Set Free

Moves, Right and Wrong

I feel like such a lucky duck. I wrote down the question that was plaguing me, dropped it into a post and came home to so many thoughtful comments!

First, thank you to Milton for sharing the link to a post about discernment at The Other Jesus. Much of what he describes doing in a discernment process is what I am doing, or at least try to do.

Readers here know that I've been in conversation about being a new church developer, and that is one piece of discernment that feels positive on a personal level but which is not close by in terms of the calendar. Meanwhile I am looking for another interim position, and being me, I am hoping that the match will feel like a call and not be simply a job. I don't know if that happens every time for people doing Interim Ministry. If you're an Interim and want to weigh in, please do.

I do tend, perhaps due to my status as a professional good girl from waaay back, to worry that if I don't make the one right choice, I'll mess up everything else. And while I've loosened up enough to believe that *others* might have more than one option, I continue to employ a different standard for myself. (This may be a childhood issue, huh?) It's not exactly works righteousness, but I'm not sure what to call it. Choice righteousness?

What's interesting is that in a conversation today that I hoped would help clarify my short-term direction I instead received an affirmation of the new church development call. Short-term, I'm still waiting for more information, both the practical and the transcendent.

I'll close this with a quote from Greg Garrett's post at The Other Jesus:

To ask God’s will for our lives is often to ask the path of our service to God, to others, and to the earth we live on. And a counter-cultural community is more likely to be open to the idea of service and commitment than a secular community.

My counter-cultural community includes all of you, across boundaries of belief or creed that might otherwise prevent us from being that for one another. Thanks for being here and helping me move, one way or the other.

One Right Move, or No Wrong Moves

When it comes to discernment, is there always one "right" move? or are there no wrong moves, as long as you are faithful to the process?

Please discuss.

Covenant

I am no longer my own but yours.
Your will, not mine, be done in all things,
wherever you may place me,
in all that I do
and in all that I may endure;
when there is work for me and when there is none;
when I am troubled and when I am at peace.
Your will be done
when I am valued and when I am disregarded;
when I find fulfillment and when it is lacking;
when I have all things and when I have nothing.
I willingly offer all I have and am
to serve you, as and where you choose.

Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
May it be so for ever.
Let this covenant now made on earth
be fulfilled in heaven. Amen.

That's the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer, which is being prayed and examined by some of my Methodist friends, as I understand is their habit at the first of the year. Although I come from a long line of Methodists on my paternal grandmother's side of the family, and although I spent some time in Methodist churches, I can't remember ever hearing it before this year.

Funny how things come into our lives when we need to hear them, isn't it?

I believe I have a 21st-century American tendency to feel I'm only being properly used by and for God when I am valued and finding fulfillment and when I have all things and when there is work for me.

That last one is most powerfully pulling on me at the moment. As my time at Main Street Church winds down, and whether it is two months or four months or more before I leave them, my mind is naturally on where I will go next. Where may I give all these things to God?

And why am I so focused on employment?

For practical reasons, it's easy to understand. There is a mortgage. An oil bill. Tuition. All the rest of it.

But on a spiritual level, this prayer gives me a different kind of work to do, the inner sort. Am I so identified with my work, with my job, with my pastoral role, that I cannot imagine being valuable to God, or faithful, for that matter, in any other way?

I suppose when a person feels called to something, there is always a risk this will be true. Employment would seem to be an affirmation of the calling. In fact, in my tradition, we do not ordain without a call to a particular job, and a pastor without that kind of call will eventually be asked to consider whether she is really "called," in the spiritual sense.

"when there is work for me and when there is none'--I find that part not just hard but terrifying. When I read it, when I roll the words over in my mind, I feel a gnawing in my guts.

I'm not a Methodist, despite my heritage, and I could blow past this prayer and look for one that suits me better today, this year, but it feels important. I can't exactly say I've prayed it, yet, but I am mulling it this morning.

Heart of Stone

"I would rather my heart be pliable and open to all...not hard and incapable of receiving God's messengers when they arrive."  Tripp Hudgins, on his blog.

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:26

Let's just say there have been some disappointments on the vocational front in terms of what the future may hold, and I am wondering what God is up to at the moment. Each time I have gotten a bit excited about seeing, perhaps, the way ahead of me, something has happened to shut me down. And when I begin to brace myself for disappointment, and brace myself I do, the only way I know how to do it is to close down.

I know very well that closing down is not the way to facilitate the arrival of God's messengers, or more importantly the recognition of their arrival.

I guess I'm comparing this period of discernment to the time I decided to go back to seminary, and finding it wanting. Then I kept seeing doors closing, and I finally got the message that I ought to be finishing seminary, not trying something else altogether, and once I made the decision, all the other things that seemed so impossible or unlikely fell into place. I want that to happen now, too! But the human element is not so cooperative, or perhaps I'm simply impatient.

What I do know is that I am wound tight and that doesn't help in figuring out what is next or what is right. My soul posture is entirely closed. Being open feels too scary, too vulnerable.

I feel a bit like the witches in Stardust, reading the entrails of a rejection e-mail received tonight, trying to see the signs and portents that will guide me to the heart of the star, to the source of renewal. The settled job it represented would have been just the opposite of what I really hope to be doing, but because of my geographic ties, it seemed important to put my name in for everything possible. I knew all along it was an unlikely match (though there were those who encouraged me to apply), but even when we know that, there is a sense of "Huh, what's so wrong with me?" that comes with such correspondence.

For now, I remain on the risky path of potential unemployment when this interim ends, and I find that discomfiting, to put it mildly. Any work on a new church start, other than distant planning, would not happen until next year, so I have to hope there will be another interim to serve. It all feels very uncertain.

Which brings me back to the heart of stone. Which I realize will get in the way of receiving the messengers. But for the moment, it's what I have.

Ice

It's icing outside.

I hear the ice hitting the windows and feel relieved to be inside.

The technical definition, according to Weather.Com is "light freezing rain," but I prefer to say ice.

Our tree, decorated, stands by a window, and the ice is just on the other side of the glass. The tree is inside, the ice outside, and I am somewhere else in my mind but pulled back by the tapping of sharp drops, pellets of winter on a dark, cold night.

The past three days, full of conversations and contemplations, have left me in a mood to hibernate, but Christmas is coming, and that sort of deep drawing within will not be possible. I will finish editing bulletins, and try to get ahead on sermons, and fulfill obligations and hope to find a way to get the shopping done. For the first time in many years I will watch a Christmas Pageant in which I had no hand. I will celebrate Christmas with a community for the first time and the last.

I wonder where next year will find me? We are passing into a new phase of our lives here, with no assurance that our oldest will be home next year at Christmas or even that this will continue to be our home. We are passing into a new phase of life, in which young things believe they can tell their parents what will be, and this parent does not know how to respond other than to feel shocked and hope to handle it better when the inevitable next time comes.

I think of all the years I did not spend Christmas with my parents, because I lived so far away. I hope I won't seem as expendable to my children as they move into adulthood, although today I fear I might be.

There is something about being 25 or even 30 and thinking all the same people will always be available to you, that you will be able to stop by the same houses and drink the same eggnog no matter how many years go by.

It's quiet outside now, although the computer tells me we are now experiencing sleet, that wetter version of the earlier ice. I'm still glad to be inside the house.

Inside my head, I hear the tapping of time and have an odd desire to freeze the thoughts in my head just where they are, in order to study them more deeply. I want a snapshot of the characters skating on the surface of the inner landscape, some waltzing gracefully and some stumbling around the edges, some racing and shouting joyfully while others struggle to do up their laces.

Here's the Thing

Dear Readers,

Enough allusions and vague references. Here is the thing that has been on my mind.

In late September, my denominational executive person, known in our tradition as a Conference Minister, asked if I would consider becoming a new church developer.

His email came within a day of my offering up this prayer:

"God, I'm ready to do whatever you want me to do next. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm ready."

Ever since then I've been engaged in a shy sort of discernment, backing away from the idea at the same time that I was participating in the screening process our national church has for potential new church developers. It's become pretty clear that the only thing holding me back is worry about how the whole thing will be financed. Oh, I came up with a few other questions and concerns, but that is truly the major one. I'm the primary support of my children, and although #1 Son's last tuition check will be sent soon, there are two more children to educate. How do I weigh my responsibility to them against my commitment to God?

It probably won't surprise you to hear that I've grappled with this question before, wondering if my work would get in the way of some fruitful aspect of their growing-up lives.

And to be clear with myself, it hasn't.

But wherever the location of a new church might turn out to be, it won't be right here in City By the Sea, so the unsettling questions of a possible move come into play, and I do find that is one of the areas of difficulty for me. I hear other pastors talk about conducting national searches, and as much as I do not feel called away from Vacationland, I envy that freedom.

Things we envy? Not good guidelines for a faithful life.

Things we love? Things we aspire to? Areas in which we thrive? Better signposts.

Last month, after my aptitude test scores came back and were high, the Conference Minister and I began to form a committee to study the idea of a new church start further. The committee met for the first time today. As we studied demographic materials and a UCC guide for new church starts, we wondered if the first thing to do was pick the location?

The one person there who knows me the least said things like this: You need to start with the person. New church ministry is incarnational. It starts with a person who is a bit of a fanatic, more evangelical than the average UCC pastor and eager to do the work. (He may have made those persons sound a little crazy, but in a good way.)

I'm pretty sure, though I left there with a bit of a dazed quality, that I said yes to going on to the next step in the process.

Well, really, I did say yes. I'm just a bit amazed at the whole thing and finding it hard to wrap my head all the way around it.

There are three areas in the state that are under consideration, all of which came to the Conference Minister's attention from people local to those areas. Now we will begin a round of conversations with clergy and laity in those areas and see what the Spirit of God reveals. And in the meantime, I will move on to another interim when this one ends.

I'm ready to spong.

Yours fanatically,
Songbird

A Bag of Campaign Memorabilia

I decided on two forms of Advent practice. One is represented by a ticker in the sidebar here, and it is a commitment to matter, to keep moving through Advent despite the challenges of doing so in a busy season. I'm close to a weight goal I established several months ago as being perhaps reachable by the end of the year, but I realize that the temptations of this festive season of the year might make it more difficult, particularly in combination with the early darkness that grows more profound each day as we work our way toward darkness around 4 p.m.

But there is also an inner life, and my dreams have been vivid, and I determined to make recording my dreams, or at least reflecting on them, an Advent practice. It seems fitting, as we move toward the texts of Advent 4 and the Sunday after Christmas, in which Joseph responds to his dreams.

Last night I had a dream about sorting through boxes of things that belonged to my parents. There was more to the dream, but here is what I feel moved to write about this morning. One of the boxes contained bags of campaign memorabilia emblazoned with my maiden name. My father was a politician, so in some ways that's not an entirely unlikely thing to find, although in this case the materials looked too new to have been from his career, the buttons too modern. There was my maiden name, Spong, over and over again.

I've been contemplating what comes next in my work life, and one of the possibilities is the subject of a meeting tomorrow. It's an exciting possibility, but also a bit terrifying because it is something new.

I woke this morning asking this question: "What would a Spong do?" I thought about my dad, and my cousin Jack and my grandmother Emily, all bearers of that name, and I realized, "They would step out in faith. They would never cower or fret. They would hear a call and answer it." Not a one of them worried or worries about what others think. They are a picture of courage, a courage based in faith.

Joseph dreamed things that guided him to do the unusual, the unlikely, even the unspeakable in his cultural context. Surely I can take a chance, too?

Change of Season

The eight days of Snowman's visit home seemed to evaporate like mist on a damp fall morning when the sun appears suddenly, and yesterday it was time to take him to the bus station.

I've put a son on the bus before, but never have I put a solo-traveling 17-year-old on a bus to the airport, where he is on his own to figure out how to check in and retrieve his e-ticket. Certainly, he did this on the way home, but the little Barbie Doll Airport near Land O'Lakes Academy has only six gates and two airlines, so I really had no worries about his ability to get on the plane there.

But it felt different to send him off to Beantown Airport alone.

At the bus station he asked, "Are you going to stay to the last possible moment?"

"I'm going to see you get on the bus," I answered. Not that I wanted to see it happen. I waited with him in the line to put his bag under the bus, and then he turned to me and smiled, but he looked a little concerned, too. I imagine he wondered whether I would grab his hands and begin to pray as I did the night we said goodbye at school.

I gave him a kiss and watched him board the bus. I must admit there was a little crying in the car as I got on the highway to head to work.

Last Monday we went to the barber shop, the one in City By the Sea famous for its lady barbers. The woman in the corner chair cut his hair. On the wall behind her was a chart for people to guess the birth date of the baby she is expecting, and to estimate the weight. All around her station are pictures of her toddler and her husband, a man in uniform.

When she heard that Snowman was only in 11th grade, but going to school in faraway Mitten-Shaped State, she almost could not believe it. She asked us for clarification more than once, and then she said to me, "You'll have to have another one!"

No, no I won't. I'll have to learn how to let this one go. And then the next one.

Just two years ago, I remember thinking, "I'm tired of tying other people's shoes for them." I didn't mean it literally, of course. Those days were far behind us. But I realized that in my mothering and in my ministry, I attended to all the little details in a way that if not smothering to others felt smothering to me. I told myself I did not believe in a micro-managing God, but I seemed to believe only a micro-managing mother or pastor could "succeed," whatever that meant to me. Strange how hard it is to change our way of operating, even when we know it needs changing and want to act differently.

I told Snowman to call me from Beantown if he had any trouble, but all remained quiet through the afternoon. I pictured him changing planes at Toddlin' Town Airport, perhaps meeting up with other students along the way.

Last night the phone rang about 9:15, and as we scrambled to find the cordless phone, mislaid as usual, I heard his voice coming through the answering machine: "Hi! I'm in Cherry Capital Airport, and I'm not dead!"

Pure Luck found the phone and handed it to me, and I talked to him briefly, hearing the background noise of students happy to be reunited. I feel relieved that he has found his right place, for this time in his life, as I have found mine.

For the next three weeks, I will turn my attention to work and preparations for Christmas. Snowman will practice and write papers and study for exams. Soon I will be meeting him at the airport and bringing him home for a longer break, which will also surely seem too short. It's hard not to think ahead. It seems to be the time for it. It is nearly Advent, that season of waiting and watching, hoping that all will be well, wondering what comes next, when it will happen, how our lives will unfold.

Somehow I must find a way to pray those prayers alone, the ones that come so easily to me when I am with another person. I regard the dawn of new possibilities, not sure where life will lead me, only sure it is to something different.

Bow in the Clouds

  All Saints Day Rainbow 
  Originally uploaded by revsongbird.

It was a grey day, although there was little rain. The Princess and I were driving home from her piano lesson when suddenly the light changed. The setting sun, behind clouds all day, appeared dramatically and shot deep yellow light across roofs and treetops.

I rushed home, hoping to get a picture, and was just going in for the camera when our neighbor rode down the street on his bike and told us to go to the end of the block and see the rainbow.

We raced down to Big Avenue, and we crossed to get a better view, only to discover that the best angle was from the middle of the street. That was not a feasible place to stop in the afternoon traffic.

I did notice at least one driver snapping a picture with her phone as she drove past us.

Even before I heard about the rainbow, I was remembering a day just after my seminary graduation, another day with a rainbow visible from just the same vantage point.

I received a phone call from the chair of a search committee, a call telling me I would not be considered further as a candidate at her church. It was the first rejection I received, and I felt just awful. I had been excited about the church, and of course I felt worried about whether anyone would want me, especially since I had limited my search to our immediate area. After the call ended, I wept. I must admit to having a moment of faith deficit, a doubt event, a sense of being miffed at God and a real dislike of the unknown.

There was little time to mourn, for we were due at a fundraising dinner for a school program, at a chi-chi pizza place on the waterfront. I got the kids in the car, and we headed for the corner. And just as we turned it, oh! An absolutely gorgeous rainbow, as vivid and enormous as any I had ever seen.

"I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth." Genesis 9:13, NRSV

It occurs to me that as I listen for what I am to do next in my life and my ministry, for the first time the answer is not in words but in the things I can observe and sense. As a strong intuitive, I have lived outside my body, almost like a person who cannot keep her feet on the ground at all because being embodied is too, too...well, frightening? Mundane? Ordinary?

Now it feels necessary, as if the guidance I require may be found in creation, somehow. I'm trying to understand how to get the message. I hope I can find a perspective that doesn't require standing in the middle of the street, but I will do it if I must.

Last Night I Dreamed

Last night I dreamed of being pregnant.

The setting: a hospital.

The pregnancy: advanced.

The outlook: mixed.

I had a sense of being too old for what lay ahead, while at the same time excited by the prospect of new life.

A colleague I admire, who is probably ten years my senior, was also in the dream, also extremely pregnant. I recognized her pregnancy first, only caught on to mine when the baby kicked me.

I realized I was very close to delivering and began looking for a nurse, to try and get some assistance. I passed a ward of young women in labor, and then a ward of grey-haired women receiving some other sort of treatment and realized I did not belong with either, neither a likely new mother nor an impossibility.

I do find myself in a strange middle place in my life. I recognize that the bulk of my parenting time is over. I feel some freedom in considering what might come next in my career, but I also feel the responsibility of two remaining college educations (plus one final semester for #1 Son). I fantasize about living in a smaller house with more land, and then I feel a pang for even considering leaving the place my children and I have lived longest in any of our lives.

I ponder an exciting possibility for ministry that would be a step away from the conventional track, and I wonder if I don't owe it to my family to do what will support them most securely?

This is the midlife wilderness of the modern mother, pregnant with her own life but a bit afraid to give it birth.

(Painting by Cindy Sherman.)

The Unknown

Have I ever mentioned what is likely to send me into a panic?

The unknown.

I rail against the unknown.

Yet as a person of faith, I live in the unknowable every day.

It seems to be the unknown aspects of the material world that make me feel most uncomfortable, and I believe it's because I like to do things well and cannot predict the possibility of doing things well when I cannot perceive the parameters.

When Pure Luck and I met, I had been a faithful exerciser for a couple of years, and when he invited me to go hiking the following spring, I imagined myself to be ready. Surely 45 minutes on a treadmill three times a week added up to preparation, didn't it?

But he warned me that hiking could not be approximated in a gym.

(This was back in the day before he had used a stair machine.)

Our first hike took us to a 2000-footer, not much of a challenge to him. I'm not sure how long it had been since I walked uphill for much more than a block, and we hadn't gone far before I realized I had gotten into something so unfamiliar that it set off my internal alarm system.

"I can't do this! I can't do this!" Those were the words of the voice in my head. If I didn't say them out loud, it was likely because I couldn't speak!!! I still had no concept of what the elevation gain would mean, but I knew almost immediately that I had undertaken a challenge beyond my expectations.

We hiked and hiked and hiked and hiked, and it got to be lunchtime, and I needed to stop more often than Pure Luck would have liked, since he wouldn't have stopped at all on such a little mountain. We reached stretches covered with small rocks, and I wondered how I would keep my footing? We reached  height that I felt sure must be near the top, and I asked, "How much further?"

I'm not sure what measurement of a mountain would have meant anything to me. I had no concept of how feet of vertical gain compared to minutes/hours needed to achieve the summit. A quarter of a mile uphill would have meant little, since I had no experience with my own feet.

Pure Luck said, over and over, "We're almost there."

Yesterday we celebrated the life of a church member who saw his journey toward death as a climb toward an unknown but inevitable destination. I'm not sure if I put that idea in his mind or if he put it in mine, but it formed the core of a prayer we shared soon after he came home to die. At that moment, we thought days remained, but as it turned out, he survived for eight weeks, sitting somewhere near the top of God's holy mountain, cared for by his loving family.

I suppose there are people who can see their paths clearly and who follow them without question, and find nothing surprising along the way. They seem to have it all together, to have everything under control.

I feel a little sorry for them.

Oh, I know it's easier when I return to a familiar trail. I can pace myself in a way that isn't possible when you really have no idea what else you might need to climb or for that matter survive!

But some of the richest moments and the most satisfying relationships in my life have been found on the unfamiliar paths, at the times when through choice or circumstance I found myself in the midst of the unknown.

Maybe this is the day I'll embrace it willingly instead of anxiously frittering away possibilities for joy.

Sense of Direction

When I was a teenager, my family moved to Historic Billsburg, and in those days just before cable TV became an expected household feature, we discovered we were living in a vast wasteland. The major TV stations came from cities 60 miles away in different directions, and our only hope of connection, a fuzzy one at that, was the antenna on the roof.

That antenna had a guidance system, a box with a dial that sat on top of the TV in our family room. No one in the family could master it, save me. I was the one called when we really needed the CBS affiliate from State Capitol instead of the one nearer Jane Austen's Village. I became known as the family member who knew how to make the technical things work, and the person with a sense of direction.

How my parents might have laughed to hear me calling home from my cell phone last week after I drove to turned up Left Hill instead of going straight through Small Town to my destination of Right Hill Road! I gave my location to the helpful Global Positioning System Agent (my patient husband), and he helped me navigate cross-country to Right Hill Road without going all the way back into Small Town.

It was not the first time recently I needed just that kind of help. After church a couple of weeks ago, attracted by a sign declaring “Fresh Corn” I detoured out to the country on the way home. After leaving Spectacular Corn Farm, I didn’t want to go all the way back to my original route, so I started driving vaguely eastward. I knew I would hit something familiar eventually. That time it was Snowman who helped from home.

These were relatively simple problems to solve, and if my Vacationland Map and Gazetteer had been in the car and not on my desk, there would have been no problem in the first place. But there are times when finding our direction is more complicated, especially when we are searching in the dark.

Pure Luck had to find his way back to his campsite in the dark this week, after his very long hike, and he was frustrated when first one flashlight and then another gave out. He ended up using his cell phone as a flashlight, instead. It gave him some ambient light, but none of those sources could really show him the grade of the earth beneath his feet. None of those lights shone bright enough to keep him from falling into a ditch too close to the trail. 

In life we all have times where we find ourselves walking a path that is unknown or hard to see clearly. That’s the time when we need to call on the Universal Positioning System, the One who helps us no matter how confused our direction. God will be ready to shine the light; we only need to call.

Do the Right Thing

             

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life  more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?             

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.  (Matthew 6:25-29, NRSV)

I have to admit it. I'm a worrier. When you consider that I've been aware of this passage since I was a child of 8, it's a sad testimony to my faith that I continue to worry.

I'd like to tell you that I don't worry about food and clothing and shelter, those classic first chakra, survival-related worries. I'd like to tell you that since I have spent my life in what have been, compared to most people's, luxurious circumstances, it never occurs to me to worry about such things. But somewhere inside me is a baby who is hungry or cold or lonely, and she worries, and so do I.

As if that were not enough, I also worry about what I like to call "big" things. Most especially I worry about doing the right thing.

I don't mean the simple, everyday choice-making we all do that comes down to ethics or practicality or preference.

I mean the kinds of things that determine the trajectory of our lives.

Oddly enough, I have long eschewed the idea of God as a Santa Claus-like micromanager, somewhere far away keeping lists of naughty and nice people and doling out punishments and rewards accordingly.

But I behave as if I believed in Santa God.

When faced with a major life choice, I worry that if I do the "wrong" thing, I will ruin it all.

As you can probably imagine, this creates a high level of tension.

I tend to get carried away with causality. If I do this, then inevitably I will be *unable* to do that or the other. One wrong move and everything is down the toilet. In contrast, one right move will certainly smooth the way. And I suppose this all goes back to the underlying survival fears.

This is one of those matters where in my role as pastor to others, I would lay out a kinder world view, one in which we are not doomed if we make one wrong move, or one less than stellar decision, or simply don't read the signals the right way.

Jesus is laying out another way of approaching life, the one I find so easy to recommend to others.

But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:33-34, NRSV)

Or as Eugene Peterson renders it in The Message:

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Right now, you say? Oh. That does put a different nuance on the whole passage. If I can focus on what God is doing right now, both in me and in the world, maybe I'll have a better sense of how to discern what I am being led or called to do.

But if I don't buy into the notion of the micromanager, the guy who has everything mapped out for me, who or what is this God and how can she or he be "doing" anything?

Once The Princess told her Sunday School class that she thought of God as being "a big ball of love."

What, then, is Love doing in me and in the world?

It can be hard to see when I allow myself to be filled with worry. Perhaps what I need to do is invite anxiety to stop blocking the view; then I will be able to see what Love might lead me to do.

Separating Elastics

This morning, The Princess went to the orthodontist to get her braces. It is a huge day in her life, and there has been a great deal of weeping about both the practical and aesthetic implications of this new factor in her life.

But she was not unprepared. Last Thursday, she had an appointment to receive separating elastics. These little bands of blue were inserted between upper and lower teeth behind certain molars to begin making space for her braces. Snowman didn't help much last Thursday when he told her the separating elastics hurt more than the braces, although it may have bolstered her courage for this morning's events to know she had already survived "the worst."

I'm thinking about the times life has been like the separating elastics, the times when a painful, but ultimately helpful, preview of coming attractions helps us prepare for loss or for transition, for growth or for death.

When my mother's melanoma metastasized in 1992-93, it traveled in a number of different directions: a lung, the colon, the liver, her brain. I knew as soon as I heard my daddy's voice on the phone that we were dealing with the worst news possible. I remember working at the library that day, unable to focus because that evening the doctor was going to call and talk to me, tell me the things my dad had only been able to express by saying, "It's bad." I spent that day in a state of emotional vertigo, considering for the first time the possibility that my mother might really die. New feelings, new fears, new realities pushed me open in painful directions. And that opening prepared me for the real death that came four months later. Oh, it still hurt! But I was prepared for the hurt, prepared for the shifting.

I have been one of those mothers who tries to prepare her children for changes. When I worked in the Children's Room at the library, I brought home stacks of books for #1 Son. We read books about having a new baby when Snowman was on the way, and we read books about death when my mother was ill, read them until he asked me to stop bringing them home! I came to realize that he did not relish being prepared the way I did.

One thing I could not prepare them for was divorce. Unlike some people, who report growing up in houses full of contention, my children had no idea their parents had a problem. The news that their father was going to move out of the house came like an unexpected blow to the head. Each boy remembers what he was doing when we asked them to come and talk, and each remembers what he did after the conversation was over, and each remembers feeling stunned.

They had no separating elastics to give them a sense of what was to come.

But I remember the first day I drove up the hill to attend classes at seminary two years before, and I remember wondering what it would be like to live there on campus with my little boys, a separating thought that shocked me.

It was a separating elastic that began to make room for something new, something unwanted, something necessary, and something ultimately better for everyone concerned.

I will try to remember how excruciating it felt to be in the first two phases when I hear my daughter sniffling, having forgotten for the moment how cute she looks with those pale pink and baby blue ligatures alternating on her teeth.  I will try to remember and offer comfort and Motrin and whatever else it takes to get through to the next day or the next week or the next month. I will try to remember and be patient with her as others were patient with me, when the separating elastics of thought gave way to the hard wear of life.

On the Mountain

There were no fire alarms.

There was a modicum of listening, and there were a few flashes of insight about my own call.

There were meet-ups with old friends and meals eaten with new acquaintances, and there was shopping for institutional swag and clerical garb.

There was the joy of seeing my son interacting with other young people who are part of the United Church of Christ congregations in Maine, kids he met at camp this past summer, kids who urged him to get more involved, kids who hugged him and included him.

There was spinach in the salad at dinner.  What the fireplace?

There were controversial resolutions and more straightforward ones, too. And while there were those inevitable mind-numbing twists of parliamentary procedure, there is pride at being a member of the Maine Conference of the United Church of Christ, a body whose Annual Meeting voted to decry torture, to be a Fair Trade/Fairly Traded Conference and to bring the message about fairly traded coffee back to our congregations, and, most importantly, voted to work together for the quality and equality of marriage.

Can I get an Amen?

Thursday's Child

Pure Luck left the house on Monday, excited to set up camp in that neighboring state and spend yesterday hiking. He came home pretty glum. He was in a Wednesday's Child state of mind.

You know...full of woe...

My children were all born on cute days. #1 Son is Friday's child, loving and giving. Snowman arrived on a Tuesday, and he is full of grace, although it's exhibition is limited to the occasional contra dance these days.The Princess is Monday's child, fair of face indeed.

I never liked that little poem, because it accused me of having "far to go." I used to think that meant I was nowhere yet, that I would struggle and never get anywhere. Later, at difficult times in my adult life, I would remember it and think, Oh, Lord, how much farther?

After reading the piece in the New York Times the other day about clergywomen, one might be tempted to say I was right. It begins with the story of Rev. Elaine Puckett, who was ordained at about the same age I was and has been in ministry 18 years. Here's a snippet:

When she left divinity school, Ms. Puckett, a United Methodist, thought that some day she might lead a large congregation in her hometown, Atlanta. Instead, she has shuttled between jobs as an associate pastor on someone else’s staff or as the leader of a small congregation fighting to survive. In contrast, the men she was ordained with, for the most part, have moved on to run bigger churches.

And I wonder, is it not our immobility that makes it harder for us to "get ahead?" That's not to say that standing in the tallest pulpit is the be all and end all. But until women have a better chance at doing so, we will always be considered second-string players, as we would in any career.

When I finished seminary, my then-Conference Minister said it was too bad I couldn't move. There weren't many jobs in my area, but with my experience in Christian Education (many years as a Sunday School teacher and some youth experience, too), if I could move I would "be able to write (my) own ticket!"

That sounded vaguely exciting yet illusory. Because moving, in my case, means taking my children not only away from their hometown, but also away from their father, to whom I am no longer married. And although that has proven to be the better way for all of us, there is nothing to indicate that leaving his general vicinity would be any good for them.

I was fortunate. There were five openings, and I had five interviews, and I was, I think, seriously considered by at least one church in addition to Small Church, which proved to be a great fit. It's a ten minute drive from home.

I don't live with the Methodist system that Elaine Puckett describes. I live with a Search and Call system, in which pastors declare themselves available and read the profiles of searching churches. It's sort of like MinistryMatch.com. As the clergyperson, you can decide how far and wide to cast your net.

I wonder how many women clergy in my age bracket, the ones who have children and/or  husbands, can really look everywhere?  Does God have a special category for us, a sort of Mommy Track of calling? It's one of the questions that had me out of seminary for a while, fearful that I would never have a private life again, worried that the only way to do it was to put the work first and the children second and myself last. When I put myself out there four years ago, looking for my first call, I feared anything that was "good" for me might be bad for them.

On his hike yesterday, Pure Luck took on more than he could handle under the circumstances of weather and supply problems. He came home drained (and a bit odd, but he seems himself today!). The goal he set was just too far to go in one day, for this very experienced hiker on this particularly challenging trail. There were five mountains in the section he did--five!!--and yet he considers the choice to cut back through the circle as a "turn of shame." Now, seriously. The train back to the place he left his big pack was another 7 miles all by itself. And that was after the five mountains.

What is our standard?

I'm not sure I would want to be the Senior Pastor of a tall steeple church with a gigantic staff. But I also don't want to fall victim to the kind of limited thinking I had as a child, convinced that "far to go" means something negative. I'd like to think it means the possibilities are endless. And I'd like to be brave enough to find out what they are.

The Day is Short

The day is short.
The night is long.
Why do you work so hard
to get what you don't even want?

Ever have a few days where the information coming in from the stratosphere was packed with too many conflicting ideas?

I could use a retreat day or two for contemplation, but this week does not offer anything close to that. I will have a long car ride tomorrow, to and from a graveside service in an even more remote location than the last one. Perhaps things will become clearer along the way.

For tonight, consider with me, if you will, mothering. I grew up in a daddy-centric household, so firmly daddy-centric that I was shocked to discover there were mommy-centric households. My mother never considered pursuing some of the things that interested her deeply because she understood her job to be supporting my dad's career. My beloved mother-in-law from the first marriage, contrariwise, handed her small children off to her husband as soon as he got home from work and went to college and grad school at night.

Today I heard a woman say that a young man liked being with her family because she never put herself first, and his mother always put herself first. I had a moment of feeling incredibly selfish, until I considered my mother and my mother-in-law. They both died in their middle 60's of cancer (melanoma and ovarian, respectively). They didn't get those extra decades to enjoy grandchildren or travel or working in the garden or reading a good book. Pure Luck's mother died even younger, at 57. The day is short. The night is long.

I don't mean to say that elevating mothering or even partnering to an art form is wrong in and of itself. But never putting yourself first seems extreme to me.

And I think about the party we have held for ourselves at the expense of Mother Earth. I think of breasts so empty they are bleeding to give us what we think we need to survive. She has worked so hard to give us what we want. She never puts herself first. But at what cost? At what cost to herself, and to us? What will be left for the next set of children? And Who will care for them?

Tomorrow I'm burying a woman who never put herself first. And all the time she was not putting herself first, she was smoking a cigarette. COPD, years in a wheelchair and using an oxygen tank, and finally cancer of the larynx.

There must be a via media, where care for others and care for self are not fighting a battle to the death.

Hearing Tests

You may have heard about the cell phone ring teachers are not able to hear. #2 Son found it for me on the Internet, and this middle-aged woman found it not only audible but piercing! Apparently my eustachian tube trouble really hasn't effected my hearing, or at least not the higher ranges. What I have trouble with are male voices on my right side, particularly when the speaker is not articulating clearly and there is other ambient noise.

Pure Luck, however, cannot hear the high sounds at all. He tells me that working in industrial settings, primarily nuclear power plants, has blown that part of his hearing away. I can testify that I once bought a little bracelet that made a gentle jingling sound, then worried that it would bother him. It was not a problem at all, since he could not hear it. Nor can he hear the little angel chimes we enjoy lighting at Christmas. That last makes me sad, since I think their sound is so sweet.

This afternoon, The Princess and I were in the kitchen when I heard a terrible, high-pitched tone. Since Sons #1 and #2 and I had earlier watched an episode of "24," I had a fleeting thought that something was about to explode!!! But I gathered my senses and followed the sounds, which were intermittent and seemed to be getting higher and more painful to my ears, particularly the bad one.

We found the source in Pure Luck's office. He was testing his hearing and playing the high-pitched sounds on purpose. I asked him to stop! He asked me to listen to the next higher one, to see if I could hear it. He had already passed his limit. I was able to go two tones higher, and The Princess heard one or two beyond me.

The Princess went off to have dinner with her dad, and we took the dogs out to the park. On the way back, we were having a discussion about what to eat for dinner and whether we needed to stop for dog food and how much time was really left before we needed to leave for the movies with the birthday girl--the usual domestic logistics. I was driving, which put my husband on my bad ear side. Open windows made the car noisy. When he answered a question, I had to ask him to repeat himself, and then once more.

What came out of his mouth the third time was intended to make it easier for me to hear, but I heard "cross" and "frustrated." Maybe that's how a loud, deep voice always sounds to me. It certainly wasn't his intention, although I took it that way for about half-a-minute.

After dinner we went to see "Cars" with The Princess. We sat through many, many previews, and finally saw the Pixar screen that indicated the short subject was about to begin. And at the bottom of the screen we saw words in parentheses, describing the sounds made by the little Pixar symbol lamp that hops across the screen. I remembered seeing the young woman in front of us using sign language and realized the movie was going to be closed captioned.

I've watched many subtitled foreign films, but I've never been in a movie theatre while closed captioning was employed. It's strange to see the words you can understand already spelled out on the screen. I wondered how helpful descriptions of the type of music used in the underscoring would be to a person who has never heard music? What is the difference between a "grand orchestral swell" and a "cheerful Western theme?" How do you grasp the context of something that is so thoroughly unfamiliar? What do the words mean when you cannot hear what they represent?

For the first third of the movie, at least, I found I was reading the words, as if I couldn't stop looking at them to look at the movie's images. I am always drawn to words, particularly words with music. Music makes me hear words differently, more deeply somehow. Sing me a song, and I will be able to repeat the music and the words to you. Read me a passage, and I will have to ask you for a copy to look at before I really know what you have said.

If I only had reading and no hearing, after 45 years as a hearing person, I would still remember how things sounded. I would remember the melodies and the harmonies that have woven themselves into me. I would hear them in my mind and in my heart. I hear better when I can read.

Wouldn't it be nice if the things we were meant to do with our lives were spelled out like the closed captioning, leaving no doubt? Sometimes I feel meaning-impaired; I feel I am mis-reading the pattern, forgetting some key to a code given to me before I was born. Other times I feel I can almost hear the directions being given to me, almost, like the voice of my son from upstairs being muffled by the rustling of the plastic bag my husband is opening here in the kitchen. So close--I can hear the skeleton of his sentence, but the flesh is missing.

In my life, I can almost hear God telling me what I am to do next. I know there is a sentence to diagram, and I can almost tell its form, but I can't yet parse the fullness of its meaning. The breeze blows, the bags rustle, the traffic of life overlays its rumbles and squeals, and I struggle in the midst of the road to listen in the right direction, to follow on the narrow way.

At First Sight

There are some people you just love at first sight. I’m not talking about romantic love, or a sexual thing, although I know they happen, but rather the kind of thing where you meet someone and make an immediate connection that you hope will be part of your life for a long time to come. Somehow you know that meeting this person matters.

There are some people you love at first sight who love you back, but it doesn’t always turn out that way. Maybe they are slower on the uptake, or maybe their energy is something you need to learn from, but yours is less significant for them.

I hate when that happens, whichever part I am playing.

When there is a delay in realizing on one side, it may be due to different styles of apprehending the world. The night I met Pure Luck, we responded strongly, but differently, to one another. I’m an iNtuitive Feeler (don’t you know all clergy love Myers-Briggs?), and he is a Sensation Thinker. I have a response to a person or a place or a thing and it’s all about intuition and feeling—instinct, emotional response. He observes data in a rational manner. He knew I liked him because I gave a little gasp when he touched me. For Pure Luck, that was observable and incontrovertible data.

I can’t read the data at all. I only have responses. I know how I feel, but not how he feels. (Or at least I didn’t then.) I could only hope that since I was feeling something intense, he was, too. He, on the other hand, wasn’t aware of having feelings…

I’m thinking about this because of Jonah and Jesus, who I’ll be talking about tomorrow morning, and about the people who responded to them with such immediacy. Jonah walked through Nineveh, calling on people to repent, and they got right to it!! Jesus wandered down to the lakeshore and said, “Follow me!” and people dropped what they were doing and followed him down the road.

Somehow I doubt the people who took off with Jesus were Sensation Thinkers.

How do we know when it’s the right time to change our lives dramatically? What drives us to decide? Was Peter in the midst of a mid-life crisis, burnt out on the fishing and wishing for something new? Is that why he dropped his nets and left his boat to follow Jesus, just for the change?

I think it’s true that we are more responsive to the new, whatever form it takes, at certain moments and phases of our lives. Some of the things I hope for at my church this year will be a stretch for the people. Are they really at the place for new things? Will they drop the nets of caution or complacency? Or am I the one on my own brink, ready to drop my own nets, carefully woven over the past three years of ministry and 44 years of life? They contain good threads and bad, things I would be sorry to drop and things I would be afraid to leave behind because even when they are not what I like about myself, I don't know how to live without them.

But to turn, as the Ninevites did, to follow as Peter and Andrew and James and John, there is no stopping to observe the data. It's all about responding.

And immediately they left their nets and followed him. Mark 1:18, NRSV

Crumbs on the Carpet

This morning was in many ways painful. I am still feeling quite sad, but comforted by the kind words of your comments.

The usual kick in the pants from Beyond came last night when I was moping about on the couch and Pure Luck asked about my sermon. I admitted it wasn't quite done. He asked what it was about, hoping to help me get going on it. So I told him about it. Earlier in the week, I read something really useful about the wise and foolish virgins and the theology of delay and planned a sermon about living in the meantime, when you have a hope for something big and world-altering, but have to go on living day to day along the way.

And a little inner bird perched on my shoulder daintily cleared her throat. "Ahem." 

Oh, allright. I have to do the same thing. I get it.

So, in the meantime, we had Communion today. I wrote not long ago about the decision by our Deacons to have Communion by intinction, the uproar from one older Deacon, the giving in I suggested and his subsequent departure anyway. So when the two women preparing Communion today asked if Intinction was okay with me and revealed a gorgeous loaf of Challah, I said it was fine.

And when it came time to lift and break that beautiful loaf, I said, "Sometimes we break off a small piece of bread, maybe because we are worried that there won't be enough to go around. You know the stories of the times Jesus fed thousands with just a few teeny-weeny loaves. This morning we are a small congregation with a large loaf, and I ask you to tear off a nice big piece today. There is always enough of Jesus' love to go around. There is always enough to go around."

There was a lot of untidy tearing of good-sized pieces of bread, and after worship, there were big crumbs on the carpet. Alleluia!! We are all moving forward.

Full Circle

Today I came home from the Church Fair feeling pretty blue. Not periwinkle, or navy, or turquoise or teal but a nearly black midnight blue.

I gave myself a little time to wallow in it.

Then I got up to walk the dogs with Pure Luck. Daylight is slipping away here in City By the Sea. Each day seems dramatically shorter than the last. The warm sunshine was rapidly replaced by a chilling mist in the sky while I was wallowing, and I decided to wear a scarf.

Putting on the scarf, I began to cry. Perhaps the wallow wasn’t really over quite yet. I bought the scarf at the Fair today. It’s just a simple scarf, really, made from a variegated yarn of pastel shades that blend nicely with my lilac-shaded fleece vest. When Mrs. C brought it to church with her other knitting last night, she told me she thought it might look nice on me, mostly because it was short, but also I think because it matched that vest.

Mrs. C is a person who sometimes keeps me awake at night. She has an uncanny knack for seeing the worst in a situation, but she is so faithful to Small Church, I forgive her for it. No one worked harder preparing knitted items for the fair this year. And for many years, she was just about the only one making anything.

I was pleased to buy the scarf today.

Why am I midnight blue? For some reason, the fair did not attract the traffic this year that it did last year. Maybe we needed balloons on our sign. Perhaps the trouble is that the newspaper listed us in Thursday’s weekend section, but not today. I don’t know. Right down the street, the St. Statue’s had a carnival, with yard sale items out on the lawn, and a moon bounce, and I don’t know what else. Right across the street, the college had a craft fair, and one block the other direction, another craft fair took place at the Catholic girls’ school. Somehow we were overlooked.

It’s hard to be a small church. One bad day can be a disaster. One small failure can crush morale. So much work goes into putting on a church fair; how do you measure success? I could see by the worried faces at the beginning of the day that everyone saw what I saw: it just wasn’t busy enough.

Small church life is precarious. One family can withdraw from activity and leave a hole you can’t quite figure out how to fill. One pillar can die or go into a nursing home, and you discover that building a pillar from the ground up takes a lifetime, not a season.

I spent some time sitting behind the knit table with Fair Chair, a great gal in her mid-thirties, mom of a couple of our Nursery School graduates and a pretty new member of the church. She crocheted a baby blanket for a shower tomorrow morning as we made a mental list of things to adjust for next year’s fair. I did it wondering where I would be next year. She worried about the fact that she was the only invitee to show up at last week’s Stewardship breakfast. We whispered about the possibility that they might have to go to part-time, that I might have to leave.

Today was the day that my own sense that it is time to go smacked into the reality that it is becoming their sense, too. Although I have known the truth for months, it’s only now I see the risk of waiting too long to do the paperwork for my ministerial profile. They may be ready to make a change before I am.

And if it’s the truth that they can’t afford me, rather than just a convenient cover for my feeling of being called elsewhere, isn’t it also true that I’ve failed them? After all, they called me hoping I would grow the church, that my ministry would inspire all the members they had and draw many new ones. The truth is that my ministry inspired some of the members right out the door. The truth is that the new members have made up the loss, but numerical growth has not been dramatic enough to make up the financial difference between income and budget. The truth is that savings have been spent down to cover my pension and my family’s health insurance, while I have learned how to be a pastor at their expense.

And the truth is, I love them. So planning to leave them feels like preparing for a death. At the lunch table, Candlemaker, who is my age, reminisced about her childhood crush on the then-pastor’s son. She wondered why her childhood pastor doesn’t ever come back to visit, and someone said, “When they leave, they are really supposed to LEAVE.” “They can’t even come back to visit?”

I’m feeling blue this afternoon, midnight blue, blue black. I wonder when the stars are coming out to break the darkness. Where does God want me? What are the best words to describe my understanding of ministry, and how do I write such a statement (for the profile) when I am feeling so sad? Who will want to hire someone who was not successful in the world’s terms? I wish I could tell you that last thing is not important to search committees, but I know it is, sadly.

Three years ago this week, I arrived at Small Church for my first day of work. Downstairs they were setting up for the fair. Upstairs I was trying to figure out what in the world I was supposed to do. Down at church this afternoon, they’re breaking down the fair. Here at home I am trying to figure out what in heaven’s name to do. We have come full circle.

There is a Limit

Tonight the boys are taking advantage of my typical Sunday evening coma and the additional trial of a template meltdown for the RevGalBlogPals site to subject me to South Park. (No, I'm not linking to anything related to it.) While I've been trying to re-construct code and such for the RevGal's sidebar, someone sneakily changed the channel from that guilty pleasure, Desperate Housewives, to the aforementioned abomination.
Now, I'm not square. Seriously. I mean, I praised Kanye West in my sermon this morning. I'm not a total nerdy loser mom.
But there is a limit.
And this is it.
Tonight's episode featured a Christian band transforming love songs into songs about Jesus, and while I've heard there is a genre of "Jesus is my Boyfriend" music, which I am sure I wouldn't like, this was icky. Maybe not as icky as the post at my old address, but icky enough.
I've sent them upstairs. I am now relaxing with Pretty Woman on TNT. I like Richard Gere. It's been a long weekend. Sometimes the TV is a good companion.
Downstairs, we have a dryer that is burnt out. Have you ever had a vehicle or appliance break down and wonder if it was a metaphor for your life? It's possible to take that sort of thing too far, but I would say it's at least worth a looksee.
We are out of toilet paper, orange juice, paper towels and I'm sure many other things that a better organized mother would be sure to have stocked up even if she had spent her free afternoon waiting around for the dryer repairman.
We have no working dryer. The kids took their dirty clothes over to their dad's house this afternoon while I attended a denominational meeting. I will be wearing jeans to work for the first time one day later this week, because there are some things I can hang dry, but there are others I can't.
Friday we will get a new dryer. I wonder, is it really possible for a 27" dryer to fit through a 27" door? The salesman insisted it could happen. But I wonder, because there is a limit. And the limit is 27".
Today at the denominational meeting, we heard the whys and wherefores about the large increase in our property insurance. The reasons sound good, but for Small Church, there is a limit. There is a limit to how much money a small congregation can raise, and when the health insurance and the building insurance and the property taxes all go up significantly in the same year, at the same time the price of the natural gas with which we heat is going to need an increase in the budget, too, how is there room for a full-time pastor?
There is a limit.
Don't misunderstand me. No one is telling me to go. And, really, it's time to go anyway. I'm not sad for me. I'm sad for the people of Small Church, so many of whom believe there is no future for the church without a fulltime clergyperson. They're not right; I don't believe they're right. I think there is a great future ahead for them that will only be lighter and freer if they are not so weighed down by these worries.
All right, I'm a little sad. In the past three years, I've done everything I knew how to do, which granted was just a beginner's bag of tricks combined with instinct (maybe some brains, too), to help this church find itself and grow. The sad part is that their right size, which I do believe we have found, is not the right size or shape for me.
So I begin to look around, feeling like a supposedly happily married woman who is reading the personals. (No, honey, I'm not actually reading the personals. But hurry home anyway!)
We've done some wonderful, wonderful things. I'm enormously proud of our Prayer Shawl Ministry and our connection to a group of South African women who are HIV positive. I'm prouder than I can say of the seven people who are helping me start a Lay Visitation Ministry, something that hasn't been done formally in this church for twenty years or more. I'm proud of the Sunday School teachers who have done such good work, and the group that is calling for education and a vote to be Open and Affirming. Today I heard that we are 2/3's of the way to our fundraising goal for new hymnals, and that reflects not pledges but checks in hand.
But...but I feel called to be talking about other things, to be moving in other directions. I feel limited by the psychic space and size more than the literal.
Richard Gere is climbing a fire escape. New beginnings are possible. He has the flowers between his teeth; he is reaching out to her. Where to? There are no limits.

Be Careful What You Ask For...

When Friday Mom asked in comments below how it felt to have grasped my recurring dream, I admitted that it was both exciting and scary. Then I typed, but deleted, the following question:

“Will I be able to let my Priestly Self (represented by Clergyman) have the keys and the driver’s seat?”

That night I had two new dreams.

1) Clergyman reappears, once again proposing that we go off together. This time I demur thinking of my husband, rather than his wife, which is an interesting shift in the theme. He is, however, irresistible. We get into some sort of big vehicle together, a dark SUV, I think (so tall it’s a stretch for me to get up and in) and take a dirt road out into the wild: woods, fields, countryside. Unlike the dreams in which I worry about Iconic Wife, there are no reassurances about my Spouse. Nevertheless I am wooed away, and he carries me off in his own powerful vehicle. He has a direction in mind, taking us away from the known and the predictable, off into new territory.

2) I am doing the Mom thing, picking up kids from afterschool activities. I see my friend Missionary Mom (a friend who is grappling with the balance between child-rearing and meaningful work), but leave her behind to do errands. I drive off in my station wagon, but the car stops running. I manage to pull it off the road into a parking lot and notice on the dashboard a light saying “Navigation Failure.” It turns out I’m in the lot of a garage; the mechanic tells me the car will not run again.

Friday Mom, any more good questions?

Dream a Little Dream

Let's try this again, shall we?

Last week I had another visit from a recurring dream, a dream that has been with me since 1996 or '97. And although the circumstances have differed the central theme has been the same each time.

A Clergyman I know invites me to be in his life. I am drawn to him but remind him that he has a wife. What about her? Don't worry, he says, she will take care of herself.

The first time I had this dream it took place in a parsonage filled with the sort of heavy, dark furniture that no modern person would choose to buy. (That helped mark it as a parsonage for me, a house furnished by committee, long ago, not a personal home at all.)

At other times the setting has been outdoors or non-descript. The focus has been on Clergyman's person, even moreso his face.

In that first version of the dream it is an invitation to go to bed with him, to literally merge.

In that version, his wife bids us farewell with a wave and a smile and goes off to meet friends. As I knew her then, the actual wife was a person who made me feel a bit inadequate, a whiz at cooking and decorating for Christmas and all sorts of wifely crafts.

I've been brushing this dream off for years, with a little touch of embarassment. After all, Clergyman is sort of my "type": he's a redhead, he's authoritative, we make pleasant sparks when we disagree. The dream first came in the midst of the collapse of my first marriage. (Also, Pure Luck likes to tease me about him even today.)

Now, seriously, I had been in Jungian analysis for a while when I first had the dream, and for years after that. I know better than to assume a dream is actually about the person in it.

But for some reason, I didn't. And so I pushed the dream away, much as I pushed Clergyman away in the dreams.

Last week, I happened to see him walking his dog, and the clouds parted and the light shone and I finally got it.

Clergyman is *me.* Clergyman is a part of me I don't live into with confidence: my Priestly Persona. Wife is me, too. My psyche is inviting me to lean into my Priestly Self, to make my bed in the Clergy House, with confidence that the Wife and Mother part of me has it all handled. The family won't be failed if I let myself go into my calling.

(High-lariously, as The Princess says, I am typing this at home while sitting next to her on the couch; she 's home from school not feeling well. I guess the children will see to it that Mother does her job!)

Teasing Things Out

In a comment to "Down from the Mountain," mc wrote:

Amazing, too, that I immediately started thinking up a list of people who can help me ask the hard questions about what seems right now to be a promising - but as yet unexplored - path. Hope you find your discussion partners post-haste!

I know that in my post I made reference to looking deliberately for those people, but what I discovered on Monday afternoon is that it didn't seem to matter what I was talking about with people; if I was listening carefully, faithfully, heartfully, I was beginning to get keys to understanding. I started writing them down in my "That'll Blog" Notebook (no telling if that's one of the keys, but you too can have one at the RevGalBlogPals store, with $1 of the price going to The Heifer Project). The next three days were full of meaningful exchanges. Or is it just that I was willing to listen?

One of the super key moments was a conversation with a colleague and friend that wasn't at all about me, rather it was about her intuition that she ought to step down from leading a committee. "I live by my intuition," she said, "and it tells me this is a dangerous job to be doing now." I'm glad I was able to affirm her, but I'm thrilled that I listened to her! Discernment is about sorting out what applies to us and what does not, at least in part. This friend and I were among three clergy at a retreat two years ago who were ENFP in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. I've always scored right on the line between J and P, but just on the J side. To look at myself as a P was a revelation! First of all, it meant I had finally gotten over having a mother who was very J, the sort of person who kept elegant and detailed lists of everything and never, ever, ever did a spontaneous thing. I remember grappling with that, being tortured by it, in fact, and trying to be like her. The last time I had taken the test she was alive. Ten years later I was no longer scoring as "J."

Anyway, ENFP friend and her intuition--ENFPs approach the world intuitively. Even ENFJs do it with their feelings. Why was I so determined to THINK THINGS THROUGH, leaving absolutely no room for the movement of the Holy Spirit? (Those of you who aren't Trinitarian Christians, substitute whatever you might call the current that runs among all things, not directing but often indicating, at least in my experience.)

Thinkers out there, I'm not against thought. It's just not my most highly developed function (though I did develop it much more fully when in seminary). Sensation types, I'm miserable at gathering information based on physical impressions and material data. Believe me, I know how differently you do things. I'm married to one of you.

Discernment is not about devising a strategy for finding the most prominent or advantaged position (insert your personal demon here). Discernment is about releasing your authentic self, about finding the way/place/means for expressing that most authentic self. If you start there, if I start there, the logistics will come later.

More later...in the midst of all this I had a dream much like a dream I've had many times before, and this time I have a feeling I understood it.

Down from the Mountain

There’s something wonderful, if disorienting, about driving up into the mountains, losing the cell phone signal, failing to connect to the promised wireless at the hotel and just basically unplugging for a few days.

 

I had a realization, one which might seem obvious to the rest of you, but which I needed to come to afresh. It occurred to me that I have been much too interested in the logistics of career and future and especially family and not really willing to ask God what God wants from me. There has been too much deductive reasoning and noisemaking and dream-weaving, and not nearly enough just listening. This was a great weekend for listening.

But of course when we come down from the mountain there is a newsletter to write and a calendar to plan and crises to which to respond. Pure Luck is away; that adds to alone time, theoretically, when one could be listening, but it also adds a layer of complexity to the running of the household. And I miss him, so I’m not at my best.

I always think of Peter and how he wanted to stay on the mountain and avoid returning to everyday life. He wanted to go to work right there, building shelter and waiting on the Lord and the Law and the Prophet. But he had to head back, and he wasn’t supposed to tell his experience to everyone he met.

Discernment is like that. It’s lonely. I don’t find the voice in my head to be particularly trustworthy at the moment. (Lucky reverend mother, hers is very useful.)

This week I’m thinking about who I can trust to help tease out the real questions, not the superficial, or at least surface, ones. Maybe I can finally get out of my own way; maybe I can let myself out of the birdcage once and for all.

Visions and Decisions

It was the Saturday after 9/11. Pure Luck and I had been invited to a wedding on the coast, the wedding of one of his college friends. It was a pretty excruciating day. On a personal level, it felt incredibly awkward to be there, given that the bride was also the good friend of his ex-wife, who was in the wedding party. There was some question in both our minds about how much further our relationship would go; the view of his former wife standing there beside the bride while vows were taken was not an easy one for me. And of course on the collective level, it was just an awful day to be having a wedding.

In Maine that day the weather was gorgeous. We were on the water not far from Blue Hill, with a view that went straight across to Mount Battie in Camden. It felt so wrong to be safe and in the midst of such beauty when a few hours south of us rescue workers were sifting through sodden ash hoping to find someone still alive.

It was a week in which my theology seemed inadequate. It was a week when I rather wished for God to be more like Zeus and come down off the mountain raining thunderbolts at all the bad people in the world.

After the wedding ceremony we walked on the beach. I was looking west, feeling flat and hopeless, when I heard a voice. What was it saying? It was a beckoning voice, saying "Come here. Come here." It was an assurance that I was not alone, that there was someplace still to go in response to the voice of God.

I didn't get the message immediately. When he heard the story, Pure Luck decided to take me to the place I had been looking. On the way home we stopped in Camden and drove up Mount Battie, and we looked back across to the place we had been earlier in the day.

Now you have to understand that he doesn't believe in mystical moments. But for some reason that day he paid attention to it and took me to a place I had never been before, to see something new: a sweep of ocean and island and faraway beaches, from an angle utterly unfamiliar, for a reason utterly unknown.

Days went by before I could process the total experience or even feel sure what words I had heard. Was God calling me to mid-coast Maine? I wondered that for a while, but I think that was my attempt to concretize something ephemeral.

In the emotion of that weekend, Pure Luck and I decided to affect a domestic merger, although it took more time to come to pass. I had a new vision of connectedness, and I wanted that to be reflected in my everyday life.

I decided that the words I heard were "I'm here," and I stopped wondering if I was being called away from City By the Sea and to a new place to live and serve. By the time I was actively searching for a job the next summer, the visionary moments of that Saturday afternoon were neatly packed away for posterity, not part of my discernment process.

What would have happened if they had been? Where would I be now?

This week I've been wondering if I didn't make a mistake, if I didn't place too great a limit on what I would consider doing and where I would consider moving. I made decisions based on my identity as mother and wife and even former wife, not so much based on being called to "Come here."

And as I think about what the future may hold at Small Church, as I wonder if it's fair to them to urge a major fundraising effort when it's really unlikely for a church this size to pay for any fulltime pastor, I wonder anew what those words meant on that heartbreakingly beautiful Saturday afternoon.

"Come here."

The Heart of the Matter

First, thanks for the cyber-hugs!! I slept a little better last night and feel a teeny bit perkier today. This morning I met with one of my lectionary group friends (the others are on vacation), and we had a great discussion about Holy Ground and burning bushes. The group will "re"group and go forward. I think I need to say something to the departing colleague about how it felt to get the word via e-mail.

I didn't love the response I got from the manager of the dog list, but I found a peaceful way to share my thoughts about the e-mail that had angered me the other night.

The news of the world is no better today. Since I posted yesterday I learned of Pat Robertson's suggestion that the USA employ assassination as a political tool. His first foray into TV was in my hometown many years ago, and my (Baptist Republican) maternal grandmother was an early financial supporter of his. My opinion of him can be summed up thusly: Pat and his wife Deedee loved my grandmother while she had a checkbook and a pen, inviting her to their home and making a fuss over her; Deedee even made some curtains for her! But as soon as a series of small strokes weakened her mentally and physically, Pat dropped her cold. My advice to Pat: it might be time to stop telling God what to do and take a listen to what God might be saying instead.

Friday Mom (who really should be working or dissertating, right? but I'm glad you stopped by anyway!) wanted to know what I meant in the comments box about inadequacy, which I confessed lay beneath the surface of my mood yesterday . Sunday night I had the chance to worship with the new church start that will now be renting space from Small Church. It's an Open and Affirming UCC congregation of about 50, worshipping in a contemporary style. The pastor is a good friend; we used to be in supervision together and have worked together on some denominational projects. I'm very happy we have a space they can use and I see great things ahead for the two congregations working together. (Just don't ask me to love Praise Music. I do not love Praise Music.)

But on Sunday night, watching him lead that very different service, I thought about how free-wheeling he is and how careful I am, and it bothered me. A lot. I've worked through a lot of my novice nervousness in the past three years. I've grown into doing Communion without anxiety. I've adapted the service to lower the barriers for everyone in worship, explaining things as we go along, leading worship in an informal style that allows everyone to feel welcomed and has broken down a lot of the icy rigidity that was the mode when I arrived there. We do a lot of drama in worship and include the children in a variety of ways. We have a vibrant worship life. These are changes that have pleased most people, and if people aren't pleased, they certainly aren't telling me (an old family systems issue for this congregation!).

The problem area for me is the sermon. I identify myself more as pastor and writer than pastor and preacher, and I fear I make an idol of my written text. I'm getting better about departing from it, as I find something mid-sermon that I want to add, or drop something that doesn't seem to fit anymore. I work things in that came up during the Sharing of Joys and Concerns, for instance, if they seem apropos.

Rev. Fun (he calls himself that, so it seems appropriate) had designed a service that began at their old meeting place. They caravaned together to Small Church, where they sang a few songs, and then he preached briefly. He told the story of the Egyptian army being covered by the Red Sea, and the celebration of the Hebrews who could see the view, and the trepidation of those who had crossed the Red Sea first and could now see, spreading out before them, a vast desert, an enormous unknown wilderness. It was very well-done. He's scripturally and theologically sound, amusing, heartfelt. I've admired his preaching before.

But here's what really got to me on Sunday night. The people talked back to him. They talked back to him!!! When they felt he had left something out, or not finished something off, they did it for him! And he didn't turn a hair.

I would have been mortified. I would have felt threatened. I would have cared.

Am I holding on too tightly? Is it because 3 years out from ordination is the equivalent of being in preschool? Will I be more open when more time has passed?

So much of Protestant worship is moving in this direction: Power Point and Praise Music and virtually no liturgy. The thing is, I *like* hymns (I like all good music, really, and would even like good Praise Music if I heard some), I like to hold the book in my hand, I like to hear scripture read aloud well, I like praying corporately and responsively, and I especially like writing those sermons. They are both a gift from and an offering to my God each week. But I fear I am both a baby and a dinosaur and have a hard time seeing what the future holds for me, if this is the future.

I will leave you with this image. Pure Luck listened to me patiently after the service the other night, and they understood most of what I was talking about, but they didn't know what I meant when I said "Praise Music." So I downloaded a clip of "Shine Jesus Shine" to play for him and explained that it was the sort of music intended for arm-waving and that sort of thing. I told the whole story again to #1 Son a short while later, while I was moping in the living room, and as I played the clip on my laptop, I caught sight of Pure Luck next door in his office, waving his arms back and forth!

All About Call

churchgal has a post about women and ministry in which she responds to a commenter who believes the pastorate is restricted to men by the Bible. She asks: "especially those of you other church gals out there in seminary or leading congregations or in ministry: if God didn't call you to ministry, who did?"

From the time I was a little girl I felt called to a life in the church, felt certain it would be not just something I attended but something I lived. As a little Southern Baptist girl, I imagined myself growing up to marry a minister. I was in college before someone suggested I might want to consider the possibility that the call I wanted to believe my boyfriend had was in fact my own. At that time (about 1980), I had never heard of an ordained woman.

Some years later, after having two children, I began to dream, I kid you not, of the Parable of the Talents, night after night after night, waking and pondering it over and over in the wee, small hours. Around the same time, I was invited to help with a Communion Service at church and sat behind the table with the pastor. It struck me that all my life I had been sitting all around sanctuaries: front, back, middle, choir loft, balcony, never quite knowing where to settle, restless. That day, at the table, I had a feeling of being, finally, in the right place.

When, after a few years of seminary, I withdrew, uncertain that I was willing to go further, the experiences that led me back were again a dream and a moving experience serving Communion. The dream got me back to school, but I still equivocated. Perhaps I could be a pastoral counselor, or should change degree programs and get an M.A. in Psychology and Religion. I was afraid of being a parish minister, afraid of being single with three children and never having a personal life again.

It was Labor Day weekend, and I was preaching at Big Church, where I had been a member for many years. The church's Elder Chaplain was the "real" minister doing Communion that day. He called the week before and asked if I would like to help him? I said, "Oh, I don't know. It's been a while, and I'm not sure..." As if he heard something in my hesitancy, with the leading of the Ho