beyond Wright and Wrong

The most terrifying moment of my ordained ministry (so far) happened a few years ago in my previous congregation.

I had given a sermon several weeks before about something undoubtedly fascinating and important, but which somehow slips my mind at the moment - though actually, upon further thought, I suspect it was on this troublesome text in Luke 13:

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’

There's probably a whole post on that thing, but we'll pass it by for now. In the sermon, I quoted another sermon, this one by William Sloane Coffin. If you have any interest at all in a conversation about God and human suffering, read this sermon. I think it should be required for all pastors.

At any rate, I used one particular line in it which struck me like a bolt of lightning the first time I heard it in seminary. The sermon was given by Coffin at the funeral of his son Alex, who had died in a car accident. The line was this:

The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is "It is the will of God." Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break.

Cut to a few weeks later. I was sitting in my office doing office-y stuff, and I heard a parishoner come in and start chatting with the secretary. My office was tucked away in a corner in such a way that I could hear conversations out there if I wanted to listen, but usually didn't. I wasn't eavesdropping, but suddenly I paused in whatever I was doing long enough to hear the parishoner mention "a sermon Pastor Shalom preached a few weeks ago." I perked up at that. I listened unabashedly. (A little abashed. Not too much.) She went on to talk about her brother, who had died in a car accident years before. "I blamed God for a long time," she said. "But Pastor Shalom said..." - and then she quoted, word for perfect word, the exact quote I had borrowed from William Sloane Coffin. She had heard this quote one time, and one time only. And apparently it was significant enough to her that she remembered it perfectly, even weeks later. (I give Coffin all the credit for this.)

Then two things happened. First I smiled and thought briefly, "boy, she was really listening that day. I'm glad that sermon was meaningful to her."

The second thing happened immediately afterward. It was almost like everything slowed down as I realized the import of what I had quickly smiled about to myself. I realized that one brief ten-second portion of one small sermon had mattered tremendously to this person. I thought about how many ten-second portions I had already preached in my scant five years of ordained ministry so far. Then I got a little lightheaded because it occurred to me for the very first time:

MY GOD, THEY ARE ACTUALLY LISTENING TO ME. OH. MY. GOD. HELP.

I find myself baffled most of the time by all the attention given to Pastor Jeremiah Wright and his relationship with Barack Obama. I suspect it is primarily the result of 24-hour news stations who need something to talk about all the damn time, and a situation like this one is much sexier than talking about a dreary war, or global poverty, or all that unsolvable stuff. I find it baffling that no one can articulate what the relationship between pastor and parishoner is like, or seems to have any interest in doing so. I find it baffling that people seem to expect faithful churchgoing from all the candidates, but seem to have no idea what churchgoing actually entails. What do we think preaching is about, anyway? Is Osteen-Homiletics now so engrained in us that we think pastors are just supposed to get up there and make us feel better about ourselves and our American-dream lifestyles? Has anyone ever heard of the prophets? Good thing CNN wasn't around when David was king. They would have had a field day with Nathan.

David Moyer pointed out in the April 22 issue of Christian Century that the 15-20 seconds of Wright's preaching currently at issue is no more than .0000012th of his entire preaching ministry in thirty years at Trinity UCC. He also points out what I find exquistely important and roundly ignored: that we who righteously claim we would not have chosen Wright's words also have not ministered regularly to people in terrible poverty who live with the daily reality of racism, who read texts about God's gracious abundance and the mercy of the kingdom and wonder what happened to all that on the south side of Chicago.

As a voter, I find this 'controversy' completely ridiculous. As a pastor, I find it mostly ridiculous, but there is a tiny part of me which is still as terrified as I was the first time I realized the weight which preaching can bear, and the bare reality:

They are really listening. Oh, my God, who promised to send out your word so that it would not remain empty - you who promise to work your wisdom through human foolishness: are you sure this whole preaching thing is such a good idea? Really?

I don't think anyone in the media ever listened to Wright. What this ratings-induced storm will mean for the election is anyone's guess. It's a largely foolish waste of time to be sure, but it does remind my preacher-self of something no less than terrifying: words matter. Preaching matters. Not just on the off chance that one of your parishoners runs for office and you get judged in the national media based on .0000012th of your preaching: but for the people you will never realize remember a snippet, a ten-second bit, .0000012th of a sermon which sticks with them. What preachers say matters to people. Which is both the best and worst news any preacher can hear.

All those late nights, the imperfect phrases, the unfinished sentences; the childhood stories, the frail metaphors, the stammering proclamations - they bear the weight of eternity, of God's fullness of life. It's a wonder any of us can step into the pulpit without shaking uncontrollably. It's so easy to forget, when you have to fit sermon preparation in between counseling sessions, plunging the toilet, singing with the preschoolers, leading a bible study for the retired folks, having lunch with a woman whose alcoholic husband spends all day on the computer, trying to fit a whole curriculum on the bible into 18 lessons, and calling the guy whose daughter is in the hospital.

It's easy to set aside the weight of the sermon because thinking about it would either make you cry or throw up, which be neither attractive nor homiletically useful. But there you have it. Every once in awhile we remember it, perhaps only as often as we can bear to, much in the way that Moses could only look at God's behind because the rest of the Almighty was too much to handle. Maybe you can only preach as long as you keep your gaze slightly sideways.

Maybe it's no wonder the media doesn't get this. I can't get it myself, not even .000012th of the time.

Today's Random Prayer

Dear Lord,

I know most of my prayers lately have been something like, "please may our house sell this week," or, "please help Beloved find a job that he loves, soon."

While I do not wish to divert your attention from those very central prayers, I would like to add just one more.

Please, Lord, do not let any members of this or my former congregation ever, ever run for President.

Thanks.

Amen.

(Late in the day) Friday Five: The Old and the New

Singing Owl over at Rev Gals has this Friday Five:

Yesterday I had two separate conversations in which people were musing about how much change is occurring. The WW II generation, of which my mom is a part, went from horse and buggy to automobiles, saw the lessening, or even the end of many diseases, went from widespread use of kerosene lamps and outhouses (in the country, and most folks were rural)) to a totally electrified and plumbed society. The fastest means of communication was a telegraph. The second conversation--gulp--was about MY generation and how much change occurred in the last half of the 20th century. The person said his 13 year old had not seen a vinyl record album until a few days before, couldn't remember a time without cell phones, and on and on.

As for the questions!

1. What modern convenience/invention could you absolutely, positively not live
without?

Depending on how 'modern' we mean here, I'll have to go first with indoor plumbing. This comes from a woman who believes 'camping' means 'Motel 6.' I'm more of a city girl.

On the more late-twentieth century front, I'm a huge fan of email - not of its more annoying qualities, but of how easily I can keep in touch with friends all over the country. It doesn't replace in-person (or even over-the-phone) interaction, but it can be great fun.

2. What modern convenience/invention do you wish had never seen the light of day?
Why?
Chorus inspires me to answer first, "call waiting." Ick. Followed closely by speakerphone, which is only slightly less annoying than yelling at each other from opposite ends of a tunnel.

Also, I hate reality television. I'm not sure that fits into the 'convenience/invention' category. I just want to take every opportunity I can to say this. (Except for Project Runway. It's fierce.)

3. Do you own a music-playing device older than a CD player? More than one? If
so, do you use it (them)?
Well, I do have a piano. Bada-bing!

No, seriously folks. I have a tape player somewhere, but I have entirely caved into the world of digital music.

4. Do you find the rapid change in our world exciting, scary, a mix...or something
else?
It is what it is. We can't stop it; there are a lot of wonderful advances and some with problematic consequences. I think we tend to romanticize the past a little too much. It's all fun and cute to pee in an outhouse for a weekend, but if that's your whole life, it's not so great. I benefit every second of the day from technology and it would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise. It also causes a fair amount of suffering, and we can't ignore that either.

5. What did our forebears have that we have lost and you'd like to regain? Bonus
points if you have a suggestion of how to begin that process.
People used to know how to entertain themselves. They didn't have every single bloody second of the day scheduled with meetings, soccer practice, piano lessons, yoga, etc. We need to slow down. We need to learn how to be bored and then find something to do. Kids today (yes, now I am offically Old Person and will be finding myself a cane once I post this) especially are victims of overscheduling, and I think the church adds to it a lot of the time by emphasizing programming, activities, or events.

Churches ought to have Non Programmed Sundays every once in awhile. Here's the program: go to worship, then go home and DO NOTHING. No church meetings, no youth group, no bowling (Wii or otherwise), no homework, no television (would have to make pastoral exception for Simpsons, though). Go home and sit around and talk to each other. That's it.

bumpy ride

You know the times when someone responds to you in a really weird, or maybe bizarrely intense way, and you walk away thinking, "boy, what is going on in that person's life to cause THAT reaction?" These are the moments about which one of my great colleagues would say, "this says so much more about you than it does about me." I find that these moments happen a lot in ministry. And that if you can detach from them just a little bit, you can more easily realize that Mr. OverReaction is probably not overreacting to you personally, but to some other situation which has boiled over onto you.

This post is one of those moments.

I am not linking to the post which inspired it, because my intent is not at all to blame or ridicule someone's well-intended comment; I'm more interested in ruminating on how it hit me and why, and what that means.

So. I was out of town visiting Beloved this weekend and staying in Our Very Own Home Without Parents, which was lovely. It was great to be alone together again, and to remember that I am, in fact, a Grown Up with the ability to support myself and that one day I will again have a whole house of space instead of one small bedroom. We also spent a fair amount of time on projects around the house designed to make Our Very Own Home more desirable for house seekers. OVOH has been on the market for three and half months, which is not bad in this market and given the fact that our hometown has had the Worst Winter Ever (and I am not much overstating this, since records have been broken). Our Very Own Home is competitively priced, quite beautiful, in fantastic shape, and highly desirable. It is also on the higher end of real estate in our hometown, and selling it is naturally a slower process. We are very fortunate that I can live with my parents while Beloved stays to sell the house and finish the school year; no need for two mortgages at a time, and no rush to buy in our new town. All good things.

Upon returning home, I glanced through friends' blogs to see how weekends had gone. On one, I found the great news that Dear Friend had sold her house - after only a few short weeks on the market! I can freely admit (even though I know she will probably read this post and know who she is) that I had a pang of jealousy about the quick sale, but more than that a joy that she can now continue more freely into her great transition over the next few months. I clicked on "comment" to leave a note of congratulations. I skimmed over the comments, and I found one that went something like this:

"You are surprised that the house sold so quickly! It's a God thing! You follow God's call, and God opens the way."

Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that. No, wait. I am sure how I feel about that. I am sure that my gut reaction to this comment was a blunt and profane two-word phrase rhyming with "duck stew." I am also sure that my reaction included the immediate desire to run over to the commenter's blog and leave a note which would go something like this:

"You know, just because people follow God's call in their lives does NOT mean that everything goes smoothly, which you would in fact find if you READ THE BIBLE and hear about how TONS of people did EXACTLY as God asked them and then got KILLED or CRUCIFIED or at least KICKED OUT OF TOWN precisely for being faithful and just because your road is bumpy does NOT MEAN that you are somehow wandering away from God and just because your FREAKING HOUSE is STILL ON THE FREAKING MARKET and you are giving yourself ULCERS at night does not mean that God has LEFT YOU in the middle of the road to fend for yourself because I AM TRYING to FOLLOW GOD'S CALL and your implication that smooth roads are an indication of God's blessing is REALLY BAD THEOLOGY and also it is REALLY PISSING ME OFF."

I managed not to do this. Mostly because even in my pissed-off-ness I know that the commenter was simply rejoicing in good news, and undoubtedly not intending at all to imply that bumpy roads are somehow less faithful than smooth ones. You see? This says so much more about me than it does about her. No kidding.

But it's definitely a theology out and about in the world, and it does, in fact, piss me off. This is where I'm really not responding to the comment directly; it's just a stepping stone for me to reflect on how angry it made me and why, and what that means.

Because I do believe that God goes with us in our best attempts to follow God's call. I believe even the best attempts at this are not perfect. I believe that God can and does do marvelous things when we are faithful; not as a reward, but because we are following in a way which makes it more likely that we will see what God is doing. With God, all things are possible. I believe this.

But. I also believe that God walks with us when following means the road will be bumpy, and hard, and longer than we thought. I believe that God can transform the bumpy roads into life-giving journeys, but that doesn't mean the bumps will be any easier to take. I believe in what Lutherans have traditionally named "the theology of the cross," which is to say that God is profoundly with us in suffering, in ways so intimate and transformative that they might not be possible when all is going well. This does not mean we ought to brag about our suffering or seek it out, but simply that any quick inference that "smooth paths mean God's blessing" needs more scrutiny.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not equating selling a house with great suffering. And I'm not implying that a smooth path is somehow less meaningful or important. But I do need to affirm for myself that God's math does not work like this:

You follow correctly = you sell your house in two weeks
You follow wrongly = you languish on the market

Or, less flippantly, I need to affirm that bumpy roads are still God-roads. I need to affirm this not only in the face of a totally innocent comment, but also in the face of a culture which, by and large, buys completely into prosperity theology. Christians of all sorts have let that go unchallenged, and I've about had it with that.

I am certainly a prosperous person in financial terms, which makes any critique of that on my part suspect and probably worthless. This, however, is the beauty of blogging - that I can feel Important and Published by simply throwing my opinion onto the internet in a rather attractive font.

All I really want to say is this: I am very blessed. And right now, the road is bumpy. Following God's call to the best of my limited ability to understand it does not necessarily mean otherwise. In fact, sometimes following the call means precisly that the road will be bumpy, at least for awhile. And this is okay.

You are out beyond us.
We are staggered, stunned, awed.
We did not know you had such futures in you
and now we know...You do indeed!
Amen.


Prayer from Walter Brueggemann, Inscribing the Text. Full prayer and citation is posted here.

new plan.

April 16, 11:55am. Alcohol units: 0 (remarkable feat considering marathon council meeting last night). Cigarettes: 0. But am non-smoker, so no great thing. Weight: fit into pants, so must be okay. Babies: 0. Non v.g. New plans for babies: 1. v.g.

Have decided on plan for infertility.

Plan is as follows:
1. Will chuck responsible job as pastor.
2. Will lose enormously irresponsible amount of weight.
3. Will move to Hollywood and hook up with rocker boyfriend.
4. Will date rocker boyfriend and forget all health class lessons about condoms.
5. Voila! Will be pregnant within months and then can torture American public with coy claims about right to privacy.

Good plan. Will be new version of Ashlee Simpson, Nicole Richie, and similar. Hurrah! Will go open bottle of chardonnay to celebrate New Plan.


*written in manner of Bridget Jones as have been listening to Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason on CD for last few days in car. Enormously amused by self.

spring, o spring, where art thou? WHERE?

I have changed from lamenting 'global warming' to lamenting 'climate change' because, although I have no doubt about this phenomenon, it would seem that the result of it in my area is THE WINTER THAT WILL NEVER END. I would give my right arm for some 'global warming' at this point, or at least for a bit of sunshine now and again.

It was nearly 80 degrees on Saturday and, while I appreciated and soaked up every single minute of it, such a day also makes the rest of this rainy, cold, snowy week even harder. (There is some kind of illustration in here about how we tend to skip over gratitude for what we have right to 'how come I can't have MORE of it?' but frankly, I don't care. I just need the sun.)

Friday Five: Moving

Mother Laura has posted a perfectly timed Friday Five for me. And for her as well. "Marvels and madness," indeed!

We are right in the middle of a move--only twenty minutes away, but we're still a mix of busy, excited, nervous and surprisingly full of grief about what we're leaving, for me at least. So this week's Friday Five asks about your experience of the marvels and madness of moving...

1. How many times have you moved? When was the last time?

I was just thinking about this last night: my parents lived in the same house for 37 years, so I never moved until college. And I've hardly stopped since. I've moved (houses, if not necessarily entire locations) three times in the past four years and I'm ready for some longer-term stability. We're moving right now and I can't wait until it's over.

2. What do you love and hate about moving?

Love: sorting out and clearing out stuff. Hate: SO MUCH DAMN WORK. HATE packing. Hate that last stage where there's just a bunch of little random items laying around and so you just throw them in a box because you can't stand it anymore and you just want to get the hell out. Aaargh.

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?

So far, entirely by ourselves. This move we'll pack ourselves and have professionals do the actual moving bit. Slight improvement.

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?

Don't do it.

Or, if you can't help yourself: keep a sense of humor and remember that moving brings out the worst in people. It will be over.

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?

Inner and outer: am six weeks into new call, husband is still in Old City, house is on market in terrible economy, can't buy new one until old one is sold, waiting for all moving to settle down before making decision about how to have a baby given infertility circumstances...

everything in our lives is moving. Transition central.

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what moving means to you.
I don't have any music or poetry, just a prayer:

Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Amen, amen, and amen.

not my words, but still my prayer

I found this prayer by Walter Brueggemann in Inscribing the Text, a book I am thoroughly enjoying. The kind of book which invites such rich and deep reflection on biblical texts that you hate for it to end, but at the same time makes you want to put it down and go find your own bible so you can read its stories the way he does.

I am surrounded these days by babies coming into the world, through birth and adoption, in my own family and in church family and in friend-families. This prayer is mine for all of you, and even for myself - joy and hope together.

On Reading Genesis 25-50

We imagine ourselves self-sufficient
and then we run short...
short of time,
short of life,
short of stamina,
short of newness.

We find our future closed off and at risk
And we with varying degrees of resolve and determination
and panic
and despair
Find ourselves - surprisingly -
back in your presence,
waiting instead of acting,
receiving instead of making
invited to gratitude instead of success.

We wait and we receive and we thank...
because you are the only Lord of the Future,
you are the one who births at the eleventh hour,
you are the one who comes to barrenness
and makes new,
you promise like the stars for number
while we count according to the old math.

You are out beyond us.
We are staggered, stunned, awed.
We did not know you had such futures in you
and now we know...You do indeed! Amen.


(From Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann. Augsburg Fortress, 2004. Brueggemann formats the prayer differently, with great effect, but blogger won't let me duplicate that. Sorry.)

poetry for preachers

I heard this poem last fall at a continuing education event, and then I saw it again on a preaching website (Working Preacher, which I'm enjoying) this week. Coupled with the amazing essay I just read on preaching by Walter Brueggemann, and the wildly mixed metaphors Jesus uses to present himself this Sunday ("I'm a shepherd! No, wait, I'm a gate!"), this seems like the right word for me at the moment.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


(By Billy Collins, from The Apple that Astonished Paris, University of Arkansas Press, 1988.)

WHAT THE F&*K?

MOST RANDOM CHURCH EXPERIENCE EVER.

This old guy came in today to ask for my ideas about hospice: his brother is dying, and a family member is pushing for hospice care, and he wanted to know something about the concept. I shared a little bit.

As usual, I asked at the end of the conversation if he would like to pray. No, he said. Then he started in on some monologue about how he was raised Irish Catholic and had the bible memorized before he was nine, and I started to lose track of where he was going.

Finally, he stood up and thanked me for my time, and then the conversation went like this:

Old Guy: Let me know when you decide you need help with your hair.

Shalom: (nervous laughter) Oh - okay.

Old Guy: No, really. Wouldn't know it to look at me (Shalom thinks to herself: "Damn straight.") but I'm a licensed cosmotologist. Worked twenty years at Local Athletic Club. Worked on men and women. I've seen it all. So I don't judge.

Old Guy leaves.

Shalom sits in her chair and mouths to herself, "WHAT THE F&*K?"

I know Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but the man could not possibly have meant that it was okay to insult the pastor's hair. I admit that I am particularly sensitive about my naturally very, very curly hair and I have gotten random comments about it from time to time, but SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY. Old (might I also mention BALD) Guy better leave off before HE needs hospice care.

My God, this job is bizarre sometimes.

Sweet Dreams

Last night I dreamt that I was pregnant.

I'm not sure how other infertile women feel about pregnancy dreams: I have a love-hate relationship with them, because I at least get to experience pregnancy in my dreams and I wish they would last longer, but they also leave me feeling a bit empty when I wake up.

I've dreamt about pregnancy before, but this was a new one. I was actually in labor, but no one believed me; I walked around all day doing my normal routine at work and at home, trying to convince people that I really, really was in labor, but they kept dismissing it and acting as if I should just be able to continue with normal life at a normal pace.

It occurred to me as I was brushing my teeth (this is usually where my great ideas come from, for some reason) that the dream was, of course, not about pregnancy at all. But it was about being in labor.

Last week, Beloved was here for his spring break. Brief recap of why my husband and I are visiting each other instead of living together at the moment: he's staying in Old City to sell our house and finish the school year; I'm living with my parents in New City having started at New Congregation. The separation should (please God) last only about four and half months.

I love my parents. But it's hard to live with your parents when you are 35, and when you have been independent for a long time, and when your parents are now living in a lovely but one-story home with virtually no privacy options. Add into this a visiting (sorry, it must be said, horny) husband who as yet has no job, and the fact that your old home is not yet sold, and so you can't yet buy a new one, and you get...stress. I love my parents, and I love my husband. But we cannot live all together for very long. I don't know how people do it, and I am gaining admiration for families who have to live together out of economic necessity.

Anyway. I am a person who needs a little private time in her day. Doesn't have to be much, but it does have to be there. Vising husband + parents + congregation = NO privacy. In hindsight, I also realize that last week was prime PMS time for me. Not helpful.

Which all gets back to the dream. I believe the point was that I am in labor, waiting for our new life to be born: waiting for the house to sell, for Beloved to get a job, for us to live together again, and yes, for us to have a child in one way or another. Meanwhile, life goes on, and you can't stop it simply because your life is one big labor pain.

One of my favorite pastors said once in a sermon that Jesus' cries on the cross were the groaning of his labor pains, bearing down to give birth to a new world. Add that to Paul's "creation labor pains," and you get, among many other things, that there are a lot of ways to be in labor.

The good news, I trust, is that the pain results in new life. Here's hoping it's not too much longer from being born here.

seems about right

Created by OnePlusYou

Now if I had taken this sucker on Easter morning, it would have been a WHOLE other story.

Yippee! Books!

One of the great milestones of living in New City was reached yesterday: finding a decent (actually quite good) Christian bookstore. We had no such thing in Previous City (though a so-so one in Bigger City Down the Road).

This one was a great Cokesbury store. Thanks, Methodist friends! Well done.

I managed to purchase only four things (especially difficult since we have a charge account there, and it's always easier to spend when you don't have to pay the bill directly). I'm eager to read each of them and wish there was more time this week to do so. Why, oh why, must people have kidney transplants and funerals on a week when I have all these good books to read?

[Editor's note: I am being sarcastic, in case there is any doubt. I am not such a book fiend that I begrudge fundamental pastoral care in favor of reading. And if I were, I would not admit it to you.]

Anyway. All I really wanted to do here was share my four books with you. Here they are:

Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann. Can't get enough Brueggemann.

Credo, by William Sloane Coffin. Ditto the Brueggemann comment.

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, by Frederick Buechner. This is where I admit with embarrassment that I thought Buechner was dead. So it's the perfect book in the Easter season because - he is not dead! He is risen! (To me.) And Buechner is a joy.

Take this Bread, by Sara Miles. The latest in a growing genre I would describe as "cool, generally non-religious women come to Christian faith via the mainline church but also keep their coolness and write about their faith journey with humor, humility and grace, which means you will not find them in a normal Christian bookstore and this is a good thing." Long description there. Hard to shelve under. This it the only one I know nothing about, but it got a rave review from Anne Lamott. I'll take that.

If you've read any of these, post your thoughts. What's on your reading list?

You, too, can rip off a devotion.

Tonight I need to provide a brief devotion before committees meet to work on their budgets. I know almost nothing about how the committees work in New Congregation, not to mention how the whole (apparently enormously complicated) budget process goes. But, given the assignment of Emmaus for this Sunday, and given the fact that the devotional reading needs to be pretty short (and then add the third fact that I don't have much time for this after today's marathon o' other meetings), I am doing the classic pastor move:

I am stealing someone else's devotion.

But I think this is such a brilliant piece of writing that I have no qualms about sharing it, being perfectly up-front that I have not written it. I found it here (you have to scroll down to the bottom to find it), but it was originally written by David Westerberg, and printed in Valparaiso's journal, The Cresset, in 1997. And thus having discharged my duties of properly crediting where credit is due (though the note about the title at the end is my addition), I bring you the following:

There is a fuzzy tract called "Footprints" that has been around since I can remember. One can get a copy of it at most Christian bookstores framed, postered, bookmarked or on a coffee mug. The message has always made me ill at ease. For those of you who have never read this little parable, the story goes like this: A person looks back on the beach that is his/her life and sees two sets of footprints most of the time; one is his/her own and one is God's. During rough times he/she only sees one set of footprints and moans that this is when God has abandoned him/her. "No, chides God, "that is when I carried you." If, as I do, you find this message off the mark, then maybe, this is your story.

In Texas, before the age of trucks and trailers, ranchers were continually faced with the problem of retrieving strays. Cattle would wander off and become too confused to find their herd. Horses spending the winter in pasture made themselves scarce when they got wind of the fact that spring had arrived and it was time to get back to work. And because the terrain was so vast and so rough, and the animals so stubborn, it wasn't practical to have a man on horseback spend two days helping just one animal to get home.

So, smart ranchers enlisted the help of a donkey or burro. A well-treated, well fed burro loves to be home. Taken from there to a lesser place, he will find a way to return, and nothing short of bullets can stop him. Burros are alarmingly smart, hopelessly single-minded, and brutally strong. I submit that if you can hold on to the rope in your hands when the burro on the other end of it decides to leave, he will drag you to where he wants to be. There is no debate. There is little concern for your fussing. A donkey on a mission is a beast obsessed. So, if you are a rancher with a few well-treated burros, your problems with stray animals are pretty much solved. You locate the stray, put a length of rope around its neck and attach the other end to a homeward bound donkey. It may take a few days. It won't be pretty. The larger animal will look a little haggard after the trip. But the donkey will come home, and the stray will be with him. Period.

It is this version of the story of life as a walk with God that I see. Ours is a rough trail, made grueling by our own resistance. We fuss and moan and kick and scream. We try to get away and give up. We seek distraction at every turn. We attempt to undermine the very ones who would help us. We want to be spared our troubles, to be carried by God, but God does not excuse and does not carry. We must walk our own way home, and stand to face our troubles as we go, never alone, but as one with God who is not impressed by obstacles, who will not let us turn away. And maybe there are some who see in their own lives a time of pain and trouble so traumatic that when they look back they see themselves then as helpless passengers in the arms of God. But the Amazing Grace that saves a wretch like me is the Relentless God who pulls and yanks and hauls and drags and wonders why on earth I resist progress so often and so vigorously. Mine is a donkey, bound fast to me, and with or without my enthusiasm, He is headed home.

Oh - and if you ever use this devotion, be sure to save the best part for last: the title of this piece.

The Leashed Among You.

Today's Random Real Estate Tip

Attention, sellers:

If you plan to leave the many, many elaborately staged photos of your family laying in a field of daisies in your home while you attempt to sell it, it would be better if you did not have possibly the most unattractive family on earth.

This also applies to the series of elaborately staged Christmas photos.

And the Thomas Kincaide collection should probably go too.

Thank you.

Potential Buyers

Friday Five: If I Had a Million Dollars

("I would buy you a green dress," "But not a real green dress, that's cruel...")

Ah, the Barenaked Ladies. Love them.

But I digress. Today's Friday Five is simple but will undoubtedly reveal the inherent self-centeredness of most of us, certainly including me: what would you do with a million dollars?

1. Buy a house in New City.
We are stuck selling Old House in Old City, in a reasonably okay housing market there, all things considered - but we are not in a position to buy a house in New City until the old one is sold. So I am living with my parents. Whom I love, but at age 35, it's not the best of situations. I'm looking forward to having our own home again.

2. Take Beloved on a Super Cool Vacation.
Beloved and I are also living apart right now, until he finishes the school year in Old City and can move here to be with me. We are only 300 miles apart, but that's long enough. So, I would take us both on a really cool vacation this week, since it's spring break for him. Someplace warm and tropical and secluded. With golf for him and a really good bookstore for me.

3. Do In-Vitro Fertilization.
No insurance coverage for this. Actually, what I would like to do is figure out a way to leverage the whole million bucks to create an endowment fund for infertility coverage for clergy women. Sadly, one million bucks might not be nearly enough for this. But you never know until you try.

4. Yes, I would give to the church.
Maybe not my actual congregation, but some church ministry: a scholarship fund for seminary students, or the social services organization which is part of my denomination. Whatever I give to, it would be anonymous.

5. Help brother and sister-in-law buy their first house.
My brother and his wife have been in New York City for two years while she completes a Masters degree program. When they come home this summer, they'll be looking for a home in one of the higher housing markets in the country (I feel their pain...). But Beloved and I had equity to bring here with us, and they don't have any yet. So I'd like to help them buy their first house.

Random Observations for the Day

1. On NPR this morning, I heard that today marks the 10th anniversary of Viagra. And that Pfizer made over $1 billion on Viagra last year alone. Most insurance companies cover Viagra. Meanwhile, almost no insurance plans cover infertility testing, drugs, or treatment of any kind. Boner or baby? I guess we know which the insurance industry values more.

2. It snowed here last night, which is completely bizarre for this time of year in New City. Spring, o spring, where art thou?

3. I am seriously considering giving last year's sermon this coming Sunday, mostly because I actually liked it and think it's worth giving again - which I can do, for the first time ever, because I am in a new congregation. Is that wrong? I have mixed feelings about it. I feel lazy.

4. I have several friends who are currently in the misdst of leaving their congregations. Things seem to come in bunches. I think about you (y'all, I might say, since 'you' is plural here) all the time. Peace to you.

5. I am unreasonably happy that today for lunch I get to eat the leftovers of yesterday's excellent pad thai.

6. However, I am unreasonably unhappy that no one in New Church makes coffee for the office staff. WHAT? Aren't you people Lutheran? I may need to get my own coffeepot.

7. Watched Dan in Real Life last night. Loved it. Waitress is up for tonight since the bastard Lost people are making us wait until April for a new episode. (Normally I am quite a union supporter and I think the writers were perfectly correct to strike, but this logic wilts completely in the face of my Lost addiction.)

I think that's it for now. Carry on.

I'm an Aunt!!!

(Actually, I will be an aunt.) At Easter dinner, my normally-reserved brother got up to make a toast (weird in itself, since he has done this, you know, never) and said, "We want to wish a happy Easter to Grandma and Grandpa and to Aunt Shalom and Uncle Beloved..." while looking at our parents and my spouse and me - which, in other words, means that I am going to be an aunt! Whoo hoo! Baby is coming in October.

I had none of the mixed feelings I've had about the rash of pregnancy announcements in my life lately - just joy. Later on, I did have to leave a conversation wherein my sister-in-law, whom I deeply love, was bemoaning her truly terrible morning sickness. I feel for her, and I don't blame her at all for complaining since her nausea is so bad she's on medication normally given to chemo patients - but still, I just can't listen to people complain about being pregnant. I'm not quite that mature.

But that was a tiny hard moment in the midst of a very, very wonderful day. I have three nieces and a nephew by marriage whom I adore, but they were teenagers when I met them, and this one I'll get to know from the beginning. We can't wait!

Ummm...okay.

Got into the church office today for staff meeting, turned on the computer, sipped some coffee waiting for the email to load, thought dreamily about how well Easter had gone, opened email to find this from a parishioner I have never heard of:

"We wanted to let you know how disappointed we were this morning when we walked into the church and found it filled with Easter Lilies. We are highly allergic to lilies and we could not stay for the service."

I am speaking as one who is also allergic to lilies (and was there for all five services, you big whiners), so I have some sympathies.

But the sense of outrage just cracks me up. It's just a shock to come into a church on EASTER and find it filled with EASTER lilies! Who would have guessed?

I think Jesus should have put it differently. "The complainers you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."

Holy Week, Batman

I think I titled my holy week post the same way last year. Same crazy week, same crazy name. (Tune in next Lent to see whether Shalom will do any better! She doubts it!) Too much super-cheesy 1960's Batman episodes for me, apparently.

It's very odd not to be preparing an Easter sermon this year; six years in a row I've preached, and now it's someone else's turn. I am providing homilies for Thursday and Friday; Thursday's is done, and Friday's is - well, halfway. Maybe.

I am preaching at our special baptismal service on Easter (this will be the fifth of five services that morning - count 'em, FIVE) and I'm excited. I think we're up to sixteen baptisms at that service, from infants to a 77-year old woman. (We think she may have been baptized several times, actually, but this is a big pastoral care issue for her so we are overlooking the shoddy theology. My worship professor would be rolling in his grave, except that he's not dead, so I imagine that he just felt a sort of twinge in his shoulder as I typed the 'oh well' sentence about baptism and wondered if a storm was on the way.)

Who knows whether there will be time for posting between now and the conclusion of the great three days. If not - blessed Easter to you, and may God fill us up with new life until we shine like the sun.

"Sarah Laughs" - at Newsweek

This week's issue of Newsweek, page 18. "How to Make Sarah Laugh," says the headline. In the inset, in bold type: "Does being religious actually help you get pregnant? It's possible, says a fertility specialist."

Sigh.

The article started out pretty well. "One in eight couples has trouble conceiving," it says. "It stands to reason that, for some percentage of these couples, intense religious belief informs the way they approach the problem."

Well, yes. For me, intense religious belief informs the way I scream at God about the shape of my husband's sperm. (Didn't see that one coming, did you Newsweek?)

There follows a brief summation of how various religious traditions feel about in-vitro fertilization, donor sperm or egg, 'spilling seed,' and other fertility treatments. I appreciated the woman who did not want to pursue IVF because her Catholicism "gave her a sense of the sacredness of her marriage and of her own body." I would make a different decision, but I appreciate her thoughtfulness.

Until her last comment. This woman sought treatment at an alternative clinic (The Pope Paul VI Institute - can you then go around saying, "The Pope got me pregnant!") and had one child. She tried for a second, but was unsuccessful. Her last comment? "I feel a real sense of contentment. It's God's will if you have a baby."

My intense religious belief now informs the way I approach her comment in the following: AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Oh, but it gets better. "Here, then, is the million-dollar question: does being religious actually help infertile women get pregnant? [Psychologist who did some study that pisses me off] Domar says it's possible. If religious women have less depression and anxiety, and lower rates of anxiety and depression correlate to higher pregnancy rates, 'it stands to reason that religious and spiritual women should have higher pregnancy rates.'"

There are a lot of things that stand to reason. That particular assumption is not one of them. In fact, it not only does not stand to Reason, it actually sits in the lap of Rush to Judgment and begs Reason's pardon for soiling Reason's good name with such an insult.

Dear Newsweek,
My intense religious belief informs my need to tell you to sod off.
Sincerely,
Infertile Pastor

I guess the media doesn't go to church.

I realize that pastors can be very influential in the lives of their parishioners. If I ever doubted that, the great sadness I experienced from people when I announced that I was leaving my first congregation proved me otherwise.

You know, there are a few things that Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that definitely horrify me, and there are a few that make me think, "that man has cojones," and there are probably more I haven't heard which would cause a whole other reaction.

But it makes me laugh that so much media coverage is being given to the issue of whether Wright has had undue influence on Barack Obama, almost as if Obama might have been brainwashed while listening to a sermon.

Because let's just say that the LAST thing most pastors worry about is their parishioners paying too much attention. Almost every pastor I know has spent at least a few minutes decrying how no one listens to them. But should any of your parishioners run for president - oh, no! They might actually have listened to you! And not known how to have minds of their own! And disagree! At least occasionally!

But that speech today, Mr. Obama - that was a work of art. Well done. I suspect that if you had been a preacher, you might have ruined some minds in your time.

one step forward, three steps back

It's been a long time since I felt unhappy when I heard about someone's pregnancy. This is one of the unpleasant side effects of infertility, because I really hate feeling jealous or sad when I hear about someone else's joy. In the 2 1/2 years that Beloved and I have been trying to have a baby, lots of our friends and some family have gotten pregnant and had kids - and 99% of the time, my excitement for them has been uncomplicated by any grief of my own.

So today, when I got an email from an old sort-of-boyfriend who lives near New Congregation, and it said, "hey, great news, I'm going to be a dad," I was not happy to be so...unhappy. Those old feelings came back in a rush: jealousy, bitterness, "why them and not us," "he was kind of a jackass to me in the end, so why does he get a kid first," that sort of thing. Very third grade, I know. But there they are, these feelings I am simultaneously ashamed of and resigned to.

I don't plan to respond to his email right away, because I really can't. Maybe by next week. Maybe not. We'll see.

I hate feeling this way. I need an emotional shower. On top of this, I am leading a baptism class tomorrow morning with a bunch of families and kids, and although this is liturgically and pastorally fantastic, it's now something I'm dreading on the personal level.

Ick. Just ick. Can I get a do-over on this day?

Crap.

I thought I was doing pretty well at keeping up with the pace at New Congregation. But yesterday, Beloved mentioned that he left me a message on my voicemail, and I realized that hey - in three weeks, I've never gotten a message. Isn't that odd?

So it turns out that the little 'you have voicemail' cue never showed up on my phone, and when the parish adminstrator helped me find my way into the voicemail system this morning, I had THIRTEEN messages which I had completely ignored (because I didn't know about them, but still...).

This is not a good feeling. My profound apologies to anyone who might well assume I'm ignoring them. I'm not. I'm just too dumb to work the voicemail system which itself betrayed me anyway.

Damn.

I'm just bitching.

There are days when I get in the car and put in a certain CD and turn up a certain song. The days I’m talking about are bad ones, days where you get frustrated at every turn, or irritated (reasonably or not) by other people’s behavior, or simply worn down by the evidence of human selfishness in yourself and everyone else. Although, on these particular days, it’s usually that evidence in other people which is the main problem.

At the end of those sorts of days, I often get in the car, breathe out deeply, and put in the only hit Meredith Brooks will ever need, in my opinion. And I sing out loud, as loud as I can, with absolutely no regard for what people might think of me during the evening commute. “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother, I’m a sinner, I’m a saint…” That’s right, people. Simul clergy et bitch is the new Lutheran.

I voted for Barack Obama in the caucus. But I walked into that room undecided, and when I cast my vote, I still wasn’t entirely sure. I am an unashamed feminist, and I wanted to vote for Hillary for that reason alone. But even by our caucus date, it was clear that John McCain was the Republican nominee, and frankly, I want a Democrat in the White House so badly that my main concern is which of these two candidates stands a better chance against him. I believe that Hillary Clinton is exceptionally intelligent and qualified. I also believe that, through a few circumstances over which she had control and many more in which she didn’t, a lot of people hate her. I worry that a bunch of people stuck somewhere in the middle will vote for McCain because they just can’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton. This makes me sad, and angry, but also resigned to reality. I want everything related to George W. out of the White House. I will vote for Obama if he’s more likely to get that done.

My father-in-law, whom I love very much, is a prime example of the “she’s just a bitch” factor. He can’t stand her. And I believe, after several conversations with him about this, that he has no logical reason for his dislike other than the fact that he never liked her husband. As much as I’d like to shout, “Who the fuck cares?” when the conversation takes that drift, I don’t. (See how I say I’m okay with being a bitch, but even I don’t want to go that far.) He just hates Hillary. I just hate that he hates her for no reason. And by no means do I believe that he’s the only one.

Should John McCain have told the guy at his campaign rally that the question he asked, “How are we going to beat the bitch?” was inappropriate? Hell, yes. Can you imagine if the same man had asked, “How are we going to beat the nigger?” Such a question would rightfully make the front page as a prime example of both blatent and latent racism still present in the U.S. But throw “bitch” around like candy, and no one cares. I’m not about to equate sexism with racism completely. I know that as a white woman in this country, I have a lot of privileges that black men don’t have, and that black women especially don’t have. But that doesn’t mean that sexism isn’t still real, and I think we’re watching it in action when it comes to Clinton.

I remember in seminary how many students, male and female, were perfectly comfortable calling female professors by their first names, when they always referred to male professors as “Dr. So-and-so.” Everybody says that we call Hillary by her first name to distinguish her from her husband. But it sure fits nicely into that same tendency.

A friend of mine who grew up in Texas told me that one of her African-American friends who moved up north said once, “you know, there’s just as much racism up here, but it’s a lot harder to recognize because people act like it doesn’t exist. At least in the south, when you’re black, you know where you stand. Nobody bothers to hide racism there.” It’s that kind of sexism I see around Hillary (oops, I did it again) – the kind that self-righteously proclaims, “I’m not sexist! I’d vote for a woman! I just can’t vote for her.” Who would you vote for, then? Very few people can name another woman as qualified.

In this week’s Newsweek, there are a bunch of essays from women about why they will or won’t vote for Hillary Clinton. One of them relates this conversation between Tina Fey and Amy Poehler from a recent Saturday Night Live:

Fey: Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: yeah, she is. So am I, and so is this one. (Points to Amy Poehler.)
Poehler: Yeah. Deal with it.
Fey: You know what? Bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep on cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont. So, I’m saying it’s not too late, Texas and Ohio; bitch is the new black!

Bitches get stuff done. They’re opinionated, and forthright, and they tell you what they think. They can be smart, quick, funny, and edgy. They are imperfect, demanding, and yes – irritating at times. But they get stuff done. You’re going to learn the capital of Vermont, damn it, because that’s what you need to know.

Why is it that people call Senator Clinton a bitch? She’s not perfect. She can be irritating. But since when did campaigning for president become a personality contest? Why is it that Hillary’s tears (or lack thereof) make news? Why does she have to prove her femininity and then, when she does, get hit in the face with accusations that she’s not man enough for the job? Why is it that, all these years after Gloria Steinhem and burning bras, all the way back to suffragettes and voting rights – why are we still rehashing these old arguments about what makes a woman – and what makes a bitch?

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter to me. I’ll vote for the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is. I still think Obama stands a better chance of winning the ultimate prize, though I don’t doubt that Clinton is every bit as qualified. But as a woman in a mostly male-dominated profession, whether I vote for her or not, I feel a connection to Clinton. I know what it feels like – admittedly with less media coverage – to wonder whether your actions are going to be read as strong or bitchy; whether people will wonder if it’s just PMS; to watch your male colleague in action and know that, if you said those things, at least someone in the room would mutter the b-word under their breath as they left the room. It doesn't take too long to get there when nearly every adjective in front of your name is supposed to make you nice: woman, Christian, pastor.

I don’t know how to solve the problem, other than to keep demonstrating in small, daily ways that being a strong leader + woman does not = bitch. But I’ve been writing too long anyway. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go get stuff done.

just for the record...

...8:30am is really early for a staff meeting.

I don't care if they're an evil empire: thank heavens for Starbucks on Tuesday mornings.

Friday Five: Signs of Hope

I've been on a break from Friday Five for awhile, but this one seems like the perfect opportunity to jump back in. So, here goes...

What have you seen/ heard this week that was a:

1. Sign of hope?

This is a goofy one, but it worked for me. My best seminary friend, both a Texan and a dyed-in-the-wool Republican (though not a Bush fan any longer, a sign of hope in itself), voted for Hillary Clinton in this week's Texas primary. Seriously, people: this is almost a sign of the return of Jesus, not to mention a sign of hope. (She confided that her vote was mostly motivated by a desire to flip the bird at the Texas media who had virtually called the state for Obama before polls closed, but hey - the fact that she would even entertain the possibility of voting for a Clinton is a freaking miracle.)

2. An unexpected word of light in a dark place?

Last weekend I helped preside at my first funeral here at New Congregation, for a 26-year old man who died of a staph infection which settled in his heart. The service was very moving, as you would expect, but for me, the best word of light came during the eulogy given by this young man's cousin. Trying to write the eulogy, he had put his three-year old daughter in front of a children's program on television to keep her occupied long enough for him to think. What happened to come on was a barnyard cartoon wherein the cow's pet goldfish had died, and the cow was grieving. Being Irish barnyard animals (naturally), the whole farm got together for a wake during which the chicken asked the cow (in an Irish lilt, which the cousin imitated very well), "Are ye sad?" "Yes," said the cow, "but it's a good sad." The way he told it and his acknowledgment of both grief and hope - certainly a light.

3. A sign of spring?

Having recently moved from Winter Wonderland to New and Green City - hey, it all looks like spring to me. It's green! Things are growing! Grocery stores have primroses outside! And they're not frozen black! All good.

4. Challenging and/or surprising?

I got a whole day this week to sit at my desk and write long lists of all the dreams I have for our new worship service and for adult education opportunities. In my experience, both that kind of time AND the encouragement to do those things are rare. I loved it. Challenging in the best way.

5. Share a hope for the coming week/month/year....

Well, the crass one first: I really hope we sell our house in Former City by this time next month. I am not above praying for this at this point.

More important hope: I really hope that Beloved finds an amazing new job in New and Green City, because he's moving here for my sake and I want him to have an exciting opportunity of his own. I've been praying for that one for quite awhile.

Bonus play... a piece of music/ poem guaranteed to cheer you?

This list could be long, but I'll just highlight a few:
1. Song that will make me laugh: "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" (Avenue Q soundtrack)
2. Song that lifts my spirits: "Ave Maria" (from my Alma Mater college choir's Christmas CD, and when I can find it I'll tell you the composer)
3. Song I love to sing with: "Galileo" and "Power of Two" (Indigo Girls)
4. Song that always makes me happy: "You Can Call Me Al" (Paul Simon)
5. Song that makes me so grateful that God created a world where there is music: "Make Our Garden Grow" (from Leonard Bernstein's Candide)

Enough for now. Hope, and my song list, springs eternal...

Random Fun

I found this fun meme on LutheranChik's "L" Word Diary and it made me laugh. Consider yourself tagged if you'd like to blow a few minutes today.


1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME (first pet, current car): Tuffy Legacy

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME (fave ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe): Chocolate Fudge Brownie Manolo (please note that I have no actual Manolo shoes).

3. YOUR NATIVE AMERICAN NAME (favorite color, favorite animal): Yellow Dog. (Or Yellow Chocolate Lab, to be more specific.)

4. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME (middle name, city where you were born): Diane Edmonds.

5. YOUR STAR WARS NAME (the first three letters of your last name, first two of your first name): Sac-Ka.

6. SUPERHERO NAME (2nd favorite color, favorite drink): Red Latte. Possibly Red Red Wine, but that sounds very non-superhero-ish. Not that Red Latte sounds all that great either. ("Who's that - flying through the air jittery and over-caffeinated? Why, it's RED LATTE!")

7. NASCAR NAME (the first names of your grandfathers): Carl James. Boring.

8. STRIPPER NAME (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Lovely Twix.

9. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME (your fifth grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Kemp Kentucky. (I KNOW that Kentucky is not a city. But I liked it anyway.)

10. SPY NAME (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Advent Sweet Pea. This might make a better hippie name, actually.

11. CARTOON NAME (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now): Nectarine Jeans Jacket.

12. HIPPIE NAME (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Scone Birch.

Liturgy is Fun! Really!

One of the projects I'm charged with at New Congregation is the development of a fourth worship service on Sundays, in the evening. Right now we're doing this just once a month, but the hope and dream is to develop it into an alternative to Sunday morning on a weekly basis.

I freely admit that I am going to steal from the Emerging Church movement on this, because what we want is not to do Yet Another Generic Praise Band service, but a service grounded in liturgy, driven by our mission statement (which has words like embody, proclaim, compassion, and inclusive) - but not full of churchy 'code language.' I have been convinced for a long time that we can do this, we Lutherans: we can do liturgy in creative and new ways while still keeping the core of a tradition which has been life-giving for a great many years.

I realize the liturgy can also be boring and/or badly done. I get this. But it doesn't have to be.

So here's my question for you: if you were given the liturgical year but you wanted to put a twist on it, how would you reinterpret those themes without churchy language?

Here's an example: January is Epiphany. Epiphany is an outward-looking, joyful season which also features the Week of Christian Unity. So, we could have a worship service full of global music, and/or invite a preacher from a different Christian tradition. We could pair this with adult and kid classes about understanding other Christian traditions and/or other religions. Or we could do a worship service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. which might incorporate a confession centered on racism and our participation in that. And then we could encourage all the worshippers to be part of a local observation of MLK Jr. day.

This is the kind of thing I'm thinking about. Not horribly original, I realize, but it's a place to start. And I am having fun. But I can use more ideas! Include them in the comments if you've got a brainstorm to share.

pulpit yoga

One of the things I knew would be a challenge for me when I accepted a call as an Associate Pastor was the change in preaching frequency. As in, certainly not every week. Because of a few things, including the arrival of Easter only a month after I started here and the fact that Palm Sunday does not include a sermon in this congregation, I preached on February 24 and will not preach on a full Sunday again until March 30. I'm preaching a children's sermon on Palm Sunday, and a homily on Maundy Thursday, and at the special baptismal service on Easter Sunday, all of which are great and do require a certain amount of preparation, but none of which are 'normal' preaching moments. This is a very odd feeling.

It's one of the things I was looking forward to, of course, the sharing of preaching with a colleague. I remember my internship supervisor telling me about the first day he arrived in his new solo call and looked at the calendar, and realized that Sunday after Sunday after Sunday stretched out in front of him with no one to preach but him. I had a similar moment in my previous congregation when I knew I was truly on my own after my colleague's illness made it impossible for him to return. It was a strange feeling. And so is the fact that all those Sundays no longer belong to me.

It's not entirely a case of "be careful what you wish for - you might get it." My colleague here is a very good preacher, and I have already enjoyed the privilege of listening. For someone who is accustomed to climbing into the pulpit week after week, simply sitting in the pew and hearing the word preached is a huge gift. It's also a great opportunity to hear a different perspective and style than my own.

At my previous congregation, a retired pastor who became one of my closest friends and who was glad to preach any time I asked him, was often teased about how his sermons were always longer than mine. I teased him about that once myself, and he laughed and said, "well, I don't get to do this very often, so when I get up there, I have a lot of stuff saved up that I want to say!" I might have to watch out for that myself. Then again, I also have a chance now to do 'preaching' in different ways which do not include a pulpit. In classes, in meetings, with individuals, with groups, in ways I haven't even imagined yet. And I am prompted to realize that preaching is something I do love. This is easy to forget when it becomes such a part of the weekly routine that it can feel more like a burden than a gift, at least some of the time.

I went for a walk the other day for the first time in a long time. The lack of outdoor exercise has been partly due to horrible weather where we've been living, and also due to my particular brand of a combined laziness/busyness attitude. As in, "I'm too busy to exercise, so I am going to lay on the couch for three hours and watch reruns of Law & Order." Obviously that busy girl has no time to exercise.

Anyway. The point is, I woke up the next day with that good sore feeling you get when you exercise after a long period of being sedentary. It hurts a little, or maybe it's just a bit uncomfortable, but it also feels good - that you're stretching yourself in good ways and using parts of you that you'd forgotten about. It's how I felt when I started yoga classes this winter: you think you can't possibly bend yourself that way, but after you try it for awhile, you build the strength to do things you thought you could never do. This call is good exercise for me. Parts of me are a little sore now and again, but it's a good sore: it's good exercise.

And Beloved is coming tomorrow night for a weekend visit, so that feels good too.

Settling In

I've been at New Church for nine days. On the one hand, it feels like about nine months. On the other, about nine seconds.

I find myself more caught up than I had anticipated in the grief process for my previous congregation, and like all grief journeys, it takes me by surprise when it shows up. I'm doing fine, I'm not thinking about them at all, and then I meet someone with the same name, or who looks like or sounds like, a previous parishioner, and poof! I'm back at stage one again. I suspect this will go on for a long time. It helps to know that the interim pastor there is someone I trust, who will shepherd them well into the next phase of their ministry. But still - I'm not there. And they are fine, of course, which is even harder than the idea that they are NOT fine without me.

This tightrope between then-and-now hit me full force last week on my first Sunday. I suppose it would have in any circumstance, but it turned out that two of my former parishioners showed up to hear my first sermon here. I found myself torn between gratitude that they would make the trip and, to be perfectly frank, irritation that I was being pulled backward on a day when I wanted only to try and leap into this new place. It felt a bit inappropriate for them to be there, even as I appreciated the gesture. I know those people will be in my mind and heart for a long time to come - I just didn't figure some of them would be there in the flesh on Sunday Number One.

So that threw me off a bit and I was relieved that they only stuck around for the first service. New Congregation has three worship services (aack!) but that was less difficult than I'd imagined (though boy, did I sleep like a rock that night). I think that preaching the same sermon three times on a routine basis will provide a challenge for me, since I was fairly sick of my words by the time the third service rolled around. I'm a manuscript preacher, so although I don't read my manuscript - it's more or less memorized by the time I give it - I do have weaknesses when it comes to spontaneity from the pulpit. I have also had some bad experiences with spontaneity, so it's not a virtue I hold in too much esteem when it comes to preaching practices. (Bad experiences as a listener, to be precise. As in, wondering what on earth the POINT OF THIS SERMON is and WHEN we might actually GET TO IT.)

We had a staff retreat on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Bad: didn't get a day off. Good: great, great staff. I'm so excited to work with these people. And it turns out that one of the staff, four years older than me, has gone through in-vitro twice (unsuccessfully, sadly) and is now in the process of adopting their second child. She had shared her faith story, including a tiny sentence about infertility, before it was my turn, so when my turn came around, I - to my own surprise - shared quite a bit about our infertility challenges.

This was a huge change for me. In Previous Congregation, I never told anyone about that struggle except for one colleague who was, in many respects, like a spiritual director. Otherwise, I did not feel ready to share that story nor did I want it to be a topic of discussion in the congregation. I told the staff the gist of the story and, although I did say that I do not want to talk about this with parishioners, it felt very good to include other people in this struggle. I know that our decision-process will speed up this summer and chances are, we'll have doctor appointments of one form or another which might prompt questions. I shared partly to explain what might yet come.

But I also shared because I realize two things: one, as much as I might believe with every fiber of my being that people ought to talk about infertility when it affects them because there is no other way to get rid of the shame around it, I am only adding to the problem if I can't talk about it myself; and two, that this has become a huge part of my faith story and I would not be telling the truth about myself if I didn't include a real description of the valley in which we find ourselves these days.

It came to me when I was writing the sermon for Sunday about the woman at the well. She came trying to hide the deepest pain in her life, and Jesus went straight for it. He refused to let her hide, and then he refused to walk away. When, "I have no husband" came out of her mouth, I'm betting that, "Oh, God, why did I say that out loud" immediately followed in her mind. Naming your pain out loud is terrifying.

But it is also freeing in the most amazing way. Now these people know me, the real me. And they did not walk away. And I have another conversation partner along the journey. Pain transformed by being borne among the many instead of one. Praises be for that.

So week one is down - week two is underway. This is the right place for me, and praises be for that as well. Now if we can just find Beloved a job and sell our house and buy another one...but these will come.

adiaphora

Today was my first Sunday in New Congregation, and I realize there should be lots of important and theologically meaningful things to say, but it's also Oscar Sunday. So I need to get back to the good stuff. Thus far:

1. George Clooney is still the most attractive man ever. (I love Beloved, don't get me wrong, but WOWZA. Clooney in a tux is hard to beat.)

2. Renee Zellweger's dress is great but what the HELL is with that haircut?

3. Marion Cotillard's dress - amazing.

4. Sean Rogan (is that his name?) and The Other Dude from Knocked Up - hilarious.

5. Much as I otherwise love him, John Stewart as host...eh.

Gotta go. More watching. Meaningful reflection on first Sunday later.

I did say EVERYTHING was new...

New call = new office = new computer = new blog template.

Besides, it's really, really time for spring.

Hope you like it.

Everything Old is New Again

It's hard to start over. This is my first week in New Congregation (which won't be new for long, so I need another name for it) and part of me is just now starting to remember how much work it is to do the pastor thing in a new place. I feel a bit like I'm watching people in a raquetball court from that viewer window they always have upstairs: the only way to learn to play is to actually get in there and do it, but it's much more attractive to watch from above given that it looks like that little blue ball would really hurt if it hit you in the head.

Of course, I hate raquetball, so this is probably a bad metaphor.

Anyway. I started on Wednesday, and now it's Friday. I'm preaching on Sunday, and the sermon is actually done, though I'm not entirely pleased with the ending. It's also a bit on the long side (I'm typically a 12-15 minute preacher and this one is probably pushing 15-18). However, I'm not sure about this because I'm using a new computer with a new font, and it would seem as if more pages is a result of the font rather than wordiness on my part.

One of the many complications of sermon-writing.

My office is very beige. Literally. Blah. I've unpacked all my books (joy of joys, I have plenty of shelf space!) and that perks it up a bit, but I'm looking into a new paint color for a few of the walls. That and some pictures on the walls will help a lot.

Yesterday I had coffee with the quilting ladies and chatted with the newsletter-folders. I talked for a bit with two staff members about confirmation ministry and with another staff member about children's ministry. I also got to go to Office Max and buy things for my office, including a box of my very favorite pens. If it sounds mundane, that's because so far I've done a lot of mundane things - and that takes some getting used to. This morning, my colleague was in his office talking to the mother of a 26-year old guy who made it through his tour in Iraq but died last night after contracting a staph infection in his heart. I asked him if I could do something to help, but he said no - and truthfully, that's right. I really can't do much of anything for anyone right now, which is REALLY STRANGE (if also a bit of a relief). If I were the only pastor, it would be completely different. But being the second pastor when the first has been here for twenty-some years really does render me a bit useless when that kind of thing happens in my first week on the job. This is a little hard on the ego.

It will be good for me not to be so beloved. There's no way to say it without sounding like an arrogant jackass, but it's the truth: my former congregation loved me (okay, okay, not everybody, but the vast majority) and it made me wary. I feel like that level of beloved-ness makes pastors do dumb things because they feel invincible. I understand that pastors get a certain level of love because of a million different reasons, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with the pastor him/herself, but still...I get nervous. And I fear that I also get lazy. Becuase once they love you, you don't have to work so hard. That's not all bad. But it sure isn't all good, either.

So now I'm brand new again, and no one loves me. We will have to start over, which is very exciting and completely terrifying. This is the first sermon I have written in a long, long time for a group of people I don't know at all. Writing those kinds of sermons is hard, like throwing at a dartboard while blindfolded. Will you hit them where it counts? Or will you miss and poke a hole in the wall?

I'm not sure how this post about starting in a new congregation ended up being about raquetball and darts, but it might indicate something Freudian about my fears of being hit by unexpected flying things. Maybe I'll put a dartboard up in my office. This would take the edge off the beige, anyway.

This Post Brought to You by the Letter Q

This summer, Beloved and I went to New York to visit my brother and sister-in-law. Among the highlights: seeing Avenue Q, perhaps the best. Broadway. show. ever. At least for anyone in the Sesame Street generation.

This week I got a belated birthday peresent from said brother - the Avenue Q soundtrack. I listened to it four times as we drove to New Town, where I will start at New Congregation tomorrow. Beloved has taken the week off and we are staying at my parents' house, about 15 miles from New Congregation. He'll go home on Sunday and I'll stay here, thus beginning the temporary separation part of our marriage: a reflection only on the complicated process of selling a house, buying a new one, starting a job for me, and finishing up a job for him - not, in other words, a commentary on the state of our relationship.

But let me tell you this: staying in a house where you have nothing to do all day is not exactly the best thing for your marriage. Beloved is driving me not a little bit nuts at this point. This is a man who needs projects. And he is stuck in a house that is not his own, with almost nothing to do except bug his wife.

One of my very favorite songs in Avenue Q is called "The More You Love Someone, The More You Want to Kill Them." Ah, yes. How true. A selection of the lyrics (which, by the way, are sung by a woman with a highly stereotypical Asian accent - and if this strikes you as prejudicial, then be sure to check out the song, "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist"):

The more you love someone,
The more you want to kill ‘em.
The more you love someone,
The more he make you cry

Though you are try
For making peace
With them and loving,
That’s why you love so strong
You like to make him die!

The more you love someone,
The more he make you crazy.
The more you love someone,
The more you wishing him dead!

Sometime you look at him
And only see fat and lazy,
And wanting baseball bat
For hitting him on his head!

Don't get me wrong: I do love this man. But we HAVE to find something for him to do. RIGHT BLOODY NOW.

Of course, the end of the song is accurate too...

So if there someone
You are wanting so
To kill ‘em.
You go and find him.
And you get him.
And you no kill him.
‘Cause chances good
He is your love.

Damn, I must really love this man.

Farewell

It's been two weeks since I left my first congregation and I'm still not sure quite what to say about it. I've been searching for some kind of biblical link, or a metaphor, or an image which would summarize it - and I can't find anything. What I wanted to do was write a really meaningful, tightly-constructed reflection on leaving. But that doesn't seem to be working out. Which in and of itself might be the only image I have for leaving; it's kind of a mess, which is not altogether a bad thing.

This was my first call, and I stayed for eight years. I started as the associate pastor and (although this is wisely frowned on by the powers that be) became the senior pastor after my colleague was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Had I been blogging at the time of his illness and catastrophic biopsy procedure, I'd have a thousand entries by now - it's enough to say that that experience changed my life in profound ways. Among which was my decision to stay in the congregation, which I had been preparing to leave (not that they knew that). Which led to five more years of ministry there. And to a very tight bond with a great many people, and a fondness for that place which seems hard to believe could be repeated again. I've said that before, though, and been gratefully wrong: I thought no friends could be better than those I found in college, until I went to seminary. It's a good thing God sustains hope a lot longer than I can.

I was worried about my last Sunday, because there's no way around the fact that you, the pastor, are the center of attention that day. You're always up in the front, of course, but not as yourself; you're there to facilitate worship, to lead the service, and to offer something meaningful in the sermon. The office of pastor is your reason to be there, not your own personality. On your last day, however, this is not true at all. It's all about you. This is a bit intense for me.

I did fine through the first worship service, although I choked up a few times here and there. During the children's sermon; at the end of the regular sermon; and during the benediction, which I knew would happen. The standard handshaking time was very emotional, but I did quite well until the very end.

At the very end of the line of well-wishers came the high school youth group. Keep in mind that these kids were in the first or second grade when I got there, and in many ways, that is how I still think of them. I did their first communion class and trained them as acolytes and spent the night with them at camp for the grade school retreats. They are not children anymore, and they regularly tortured me during confirmation class given the fact that several of them are constitutionally incapable of shutting up for more than thirty seconds at a time.

They had been sitting in the balcony, so I couldn't really see what I realized when they came down the stairs to hug me, which is that they were sobbing. I do not exaggerate here. Sobbing. And I lost it. It was lovely and wonderful that they were so sad to see me go (some note must be taken of the general tendency toward drama in this group), but let me tell you this: there is nothing worse than knowing you have made children cry. You feel like the devil. Hands down, that was the hardest moment of the day. Because I remember when our youth pastor left, when I was in high school, and I remember how much it hurt and how I wondered why he would want to leave us and knew that I would never, ever, ever like a pastor the way I liked him.

This turned out not to be true, of course, but it hurt like hell at the time. And all the stuff I can tell myself now about how these kids will be just fine, and how they will remember this years from now and smile a little at their dramatic overtures - none of it matters when you know that you have hurt the kids you love. There are some things about leaving a congregation that, to be perfectly frank, are just fucking hard. There is nothing you can do about the fact that you are going to hurt people. They will get past it. But in the moment, that cliche doesn't help much.

So, the rest of the day went up from there. Surprisingly (to me) I didn't cry at the second service at all, until communion. We have a round altar, and as I came around for one of the last times to serve communion, I met the eyes of the woman who was congregational president when I came to the church. Next to her was an elderly woman who is, on the surface, the most unemotional person you have ever met - but who has survived, during my time there, the lingering illness and death of her husband and the completely sudden death of her only daughter, killed in a plane crash. Both women were crying. There is nothing harder than the tears of someone you have only seen cry once before, at the death of her daughter.

And, at least for me, there is something so intensely personal about serving communion. I managed to convince the congregation after a few years that we should be celebrating communion every Sunday. I gave them all the standard reasons, about the fact that worship is really meant to include this meal, that the ancient church did this all the time, that the piety of "less often makes it more special" was really invented by Scandinavians who lived so far north that the pastor could only make it there once a year so they had to give themselves some kind of meaning behind the infrequency of the sacraments. But what I didn't tell them was this: I also wanted them to have communion every Sunday because it means that they are guaranteed to get something meaningful every week. Even if the sermon sucks, they will have the body and blood of Christ. This takes the pressure off a bit. On the Sundays when I feel less-than-great about the sermon, I serve communion with extra fervor, taking refuge in the reminder that nothing I do up here changes the essential grace we receive in that meal. I cannot screw it up. (I have, in various ways, done very human things up there, like cough or forget the words of institution or spill wine or run out of wafers, but these things don't matter in the long run).

And honestly, I didn't feel all that great about my last sermon. It's too much damn pressure, you know? It's too much to expect of yourself that it be the BEST SERMON EVER, because that's not realistic. It was okay. I felt alright about it, but not great. So I was especially grateful for communion that day. And when I saw those two women and the tears in their eyes, I began to cry. Not horrible sobbing, but also not just misty eyes. I stopped for moment, and then kept going, and then I cried through the rest of the service. Especially during the closing hymn, my very favorite: Lift High the Cross.

After the service, we had a potluck. It was more fun than I had thought: I was worried about being emotionally exhausted, but that turned out not to be true. I was also worried about the "open mike!" invitation, but that turned out much better than I had anticipated (apart from the guy who talked about my initial interview there and mentioned that I was wearing "white silk stockings." What the hell? I bet no one says that kind of stuff at Rowan Williams' farewell potluck).

And then we left. I had packed up my office the day before, so we put a few last things in the car. I took the church's keys off my keyring and left them on the desk (that was a weird moment). I worried about what I had forgotten, which turned out to be a few minor things I came back to pick up later that week.

There is never such a thing as tying up all the loose ends. Not everyone I had hoped to see was there on my last day, though there were few significant absences. Thankfully, the weather cooperated for the first Sunday in a month and we had very little snow so those in outlying areas were able to come.

If this were a novel, there would be some great story that summed everything up. But there wasn't. It was just a good day, and a hard day, and a treasured day. I'm grateful to have had these two weeks off between calls, and it's still a bit unreal to me that there is another congregation waiting for me to begin.

Saying goodbye is hard. This is a good thing, of course, because it means you have formed real attachments, that you have really loved and been loved. There is nothing better than that when you are there, but there is a price to be paid when you go. I wish there was something more profound to be said, but I can't seem to find it. All I find is this: that even the best of farewells will break your heart a little bit, and the best hope is that it breaks it open for a richer life to come.

Well, it is LENTEN soup...

So one of the things I have enjoyed doing on my two-week break inbetween congregations is showing up at church (a neutral site church, neither old nor new) and not having to do anything. As in, I was the happiest person at Ash Wednesday services, perhaps the happiest person ever considering the assignment of the evening is to seriously consider one's sin and mortality. Why was I happy? Because I just sat there. I didn't have to run around remembering where I had put the ashes from last year's service, or collapse during the recitation of Psalm 51 in a coughing fit (actually happened last year, after which kind congregation members handed me a pocket full of various and sundry cough drops during the imposition of ashes) or any other random pastoral duties.

So tonight I am making soup for Lenten supper, which I never do. And going to church across the street, where Beloved has been a member for many years and where we were married. Neutral Site Church is one of my favorite places in the world.

I am making Minnesota Wild Rice soup. I love this stuff (if you are a midwesterner and know of Byerly's Wild Rice Soup, this is the recipe I'm using). Unfortunately, there has apparently been a run on wild rice in our town and there was none left anyplace I went today, so I had to settle for a similar-looking brand of wild rice from China. I did notice that "beautiful purple color" was on the package as one of its fine attributes, but I didn't think much of it. Plus I didn't have any choice.

You know where this is going. I am leaving in five minutes for Neutral Site Church with my pot of PURPLE wild rice soup. I don't mean lavendar, or mauve, or anything in the pastel family. I mean full-on, royal, PURPLE. I'm the Bridget Jones of Lent.*

I have, however, just remembered that purple is, after all, the color of Lent. So this is not just purple soup, people. Oh no. This is LITURGICALLY CORRECT Lenten soup. Ha. Take that, bizarre Chinese rice.

*If the Bridget Jones reference doesn't make sense to you, check out the scene where she makes the soup and it turns blue from the string used to tie up the leeks. At least my soup is colored by an actual ingredient. That's better, right?

Working On It

For the hordes of readers out there, let me reassure you that I am not dead. Nor is my internet service. I'm still thinking through the leaving-congregation experience and deciding how to blog about it. Hopefully tomorrow.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled life.

Stuck

Yes. Writing this Sunday's sermon - the last one I will give in this congregation - is every bit as hard as I thought it would be. And then some.

Mary

I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. But sometimes you just see a piece of art which speaks to you, and you can't necessarily explain why.

Today I bought a painting - something I have only done once before (Beloved and I bought a small oil painting of Banff while we were there on our honeymoon). For Christmas, my parents gave me some money to buy a piece of art before I leave this place, so between that, a small fund I'd been saving for a painting of some kind, and a price cut by the artist, I actually had the means to buy this piece I've been admiring for months. (It wasn't all that expensive - I'll keep the numbers to myself, but it was well in the three-digit range.)

Almost every Wednesday morning, a good friend and I have coffee at a local bakery. They always have local art there, and for awhile this particular artist has had a display of ten or twelve paintings on the walls. One in particular attracted me on the first day, and I've been staring at it ever since. It's called 'Mary.'

When I spoke with the artist today, he said he was inspired by Russian icons. Normally I dislike a lot of religious art (particularly of the Precious Moments, Footprints, Thomas Kinkade-type, of which there is way, way too much in the world) - but icons are a definite exception. Aside from a print of a stained-glass window in Germany (featuring Luther, imagine that) and a large sheet of music whose notes create the shape of the Koln cathedral, I have no art in my office except this icon replica: Trinity, painted by Andrei Rublev around 1410.


Art is personal, so I have no idea if you will love or hate or feel indifferent about Mary. I love her. Here she is.



Check out artist Rick Garcia if you'd like to see more.

T-minus Nine and Counting

The "it's the last ________" has begun.

Today was my last staff meeting (I should have one next Tuesday, but I'll be out of town). I'm not super emotional in public, but I wanted to say my thanks to the staff and I managed to do this without out tears. They really are great.

This Sunday will be the last "normal" sermon - I'm not counting my last day as that, because it won't be a normal day at all.

This past Sunday was (please, please, please God) my last drive in horrible snow conditions. The 70-mile round trip commute in winter is one thing I will most definitely not miss.

Today I had a last lunch with one of the really wonderful retired pastors in our congregation. He filled in for me during my sabbatical last year and I'm so grateful for his presence: good advice when I ask for it, good listening when I don't (even if I should).

I have come to the conclusion that seven weeks in-between announcing my leaving and actually leaving is too much. I thought it wouldn't be enough, and frankly, I can hardly wait to leave at this point. You can only drag out the goodbye-ing for so long; I knew it would be emotionally draining, but this is a lot harder than I thought.

Now I'm in the last two weeks: technically, nine days left of work (hence the title of the post). I find myself caught between drinking up every second of these two weeks and wanting to get out of here as quickly as possible. I'm sure that's perfectly normal, but it's not the most comfortable experience of life.