The Weekend at Holden

I should just have out and done with it: I don't do very much on the weekends. Or rather, I don't get very much done. But this is good, and rather like the concept of "un-schooling" that someone explained to me a while back. (Yes, there is such a thing.) The "un-schooled" don't go to school, nor are they home-schooled: sort of an official form of truancy. Mom might show and tell a bit about math, but there's no set curriculum to be got through. And there's the crux: "because I wasn't doing anything," my friend explained, "I did a lot of things."

So the weekend. I spent Friday afternoon, once school let out, sorting the village's trash in Garbology duty -- a monthly commitment for staff at Holden. Green glass here, brown glass there, pop cans, tin cans, landfill, burnables, compost. Friday was my February day. Other community expectations include attendance at worship (daily), staff meetings (every other week), and weekly dish-team. And of course, whatever your job is. On Saturday I had dish-team, except I forgot. Then I remembered. Just a little late. Well, forty-five minutes late. Well. In the end I went.

I did my laundry. This meant washing it in cold water (we don't have enough hot water to give everyone a shower on any given day, much less to spend on clothes) and hanging it to air dry -- because we don't have enough power for clothes dryers. So think of me when you're taking hot showers and drying your clothes any old time you want. Think of me, too, when you're doing your laundry the day you run out of clean underwear. Air drying takes a bit long for that strategy; gone are such carefree days...

I've been knitting a hat with yarn my mom sent me, so I worked on that. A student taught me to cable, and now I'm making a strap for a bag on another set of needles. This is the pattern:

CO 17 st
R 1, 3, 5, 7: P1, K3, P9, K3, P1
R 2: K1, P3, C6F, K3, P3, K1
R 4: K1, P3, K9, P3, K1
R 6: K1, P3, K3, C6B, P3, K1
R 8: K1, P3, K9, P3, K1
Work Rs 1-8 to desired length.

Used to be gibberish to me, too. Then I moved to Holden.

Watched a movie in Koinonia Fireside Saturday night: LARS AND THE REAL GIRL. Highly, highly recommend it. And I read the last fifty pages of a book I'd set aside months ago, one of Bill Bryson's lovely travelogues.

Decided we'd tackle the imperfect tense in Spanish this week, and set dates for performances of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED) [March 28] and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST [June 5]. Helped one student memorize lines and received a letter from another with instructions not to open it for a year. I sealed it up and tacked it to my bedroom wall, where I plan on not losing it.

Church happened. (In fact it often does.) Saturday evening we sang Vespers '86, that service I called Holden Evening Prayer until I found out there were multiple settings of Evening Prayer original to Holden, best distinguished by year of composition. Vespers '86 is the one we call Candle Light at Valpo. Then Gather Matins ("pink book," again, in Valpo parlance) on Sunday morning, and mass in the evening, where, yes, yes, what you always suspected is true: "God be with you," is more commonly formulated than "The Lord be with you"; likewise, "Go in peace. Serve the living God!" instead of "Serve the Lord"; and "Creator, Christ and Spirit" instead of Father, Son and same. We use inclusive language in a way that has gotten out of hand in the past, cf. Soul Purpose's experience at the Village time before last. Also we sang ELW 859 instead of ELW 858 for our closing hymn. Both are called "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty," but the version we sang eliminates every other reference to "Lord," "him," "King of creation," etc. Sometimes that makes me sad, because we discard poetry I rather liked and disbelieve our own potential to teach our children prayer without teaching them there's a very large man in the sky. But I rather liked the replacement Sunday night when I found out they'd traded out the line, "Ponder anew what the Almighty can do/ if in his love he befriends you." If in his love he... what? I'd never known what to make of that. Now it's "infinite love here befriends you." So I am mollified.

Everyone is welcome at the table, and when we pray Jesus' prayer, it's not a specific version. The invitation, "Please use the form and words that are closest to your heart," is often heard as preface. I think that's nice. I think it means you could pray in German or Spanish or Greek if you wanted to, but in the end you just hear two English versions unfolding side by side. And like I said, I think it's nice. At Valpo we alternated between "Hallowed be thy" and "Hallowed is your," and I suppose I always had this feeling that change was being foisted upon us -- that we should just stick with the traditional formulation and not force the introduction of this contemporary "Save us from the time of trial" business. Hearing people respond to the "words closest to your heart" invitation with that "other" version was just an experience I needed to have, I guess.