and imagination in the use of words.

In the afternoon, I toured the university’s Bodleian (pronounced Bod-lin) Library. The library opened in 1488 and is named for its greatest early champion, Sir Thomas Bodley, who oversaw its expansion from 1598 through 1602. Its earliest collection, which dates from the 15th century, was a gift from Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. It includes scholastic and legal manuscripts, many of which are from the Italian Renaissance. The smell of very old wooden shelves, paper, and leather bindings is intoxicating.

After my tour of the library I perused Blackwells, which is Oxford’s premier bookstore. It, like everything else in Oxford, has been around since time immemorial. In good Calvinistic fashion, I limited myself to one hour and the purchase of one book. Also, in good Calvinistic fashion, I may have to go back tomorrow for another hour (or more) and another book (or more). Truth be told, I wanted to spend some time out of doors, given the bright blue sky that was appearing after the clouds of a typical English summer day dispersed.

With the sun on my shoulders, I took in the university’s early 17th century Botanic Garden. The garden is along the shore of the confluence of the Cherwell and Thames Rivers just across from Magdalen College. The highlight of my stroll was the centuries old Black Pine tree, pinus nigra. It is awe-inspiring to contemplate the persons who have walked in its shade on similar sunny summer afternoons.

Once again, I dined in The Hall. Here is the grace that was said before the evening meal. It was said in Latin. I will provide you with the English translation. This particular grace dates to 1546.

“Let all thy works acknowledge thee, O Lord, and let all thy saints bless thee.

Almighty and eternal God, we give thanks to thee for thy favours to all men, for the lord King (this would be Henry VIII) our first noble Founder, and for the other benefactors of this House; and we beseech thee that, using these gifts aright, we with them may rise again to life in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

I ended my day with a visit to several pubs, all of which date to either the 14th, 15th, or 16th centuries – The Eagle and Child, fondly referred to as the Bird and Baby (the favorite watering hole of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein), The King’s Arms, and The Turf Pub.

Can you tell I am having fun?

That’s it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Part III

An amazing day. In class, we explored characterization. We differentiated between positive and negative characteristics, between active and passive. We talked about what characters need to possess in order to drive a story.

The instructor is more interested in honing the imagination than discussing the do’s and don’ts of technique. Our ten-member class of students has been divided into two groups of three and one group of four. I am in the group of four. Our task is to present fifteen words to the class with definitions and an example of usage. Ten of the words will be true as will be their definitions. Five of the words will be made up, so too will their definitions and their usage sentences. The goal is to persuade the class of the truth of all of the words. The instructor’s point is that good fiction writing involves making one’s lies as believable as the truth. Lying is the analogy he uses for fiction writing. By lying he means that an author makes up a story. Characters, plot, setting, and all the rest are fabrications. Still, the truth told through the story can be quite large all the same.

In the afternoon I took a guided tour of many of the Oxford University colleges – not all and not most, but many. Remember, there are 39 colleges in all. And I thought Boston was a college town. I took a copious number pictures. I will post them in due time. I am using a public access point here at Christchurch to paste narrative to the blog. When I get home or to a place where I have the time and the connection to paste photos I will.

Here are the colleges I toured:

All Souls – no undergraduate students at all, post-doctorate research fellows only; founded to pray for all the souls of men who died in service to England in its wars against France – an interesting beginning for an institution of higher learning.

Balliol – Holder of the largest single collection of medieval manuscripts in England. John Wyclif, translator of the Bible into English, was a graduate and served as the college’s master in the mid-14th century.

Corpus Christi – Smallest of the Oxford colleges with less than 300 students. Most of each of the other colleges have roughly 500 students.

Hertford – Founded as Hertford Hall in 1282 is composed of three quadrangles dating from the 15th through the 20th century.

Jesus – Founded in 1571 by Elizabeth. First to admit women in the late 19th century.

Lincoln – One of Oxford’s oldest, founded in 1427.

Merton – Again, one of the oldest. The stained glass windows in its chapel are among the oldest and rarest in England. They date to the 13th century. For what it’s worth, my favorite. You will see why in the photographs.

New – Notice the name, it reflects the college’s relatively late founding date of 1379. Its founder was the Bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham.

Oriel – Founded in 1324 and dedicated to St. Mary. This is for all Carolinians – Sir Walter Raleigh is among the school’s graduate. This is for Maren – Oriel has the most successful punting (read crew) record. The pub off of Tom Quad has an impressive array of gold-leaf inscribed paddles attesting the godlike qualities of Oriel's punting teams down through the centuries.

Trinity – A place of study since 1286.

University College – Home to Rhodes scholars from around the globe. Our guide was kind enough to point out Bill Clinton’s room. Our guide had done his homework and was able to provide us with a list of books Clinton checked out of the library. Our former president read an inordinate amount of works by Rousseau and Hobbes as a young man. UC is also the school which Percy Shelley attended. He did not graduate. He was expelled for his paper in defense of atheism. Now, there is a sizable statue of Shelley at UC as well as tributes to his genius as a poet and contributor to British verse.

Admission to Oxford, as one might well imagine, is competitive, to say the least. The method of instruction is unique. There are three eight-week terms each academic year. It ordinarily take three years to earn the bachelor of arts degree. Each student takes, on average, three courses of study each term. Weekly, he or she meets for one hour with his or her tutor to discuss assigned readings and to present an essay. Periodically, the students of all the colleges will gather en masse to listen to a lecture by one of the college’s tutors. At the end of each term, students sit for their examinations, all of which are essay – no fill in the blank and no multiple choice. Through the 19th century, examinations were oral before faculty and student peers. If failed, the student has one retake opportunity. If not passed then, the student is dismissed.

This evening I attended a wine reception in the Hall and sat at High Table. This is the very same table Dumbledore and his Hogwart’s faculty sit at in each and every dining hall scene from the Harry Potter movies. More importantly, it is also the table where some of the most influential men in Britain’s history have sat. I would go so far as to venture to say the most influential men in the world. And now, it is where I sat. Imagine that. I sat beneath Holbein’s 16th century portrait of Henry VIII. If you have seen any image of Great Harry, it was probably the one painted by Holbein.

After dinner, the entire Hall retired to the Master’s Garden between Meadow Quad and Christ Church Meadow for a dessert of strawberries, cream, and champagne. The weather could not have been more cooperative. Late evening blue sky, a gentle breeze rustling through the ancient maple trees, the grass so green and lush you had to work at keeping your jaw from dropping as you stared at it beyond the point of embarrassment.

Tomorrow, after class in the morning, I will be touring Oxford’s Bodleian Library. I let you know how it went.

That’s it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Part III

I dined in The Hall for the first time on Sunday evening, not at the head table mind you (that’s Monday evening). However, still in The Hall. The weather cleared and allowed us to have the wine reception in the Tom Quad. The meal was impressive – asparagus spears for an appetizer, the main course – roasted lamb chops with currant jelly, thinly sliced potatoes, and broccoli with cauliflower. The dessert was baked apple with whipped cream. Who says the words British and cuisine are incongruous? Do the undergraduates eat this well during term? Speaking with persons who have participated in years past, I can expect to eat like this every evening. I will need to plan on taking more and more trips up and down the stairs to and from my fourth floor room.

One of the most impressive features of The Hall is the numerous very large portraits of famous graduates or patrons of Christchurch. I had the opportunity to dine under the thoughtful gazes of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Lord Grenville, John Wesley, William Penn, Lewis Carroll (there is even an Alice in Wonderland stained glass window) and W.H. Auden.

The bell in Tom Tower rings 105 times every evening at 9:05 for the 105 founders of Oxford University in the 13th century. It tolls the time at five minutes past each and every hour. Why? Because Oxford is on its own time, Oxford Time. And, because Oxford is literally only five minutes behind Greenwich Mean Time.

My class met with the instructor this evening. There are ten of us. Chris Sykes is the instructor. He writes for the London stage. He is also a published poet. Currently, he is trying his hand at songwriting. I spoke with him after class and discovered that his preferred style of playing and writing is acoustic folk and that his guitar and mine are both Robert Taylor’s. His is an 814 and mine is an 810. Same woods, different body designs. I believe I am going to enjoy the class. Chris stated that he became a writer because he loves “making things up in order to see what becomes of them.”

That’s it for the moment. Peace.

Christ Church, Oxford, England, UK

Christ Church, Oxford – home of Alice’s Wonderland and the set of Harry Potter films. Actually, there is a lot more to Christ Church, a lot more.

I’m here. The travel was straightforward enough. No glitches to speak of.

It’s raining. Evidently, it does this a great deal. No one seems to mind. I have the necessary gear.

My room is on the fourth floor of the Meadow Quad, so named for its view of the Christ Church Meadow. It’s directly off of the Tom Quad with Sir Christopher Wren’s commanding tower, which gives Christ Church its presence on St. Aldgates Road in Oxford City Centre. From here, I have an easy walk to the Great Hall on Tom Quad for meals and Peckwater Quad where my classes will be held. Peckwater Quad is between Christ Church and Oriel College.

Since I am a nut about trivial historical information, here are some facts and figures about Oxford University.

The student population of Oxford, which is 39 colleges, is 18,000. Rather small when compared to any number of land grant universities in the US.

Oxford has more published authors per square mile than anywhere else in the world. I wonder if they had them all stand in one quad to make it true. Don’t know.

For garden fans, Oxford’s Botanic Garden is the oldest in the world. It was founded as a physics garden in 1621, fourteen years after Jamestown and one year after Plymouth. A stroll through the garden is on my to-do list.

Oxford is the oldest English speaking university in the world. It was founded in 1249, roughly in the generation following the inking of the Magna Carta. The oldest college in the university is St. Edmund Hall. One of its notable graduates is Terry Jones of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. The youngest college is St. Catherine’s, founded in 1964. The first college to admit women, and the only college founded by Queen Elizabeth I, was Jesus College, founded 1571.

Oxford, from my thus far short stay, is big on tradition. One of the traditions is honoring and keeping the full names of each of the 29 colleges. Oriel College has the longest name: The Provost and Scholars of the House of the Blessed Mary, the Virgin of Oxford, commonly called Oriel College, the foundation of Edward the Second of famous memory, sometime King of England.

There are porters at each gated entrance to Oxford. I am told that they can answer any and every question about either the university or the city. If they can’t, they know someone who can. Very trusted and admired, the porters. Tourists are allowed access to some places in the university, but are not allowed access to many others. The neat thing about the summer program I am participating in is that I can roam wherever I wish. The porters are dressed formally – dark suit with tie -- including the traditional black bowler hat. I love those hats. Would it be possible to get away with wearing one in Winchester? I wonder.

The university’s Bodleian Library is nearly seven centuries old at the last counting. It houses more than 9,000,000 documents in ten buildings on 105 miles of shelves. Yes, you read it right. Six zeroes is correct. I’m taking the grand tour of Bodleian in the middle of the week. I understand it takes the better part of an afternoon.

One final note: On Monday evening I am dining at High Table with Christchurch’s scholars. The evening, which is formal, begins with sherry wine in the reception area of the Great Hall. This is one of the treats afforded the summer program participants.

That’s it for the moment. Peace.

Winchester

It's been a quiet week in Winchester. That sounds a lot like the beginning of a Garrison Keillor monologue. A bit warm, but nice. I got some tennis in during the evening hours when it was almost cool. No golf or fishing, simply too warm for my taste. Daily, I'm working at guitar and bagpipes. My lip and diaphragm are developing, slowly.

I watched the All-Star Game last night. An American League victory, again. That's ten years in a row. The baseball season is at its halfway mark. The American League East seems to be all Boston with a bottleneck in the middle. New York and Toronto are tied for second at 10 games out apiece. The Orioles are 15 games out. The First Church trip to Camden is not far off.

I completed Egri's book. It was a very slow read. The book read like a transcription of a series of lectures on writing. I don't know if it will make me a better writer of sermons. I do know that it will make me a better reader of novels and short stories as well as a better watcher of movies and plays. Egri is big on any literary work abiding by its fundamental premise. In Egri's words: "Every sensible invention must have a purpose, every planned sprint a destination." For example, the premise of Romeo and Juliet is "Great love defies even death." For King Lear, "Blind trust leads to destruction." For Macbeth, "Ruthless ambition leads to its own destruction." And so on.

The bulk of Egri's book is on character. According to Egri, for the dramatist, each character possesses a physiology, a sociology, and a psychology. Each of these "-ologies" makes us who we are and plays a significant role in what we say and how we behave.

Egri is "old school" in that he is a proponent of the Socratic dialectic. Each literary work should begin with a thesis, then move to a contradiction of the thesis, antithesis, and eventually land on a synthesis, a combination of the original proposition and the contradiction to it.

Here are some of my favorites quotes from Egri's book. The first is Egri citing Oscar Wilde -- "The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not is growth and development."

"There is only one realm in which characters defy natural laws and remain the same -- the realm of bad writing . . . Any character, in any type of literature, which does not undergo a basic change is a badly drawn character."

Egri sets up a nice quote by first citing Emerson, "What is a weed? A plant whose virtures have not yet been discovered." After a lengthy exploration of how plot and character interact, Egri writes, "What is a character? A factor whose virtures have not yet been discovered." This is where plot comes in.

Egri's chapter on "Point of Attack" is probably the most applicable when it comes to sermon writing. Egri states: "When should the curtain rise? What is the point of attack? When the curtain goes up, the audience wishes to know as soon as possible who these people on the stage are, what they want, why they are there? What is the relationship between them?" In the case of a sermon, a good point of attack is where something vital is at stake at the very beginning. The first line spoken should start the "crisis," or conflict to be resolved, and the inevitable drive toward the proving of the premise.

Egri has a good chapter on tranistion in literary writing. He uses nature as an analogy. "Nature never jumps. She works in a leisurely manner, experimenting continuously." Don't think too long about this analogy, you will find problems with it -- tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc. Nature can and does jump. That said, let's stick with Egri for a moment. Certainly, every human life as two main poles -- life and death -- between which there is transition. At the close of the chapter Egri writes: "Every tissue, every muscle and bone in our bodies, is rejuvenated every seven years [Is this true? My high school biology is way back in the rear view mirror and I didn't fact check Egri here]. Our attitude and outlook on life, our hopes and dreams are also constantly changing. This transformation is so imperceptible that usually we are not even aware that it is taking place in our bodies and in our minds. This is transition: we are never, for any two successive moments, the same. And transition is the element which keeps the play [and perhaps the sermon -- my words here] without any breaks, jumps, or gaps. Transtion connects seemingly unconnected elements, such as winter and summer, love and hate."

Here is my reading diet while on the road. I hope to post to my blog from the UK, as time and computer availability allow. One book is another required text for my class at Christchurch, Oxford. It is "Becoming a Writer" by Dorothea Brande, originally published in 1934. By the way, if you would like more information about Oxford University's Summer School for Adults, scroll down to "Links worth visiting." I linked their site to my blog. I also linked my instructor's site to my blog. His name is Chris Sykes. He writes for the London stage and teaches at Oxford. The other book in my diet is the definitive one-volume history of Scotland written by J.D. Mackie, titled "A History of Scotland."

That's it for the moment. Peace.

On another matter. On Monday, August 6, I will be transporting daughter and stuff to Williamsburg. Once there, I will need to move a sofa from a storage unit to an apartment. I need a vehicle capable of hauling a sofa. If the weather is fair, an open back pickup truck will work. If you have a vehicle to loan for the day, email me or post to my blog. I plan on leaving in the a.m. and returning in the p.m. of the same day. Thanks.

Nags Head, NC, Part II

We had a good Fourth. We visited old friends from school and boated in the sound. After the teenage boys took their turn on the ski bisquit, it was the middle-aged men's turns. I was initially hesitant. I like being able to get out of bed the next day. The fun factor enticed me to give it a try. Several runs later, with attempts by the helmsman to slingshot me off of the bisquit on the turns, I returned to the boat a little out of breath and a little sore, but a lot happy. And I was able to get out of the bed the next day, slowly, but out all the same.

Here's some more on Scheer's book. He objects to congregational singing as merely a warm up to the real spiritual meat of the sermon. For him, congregational singing plays a signifcant role in spiritual formation. It puts the Christian faith on the tongues of people, letting it work its way down to the soul.

Scheer refers to congregational song as "functional art," that is what human beings without rehearsal can do -- namely, "sing simple structures in an idiom they understand, structures that make logical musical sense, so that they can be remembered easily enough for singing among normal people." [p. 60] Scheer doesn't say this, but I will. "Functional art" seems to be synonmous with "folk art," whether it's music or painting or sculpture.

Scheer does a nice job of explaining the traits of songs sung most enthusiastically by any given congregation. Since most people in a congregation are untrained singers, their needs and abilities need to be taken into consideration when selecting congregational songs. It is evident to me when I have selected a winner and when I have selected a dud. According to Scheer, the traits of singability, lyric quality, and music scalability separate the winners from the duds. A song, on average, is singable by a congregation when it avoids going below B-flat below middle C and above the D a tenth above that. Singable songs are also rhythmically simple and in a learnable form that fosters memorization (call and response, stophic, verse-chorus-bridge).

A song's lyric quality is determined by its theology. Scheer suggests that "every song should express some aspect of truth, but no single song can express all truth. Revealing the whole theology is the role of repertoire; each song is one piece of that unfolding revelation." [p. 63]

Lastly, there's music scalability. For Scheer, songs should provide a simple point of entry that is accessible to all and at the same time include sophisticated musical elements that will retain the interest of the musically advanced. In other words, again I will quote Scheer: "The important thing is that the melody can be sung by children and non-musicians, and that the song is flexible enough to allow for increased musical contribution with repeated use."

I am in Winchester this week -- practicing the guitar, practicing the bagpipes, reading and writing, playing some golf, and, if this torrid weather breaks, perhaps some fishing as well. Although, according to the comments section of the blog, the fishing is slow and hard.

I leave for the UK on Saturday. First, Christchurch Oxford. Then, the Piping Centre in Glasgow. Then, Edinburgh and the Highlands. Lisa and the children will be joining me for the last leg of my UK adventures. So too will Lisa's parents.

I haven't landed on my reading list for this week just yet. When I do, I will post it.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Nags Head, NC

The weather is unseasonably delightful. Ordinarily, the temperatures and humidity levels are a bit higher during the first week of July. Not so this year. Air and water temperatures are nearly identical, mid-70s. Very nice.

It's been a relaxing week. Sleeping in. Reading. Listening to music. Playing music -- there was no room in the car [Lisa, me, Patrick and his friend -- Molly is in Bath, England for another week yet; she has been there for the past month] for my guitar, so I brought along my practice chanter to work on pipe tunes. Staring at the sky. Staring at the sea. Taking brisk walks.

I've completed Scheer's book. Early on Scheer states, "Contemporary worship music will not revitalize my church, contemporary worship music will not revitalize my church, contemporary worship music will not revitalize my church." Scheer goes on to encourage a solid assessment of any given congregation. His questions include: Do the people need new music? Who makes up the congregation, and are they being represented musically? Does any proposed change in music come from the people?

Scheer covers a lot of familiar ground regarding institutional change -- innovators (2%), early adopters (18%), middle adopters (60%), late adopters (18%), and never adopters (2%). He also covers well-worked ground contrasting modernism (knowledge) and postmodernism (experience). Modernity has ruled for the past two centuries, more or less. Postmodernity currently rules the roost, more or less.

Scheer is a good analyst of worship traditions. He delineates between liturgical worship, thematic worship, and experiential worship. In liturgical worship, preaching and the sacraments take front and center stage. In thematic worship, everything leads up to and flows from preaching. Experiential worship is primarily music driven where the worshipper's response is of utmost concern.

Scheer's argument for blended worship is a compelling one. He discusses Martin Luther's reviving the Roman liturgy with vernacular language and common musical styles. Scheer notes that "too much vernacular influence may allow the medium to overwhelm the message, but rigid adherence to perceived historical purity may drain worship of its lifeblood." [p.98] One of the more useful pieces of information I have taken away from Scheer's book is this: "For most churches, the wisest decision is to find a place on the spectrum that gives voice both to the people in the pews and to the saints who gave gone before, giving worship both relevance to modern culture and roots in tradition." [p.98]

Also, Scheer has a great segment in his book on informing your ear musically. As a Beatles fan -- Paul turned 64 this year -- I was thrilled to read: "If I had to recommend one band that would best train the worship leader's ear, it would be the Beatles. Over their career they explored an incredible range of styles, sonorities, form and harmonic languages. Nearly everything done in popular music today has a precursor in the output of the Beatles." [pp. 167-168]

To everyone who has left a comment, thank you. Your words inspire me to be faithful to this blog.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Shenandoah Pipe School, Part III

For the record -- I did it, I did it, I did it. I played a tune from start to finish on, not the practice chanter, but the highland bagpipe. After some bagpipe adjustments by the ever skillful Stuart Liddell -- he shortened the tongue of my outside tenor drone (to require less air) and bent the fibers on the cane reed in my pipe chanter (again, to require less air) -- and some able coaching regarding breathing and arm pressure on the bag technique from the same Mr. Liddell, I played Bonnie Galloway. I repeated it to assure teacher and student alike that it wasn't a once in a lifetime cosmic fluke. They do happen. This wasn't one of them. I did it. Perhaps there is musical grace now and again.

Granted, my strike-ins and sound-offs need some polishing. That's what practice is for. But, I did it.

I truly felt like a little kid whose training wheels have been removed from his bicycle for the very first time as well as his father's hand from the rear of the seat. I know the extra wheels are gone. I helped take them off. My balance is a little wobbly, but I am not falling over. I look back to make sure that a gentle hand is keeping me up and on track. It was there when I started. It's not there now. It was scary at first. A touch of astonishment was present as well. It was one of those "Am I really doing this?" moments. What fun. I think I may have experienced something akin to giddiness. Is that possible?

I will stick with slow airs and 4/4 marches for the near future, but I have my heart set on some jigs and reels. One day. One day.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Shenandoah Pipe School, Part II

The instructors' concert was this evening at Millbrook High School. It was good to see so many Presbyterians in the audience.

The show was remarkable. It is inspiring to see a challenging instrument played with such precision and virtuosity. Stuart Liddell, a lead piper with Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada and world piping champion, was clearly the star of the evening. He played one of the fastest and most multi-parted hornpipes I believe I have ever heard. Stuart has played at Carnegie Hall and now he can add Millbrook Auditorium to his list of performance venues. If you happen to be interested in very good recordings of traditional pipe music, the SFU band is one of the finest. I have added a link to their site in my "Links Worth Visiting." Scroll down. You will see it.

Tomorrow is the last day of pipe school. I have learned a lot. I am acutely aware of where my attention in practice needs to be placed, which really is a good thing. Step one toward improving in anything is a sober assessment of what you can do and what you can't do. As much as exercises on pipe music embellishments bore me to tears, I will do them. I prefer tunes, however. That day, in time, will come.

I said I would post my reading list for next week. Here it is. I have kept it intentionally light in order to take notes and absorb the material. Since I have spent the past two weeks studying music -- guitar one week, the bagpipe the other -- I have decided to continue the theme. I will be reading Greg Scheer's The Art of Worship: A Musician's Guide to Leading Modern Worship. Scheer is a music associate with Calvin College and Seminary's Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, MI. The chapter titles of the book will give you a sense of Scheer's perspective: "Setting the Stage;" "Assembling the Team;" "Planning Worship;" "Making Music;" "Timeless Hymns in a Contemporary Context;" "Rehearsing and Leading;" and "Looking to the Future."

The other book I will be reading is by Lajos Egri. The title is The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. The book was first published in 1942. Egri, originally from Hungary, founded the Egri School of Writing in NYC in the 1930s. This text is one of the required texts for the writing class I will be taking at Christchurch College, Oxford in July.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Shenandoah Pipe School

Three lessons a day plus three hours of practice daily with a workshop thrown in for good measure leaves one with little breathing room, which is important when it comes to the highland bagpipes. I must have an odd Calvinistic gene that compels me to take up pursuits that require disciplining the mind and body alike over a period of years only to fall considerably short of anything that resembles perfection. If only musical grace were as bountiful as spiritual grace. What is gained musically is earned through hard work.

My sight reading continues to need work. My brain recognizes what the notes represent. Getting my fingers to follow along happens sporadically at best. My chanter technique is improving daily. I am still mystified as to how to keep pressure on the bag with my arm, replenish the bag's air with my lungs without passing out, and play a tune in time all at once. The instructors assure me that it comes in time, much like riding a bicycle. Once I have it I will have it. I have to trust them on this. At the moment, it is not apparent.

So far, my small group of students has been introduced to a 4/4 march, a 3/4 retreat march, a 6/8 march, a jig, a reel, and a strathspey. The strathspey is unique to traditional Scottish music. It is music designed with dancers in mind. The unembellished notes are punched, which gives the music its drive. The timing is 4/4, but rhythmically a lot more is going on. The pattern is one of held and cut, cut and held notes that gives so much Celtic music its flavor.

We were also introduced to Piobaireachd [pronounced Pee-brock] music, which is Scottish classical music. Piobaireachd begins with a theme, which is embellished and elaborated upon through the course of numerous movements. Piobreachd tunes fall in the categories of salutes, laments, and gatherings. The laments are particularly attractive and quite haunting. One of the nice features of the Shenandoah Piping School is the daily recitals presented by members of the faculty.

As I pursue piping I have to remind myself that it's the journey rather than the destination that matters most. There are some places with this instrument at which I will never arrive. Admitting to limitations is never easy. However, I plan to keep taking steps forward.

Next week I will be on the Carolina coast with a stack of books by my side. I have not mapped out my reading list exactly. I intend to do so before we set out for the beach on Saturday. When I do I will post it. We will be in South Nags Head between mileposts nineteen and twenty. We are in the phonebook. If you are at the beach and wish to say hello, give us a call. We'd love to see you.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

More from Maryville

Bluegrass musicians are incredibly friendly, humorous people. Tony McManus, one of the instructors and performers at the camp I attended this week, is from Paisley, Scotland. He had numerous jokes about some of the proclivities of his motherland, namely its emotional aloofness and its notorious stinginess. These are his jokes, not mine. Any offense given to persons of Scottish ancestry is understandable and should probably be taken if it helps.

There was a man in Paisley who loved his wife so much he almost told her.

There was another man in Paisley who took his children each and every Christmas to see Santa's grave.

Tony is noted as a very talented fingerstyle and flatpicker guitarist in the Celtic tradition. If you are a fan of the acoustic guitar, I recommend his Ceol More CD. It is one of his more recent recordings. I listened to it countless times on my longish drive from Maryville back to Winchester today.

Invariably, when bluegrass musicians get together they tell banjo and banjo player jokes. Banjos and banjo players are easy marks. Here are some of my favorites.

What do you call a banjo player without a girlfriend?

Homeless.

What do you call a pretty woman on a banjo player's arm?

A tattoo.

St. Peter was having a monotonous day at the pearly gates. He decided to ask some new and different questions of the prospective entrants. He asked the next three persons in line to tell him their annual incomes. The first two persons incomes were sizable. "Ah," Peter noted, "must be hardworking professionals." The third person reported a rather meager sum. So, Peter asked him, "What kind of banjo did you play?"

This coming week I am changing gears. I move from using my fingertips to the pads of my fingers. I am at Shenandoah's piping school. I am hoping it gives me a head start on my week at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow in July.

That's it for the moment. Peace.

Maryville, TN

Here is a day in the life of a guitar camper at Steve Kaufman's Acoustic Kamp. Steve Kaufman is the three-time National Flatpkicking Champion. The only one in the history of the award. Other guitarists have won it twice, but no one has won it three times.

Breakfast begins at 7:30 a.m. and is served through 9:00 a.m. The late serving time is to accommodate all of the pickers who stayed out too late the night before picking and grinning into the wee hours. The lodging and food is decent for college campus fare. It is ample and satisfying. Maryville College, by the way, is one of the small liberal arts college gems of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The campus, which dates back to 1819, is stately with architecturally attractive buildings that cannot be mistaken for anything other than halls of learning. The campus is a half hour outside of Knoxville with a commanding view of the Smoky Mountains on the near horizon.

After breakfast, there is a morning jam session in a breezeway between the campus' Fine Arts Center and Music Hall. It is a sight to behold. Literally, dozens of groups of banjos, fiddles, guitars, and mandolins playing one tune.

There are two formal classes each day, both of which are two hours. One is from 10:00 a.m. to 12 noon. The other is from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The classes have ranged from the highly theoretical and technical to the very practical. My head and hands hurt. But it is a blissful pain. Before dinner, the jam sessions resume.

Each evening there is a concert in the chapel. The instructors are the performers. The concerts have ranged from traditional folk to bluegrass to acoustic jazz to Texas swing. My favorite instructors so far have been Beppe Gambetta of Genoa, Italy (I had a small master class -- eight students only -- with him. I added a link to his site for fans of the acoustic guitar) and Adam Granger. Granger is the guitarist for The Guys All Star Shoe Band of Priarie Home Companion Fame. He, of course, is from Minneapolis. After the concert, which ends ordinarily at 10:30 p.m., as you might well imagine, there are more jam sessions.

The campers are from all over the country with a smattering of persons from Europe and Asia. The ages range from middle school into the twilight years.

I have learned enough over this week to keep me busy at the guitar for a decade or more.

I appreciate the occasional posts by some of you who have been following my narrative. Please know that I read them.

That's it for the moment. Peace.