27 Dresses. Not.

Well, it COULD be a thrift shop purchase, although it looks more like a nightgown with mosquito netting. (Wiki Commons)

Could you put in some pew de soy?

What?

During journalism grad school, I got a job copy editing the local morning rag. Glen, one of the typesetters, who had been an English teacher before the unruly kids almost destroyed his gentle soul, was getting married and had handed me the wedding announcement.

"Oh," said I. "Peau de soie? Well, does her gown entail any peau de soie? Probably; most do. Why don't you ask Esther and find out."

He did. It did have pew de soy and some Allan's son's (Alencon) lace as well. Still, I sent him to the Community Editor with the announcement, as it was her job to marshall all the laces and silks and satins into regimented rows, always ending in, "The couple will honeymoon in Myrtle Beach." Everyone who lived in Athens, GA, honeymooned in Myrtle Beach. I suspect they thought a passport would be required if they ventured farther afield.

I missed that wedding. I even missed the one wedding for which I was supposed to be a member of the wedding party. Lord, how I did not want to do that. I managed to get a strep throat a few days before that wedding, which was to be the day before my college graduation, and two days before my husband, who was getting his doctorate, and I moved to Denver from Binghamton, NY. So I bombed out. Whew.


I think I am phobic about weddings. It might have something to do with the wedding in the movie 16 Candles. Or maybe the 1978 movie, A Wedding, directed by Robert Altman and casting funnywoman Carol Burnett in an unaccountably bleak role. A wedding, it always seemed to me, was a prescription for one kind of disaster or another. So I avoided them. Even my own...and I've had three, or four if you count the last one.


Interfaith marriage? Problem solved

The first one was fraught with peril because the groom was Jewish and I was nominally Roman Catholic, although I had, by age 20, long since abandoned that nonsense. We could find no clergyman to marry us. After much dialing, I finally found a New York State Supreme Court Justice who agreed to do the deed as long as it could be on a Wednesday morning in March. OK.

The attitudes toward this happy event ranged from horrified to OK with it. Well, maybe a bit more. For example: 

• My father, the RC patriarch, was not happy. 
• My Episcopalian grandmother, my mother's mother, was happy. She liked Paul, my fiance. 
• My brother was 15. That is, he didn't really care. Sure, it was a day off from school--two because of the trip from Long Island to Binghamton. 
• My husband's favorite aunt--and mine too, as it would turn out--flew from NYC the night before and back the next afternoon. She was a grand lady, and also the able long-time cable desk chief at Time, Inc. She was happy. I think she was as happy a my grandmother. They were much alike.
  

There was also Paul's best friend as his witness and my best friend as mine. I think they were both on the negative side of the midline between ecstatic and horrified, but only just.


But if you value your belief that weddings are a priori happy occasions, do not look at that wedding picture. We all look like we've had the word from the stormtroopers and we're next. All of us.


Next time I got married, it was in Athens, GA. I was in grad school, had just divorced No. 1, and No. 2 seemed like a good bet. He was also a journalist, and, in fact, the marriage lasted 16 years, a lot better than the scant five for marriage number one. The wedding? Neither of us wanted clergy, so we trotted over, with our two best friends, to the offices of an elderly judge. At one point, we had to quietly snake the rings off each other's fingers because the old judge had forgotten we'd done that already. So we did it again. I think he got tired after that, or he might have gone round again.


The reception was a barbecue at a friend's house. We fell out of a hammock together after too many peach daiquiries.


Third time's the charm

Marriage number three (five years and counting) was supposed to be the first actual church wedding I'd ever had. I had become a nominal Episcopalian, mainly for the coffee hour as freelancing is lonely work, and my husband was Church of England, being a Brit. We even had the de rigeur conversation with the Rector who assured us it was very important to involve the church community, who would be there for us as marriage took its inevitable toll on us (he didn't put it that way.) We nodded. Then Simon ran off to fly to Africa or someplace on business, and I went home to wonder how I could ever even get through buying some kind of frou-frou dress, never mind figuring out how to involve Simon's three grown daughters in the ceremony, as the Rector had suggested. A dilemma indeed as at least one of them hated me (and still does.) And this is supposed to be joyous?






"Why don't you just go get the license today and I'll marry you Saturday night. It will be fun. I'll get champagne," she said.


I called Simon at work and he agreed to meet me at the county office where marriage licenses could be procured.

On Saturday, we cleaned out part of the basement, took the stuff to the landfill, and returned the borrowed truck to its owner. It began to snow. Hard. Our return trip, from the mountains around Camp David where his friend lived, among the constant coming and goings of the presidential copter and 24/7 fighter jets on patrol, was really slow. But I really wanted to paint my toenails.

I have no idea why it was so important to me to paint my toenails.  For this wedding, I was wearing a purple two-piece dress I had gotten from my cousin's thrift shop.


Well, it wasn't really a thrift shop. My cousin manages a big apartment building in Washington, DC, and when someone moves out, they often tell him to take what he wants. One woman left a ton of books, a ton of clothing, a ton of kitchen equipment. He took it all. When my friend Noeleen and I visited, while Simon was in Africa, we each chose what fit us from the selection in Dennis's spare room. She got mainly shoes; I got mainly clothing.


Anyway, between trying to fluff up my hair after the snow experience and painting my toenails for the open-toed shoes to go with the thrift shop dress, we were late. Quite late. The cell phone call to Jane, the minister, produced ice almost as bad as what was on the roads. "If you're not here in half an hour, I won't do it," she said. "Noeleen is already here."


We got there. And it was fine. Short and sweet. Then Jane, her husband, Noeleen and we newlyweds had champagne, and then we drove through the blizzard to our favorite Indian restaurant in Baltimore.


Three weeks later, we had the reception on the date of the original, non-starter church wedding, since it was already booked and paid for. I would have gone through with that wedding itself, I guess, but when I called to tell the Rector that we had already gotten married, so it would just have to be a blessing and not a full wedding, he said that was all right. Civil weddings could be blessed.

"What? You were married by a bona fide minister? Then I can't bless it," he said. "It has already been done."


He wasn't too fond of us after that. The community seemed OK with it, though, as those we had invited all came to the reception. I wore some old black silk pants I had, a silk chemise I had bought at Nordstrom Rack, and the thrift shop Asian coat thingie in embroidered yellow silk I had found the week before. No, really. This time it WAS from a thrift shop.


But I did, the morning of the reception, decide maybe I should go have my hair done.

A thank you note to Father Andrew M. Greeley

Carraroe, Ireland, home of Andrew Greeley's fictional character, Nuala Ann McGrail (Wiki Commons)

A couple of years ago, Father Andrew M. Greeley, getting out of a cab in Chicago, got some of his clothing caught and was dragged. He suffered a fractured skull which, since he was over 80 at the time, was hardly likely to be a good thing. It finished his book-writing career, but not his career as a priest. He still writes weekly homilies, which appear on his website.

I am not a Roman Catholic. I am a sometimes-kinda-sorta Episcopalian (Church of England) with Druid tendencies and New Thought understanding of how it all works; in addition, I operate via existential behaviors. So it is odd that Father Andrew M. Greeley is, for me, the revealer of infinite wisdom, as he has been since I read a column he wrote about Star Wars, long ago and far away―to be precise, in my apartment in a New York City high rise, 17^th floor. The column, syndicated at the time, appeared in the New York Post, a rag I rarely read. At that moment, at the zenith of my unbelief in much of anything, Greeley captured me heart and soul with his insightful comments on that iconic movie, which was eliciting outrage from a great many clerics at the time. It has been a good, long time that I have been an avid fan of the writing of Father Andrew M. Greeley.

It is with the utmost sadness and distress that I admitted to myself this morning that the creator of stories I have loved so well for so long shall not, though he yet lives, offer me any more spirit-lifting, mind-engaging parables of the modern age and its relation to the numinous. His website has said so for months, but I refused to understand. Selfishly, I wanted more.  Except for his accident two years ago, we’d have had another mystery novel from his pen by now, and I’d have eaten it whole, relished every word, every nuance of his lovable characters developed over the past 30 years or more.

No more Nuala Ann McGrail

I realized, finally, that there will be no more Nuala Ann McGrail mysteries, populated by the world-famous but self-effacing (while being altogether fierce) singer from Carraroe, County Galway and her husband and several children, one of them fey like Nuala Ann, and the wonderful wolfhounds, going now into the second and third generations from the original pair of savior dogs.

No more Mike Casey the Cop showing up in the Nuala books and in the luminous works about the tiny fresh-faced bishop in a Chicago Cubs jacket, the Rt. Rev. John Blackwood Ryan (“Call me Blackie”) and his just-retired boss, Sean Cardinal Cronin, who also starred in an early series by Greeley about the problems inherent in celibacy, and in human relationships in general. 

No more one-offs, like the ultimate entry in modern mainstream fiction, Lord of the Dance.

And so, finally, I grieve, and feel compelled to acknowledge the gift while Greeley yet lives.

Moving house

I grieve, in the middle of my angst about finally getting to move into the house we bought in October, finally financed in December after we had danced to the unfortunate tune of an incompetent mortgage broker for six weeks, and which has been delayed by acts of God―snow and the vagaries of lawyers and builders―since then. It looks now as if my original extended estimate―Feb. 10―will be about right. We shall thus be denied a trip to London on the 9^th to meet with Simon’s boss, the lovely man who made it possible for him to move and work here while the company remains in the U.S. We shall endure an extra week in the interim rented house, where light bulbs burning out cause major power shorts (the owners need to have that looked at!) and frighten the dog into hour-long shaking fits. The event doesn’t do much for me, either.

Father Greeley’s homily concluded with the phrase “we should never let the important interfere with the essential.”

Indeed. And so I suddenly got happier, as I began to ruminate on the fact that the to-do list often overwhelms the must-attend list. The house? It’s a to-do list thing.

The scourge of the to-do list

The to-do list, I realized (as so many others have before me, and will after) that the to-do list is how we become human doings rather than human beings. It is how parents become so convinced that their children have to do well that they forget to allow them to be well, to help them to be well.

It is how marriages become hollow, targeted only on acquiring houses, boats, cars, and trips, and not on cherishing the other person and the relationship itself.

It is how careers become things such as those execrable excuses for meaningful work carried out, and finally exposed, on Wall Street..the faux work of the tycoons and tycoon wannabes; their 'work' did not express stewardship for the world and its people. Not at all, at all.

Working the do-do list is how actors become idols rather than artists, how artists become caricatures instead of the bearers of cultural understanding.

The to-do list is how cultures become the sham found in most nations these days. Not just western ones; it’s too easy to point fingers at America.. Islam is just as much at fault for putting the to-do list first:

Item One; Make westerners accept Islam, regardless.

Item Two: Repel all incursions into Islam of thought from other cultures.

Etc.

Consider how different the world would look if it followed a must-attend list rather than checking off its to-do list. Would there have ever been a 9/11? Probably not. Regardless of who did it (and I am mainly persuaded it was an inside job), it wouldn’t have been carried out because the event fails, in every possible way, to attend to the welfare of anyone. It cannot actually even attend to the welfare of whoever did it and thought to profit from it in some way. There can be no profit in destruction. If there could, then the eternal quest would be not for order, but for chaos.

Appearances abound; truth, not so much

There may be a temporary appearance of profit in harmful deeds, from 9/11 to the BP blowout in the Gulf to trashing a co-worker whose job one covets…but appearances are allied with the to-do list. “What a success he is!” we may say. “Look at all he has done.” We do not say, “Look at all that he is.” Or even “Look at all he isn’t.” We don’t look at all at human beings; we simply look at human doings, and judge accordingly. Thankfully, even this semi-atheist is familiar with the phrase “Justice is mine, saith the Lord.”

And so it is. No human can mete out ultimate justice. The universe will do it in its own time, I say. (Others would say God does it.)

Meanwhile, our task―as human beings―is to attend to those things we must do: 

• Care for others, not just about them.
• Do valuable work, whether or not for a paycheck.
• Balance our to-do list (it is, after all, necessary to vacuum the hallway sooner or later) with listening to the music of the universe, and gleaning what it can say about contributing what we can.

The judgment of the universe will be, I think, that Andrew M. Greeley is a brilliant teacher, whether he teaches through novels or homilies, through abundant life energy or in the less active moments of his current life.

And for that, and countless hours enjoying the universes he has created and mulling the spiritual food he offers so entertainingly, I thank him.

***

Dear Father Greeley,

I realize you have worked both lists for decades, and it is time for your must-attend list to be mainly about your own relationship to the numinous. And I thank you for all you have done for me for so long. But you must know: When I’ve finished my daily to-do list from here on, knowing I will lack a fresh Blackie Ryan or Nuala Ann book to please me, I will grieve. But I will also continue to thank you, and to commend your work to anyone I feel needs both a laugh and some spiritual instruction. You are a true mensch. I adore you. I wish you well.

Love,

Laura

King Henry VII has his hand in my pocket!

The fat bastard  king whose religious over-reaching just made me reach into my pocket, 500 years later! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not literally, of course. He died a few hundred years before I was born. But now that I live in England, and am buying a house in England, I have had to insure myself against his depredations.

Well, not his exactly, but the Church of England’s. When Old Hank dissolved the monasteries in 1534, making himself rather than the Pope the head of the church in England and calling it the Church of England (a bit better, admittedly, than the Church of Fat Syphilitic Henry). Before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, each one employed a rector to see to the good repair of the church building. When the church had been disemboweled by the old head-lopper, no such position remained. Churches began to fall into disrepair.

What to do? Simple. Each county’s church administration was given the power to require local residents to kick in for the repairs. Not only that, but the requirement was attached to the deeds so that anyone buying a house or farm with chancel repair liability in the deed would get the opportunity for the touch as well.

Well, you might think, each household would be apportioned a part of the cost so that the unfair burden was equally unfair to all. Right?

Wrong. There was no demand that the plot size dictate the size of the theft…I mean donation. The Parochial Parish Council, if it thinks your pockets are deep, can arrive with an articulated lorry if they want to, the better to carry away your worldly goods to make repairs to their otherworldly amusement park. I mean church.

These days, it’s even more  unfair and that’s before I get into the real unfairness of it. These days, local residents whose land is subject to assessment of this enforced tithe might practice any religion or none at all, whereas in Hank’s time they were at least all Christians…although there would be a distinct problem with that a generation later when Queen Mary the Guppy Gobbler (offspring of Henry) declared the C of E to be anathema, and her successor, half-sister Queen Elizabeth I (offspring of Henry) declared all R.C.s to be anathema. But I digress into the vagaries of a convoluted and somewhat incestuous interplay between church and state in England. The situation is bad enough without bringing Henry’s half-sibling children into it.

Bad news if your land had a chancel repair liability for this church. On the other hand, it's in Scotland and there are seven distilleries nearby to drown your pain or help with becoming a homeless drunk. (Wiki Commons)

The whole thing came to a head when the church in Aston Cantlow needed almost 100,000 pounds worth of repair. The church billed Andrew and Gail Wallbank for the amount, and the Wallbanks fought it. And lost. Now they owe well in excess of 300,000 pounds, including legal and court costs for themselves and holy mother church. They couldn’t pay the 100,000 without selling the house the right of repair liability was attached to…because of the liability being part of the deed. Who would be dopey enough to buy a house one knew would make one susceptible to rape and pillage by holy mother church?

However, like Mighty Mouse saving the day, into the fray leaped the insurance industry. They created Chancel Repair Insurance. For a nominal amount, like a one-time fee of about 50 pounds, they’ll insure homeowners against attacks by mouldering churches and the Rev. Dimwit. It behooves one to buy the insurance even if one gets a clear deed with no chancel repair liability written into it. Why? Because this stuff is medieval, literally. As our solicitor told us, the church can afford to have someone spending all their time poring over old―really, really old―deeds and writings to see if maybe local properties had been transferred and the chancel repair liability had inadvertently been left off the documentation at some time between 1543 and the present.

Our solicitor says we are probably safe, since our new house is being built on land that was either agricultural or mining property for a very, very long time and thus would not have borne the householder’s burden of chancel repair liability, since it probably was never land owned and sold off by the church. But, she also said, one never knows. There are lots of old documents lying around, and the Church of England, with a current backlog of 925 million pounds worth of chancel repairs awaiting some fresh peasants to be plucked, has only until Oct. 13, 2013, to find ALL the properties with chancel repair liability and get them on the books. Who knows what danger may lurk in old church basements?

Our solicitor recently had to advise one of her clients not to buy a field he badly wanted because the legal search had turned up a chancel repair liability attached to it…and since he was a wealthy farmer…..and the local C of E priest probably knew that… “Just buy a different field,” she told him.

As for the Wallbanks, I can find nothing about what has happened to them recently. They had until Feb. 2009 to pay up, or else. They would have had to sell the farm to pay up―thereby impoverishing themselves in their old age as they were already in their late 60s―but they couldn’t do that. Who would buy it, knowing they’d have to clear 300 pounds worth of debt to the church….and that the church could still AT WILL demand more? In any case, the legal proceedings the Wallbanks lost also resulted in the deed being encumbered with a phrase noting that any sale would need the approval of the Parochial Parish Council.

 It is interesting to note that the Appeals Court, back in 2002, found in favor of the Wallbanks. It is even more interesting to note that the House of Lords overturned that decision in 2003.

And they said serfdom had been abolished.