Seraphic Goes to Scotland

Pray for Irish Priests

2009-11-27T13:26:00.008Z

When my mild-mannered friend Der Gute was preparing to study in Canada, I warned him that people might give him a tough time for being German. It's been at least forty years since we've had a big migration of Germans, so nobody bothers to teach Canadian kids not to be rude to Germans. And World War 2 is refought on TV nightly.

"What do I do if they do?" he asked.

"Tell them you were born in 198-," I said.

So Der Gute went to Canada and, sure enough, people made jokes about his Germanness and some Polish foreign student made his life miserable, but Der Gute hung onto the thought that he was born in 198- and Hitler was not his fault.

This is a terrible week for the Catholic Church in Ireland. Terrible. Of course, it is entirely the fault of some bishops and priests and cops (many now dead) in Ireland, just as the scandals in Irish-dominated Newfoundland and Irish-dominated Boston were entirely the fault of some bishops and priests and cops in Newfoundland and Boston.

If my experience of Canada and the USA are anything to go by, I predict four outcomes: 1. the public at large will blame all bishops and all priests (though not all cops), 2. the public at large will neglect to remember that the kids who were abused were Catholics themselves and use the scandal to demonise practising Catholics, 3. the public at large will suspend their belief that most child abusers were themselves abused as children and 4. innocent priests are going to be insulted to their faces, including ones in their twenties.

This would be a good week to pray for good priests, especially good priests in Ireland, especially good young priests in Ireland. This is a time for laypeople to embrace their good priest friends and to befriend other priests. The worst thing we can do is make good priests feel isolated and defensive and unloved.

Maybe it was a better life for priests when they had as much importance in a village as any other tradesman. A mediaeval secular priest had his cow, his little garden, his little profit, his little church and his pastoral duties. He was not raised above his fellow villagers as a spiritual superman. He was not left in splendid isolation, a rival authority to the mayor or parish council president. However, such simple priests didn't always know how to read or preach, so there were various reforms which led to the situation of the 19th century priest-boss who had lots of obedient parishioners but very few friends, unlimited power but no-one to love.

I have a priest friend who loves to meet married couples. He loves female companionship, and I had to smile once when he enthused about a young married woman he had met, briefly mentioned her husband and said, "That's a great married couple to be friends with." Now I could be wrong, but what I think he meant was, "That's a safe woman to be friends with." And I'm all in favour of priests having prudent and chaste woman friends, woman friends happily married to someone else. And the more friends the better. Safety in numbers.

The difficulty of parish priests in making friendships was brought home to me when I did an M.Div. and listened to lectures about clerical misconduct. There was a strong emphasis on not confusing roles. Just as a doctor shouldn't practise on members of his or her own family, a priest shouldn't depend on the people he ministers to for affection. And, therefore, a priest should look outside his parish for his emotional support. With parishioners, he has to be professional. The same holds true for lay ministers.

A female classmate and I worried about this, since if we got jobs ministering professionally in a parish, that would mean we wouldn't be able to date anyone we met in that parish. Being obsessed with romance and marriage, that was a real problem for us. Meanwhile, we wondered about priests stuck in isolated areas, where the only people around were parishioners. And what about priests (and lay ministers) with no extended families?

So how do priests and laypeople balance friendship and prudence? First, I think laypeople should stop thinking of celibate priests as spiritual supermen. They're single men called to be priests. They like the stuff single men like. They suffer the problems single men suffer. They get lonely on Friday nights. They eat out of tins over the sink. They like to be invited to parties. They like to go out with friends to the movies. They like women who don't make scary demands of them.

So it would be nice if laypeople, especially married laypeople or other single men, asked priests to dinners, parties and the odd movie from time to time. Not teenagers. If you're too young to hang out with middle-aged laymen, you're too young to hang out with middle-aged priests.

Some priests have to turn down their parishioners' social invitations because other parishioners start wondering if there is favouritism going on, blah, blah, blah. That's okay. But it would be nice if people made friends with priests not of their own parish. I do. Meanwhile, priests who don't have friends should consult with their spiritual directors.

Meanwhile, the least we can do for good priests, especially good Irish priests, at this time of horrible revelations about the revolting behaviour of some Irish bishops, some Irish priests and some Irish cops, is to pray for them. So let's pray for them.

It should go without saying that we must pray for the survivors of sexual abuse, too.

The Novus Ordo Turns 40 Part 3

2009-11-27T10:12:00.006Z

C.S. Lewis was down on church-shopping. He thought you should go to your parish church and lump it. However, if I recall this correctly, he thought the temptation to move around came from your annoying fellow worshippers, not from variations in the liturgy.

Amongst Catholics, there seem to be two official points of view on the topic: 1. thou shalt go to the parish church nearest thy dwelling and 2. just go where your soul is fed. I belong to the soul-feeding party myself.

When I moved to the USA for school, I immediately signed up with the campus parish. But this proved to be a mistake. First, the priest was very young, very charismatic and extremely good looking. I cannot tell you what he preached on because he was so handsome. Second, the pointedly political Prayers of the Faithful annoyed me. They didn't sound like prayers but like small diatribes. Third, the cantor sang Gospel music and Spirituals. She had a great set of pipes, but the music didn't help me pray. Actually, it made me (sitting in a crowd of fellow white people) feel uncomfortably like a tourist. But I have no hard feelings about this church, which I visited so rarely. It wasn't, for example, the priest's fault that his handsome face was a distraction to susceptible ladies like me. And I madly enjoyed the accent of the reader who announced, "If today you heah God's voice, hahden nat yo hats."

Onto the parish church nearest my dwelling. Terrible music. Absolutely terrible. And I was a zombie among other zombies. Onto the fine old church attached to snazzy university not my own. Bingo! Fantastic organist, amazing choir director, talented Boys' Choir and Men's Schola. The music was so good, I wept. My soul was fed.

Well, part of my soul was fed. One of the priests, the one who quite obviously dyed his hair, gave homilies that trembled on the border of heterodoxy. And some of the extraordinary ministers of the eucharist wore green sashes on Voice of the Faithful's We Support Our Gay Priests day. Seeing the green sashes, I spent Mass thinking about Gay Priests, both good and bad, and the sex scandals, and the oddity of VOTF, formed in protest of the sexual abuse of boys, now getting all worried about the new restrictions on homosexuality in the seminaries, instead of praying.

Again, the Prayers of the Faithful didn't sound like prayers but like endorsement of the aims of the Democratic Party. The Sunday after the Regensberg Controversy, one of the Prayers of the Faithful asked the Holy Spirit to bring wisdom to Benedict XVI. I took this as an insult and, near tears, demanded of the dyed priest what that was all about. (He had written it himself, but before the Regensberg story hit the papers.)

Home again, I went to the squat horror with my parents and listened, annoyed, as Father Cut Corners got through Mass lickity-split. A control freak, he had forbidden the current cantor from singing more than one verse of any hymn. His homilies were orthodox, but--like most priests, incidentally--he diverged from the words of the Mass several times. In short, Father, like most priests I know, made stuff up. This practise, after 35 years, was really starting to bother me. Having studied theology, I knew that every word in the Mass was there for a reason. Meanwhile, Father Cut Corners said Mass in an odd sing-song in an accent he had never lost despite decades in Canada.

"Laaaaaaaaaaaaamb ofGodwho taaaaaaaaaaaaakes away thesinsofthe worrrrrrrrrrld, havemercyonus. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamb ofGodwho..."

In the Novus Ordo, priests take centre stage, faces always turned towards us, backs turned to the crucifix and, if it hasn't been moved, the tabernacle. If they say Mass badly, or if they dispense with the Ordo as written to add their own creative spin to the liturgy, it really matters. (Here's my rather bitter take on how bad it can be.)

To escape what what priests do to the Novus Ordo in English, I began going to Mass at my town's German parish. The music was terrible. But the elderly expats were lovely, attentive and devout. The German priests said Mass by the book. I liked it there. I couldn't understand more than a few words of the homily, but I found the German of the Mass beautiful. The priests and people were reverent. I couldn't quite see what Martin Mosebach was on about.

Then I went to Scotland to visit friends. And my friend Benedict Ambrose took me along to a Sunday Mass said according to the Extraordinary Form.

To be continued...

Singles and Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T20:54:00.012Z

That's a photo of me as a so-called "Spinster Auntie" a few Christmasses ago, and this is my third post today!

I thought I had said my bit for the evening, but then I read this column by Dawn Eden, and the comments underneath, and my heart was wrung for Single people facing the holidays alone. Today is American Thanksgiving, and therefore the official beginning of the Christmas Season in the U.S.A.

So, first, Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers, commentators and lurkers alike. And to my Single readers I would like to say that spending the holiday alone sucks, so don't.

If you don't have a Thanksgiving Dinner to go to yet, find one. See if your university or parish community is hosting a dinner for people far from home. Call 'em up, promise to help wash dishes afterwards, and go. Failing that, make something special and invite a neighbour to have some. (Tip: priests and nuns are also Single and don't always have a party to go to themselves.) Or set a place at table for the person in history you would most like to have dinner with. (Mine: Nancy Mitford.) Eat the something special while conversing with Beloved Dead Historical Person. Write down your conversation afterwards.

Seraphic: Nancy, how could you shop your own sister to MI5?

Nancy: Well, Diana was a frightful Nazi, you know.

Seraphic: All you Mitfords seemed very extreme.

Nancy: We were simply mad, darling. Absolutely barking. Are you going to eat that? Ooh, just a little slice, please.

Hey, I sent myself a Valentine once. Afterwards, I wished I had sent chocolate.

I wrote this article for my paid gig to help out Singles facing Christmas. If you need a little cheering up tonight, have a look.

Meanwhile, I know not everybody has a family that they can stand. But if you do have one, and you can physically get to it, I do suggest you do. If the Mom-Dad-Sibs thing doesn't work for you, consider your favourite Auntie, Unkie or Gran.

The other secret to enjoying the holidays is not to complain about your Single Life except to other Single people (or me, as I've volunteered). Be happy. You might not be happy, but fake it. Fake it, fake it, fake it. That way, you will add to the jollity of parties and actually trick yourself into happiness. A good way to get into the frame of mind where you can fake happiness convincingly is to have a good howly cry beforehand. Get it out of your system. It worked for me and, since worry, angst and grief don't retire permanently when/if you get married, works for me still.

P.S. Fellow Married People: NO asking Single relations and friends if they've found anyone yet. If you slip, don't say "Oh, too bad" in that pitying tone of voice. Instead say, "Time enough for that! Have fun while you can, that's what I say. How about another slice of pie?"

Update: More unsolicited advice from Auntie Seraphic.

The Novus Ordo Turns 40 Part 2

2009-11-26T17:09:00.005Z

My family attended two churches in the 1980s: an old-fashioned church with a very Marian pastor and the cathedral downtown where first one brother and then the other had choir duties. This gave me some opportunity for liturgical comparison. When our old-fashioned church was sold and the squat horror was built, I had a lesson in comparative architecture, too.

I do not remember much about music in our parish old-fashioned church. Perhaps this is because I loved the sacred old building and am suppressing memories of the simply frightful woman cantor/choir director. (Her efforts in the squat horror come easily to mind.) I do remember one thing: My brother played the organ for our youngest sister's baptism, ending with the Habenera from Carmen. Perhaps because my brother was only 11, the associate pastor was amused.

But the music at the cathedral was sublime, and American tourists would brush away a tear or two after the angelic voices had finished their hymn. The tourists never found out, as I found out, that the cherubim behind my brother liked to sing "[Brother] has died, [brother] has risen, [brother] will come again." It was a sad example that liturgical abuse can go on even in an archdiocesan Cathedral.

The cathedral, which was rich, got in its blue CBW IIIs before the uptown parish, which was poor, put away its green CBW IIs. So although I first heard Palestrina and all kinds of gorgeous stuff in the cathedral, I first sang the bowdlerized hymns there too. My mother, of course, continued to sing the hymns the way they were written by their original Piskies and Lutherans. This is, after all, the woman who sang "God Save the Queen" at Mass on July 4th in rural Indiana when all around us sang "America", Samuel Francis Smith having stolen the tune. You may (if American) think this very naughty of Aged P, but you have to admit that cutting out "that saved a wretch like me" from Amazing Grace is even worse. We are wretches, so why not say so?

As a child, I was ambivalent about my brother's choir duties. The major difference between uptown and downtown Masses, I thought, was the snack. If we went to Mass updown, we would stop into a coffee shop for a donut. If we went to Mass downtown, we would get brunch at a nearby hotel. It was all the same to the infant me. However, once adolescence, and a really awful associate pastor, struck, I preferred to go downtown, hear the glorious music, eat the hotel brunch and lay in wait for various teen choir boys I met at dances.

The good old Marian pastor of my uptown parish moved on, as wonderful pastors tend to do, and the squat horror got a succession of liturgical monsters, including a priest who liked to play guitar during his own Masses. The aforementioned lady cantor held onto her duties with an iron grip, a failing voice and a mostly female amateur choir. The newly built squat horror, whose only beauty was ever the old stained glass windows, began to fall apart. But, having grown up, I abandoned my family to these difficulties and moved to a parish in another town.

This parish had a good choir, a fantastic organist/choir director and a charismatic pastor who told jokes against his bishop. It also had a liturgical dancer, a short-haired lady in green, who occasionally danced with a green veil up the aisle and around the sanctuary. I was at my super-progressivest ever, constantly using radically inclusive language, and saying "She" for the Holy Spirit (a habit I've only recently dropped FYI), but green veil lady embarrassed me. The anti-bishop jokes embarrassed me, too, but I was prepared to overlook that, as I loved my pastor and the music was great. That church was definitely a holy place, and I was sorry to leave it when I moved back home to study theology.

Theology school displayed a goodly number of liturgical abuses, but I will not enumerate them for I love my theology school with a filial love and had a word with the appropriate authority (i.e. the school's liturgy committee) about the ones I knew about at the time. Also, I myself was complicit by making communion bread with honey in it and goodness what else I did, in ignorance. The worst abuse wasn't the school's fault anyway. It came from a Latin American liturgical dancing troupe in which--as I discovered, quite horribly, during a dramatic backbend--not all the dancers were wearing underwear under their low-slung trousers.

All this said, I would like to stress that I grew up a child of the Novus Ordo, and its rhythms long ago dripped into my bones. I've heard it in Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Slovak, and I always knew where we were. (Well, okay, I got lost in Slovak.) I am used to Mass being bifurcated into the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I am used to Entrance Hymn, the Offetory Hymn, the Communion Hymn and the Recessional Hymn. I know when to stand and when to kneel. And I have to struggle with myself not to just process up to the front like a zombie for communion. Liturgical innovations that were supposed to increase active participation have bred a certain number of liturgical robots, and this may be one reason why so many faithful now clamour for active, ministerial, service in the liturgy.

To be continued...

Spinster Spinster Spinster

2009-11-26T10:15:00.009Z

Personally, I missed the memo that said it is now okay to call unmarried women over a certain age "spinsters."

Twenty years ago or thirty, in a bid to make life less humiliating for unmarried women, feminists tried to take the word "spinster" out of circulation. And since it had become a pejorative term, often coupled with "dried up old" or "with cats", that seemed just. But here it is again, used in every article I've read so far about the singer Susan Boyle.

It has been some time since many Scotswomen actually spun for a living. I suppose the world "spinster" was convenient when unemployed women had to tell their priest or minister what their profession/state in life was when they married. But surely most unmarried women have social role beyond being unmarried. (The church register has me down as "columnist".)

Now, I do not believe Susan Boyle had a profession before she embarked on her celebrity career. And perhaps journalists are less worried about annoying people on the dole than about annoying single women by choosing to write "from a Scottish spinister to a superstar" instead of "from dole to darling". On the other hand, they sometimes still do this to J.K. Rowling, "the single mother on welfare". However, I think it more troubling to comment on a woman's marital status than on her economic circumstances, as if being unmarried were by definition a misfortune. Being on the dole--misfortune. Being unmarried--not so much.

Although I am married now, I still retain a great interest in the circumstances of those who live the life of the single bed. And I think it would be all the better for single women--especially single women over 40 with cats--if we stopped referring to Susan Boyle before her big break as "the unknown spinster who." After all, the woman is still unmarried. Evidentally she didn't need to marry to fulfill her dreams.

The Novus Ordo Turns 40

2009-11-25T09:33:00.005Z

This post is not going to be rude about the Novus Ordo, a form of the Mass that critics call "the Nervous Ordo" for its pace, variability and large cast of characters. No. First I'm going to reminisce. And then I'm going to make yet another plea for the Usus Antiquior aka the Extraordinary Form of the Mass aka Trid Mass. Because on Sunday, the 40th anniversary of the New Mass, Catholic readers may be listening to homilies that try to make the contemporary Mass seem better by trashing the Mass we all had before and a privileged few have now. And I think that monstrously unfair and dishonest.

I began going to the Novus Ordo, which I though of until recently simply as "Mass", when I was a week or so old. At my first parish, this Mass had a folk choir, and by the time I had a working memory, it sang "God Save the People". I remember "God Save the People" because my mother, a monarchist, disapproved of it heartily and refused to sing it. This was my first introduction to the revolutionary idea that not everything that happened in God's House was a-okay.

Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression. I liked "God Save the People". It had a great dance beat, and as a child I appreciated dance beats in church. But here was this grown-up, my mother, in fact, who found something wrong with "God Save the People" and put a repressive hand on my shoulder when I bounced up and down to its tune.

I should point out that my mother also thought that God did care what you wore to church, and so she, her husband and all their children all went to Mass dressed nicely. She wore a hat and we girls wore berets, and when we moved to another parish, we were called "the Hat Family" by other families, as I discovered when I joined the Youth Group. My mother also thought that good behaviour at Mass counted, too, and glared balefully at her children when we looked like we might make a dash for the aisle or mutter to each other.

For our docile behaviour in church, Aged P was praised by a goodly number of Catholic Old Ladies, and her maternal heart swelled with pride. (Of course, there are some stinkers among Catholic Old Ladies, and on one occasion, when my father was taking one brother to choir duties at another parish, a Catholic Old Lady approached my mother after Mass and said, "I hope you have a father for all those children, dear.")

So if critics slam my old-fashioned attitudes towards what is meet and right to do at Mass, I will take refuge in blaming my mother. Perhaps even my discomfort when our first parish priest cut his homilies to make sure he got home in time for the football game can be blamed on some maternal cluck or sigh.

Mass was holy. I knew that. I could feel it. My first parish, a very modern one, shone with bright bulbs, but the brightest bulbs were in a huge halo above the altar. The altar was the focal point of the church, and the consecration was the climax of the Mass. The pastor was a jolly guy, given to jokes about football, but he took the consecration very, very seriously. Meanwhile, we always sat near carved wooden stations of the Cross, and they were, to my child's mind, beautiful and much more interesting than the homily or the long string of prayers the priest recited to us. I was always impressed by the tummy of Our Lord, for it didn't look like any tummy I had ever seen before: grooved with lines I now know is colloquialy called a six pack. The altar got it across that Our Lord was divine. The stations of the cross got it across that Our Lord was human--and a man.

My second parish, an old one that had been only half-heartedly modernized for the times, depended rather more on natural light to illuminate the dim glow of the old-fashioned overhead lanterns. It had marvellous stained glass windows of the mysteries and the sacraments: I am still particularly fond of the couple getting married and the lady in a mantilla standing behind a girl being confirmed. When the old church was sold, these stained glass windows were carefully removed and fitted into the squat little horror that was built on a side street in its stead. We sang old-fashioned hymns from the Catholic Book of Worship II. We never saw a folk group, and we never sang "God Save the People."

These externals were enormously important to the child me because at first I couldn't read and didn't pay a lot of attention to what was said. I don't remember when I was able to read everything in the hymn book and missalette. Eight, perhaps? But I was thoroughly Christianized by the time I was five, for my mother found me evangelizing my newborn sister with an upside-down Russian dictionary, telling her the story of the Baby Genius and his mother Marty.

To be continued...

Why He Became a Catholic

2009-11-24T11:55:00.007Z

Not B.A. This guy. A very interesting read. H/T Deborah Gyapong.

As I read it, I found myself thinking "Yeah, but some Catholics are the same." And he acknowledged this at the bottom.

If you are a believing Catholic or other kind of Christian, and you take Gospel as Gospel (but have some questions about why one Gospel says one thing and the next says another), it is devastating to go to the wrong theology school.

In general, I advise people who take their faith very seriously not to go into a graduate theology program but to go to ministry school, if they are interested in studying their faith formally: think M.Div., not PhD. Then I suggest that they look very, very carefully at the ministry schools they are considering. Never mind their scholarships and bursaries: look at their commitment to the historical faith. From what I heard as a student, I wouldn't set foot in the M.Div. progams of Yale, Princeton or Harvard. Never you mind Ivy League cache. All that glitters is not gold.

I suppose some might argue that what we need are more, not fewer, orthodox Catholic PhD students to create a kind of "surge"--a force of 40, 000 troops--to take over academic theology. It's a good idea, but I'd recommend that those on the frontlines have hides like elephants. The PhD grind is hard enough without being feared and rejected by some of your profs and used as ideological pawns by others. In such a situation, I can recommend only surrounding yourself with allies. Jesus sent the disciples out two by two for a reason.

Update: On a lighter note...

Writer's Block, Bawling and Business

2009-11-23T12:33:00.010Z

I have now finished my biweekly column, so I can chat with you guys.

Benedict Ambrose, upon reading these words in his office in the former stable block, will cheer. It is not nice to be married to me in the days leading up to my deadline. I walk around shooting sparks from my eyes, complaining about my nerves. Laundry goes undone, dishes unwashed, bed unmade, dinner uncooked. Occasionally I burst into tears. But then I simply sit down and write my article, and all is sunshine. I've never missed a deadline. Artistic temperament is all very well, but editors are not impressed by it and complicating an editor's day is the unforgiveable literary sin, at least until you are worth millions of dollars to him or her.

I used to cry before writing term papers in theology. At the time I thought it really weird. But then I came upon an account of Thomas Aquinas with writer's block before his inaugural homily at the University of Paris. He cried. And apparently that was common to mediaeval writers. Before writing, they would cry, and their tears seemed to wash away any writer's blockage.

"How do you do your creative work?" I recently asked an artist.

"Well, I can't just sit around waiting for inspiration," said the artist. "I just sit down and do it."

I'm like that too, except perhaps for the "sit down and do it" part. The reason why I blog every single day is to keep in the habit of writing every single day. That way, when I have to write something I will actually be paid for, I can automatically sit in front of the computer and type away, no matter how blocked and miserable I felt the evening before.

I haven't worked on my latest novel for some weeks now, woe. But it is simply a matter of just sitting down and doing it. Perhaps I should write novel first and then blog second.

I think the best time to write is first thing in the morning, preferably when no one else is awake. As a Single woman in Toronto, I had an iron-clad schedule, uninterrupted by such mundane married-lady matters as dishes, tidying, buying groceries and cooking supper. Let's face it--I was spoiled rotten. Once every two weeks or so my mother would stick her head in my door and say, "It's your sheet week". Groaning with frustrated artistic impulse--for had I not been interrupted?!?!--I would pull off the sheets on my bed and shove them down the laundry chute in the bathroom. And that would be it for outside pursuits until lunchtime. Tappity tappity tappity.

The Writing Schedule (circa 2008)

Awake.
Check email.
Get coffee.
Write blogpost.
Get second coffee.
Write chapter.
Eat lunch.
Surf web.
Do something I'm actually paid for (e.g. article, copyedit)
Surf web.
Get afternoon coffee.
Socialize.
Eat dinner.
Wash dishes.
Surf web.
Blog.
Sleep.

Actually, written out like that, it looks rather sad. For one thing, I wasn't doing a lot of reading of novels, and that is not good, for although the one way to learn how to write novels is to actually write novels, in order to write good novels, you need to read the best. For another, all that coffee was bad for my nerves.

Update: Here's a great article on Catholic blogging by Father Z.

Sunday Social Regrets

2009-11-22T16:00:00.002Z

Mrs. Seraphic McAmbrose, who spent the morning battling a wrap skirt that kept unwrapping and stockings that kept falling down, blew her socialising fuse shortly after her weekly post-TLM Gin of Human Kindness.

She is resting.

Pause Between Binges

2009-11-21T12:20:00.006Z

With warm memories of Dame Emma Kirby singing in our heads, my husband and I took the train south to Edinburgh. We arrived shortly after five and cooled our heels in the Old Town, waiting for it to be eight. B.A. rummaged in the Manuscript Room of the National Library; I surfed the web. And then I changed for supper in the National Library's loo, we bought a bottle, and we went to the party in the dark and mediaeval Canongate.

The party was on the fifth floor of a 19th century building with a bar tucked under it. We carefully ascended the worn stone steps to a large apartment. The large dining/sitting room was lined with painting, books, and great Victorian windows. There was a modern black iron stove in front of the disused hearth. Our host put pine needles and wood into it.

It was a Men's Schola party and a Friday, so the food was vegetarian and the drink plentiful. After supper the flatmate excused herself to go to bed and the Men's Schola settled themselves in for night of drinking and playing vinyl records. I found a friendly mossy green chair by the fire and the flatmate's In Style magazine and fell asleep, drifting once into consciousness when my husband sang along to The H.M.S. Pinafore.

I slept for an hour and a half, and then woke up to the Great Mass in C-Minor.

Kyrie. Eleison. Eleison. Eleison. Eleison.

Kyrie. Kyrie. Eleison.

The men were spellbound, which--I noted--did not stop them from talking.

"This recording of this piece," said the host, drinking his homemade beer, "is the pinnacle of Western Art."

The Mass in C-Minor continued. Two of the Men's Schola, discovering it was 3 in the morning, reluctantly put on their coats and went down to their bicycles.

"This piece," said the host again, "is the Pinnacle of Western Art."

There was some argument between the remaining men. Bach, one argued, was superior to Mozart.

"Bach," said the host, "is a monkey."

"Mozart," said my husband, "is Bach's bitch."

For such is learned conversation in the Canongate after three in the morning.

Handel followed Mozart, and after Handel, Brucker. B.A. audibly sang along. The host fell momentarily asleep. The McAmbrose family gathered their belongings.

The Canongate, black and mediaeval, was deserted. It was a quarter to five.

We caught a cab, arrived back at the Historical House, checked our email, went to bed.

"Oh no!" I said. "I forgot! We have the [artists' potluck party] tomorrow afternoon!"

So now I am off to make 24 lamb pies, Mozart still thundering in my head.

Eleison. Eleison.

Books and Blighters

2009-11-20T10:39:00.003Z

Here I am in a student computer cave at the University of Aberdeen. Emma Kirby sang beautifully last night, and it was such a thrill to see her in person. Invocante and I urged a blushing Benedict Ambrose to speak with her, but he kept saying things like, "She can't speak to everyone" and "It must be so boring hearing people tell you over and over again how wonderful you are."

Maybe it is a diffedent British thing. I, personally, would never get bored of people telling me how wonderful I was. I will never get bored of sexy young things of 37 telling me how wonderful I am when I am sixty-ish, if such things go on. Later, B.A. realized that perhaps he could have asked her to sign his programme.

Anyway, I am on my way to elevenses (such as consumed by Paddington Bear with his friend Mr Gruber) with B.A.'s uni friends, so I will leave you with two links from my paid gig.

The first one is about the great crop of Governor General Award nominees for 2009. The award has been given to Mistress of Nothing, which I really liked, but now that I think about it is the nominee that comes the closest to having Identity Politics. After a lifetime in Canada, I am very cynical about the Arts and Identity Politics.

The second one is my bi-weekly column, and this time it is about the Fort Hood Shooter. In case anyone has kittens about my stirring opening tale, I would like to make it clear that I am NOT suggesting that pro-life activists are like jihadists. I've never met a violent pro-lifer in my life, although I know that one or two anti-abortionists are currently twiddling their thumbs in American prisons.

I am very interested in teenage fanatics because I remember being a very uncompromising teenager myself. Teenagers (I recall) hate hypocrisy and love consistency. Because they are more willing than adults to risk all for a gorgeous martyrdom--and have less developed critical faculties--they are easily influenced or even exploited by smooth-talking seniors. So when I say I have a "sneaking half-sympathy for confused teenagers with dreams of jihad", I'm referring to their teenagehood and their longing to do what they think God's will, not to their actual dreams of jihad.

Nidal Hasan is not a teenager, of course, and if I believed in the death penalty, which I don't, especially not for people who think the death penalty might be their ticket to houri heaven, I would think the inevitable charge of High Treason and death by firing squad the appropriate response to his crimes.

Going to Aberdeen

2009-11-19T08:15:00.005Z

Going to Aberdeen to hear Emma Kirkby sing tonight. Long-time readers may remember that in his university days Benedict Ambrose used to pin up her picture. When first I read that, I looked up her photo and discovered that in her younger, frizzier days, she had a strong resemblance to me. She could be my aunt or something.

I wrote something to that effect in B.A.'s combox, and he suggested that the resemblance was not lost on him, and I thought, "OOO! I wonder if he fancies me."

And now we are married and shortly on our way to hear Emma Kirkby sing.

By the way, I know a man who loves Rita Hayworth movies. And I told my friend, who is tall, has bright red hair and had a crush on this man, that he was most probably attracted to her too. And, lo, they have been dating for over a year now. I really do think that men have "types", and now I should change out of my green flannel pyjamas.

Bats of a Feather Fly Together

2009-11-18T11:37:00.008Z

Twilight represents the commercialisation of my youth, and I resent it. When I was a girl, children were afraid of vampires; they didn't have cutsie-pie romances with them. Vampires were strictly adult. Pulse beating madly, on Fridays the 20-something I would cover my face with white powder and black liner, pull on the black dress my mother said was really a slip, and sashay into the night, bound for my favourite Goth club. I smirked as people on the subway stared.

Ah, the Goth nights of my youth! I brought pen and paper, for writing brooding poems of gloom. The club was divided into two chambers: a small and quiet lounge and a huge room with an earsplitting dance floor. The two chambers were connected by a black-lit hallway. This hallway reputedly had doors to little rooms where unspeakable things reputedly happened. Years later, I don't recall ever seeing those doors. Hmm.

Real-life vampires, in case you are wondering, are not very nice or balanced people. Some guy bit my friend Silke outside our favourite Goth club--actually BIT her, on the neck--and we her friends were all horrified. Of course, outside our favourite Goth club was probably the most likely place in the world for a girl to get bitten by a real-life vampire, so I always kept an eye out for freaks after that. Of course, we were all dressed as freaks, so maybe I am romanticising my prudence. I used to hoard my spending money so I could buy one intoxicating glass of red wine at the Goth club bar on Friday nights. Ah me. Youth.

By now you are probably wondering how I ended up with such a nice and normal guy as Benedict Ambrose. What you don't know is that right about when I was dressing like Beetlejuice, B.A. was dressing like an Edwardian dandy and had a disturbing resemblance to, er, Lytton Strachey. It is fitting that (straight) Eminent Victorian guy ended up with Victorian Vampire girl, that's what I say.

In fact, I am reminded of the words of an elementary school teacher on the subject. He was taught in an experimental, once-a-week Gifted Program, in which we Gifted were all semi-encouraged to do whatever we liked, alongside lessons in convergent and divergent thinking, research techniques, independent studies and everything else our educational masters were going to spring on our dimmer fellows in the years to come.

One of my Gifted classmates was named Kathleen, and Kathleen dressed as much like a punk as teachers allowed. For all I know, she splashed out for Gifted Program days, as our teacher was tolerant of everything creative. However, he didn't like Kathleen's look, and he said so. The problem, as he saw it, was that Kathleen's appearance was likely to attract the kind of guys who dressed like Kathleen.

"That's great," said Kathleen, age 14. "I love punk guys!"

As far as I recall, our stunned teacher said no more. But I think that he had an interesting insight into the subject, and I wonder if Kathleen found the punk guy of her dreams. I hope so. My own husband does a great Sid Vicious imitation when his hair is wet and spiky by screwing up his face and wailing:

I wanna bay
Assam taaayyy!!!!

So one perhaps must dress for success in romance. And in case you are dreaming of vampires, here is the National Post's advice on how to get the Vampire Look of the Season. But if you want to attract the Tweedy Trad Catholic Man of Your Grown-Up Dreams, I suggest cute mid-knee-length frocks, sweet little cardigans, cunning boots, elegant winter coats and a dashing little hat. Plus, of course, a white mantilla for Sundays, if applic.

Update: Prue sent this Australian review of the Twilight phenom. Whereas I agree with everything else in the article, I can't support the idea of aborting a baby, even if half-vampire.

Death of a Stalker

2009-11-17T09:57:00.025Z

Sometimes people die and you don't feel sorry. Of course, their relatives and close friends feel sorry, and some people feel sorrow at any reminder that they, too, shall die. So it doesn't do to say out loud, "Such-and-such is dead, and I'm not sorry." We have the fine motto of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est", which means "Of the dead, say nothing but good."

Which is why I did not, after all, leave a nasty comment on the deceased Stalker's webpage amongst the notes of condolence.

The Stalker, a nominal Anglican, is likely to have a grand and glorious funeral in a beautiful Anglican church. Although there were few in his social set before his illness, there are over 100 fans on his facebook page and there may very well be a crowd at his funeral. There will be speeches and chuckles. The convivial atmosphere will not be disturbed by me, or my dearest friend, or any suggestion that the Stalker was ever in serious spiritual danger, save, perhaps, for a rueful remark that the Stalker could be "difficult", followed by knowing, forgiving, laughter.

The Stalker was the only person I ever knew well enough to fear that he was in imminent danger of hell. And because I thought so, I told him so, through the medium of my blog, which he often read, because I simply couldn't stand to talk to him. He sulked about this on his own blog, not denouncing my belief in hell, mind you, but expressing a frustration that I did not think he was capable of change. (I did, though, which is why I bothered.) He was over 60 at the time.

The Stalker was born to devoutly religious, Protestant parents. He went to an evangelical college and showed a talent for art. He came to Canada, married, had children, pursued his artistic interests. He was a huge fan of the neo-platonist writer Charles Williams, and he tried to slough off the evangelicalism of his youth by joining a very "High" Anglican Church. He also indulged, rather heavily, in alcohol and marijuana. The marriage foundered.

The Stalker believed in romance, however. He craved it like alcohol and marijuana. He fell hard for his women, and when each affair ended, he had a hard time letting go. He stalked at least one, lying under her porch, listening for men. He grew old.

He grew old, but he could occasionally attract women with his erudition, his artwork, his dreams and, I believe, his melancholy. Success had eluded him, but he had undeniable talent. He owned an attic apartment in an old house in a bohemian district, and it was a fascinating rabbit warren of books, paintings, dust and dirty plates.

One night he went out to a bar/concert hall, and he met my dearest friend.

My dearest friend has a soft spot for old men, talented artists and failures. The Stalker was old, talented and, in his own estimation, a failure. My friend called me to tell me about this fascinating man she had met and wondered if she should date someone 30 years her senior.

"You'll be bored," I said brutally. "You'll miss young bodies."

At the time my friend was a true believer in the sort of love once called free. Free Love, however, turns out to be very expensive. "The woman always pays," says Live Alone and Like It, and ain't that the truth.

I liked the Stalker the first time I met him. He was "a Christian", and I thought he might interest my friend in Christianity. He had a lot of books. He was mostly bald and cadavernously thin, and he had yellow and grey teeth. But my friend adored him, and he was a talented artist.

The second time I came to visit, the Stalker discussed his failures. He sighed. He looked melancholy. My friend looked on in sympathy. My hackles rose. I loathe self-pity in men. And this guy was swimming in it. Swimming. But I did not say this to my friend. She was smitten, and at the time I believed discretion was the soul of friendship.

She moved in with the Stalker. They discussed the future. They bought a house together, a fixer-upper. He continued to drug and drink. When she had parties, he would withdraw, feeling uncomfortable among her young friends. When he had parties, she seethed at the amount of alcohol and drugs consumed.

He was a bad, selfish and brutal lover.

My freespirited friend lost all interest in sex. She moved into a room of her own and tried to renegotiate the relationship. She tried to convince the Stalker to drink less and to give up drugs. She eventually refused to allow his druggy friends into their house. Eventually, their romance was dead, but the Stalker would not bury it. Instead he assailed the slowly rising walls of my friend's privacy with passive-aggressive plaints and emails. Hundreds of emails. Eventually I was to read some of them, and I wondered if the Stalker were insane.

The Stalker stalked my friend. This was quite easy, as they lived on the same property. And it was quite obvious, as he blogged about it. He watched for her car. He watched the door. I came across him one night as he paced around to the front of the house, ever watchful. He obsessed over who my celibate friend might be sleeping with, and blogged his speculations.

I came home from studies abroad and found my friend half-crazy with frustration that the Stalker could not understand that their romantic relationship was over and had been over for years. To my surprise, when I offered to talk to him, she immediately agreed.

So I went to talk to him, "as a Christian", since I knew that at heart the man was still, despite his drinking, drugging and flirtation with Anglicanism, a Protestant evangelical. And as we talked, he suddenly turned melancholy and said that he might as well kill himself. As an example of emotional manipulation, it was breathtaking.

That was the end of my polite association with the Stalker. Not having known how bad things were between them, I had not known there were sides to be taken. I took my friend's side. Seraphic et Amica contra mundum.

The Stalker continued to obsess about sex, to write emails, to stalk, to blog about my friend. He read my blog, searching for information. He left comments. (Some of you may remember.) I erased them. I told him to stop. I called the police. The police called him. He left one or two more messages. He continued to drink and drug. My friend worked desperately not to lose the house. She rented rooms. She held down jobs. She felt guilty about the Stalker. I am sure his daily email rants encouraged her guilt, her self-reproach, her attempts at a kind of friendship.

And then--cancer.

Cancer. It was, he blogged, a wonderful thing, for it made my friend be kind to him. She took care of him until relations took over. She visited him in the hospital. And, in return, he continued to blog about her, his sexual frustrations, his sexual obsessions. Was she having sex? He revealed increasingly intimate details about her. He sent her abusive messages. He was obscene. Even as an old man, even as death approached, even wasted with illness, he could think of nothing but the erotic love he longed for.

I begged my friend to stop visiting him. It only made his behaviour worse. His new caregivers were horrified by his excesses. My friend felt happier, relieved that at last there were people (other than me) who understood what the Stalker was really like. And I, suffering when my friend suffered, for after my husband she is my dearest friend, realized that the Stalker would not stop obsessing sexually about, blogging about, writing about, her until he was dead.

And now he is dead, and my dearest friend is free. Miraculously, she is still sane. May the Stalker rest in peace. May his life be a lesson to us all.

Please stand now for the hymn.

Update: Called it. Big Memorial "Mass" in Anglican church with glorious music. Reception to follow in the Gay Village.

Die, Heroes, Die!

2009-11-16T22:35:00.003Z

Just watched a TV movie about Enid Byton, starring Helena Bonham Carter.

Oh my.

One day, there will be no heroes born before 1940 left to us as heroes--except, perhaps, if we are very lucky, Stalin.

A Currant Affair

2009-11-16T13:49:00.007Z

For the first time in my little life, I am not going to be home with Mum and Dad and my siblings for Christmas. That is the way the transatlantic cookie crumbles this year, alas. Benedict Ambrose and I have to save our airfare for March, when my book launches in Canada, so here we shall be at the Historical House over Christmas.

The Historical House is rather Christmassy place, having around it woods full of the holly and the ivy. And it is Georgian and Scottish, which is how Old Canadians and Americans rather envision Christmas, and why so many Christmas things get wrapped in tartan ribbon. But it seems very weird to have a Christmas without Mum in it. I mean, at our house, Mum OWNS Christmas.

But if one cannot have Mum at Christmas, one can have Mum's recipes. Answering my email of woe, Aged P has so far transcribed and sent her fruit cake recipe and her gingerbread recipe. These are always the first things to be made in Mum's Christmas kitchen, and as the fruit cake has to be wrapped in brandy-soaked cheesecloth for a month, it is not too early to be thinking fruit cake.

"My mother says you can get everything you want in co-op," said an extremely useful and knowledgeable local friend, but I decided to go first to our local Tesco. To my relief, Tesco did indeed have candied peel, candied cherries, blanched almonds, pitted dates, seedless raisins, muscat raisins and a nice small bottle of brandy. But it did not have red currants. Mum's cake has red currants. My cake must have red currants. And nowhere was cheesecloth to be found. I saw some cheesecloth in Morningside on Saturday, but it cost over 3 pounds ($5). I think not.

So after some fruit-and-cheesecloth-less searching in the town shops, my creaking rucksack and I headed for the next village by bus. (Towns and villages here are rather close together.) I went to my friend's mother's co-op and was delighted to find a bag of currants (not sure what colour, actually) and also all the other dried ingredients, priced higher than they cost at Tesco, yay!

Finally, although neither co-op nor the hardware store had any cheesecloth, the hardware stores had, beside the "chunky dish rags", a very cheesecloth-looking "stocking roll" for only 99p.

When I got off the bus to walk through the woods of the Historical House, my eye was suddenly arrested by the sight of red berries growing by the burn. And, lo, I realized that they were red currants. It occured to me that had I begun thinking about Christmas baking any earlier, I could have dried my own currants for free. However, it might take many fresh currants indeed to come up with 1/2 lb of dried.

Do not underestimate the amount of dried fruit needed for my mother's fantastic Christmas fruitcake. The recipe advises the cook to get a very large mixing bowl. Leaving nothing to chance, I have soaped and scoured a big red plastic basin. Eventually I will soap and scour my own arm, to use in lieu of a wooden spoon.

Christmas is coming, and I mean business.

Update: Cakes (!) done and wrapped in brandy-soaked stocking-roll! Yay!

Sunday Social Notes

2009-11-15T18:33:00.010Z

The sky was blue and sunny this morning when I hurried out of the Historical House, bound for the bus stop. I had left my husband in our linen-cupboard-turned-library, defending Damian Thompson on Ship of Fools, and once he was done, he rushed out after me.

The sea was a marvellous deep blue ruffled with light blue currents. A few roses still clung bravely to vines outside cottages. Really, is this anyone's idea of November? Marvellous.

B.A. and I alighted near the church and were assailed once again by the smell of the brewery.

"It's not like a boozy cookie," I said. "It's like something soggier."

"It's like breakfast cereal," said B.A.

"Maybe Cheerios after you leave them in milk for half an hour," I said. "No, wait. Not sweet enough."

"It's like Golden Grahams," said B.A., and he was right. It smelled exactly like Golden Grahams.

The mystery solved, we hurried up the stately avenue and ducked down some rotting wooden stairs to the Waters of Leith and strode along, looking at ducks, towards a more sturdy set of stairs, up which we climbed. Then we walked along one road, crossed another and eased into the church driveway, waving at a youthful parishioner in a suit. Young Trid men seem mad about suits. If they don't wear tweed, they tend to wear suits with very bright ties. I affixed my mantilla with a bobby pin.

I shall copy what I said on Father Z's blog about my mantilla. Someone had left a nasty comment suggesting his readers should be in sympathy with the Taliban because we prefer women to be veiled and submissive, blah blah nasty-minded blah.

Goodness me. A slur on my scrap of black lace fabric, bought from a nice Muslim lady at Edinburgh Textiles. Actually, for me the mantilla feels like a kind of prayer shawl, like a kind of liturgical dress. I put on my mantilla when I walk into church, and I enter a sacred space mentally as well as physically. The action of putting on my only-for-church veil is like a private ritual, perhaps like that of priests vesting. By wearing the mantilla, I am conscious of expressing my identity as a Catholic woman among other Catholic women. And, since the fashion has sprung up this way in my parish, by wearing a black veil, I am also expressing my sacred vocation as a married woman... I don’t wear it to N.O. Masses because I know people might misunderstand and feel uncomfortable.

But enough about me. There were translation sheets today, so I didn't have to bring our heavy missal after all. And before Mass there was the Asperges, which we have gone without these recent weeks. The choir was in good voice. There were 60 people in the church, the congregation having been swelled by a party from St. Andrew's. Most of this party was made up of young men, so had I been younger and unmarried, I would have been quite excited. Dante first saw Beatrice in church, you know. I forgot to count the mantillas.

The Gospel was full of parables about the Kingdom of God, and it was quite easy Latin, for once. The announcements were full of gladness and veered into a homily so suddenly, it was hard to make out what was announcement and what was homily. But it was all good. Apparently the Blasphemous Play in Glasgow had 300 protestors, singing and praying away outside. (On Friday, I learned that the theatre showing the Blasphemous Play had only twenty seats.) Possibly the singing outside showed a lot more talent than the acting inside. The singers (I heard on Friday) were Baptists, so it was probably so.

"De profundis," sang the Men's Schola, for that is what is in the missal for today.

Mass closed with the Last Gospel and "Salve Regina", and lo, I had to think hard about the words, for I couldn't find a plainsong book before Mass. Fortunately, Sister W. taught my Grade 9 Latin class "Salve Regina", so I know most of the words by heart. Every, every time I sing "Salve Regina", I think of Sister W. I didn't like the woman at all in school, but now I think of her fondly because she taught us such a useful and pretty song. Maybe that was her sneaky plan:" You girls may hate me now, but one day you will have to sing the "Salve Regina" and then you will thank me. Oremus."

Afterwards, the smokers struggled to light their cigarettes in the breeze as the non-smokers ambled into the hall for the CoToP and a biscuit. It was quite crowded today and cheerful. Then the Men's Schola and a few of their hangers-on met in a pale green drawingroom for the Gin and Tonic of Bonhomerie. (The crisps were peppery and delicious and apparently only a pound for 2 bags in Sainsbury's, but could I find them in Sainsbury's afterwards? No.) The drawingroom is on the first floor and boasts a rich red-brown grand piano in its bay window. The window looks out upon a glorious view of trees, shrubs and spires. I perched on the edge of an armchair and admired the view while listening to the men being catty about the clothes of other men. It was very instructive.

There being no more gin to drink, we revellers descended and made our way through the Georgian streets to our favourite (because cheapest) pub, where we had beer or vodka-and-coke and B.A. and I ate stodgy pies and chips and green tough pies out of hungry desperation. Then I asserted my authority as a married woman and carried my husband away from the other men, so that we might buy a cake tin. This cake tin is for our Christmas cake, for it is high time I made our Christmas cake, wrapped it in brandy-soaked cheesecloth and left it to marinate darkly.

And those are all the Sunday Social Notes I have for today, other than that B.A. has been stuck with making dinner again because I am writing this post. Ha ha ha!

Update: The Historical House appeared on the BBC's "A History of Scotland" tonight. It was exciting to see Neil Oliver marching up and down "our" hallways on TV. Months ago, after the crew finished shooting, I came outside with a plate of cookies I'd just baked. As long as I'm the lady of the hoose, Neil Oliver and BBC film crews will always get homemade cookies when they swing by.

Meanwhile, this episode was about the Jacobite rebellions, so B.A. and I were almost crying into our blankets over the '45. Waaaaaaah!!!!

The Unmarried Artist

2009-11-14T19:04:00.005Z

When my mother went to university, my grandmother said, as so many grandmothers have said, "It will come in useful if you don't get married."

Well, Mum got married, and although she worked outside the home only very occasionally, her B.A. came in very useful indeed. When I worked for Statistics Canada, I learned that the more education a woman has, the more likely her children are to do well at school. For some mysterious reason, this was more important a factor than the father's education.

My B.A. was not a practical one, nor was my M.A. My M.Div. is somewhat practical, and could lead to chaplaincy jobs, were I not so convinced that there is just no chaplain as effective as a priest. Sometimes I wish I had had the foresight, as had Muriel Spark, to take a secretarial diploma among all those high-falutin' degrees.

The way of the artist is hard, and it does not necessarily get easier if the artist gets married. Many women still have the idea that if they get married, there will be someone to take care of them, and they can relax. But this is not always so. A poor artist might marry another artist. Grad students marry other grad students. Painters marry other painters, musicians, musicians. The man born after 1960 has been liberated from the cast-iron expectation that a married man is of necessity the sacrificial principal breadwinner. His impractical dreams are just as valid as his wife's. And then babies arrive.

Someone--I forget who--was asked what he needed to write. He replied, "A piece of paper and a pencil." For writers, this is essentially true. To be a writer, all you have to do is write. And luckily for writers, pens and paper are cheap. Computers become necessary, of course, but most of us can manage to buy one. When we attempt to make money from our work, we are often allowed to send our submissions by email. This costs nothing.

It is not as cheap to be a visual artist. A painter has to buy paints and art paper or (very expensive) canvasses. A filmmaker has to buy at least one camera. A sculpture has to buy materials. To make money, they have to negotiate for a sales space: a gallery, a website, the services of a distribution company.

And then there is the performing artist. Singers and dancers have to have special rehearsal spaces. Actors depend on productions directed by others. They spend money and time travelling to auditions, always hoping to be that rare person who is "right for the part."

Many artists dream of being able to make a living through their art. But for most, this is not possible. We all flip through magazines featuring lavishly dressed artists--actors, singers, directors, even painters--but almost no artist becomes as rich as those big stars. The most we can hope for is that one day our art will pay for groceries and the rent.

Until I moved to Scotland and began to meet successful visual artists, I didn't know anyone, married or unmarried, who made a good living through their art alone. My artist friends tell fortunes, pet-sit, sell drink mixers, work in bookshops, wait tables, work in offices, sell real estate, rent rooms, give voice lessons, give piano lessons, copy-edit, teach writing. A few of us are lucky enough to get paying gigs. These are usually few and far between.

As a career, art is a terrific gamble. Some artists make millions. Some artists make peanuts. But if you really want to make art, you have only one insurmountable enemy: ceasing to make art. There are people across the world who get up at 6 AM every day to write their 1000 words, play their scales, or do their voice exercises before leaving for their 9-5 jobs. Where there is a will for art, there is a way for art.

Success, though, as the world measures success, is something else. I don't think it comes with marriage, as nice as marriage can be. I'd call it the will of Providence. Others might call it luck.

Photos: Louisa May Alcott, never married; Muriel Spark, divorced young; Greta Garbo, never married.

Roll Over Compton Mackenzie

2009-11-13T11:30:00.006Z

Readers may be familiar with the Monarch of the Glen series, if only because the actor playing Archie MacDonald is so cute. I was delighted when I discovered from my husband that Monarch of the Glen was based on real books by one Compton Mackenzie, of whom I had never heard before. And in my husband's library, I unearthed a book by said Compton Mackenzie, called Hunting the Fairies (Chatto & Windus, 1949). Perhaps the title should have warned me of what was ahead.

Compton Mackenzie died in 1972, so I can say what I like without worrying that I am going to bump into him on Sunday or that B.A. is on some committee or other of which he is chair. And so I say that he wrote like a silly ass. His characters are either comedy Scotsmen wearing "the kilt" and speaking snippets of "the Gaelic" or brassy American ladies of a kind only ever found in British novels of the mid-20th century. He writes as if he were determined to be the Scots P.G. Wodehouse, but with disasterous, clunky results. Whereas Wodehouse seduces you into believing his world is real, Mackenzie tries to beat you into submission, like a crazy-eyed Covenanter with a pen in one hand and a stick in the other.

So far I've had mixed success with my Scottish reading. I gave up on Irvine Welsh's Glue because it was vile. I gave up on Ian Rankin's art heist book because it was slow. I did enjoy Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, however, and giggled happily at Owen Dudley Edwards' editorial notes. Eventually I will read Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street because I've been loaned the sequels. I suspect there will be adverbs. This country's literature seems overrun with adverbs, to say nothing of distracting substitutions to the word "said." (Compton Mackenzie favoured "woofed".) And repetitions of old Scottish jokes, told again and again. Bloody hell. You'll have had your twee.

Still, speaking as a Canadian deeply indocrinated in the Literature of PLACE, I have admit that Scots have magnificent landscapes to write about. And the sandstone terraces of south-eastern Scotland blow away the inhuman skyscraper-lined canyons of Canadian cities for beauty. Whenever I travel to Edinburgh's Morningside for tea, I scramble to the top deck of the bus and begin scribbing away.

In August, I caught this bus on a beautiful day of blue skies but high winds blowing in from the Firth of Forth. There were sandpipers and red-beaked oystercatchers pecking around on the shore, crying peep peep peep like squeaky toys. The road to Edinburgh is lined with (in summer) gloriously leafy trees and passes through a marvellous town of 19th century sandstone terrace buildings of cream, biscuit, pink or grey, with bright shops tucked into the ground floors. A great dark green hill, Arthur's Seat, looks down upon the winding road, ignoring the modern houses scampering up its slopes as far as they are allowed. They look cheap and shoddy, so perhaps they won't last long.

When the bus gets to Edinburgh, I always read the names of the other busses. They sound terribly romantic: Trinity; Hunter's Tryst; Restalrigg; Mayfield; Silverknowles; Ocean Terminal; Craighouse. The busses themselves are not fearfully romantic: they lumber along like shiny red homicidal elephants.

It takes a long time to get anywhere in Edinburgh by bus, partly because various roads have been torn up, either to repair pipes or to put in a tram system that few Edinburghers wanted. No matter whether I am going to Ravelstone or the Morningside, it is the same story: a slow, stately (if rocky) procession down Georgian avenues and around Georgian squares with green centres. Thus, whereas the journey is long, the architecture is worth it.

When going to Morningside, the bus turns into Princes Street, just after the road-wreckage, past St. John's Church on the left and the Caledonian Hotel on the right. St. John's usually has some tooth-grindingly lefty slogan painted on a wall; any day now it's going to be "Drive Israel into the Sea." In summer, the Caledonian is festooned syncophanticly with foreign flags. Yesterday, it was surprisingly naked.

Next the bus lumbers past the dome of a concert hall on the left, and the rather shabby grim grey concrete Festival Square on the right. The Square now has a digital bulletin board, and yesterday it proclaimed that Gordon Brown is going to tighten up migration rules. The bus then passes Edinburgh's elegant grey sandstone rep theatre, "The Filmhouse", to the right and-horrors!--Pizza Hut to the left.

Lothian Road is lined with betting shops, liquor stores, charity shops, drug stores and thus the route looks rather shabby until--hooray hooray--Tollcross, which features a mix of shops, high class, trendy, and cheap, tucked into marvellous 19th century sandstone fantasies.

The bus swings onto Bruntsfield Place with its nice shops and cafes. Suddenly there is a flash of green, and the Bruntsfield Links lurch into view. There is no golf on them; they are just a green fields (still green in November) edged with 19th century buildings in the distance and gorgeous, two-story Georgian homes--and the Brunstfield Hotel--across the street. Bruntsfield Place continues on with its intriguing shops and tempting cafes until the bus is suddenly on Morningside Road, the sun is shining through the trees and spires of Christ Church Morningside Episcopalian, and great hills loom in the distance.

Although Edinburgh is covered in churches, they cluster rather thickly around one intersection in Morningside, so it is known as "Holy Corner". The bus rattles past it, and there my notes usually stop for I always alight just after the Waitrose grocery store, so as not to miss the teashop. At the teashop, whose colour scheme is mostly black and cherry pink and whose patrons are 99% female, I await an American friend who is absolutely nothing like the American women to be found in the pages of Compton Mackenzie.

Bi-polar 2

2009-11-12T10:10:00.014Z

One of the interesting side-effects of writing in public is that it can win you a mild fame. When I was booking a hotel room for Benedict Ambrose and his best man, a rival bride jockeying for the clerk's attention suddenly asked me if I were I. Having never seen her in my life, I was astonished. But, of course, it turned out that she was a regular reader of my paid gig.

These days, I live in Scotland, where only friends read my paid articles. Therefore, I am much more likely to discover any flickers of fame through my statistics counter. Sometimes much bigger and more important blogs link to me, and I find that most exciting. My only worry is that one day someone from my American grad school is going to find my blog, and I'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Well, guess what?

I was found out, but only by one of the "Benediction Kids" after Inside Catholic linked to my memories of American grad school. And since I have warm memories of the Benediction Kids, that was okay. We sent emails back and forth, and the B.K. said something fascinating: "I never felt that you were different for studying theology. It did seem odd to me that a grad student was coming to our undergrad group but I always tried to be friendly."

Yes, he did. I remember. I remember feeling my grateful, too. It drove me nuts that whereas in Germany no-one could figure out how old I was, in the USA, undergrads often asked if I were a professor. But some of the Benediction Kids would sit beside me as we scarfed post-Benediction pizza and chat. Sometimes I wondered if I was just imagining that the BKs did this with a nod and a smirk as if rebelling against some social standard. But now, no. For it did seem odd that a grad student was coming to their undergrad group.

And I find myself asking, years after leaving the USA, why?

There are very few private colleges in Canada. There is no such thing as an "elite" university, although some are older and more famous than others. Canadian undergrads pay a relatively small tuition, and Canadian post-grads get relatively small grants. Undergrads are at the bottom of the pecking order; graduate students are, to aspiring undergrads, demi-gods, professors in utero. In my Catholic undergrad college, undergrads and grads mingled, prayed together, joined the same fellowship groups. And because I got involved in on-campus theatre, I hung out with non-Catholic grad students too. I thought they were smart. I thought they were cool. I dated one. Jeepers.

In the USA, there are very many private colleges. They are considered better than state schools, and I'm sorry to say that Canadians have as much respect for a snazzy academic brand name (Harvard, Princeton, Yale) as Americans do, despite our marvellous, world-class government funded institutions.

I could be mistaken, but it soon appeared to me that at my American private college, undergrads were infinitely more important than graduate students. The undergrads were paying customers, and graduate students were poorly paid support staff. This came home to me rather dramatically when I learned that I could not use my American college gym facilities without paying a hefty fee. This was not how it had been at my Canadian uni gym. (Which, of course, was subsidized for everyone.) Having barely enough money to live in the U.S. (and, it must be said, escape home whenever possible), I couldn't afford the U.S. gym. Goodbye, goodbye, boxer's body. Hello, hello, current squishiness.

American academia seems to be a much more classist society than Canadian academia, so maybe I was not supposed to be hanging out with undergrads, in the way servant children in the UK were not supposed to play with the children of the Quality. But it amazes me that these distinctions could be made within the context of Benediction and Catholic theological discussion. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave nor free, male or female. Etc.

But perhaps this, too, is a clue to the "bi-polar" nature of the Church in the United States. Americans seem to think in binary terms: North of the Mason-Dixon Line or south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Republican or Democrat. White or "of Color". English or Spanish. Right or Left. Undergrad or Grad. Us or Them. The religious civil war between Catholic "traditionalists" and "progressivists" might be rooted in an overall American culture of division.

I don't write this to throw stones at the USA, whose internal problems are its own business. My business is more about how American culture affects my own culture and, of course, how it affected me when I lived there. My dream of an academic career died a horrible death in the USA, basically because I couldn't fit in and couldn't "get it". I could get my mind around the Summa Theologiae, but I couldn't find a mental or spiritual home where I wasd. It was like being a bat in the war between the beasts and birds. I was a stranger, and some tried their best to welcome me. But as someone who believes more in "both and" than in "either or", I did not belong.

Note to worried readers: All this happened years ago, and I am merely recalling old emotions in present tranquility. I am fine now, happily married and with many likeminded friends. I have new dreams, too.

Lest We Forget

2009-11-11T17:06:00.002Z

Dating Advice from the White House

2009-11-11T09:24:00.012Z

Well, poppets, Michelle Obama, First Lady of the USA, has been giving out dating advice. Me, I've had a soft spot for Mrs O. ever since people beat up on her for having said she felt more black at Princeton that she ever had in her life. I think I know what she means, for I felt more white at my American grad school than I ever had before in my life. The obsession with race in elite American schools is seriously weird. Besides, Mrs. O is not a politician--in so far as she's First Lady, she's a professional wife, like a football WAG. Hors de combat.

And as a successful professional wife, any advice Mrs O. has about dating is interesting to Singles, so it might be worth flipping open the December issue of Glamour.

For now I can only find a snippet of this advice on-line, so here it is:

With men, don't be swayed by "cute." Cute's good but cute lasts for only so long... Who are you as a person? Don't look at the bankbook or the title. Look at the heart, look at the soul... When you're dating a man, you should always feel good. You shouldn't be in a relationship with a man who doesn't make you feel completely happy and make you feel whole.

What do I think?

Cute. Not too bad. However, I have noticed that a woman in love always thinks that her beloved is cute. From an objective point of view, she could be wrong. But, subjectively, a woman would find Quasimodo cute if she fell in love with him. If, after dating for a month, you don't think he's cute, you don't love him. Toss him back in the pond for the girl who will find him cute.

Who are you? A good question. My lifelong question to Catholic friends who have met a new guy has always been, "Is he Catholic?" Of course, some Catholic women are fine with dating and marrying non-Catholic men. But then there are other values a woman needs to compare. Does a bookworm want to spend her life with a partyboy? Does an athlete want to be with a man who needs to think women are delicate? Does a pro-life girl want to be with a pro-choice man?

Bankbook or title. "Could you support me and a baby, if we had one?" I asked the guy I'm now married to. He said yes. Let's not pretend that money and jobs are not important in a relationship, m'kay? Men, even more than women, derive a lot of identity, satisfaction, and self-esteem from their work. If a man hates his work, he's going to be hell to live with. If you're chronically poor in a country of wealth, your marriage will fail. Ambition is sexy and so is enough money for takeout Chinese when you're too tired to cook.

The heart: True. And to make sure you see the reality, introduce him to your best girlfriends. If you don't have best girlfriends, introduce him to your brothers and sisters. If you don't have brothers and sisters either, jeepers.

The soul: Not sure what Mrs. O means. All of a sudden, the image of a really cool dude in a jazz bar being suave at the wine waiter came to mind. It was closely followed by the vision a shaggy haired guy in ripped jeans crooning over his guitar. But it probably means the guy's moral and religious life. If that's what she means, I agreed.

Completely happy: True. Of course, once you are married, you are going to go back to feeling cranky about all the stuff that made you cranky before, plus extra crankitude towards your poor husband for whatever he did to annoy you. This is the same for husbands. I have a bad habit of mopping up sauce with my index finger, and this drives B.A. absolutely insane. But before marriage, you should have at least six months of the love-drunk stage in which you are both convinced that never in the history of the world has there been anyone as funny, smart and loveable as your beloved. You're allowed to believe this after marriage, too. But then it's more of an occasional mystic state than the very air you breathe.

Completely whole: Well, steady on. It is true that I feel more "whole" since I met B.A., but that was because the Great Vocational Mystery had been solved. I had a vocation to the married life. Yay! But I don't think I'll feel completely whole until I win the Booker Prize. Ha ha ha.

Meanwhile, I love the hair and the dress. About half the USA hates their President, but to give the devil his due, he's got a very pretty wife.

Toronto 18 Connection

2009-11-10T21:47:00.005Z

Oh my. I wish I had known this this morning when I wrote my Fort Hood Shooter story.

This imam in Yemen, said to be a hero to Nidal Hasan (and who praised Hasan on the internet today as a great hero and model for Muslim American soldiers), was also a hero to the Toronto 18.

It is staggering the influence a charismatic religious authority can have over teenagers and early-twenty-somethings. John Paul 2 (good). Al-Awlaki (bad). More on this later.

seraphics branes are fryed

2009-11-10T11:48:00.002Z

lol it is me the inner child reporting on the mental stayt of my outer adult seraphic her branes are fryed.

seraphic is a riter she shud be riting fun things spining fantasees for the deliktayshun of the masses insted she has been riting boaring prose for her noospayper for 2 days and befor that reeding other peeples books.

'it pays brat' sed seraphic 'go away i hav a hedake.'

her hedake is big becos she rote 1 colum that got terned down so she had to scrambel and rite 800 words about the fort hood shooter without hirting anyones feelings nise try. ackchooally it is an interesting colum but for shure she will get in trubble she sez. But she always sez that and she never dos.

wat my outer adult needs is a cuppa cofee and a nap but she has been so buzy she has not had a chans to bi any cofee how sad t is not the same. i will try to xert my inflooens and mayk her bi not just cofee but choklit.

there is a man at church he is funny he sed the hole poynt of marige is to get the other persons bank card number rofl but sadly altho seraphic knows benedikt ambroses bank card number she doesnt think it is a lisens to spend all bas money wy not. if it were me i wud be in harvy nicks 24/7 but seraphic sez that is a criminal thot harvy nicks is too xpensive 5000 pownds for a dress when children are starving it is a crime. can you not fantasiz insted abowt jenners ackchooally it is troo i like jenners beter

okay the superego has convinsed seraphic to put her clothes on and now she will tayk me to the cafay in tesco for a cofee i want to go to edinburrah but the superego is being a bich and sed 'no seraphic must buy groseries today.' i hate the sordid nesessitees of lyfe wy was i not borned the inner child of sarah jessica parker insted. this sucks. and so this is me the inner child singing off to say I HAYT TESCO WAITROSE IS FUNNER and BYE-EEEE!

Counselling Soldiers

2009-11-09T23:42:00.002Z

I see the media is still hanging onto the "Shrink Snapped After Too Many Horrible Stories" explanation for U.S. Army Major Nadal Malik Hassan's murderous spree.

And all of a sudden I remember that the U.S. Army is full of military chaplains who have also heard many ghastly stories over the years. A good friend of one of my American great-grandmas was Father William Corby, who heard confessions on the battlefield of the U.S. Civil War.

So, people. Know of any military chaplains who suddenly went berserk from hearing terrible war stories and shot up a bunch of people? 'Cause, you know, I have never heard of secondhand PSTD before. Let me know in the comm box.