Home Around the Corner

It's good to be back on the blog.  Thanks for the kind comments, I do appreciate my RevGal friends! As I re-read yesterday's post  I think I sound a lot wistful, and maybe more than a little whingey as my Brit friends say.  It's all  really all right...and yes, it is about making room for the new by letting go of the old.  That's kind of been the theme this year.  We moved in June from my seven room, two porch, two and a half garage house out in Little Town on the Prairie to the Big City, where we rented a lovely, but small, four-room townhouse with one garage.  Period. 

 Ah yes, the move.  It was a necessary relocation in many ways.  I needed to leave a work situation that had become a source of daily frustration, as I disagreed on a fundamental level with the direction our clinic was moving.  In order to continue to be employed in my field, by a signed agreement, I needed to move farther than the five counties that surrounded us and that the clinic served. Out there in the hinters, that pretty much meant to move away. At first we thought about a cross-country move, but that did not prove feasible, so we decided across the state would do. R was up for the adventure.  Twenty years in the same job had left him ready for something new, and for me it was a kind of coming home.  So I job-searched,  the house got sorted out, packed up, pared down and put on the market.  I was faced during the packing phase with the reality of just how much stuff I had somehow acquired in my almost seven years in that house.  We knew we were downsizing, and so much had to go. At first felt the loss of each pickup load that we carted off to the thrift store.  After a while, I found I cared a little less that something was leaving my life, as it was one less thing to pack, to move, to simply deal with!

Along with parting with my stuff, I also had to face the loss of my church home and my role there as part of the ministry team.  Because of the nature of my licensure to a local church rather than the diocese, there was some uncertainty about just what the future would hold for me as a priest. But we knew that it was time to go, and so I sadly preached my last sermon and said goodbye to my little congregation.

Finally the day came that we hauled ourselves and what was left of our belongings (LOTS!) to our new home.  Wonder of wonders, it really did all fit! Well except for that last pickup load that went to the new thrift store we found!  I had found a new job as a therapist and an old church community where I could settle in as a congregant, and where the priest was welcoming to me as a homeless cleric.  She offered supply as available and whatever else I might find a good fit.  The downside.....it was at least a twenty mile trip to get there.  Not a bad commute in our new urban life, but a daunting thought as far as really getting involved in the life of a community where we worshipped but did not reside.  Our new life has an interesting schedule that complicates things as well. R is off to bed at 8 or so as he rises at 3 am to be at work by 4.  This means that I needed to be self-reliant if I wanted to engage in the evening activities that constitute so much of church life....and I knew that navigating those twenty plus miles of freeway in the dark  was going to be a challenge for my little astigmatic night-vision reluctant eyes.  I thought that things would be ok, though, given the CPE involvement....my "priest-self" would find a home there and I would be settled. Well, once again, those best laid plans didn't prove to be so.  A couple months into CPE it became sadly apparent that this was not the place I needed to be, and after prayer and tears, I withdrew from the unit and went back to being, as one of my friends said recently, a "feral priest."

Fast forward to three Sundays ago.  We decided (on a whim...ha) to visit the next closest Episcopal church to our house.  Before we went I decided to peruse the church website, where I learned that several months ago the leadership had expressed a hope for another priest who could spell the vicar and assistant (both "retired" priests who seemed to find themselves working full-time again) and who would not need to be paid, as the budget would not support what the community so obviously needed. We went that Sunday. We met some folks, I talked to the priest,  had some e-mail conversation with the Bishop, and assuming the consent of the parish and leadership, it looks like on the 4th Sunday of Advent, I will once again have a place to celebrate and preach.  We are looking at once a month to start....but it feels like potential and possibility for more.  The church of my heart, where we have been attending still has a hold on me, and we will go there as we can. But as R pointed out, as far as we are from there, it's less likely that we would ever be a deep part of the community. At our potential home, we will church where we live...or close to it, and we can be part of the rather impressive local (and larger) mission efforts that come from the small but committed group of folks in the congregation.

So finally, at almost six months into the adventure, things are starting to settle.  Not all things, not even some important things about which I cannot blog right now....but at least for me one of the most important things is finding resolution....how I live out my call and vocation. It appears it will be with my two hats firmly in place again, thank God!  Once again I will have cause to do more than lurk at the preacher party,  and skulk over to Tuesday Lectionary Leanings.  I will have real reasons to hang out in Textweek, immersing myself in the weekly texts as only preaching prompts me. I will find a home on a new altar, share bread and wine with new people who I will come to care for as my own. Once again, there will be too many things in the week at times, meetings that will push my patience and church politics that will make me need to hold my goat close! I can't wait.

Pining a LItle in November

It's November...mid actually, and I am waxing nostalgic.  We went to a concert the other night at one of the local Lutheran churches.  The sanctuary reminded me of the church where we frequently held our community Thanksgiving service in my former life in Little Town on the Prairie.  That service will, I think, be held this year in the newly renovated Catholic church.  (We alternated between the two as they had the larger of the town's sanctuaries.)  For the first time in nine years,I don't know where I will be on the night before Thanksgiving. I will not be there, I know that for sure, and I am feeling more than a little sad about it.  That service was a benchmark of sorts for me in my gradually becoming a part of that community.  The first year I remember sitting alone in the big Catholic church, wondering if I would ever belong to this place.  In subsequent years I sang with the choir, and in the years after I was ordained processed in with the clergy, gave the blessing, did a reading, planned the service. I will not be there for the Thanksgiving service this year, nor will I be driving myself crazy over getting all the robing of the choristers accomplished for Lessons and Carols, serving turkey dinner with  the Presbyterians on Christmas Eve, or celebrating the Midnight service in my little jewel box church.   Each year as I participated in these traditions, I felt a part of something bigger than myself.  I miss that. Our life here that in so many ways is a more private one, a smaller one.  Sometimes I have felt a little cast adrift, without a role, a place in the community.

We are still finding our way here.  I know that there will be new traditions in a new home, new things that will capture my spirit and imagination and that will help me find my sense of place here.  The potential is there. There may be new possibilities for ministry just over the horizon. That makes me hopeful. But right now I am just a little melancholy, just a little homesick for the life that was.

I know that part of the sadness and feelings of displacement is over the ending of CPE.  Yes, already, I am done.  It was simply....not right.  I knew it very quickly, and I knew it very profoundly.  Perhaps it was a timing error, perhaps an underestimation of the impact and the energy it would take to do this alongside a full time and demanding in its own right "day job."  But I knew that I could not go on.  And the input of the man I love and trust utterly validated and reinforced my need to let go.  As he could see even more than I the toll this was taking, he offered the strength I needed to make the hard and final decision.  There are surely things I will miss.  I had a great supervisor and peer group.  And there were moments of pure grace.  I can hold them as I let go of the thought that this might be a call for me, as clearly it is not.

So that is settled, though other things are not.  That is known while others remain in the realm of "not yet."  Patience has never been my strong suit.  But as my wise beloved says, "we must live with what is not what if." And for me right, that also includes the "what if" of what may be.  I can't live there any more than I can live in "if only" looking backward.

I once said to a friend that I missed my life.  She told me that really, I can't as I am living today the only life there is.  So I am living here, now, though I still find myself wondering a lot about what might be in store next.  One day at time I am living this life, the one that is now....but I can't help missing a little of what was while I wait, in hope for what will be.

Rest Well Bridget

 You know how it goes,  you are prepping a sermon and somewhere in Textweek, one link leads to another and you find yourself reading someone's blog...that links to another blog...with a sidebar of an interesting name...and so you go read her blog.  Well that's how I found myself a week or so ago at a blog called My Manner of Life.    I got to reading (the way you do sometimes when you "meet " a new blogger), and it seems that about a month ago, the author of this blog faced the loss of one of her beloved cats. Part of her posting about this difficult time included (bless her!) some thoughts about and links to liturgical/prayer resources for the loss of our companions in this life who do not happen to be human.

This could not have come at a better time.  I have just come home from that last goodbye to my sweet old Bridget.  Dr. Scott said she was probably somewhere upwards of a hundred in cat years.  Nobody knew for sure.  She was already a grown kitty when she came into my life some fifteen years ago.  We had a good run, my quirky green-eyed girl and I.  She left this life very peacefully, and I know that she is where the good kitties go, having a nap, chasing a mouse, eating her favorite crunchies with no aches or pains in her ancient old self.

We will pray the prayers for her tonight, and when her ashes return there will be some small liturgy to scatter them in the place where she watched the seasons change and the birds roost. May the Lord grant you a peaceful night and perfect end my sweet furry friend.

Thanks to a WI Farmer and the Government....Freedom!

Yesterday was kind of a BIG day.  I paid off the LAST of my student loans.  Only because of the grace of God and the National health Service Corps, I might add.  When I finished my doc program I owed the equivalent of  the cost of a moderate house...and my payments and "mortgage" were about equal to buying one too! The was I figured it, if I paid $1300 a month for the next thirty years, I'd be just about done.  There were only two problems with that scenario. 1) I did not HAVE an extra $1300 a month, and 2) graduating as I did, shall we say, a little later in life....thirty years was going to take me WAY past any one's idea of a graceful time to retire.  I had deferred and forbore, and it was, after being out of school a bit, definitely time to pay the piper.  This all came to a head on my birthday back in 2002.  I was sitting in a field in Wisconsin celebrating my birthday with a friend.  S has always been one not to pull punches with me, and as I was bemoaning my "fate" of a lifetime of loan payementss with no retirement ever in sight, she hit me with the one-two..."So....are you just going to sit around and complain about this thing, or are you going to actually DO something?" I knew the something she was referring to....the National Health Service offers to pay back loans of those in health and allied professions who agree to work in underserved areas for a period of time.  We had talked about this as an option when I was in grad school, but I had hemmed and hawed and put off seriously thinking about it.  It was a risk, I'd have to move...somewhere....my life would have to essentially (or so I thought) be put on hold for the 5-7 years required to complete my service obligation.  And where would I end up?  (Visions of underserved areas to me didn't include my own state at that time.) But I heeded S's words and when I got home again, I looked up the NHSC.  I checked the locations for places to serve and found there were a number of them within a three hour drive of home, and some even had been given a rating that led me to believe that I would have no trouble being accepted for the program should I be applying from one of them. Hmmmm....This might work!.The next step would be a job search. I thought that would take time.   Imagine my surprise when I opened the Sunday paper right there in my own kitchen, and there was one of my sites....in my own state, looking for a psychologist!  So off went the resume, and very soon I was toodling across the state to an interview, then accepting a job and packing to set off on the beginning of  what turned out to be far more of a life-changing adventure than I had ever bargained for.  In addition to the obvious benefits of NO MORE STUDENT LOANS....I have gained  fabulous friends, ordination, which of course has led to more wonderful adventures all on its own, and best of all my amazing husband!  Not bad for eight years. So I'm toasting the National Health Service Corps.  A great deal all around.  People in underserved areas get good clinicians to come and work with them....and those clinicians....doctors, dentists, nurses, too....get relief from a huge debt burden! This is something the government has gotten very, very right. Thanks and blessings NHSC.

To Strive Not To.....

I never wanted to get to the point where my only posts were the Friday Fives. Not that there is anything wrong with that in and of itself, but for a long time my blog was my main creative outlet. There was a time there when I was pretty prolific and rarely had a thought that didn't lead to a post of some sort. Now I find that my main writing energy is going into sermons that I mostly don't think are worth posting, and "five things" each week on Friday, I can't help but wonder if my creative juices, at least in the writing department, are running a little low.

Or maybe it's just that balance thing again. The inner life and the outer life and getting them in sync seems to be a particular challenge for me. I have certainly never been happier and more surely and certainly content with life as a whole than I am right now. Marriage and life with R agrees with me! Some other aspects are a bit challenging (there is always something, right?) like work issues and the irklings that come and go just in the living of life with other people whereever we encounter them (yes, church, too....imagine!) But as I have shared with C on more than one occassion....I seem to struggle with how to have a decent spiritual life in times of goodness and joy. God tends to seem more present to me in times of struggle and difficulty. I rely more, turn more....remember more who and whose I am when I am floundering and falling than when I am coasting along in joy or even in neutral.

I was actually thinking about this on Sunday as I sat in my little red kayak for the first time. As in all things I had pushed and struggled to "get it" immediately, expecting that I should get in that boat, pick up those paddles and row myself perfectly out into the water. Umm, yeah....And after the laughter (good-natured of course) stopped, and my companions R and Soul Sister C pointed out 1) the numerous errors of my paddling ways and 2) my "frowny face," I was able to stop and relax a bit and see that I was er....maybe expecting a little bit much of myself for the first time ever doing this. So I stopped struggling so hard to be the perfect kayaker..... played around a little, got the hang of it just a little bit, and found myself at one point out in the middle of the pond, just drifting. It was quite lovely. And when I was ready to go back in, it was a little easier to take myself and my boat in the general direction I wanted to go...without quite so much effort, without quite so much struggle....I did not need to sufffer or strive to kayak...who knew!

I am by nature a striver. It is where I go first....in paddling, in life and with God. The hard way seems to be the way I know how to do it. Something in me still resists ease. Resists even joy? That is hard to admit, though I think it might be true. I think there is some small part of me that still believes that there is some virtue in suffering and struggle, though my post-modern, liberal self scoffs loudly at this notion. I have gone round in this little circle of my own making far too many times to count. And its getting old. I know that God rejoices in my happiness....is in fact the creator of it. Maybe love will teach me....or the small red kayak, or perhaps God in God's time and patience will get through. Or perhaps I will surrender. Miracles happen all the time! There is, at least in the meantime, a blog post.

I Has Jitters

I seem to be sort of useless today. Having a hard time settling in to do the things I need to get done. I wonder if it has anything to do with the tick, tick, tick in my head....Twenty-four days. Or three weeks and two days....or 566 hours, 32 minutes and some seconds as the little counter on the blog tells me. I had an e-mail on Sunday night from a friend asking about "details and directions" for the wedding. All well and good, you say, except for one thing...I realized that I had forgotten to invite them! So now my brain has gone off on that little tangent. Who else, I wonder, have I forgotten? Or for that matter, what? Something...vital or not....that I was supposed to remember to do, get, take care of.....My lists are my friends. But in order for lists to be effective things have to be ON the lists.

Pet peeve of the day....people who don't RSVP. Is that something unique to this part of the world, or are people just universally not good about this? My invitations were, I thought very clever, with a little tear off post-card part for the rsvp....complete, or course with the stamp. All very simple. I have not heard a word from twenty people, yea or nay. So do I assume no news is a no and they are NOT coming? Obviously not, because I know for a fact that some of them really are! I told R that in my shrewier moments I feel like those who have not responded should have to stand and watch the others eat...but he, kind soul that he is, says, "no honey...we will just order extra, and assume more are coming than have responded." A couple people told me they "accidentally" threw out the response card but they are coming. Sigh. Oh well. At least I know.

My other meh for the day....the cleaner DID shrink my dress....not a lot, just a tich. It is silk and they washed not dry cleaned it. And now it hangs just a little different, pulls just a little er....snugger in a couple places. So I am trying to eat less and walk more and hope that by the 15th it will feel as lovely as it did before. The good news is that they did get the tiny coffee stain out. I am trying not to obsess about this. It is not the end of the world.

On the happy news front, our new cabinet has arrived and that and the new dishwasher are being installed this week. The cabinet is beautiful and it classes the heck out of the kitchen. The fact that we were getting it created motivation for new light fixtures which in turn caused ceiling patching and painting which triggered wall touch-ups....so the kitchen will be its best self ever very soon.

My workmates are throwing me a shower tonight. The last one of these I went to involved lots of er....interesting lingerie type items. I'm not sure if that is what they have in mind for me or not. But I appreciate the thought and I'm sure we will have fun.

I guess getting back to work , and at least trying to focus on the task at hand would be a good thing. I have a feeling this could be a portent of the next few weeks and my productivity level.....

Easter Comes Ready or Not!

It's not the first time in my life that I've thought that God might have a sense of humor...and that it might be just a tad on the dry side. It had been kind of a hard Holy Week....I struggled with the services....it felt like there were so many words, so much ritual, and I had such a hard time feeling a connection with it. It felt a little, well, stale....like old things done too often that had perhaps lost their meaning, at least for me this year.

Easter morning found R and I on the road motoring across the state. We had decided that since this was the first holiday since his dad's death, we really wanted to be with his family. So I excused myself from my place this morning and did a little research to find the Episcopal church closest to his sister's that would work out time wise to allow us to have worship and arrive for dinner with the family. Early this morning we headed out and as we were driving along and chatting about this and that, I was sharing some of my Holy week discontent with R and saying...."Gee I wonder what it would be like if there was an Episcopal church that used some of the praise and worship style music and liturgy that you usually find in more Evangelical churches, rather than the very traditional worship that we are used to?"

Well now I know. It turns out that the church we ended up in for Easter service had exactly that! There was a drummer, a guy on an electric guitar and the music was definitely not done in the traditional style. Some of the other aspects of the worship service were also done differently than I am used to. I found myself taken a bit aback by it all. I guess I am a little more traditional than I'd like to think. Or perhaps I can't be pleased no matter what. But it definitely felt a little like "be careful what you ask for."

The sermon was a definite bright spot however. "Where is Jesus, anyway?" was the question of the day. I think it's the question I wrestled with mightily through Holy Week....what do all the words and ritual have to do with Jesus? I don't know that I have an answer. The priest's answer to the congregation today was clear. Here. Here in this place. Here where you have those that love and care about and do for and serve one another just as Mary and John and Peter did. They did it, she said, even when they really didn't get it. So maybe it's ok if I muddle along ,too, not really sure about why I'm a little fuzzy on some of the fine points right now.

Big picture....Jesus is here too....in the love of my new family who seem to be taking me in....just as I am. In the gift of my sweet R, soon to be vowed forever mine in front of God and everyone! In the grace of simple things, in saying goodbye to our congregant P whom we laid to rest on Holy Saturday, in navigating well the changes that are coming in our team as we change and shift in our roles, remembering that just because we can does not mean we should and that working harder is not always what God really wants of us.

Three years ago today, I baptized a lovely little baby girl. One of her sponsors was a handsome man named R. There was something about that man that caught me....I never forgot him, and in forty two days.....I will be marrying him. Again I say, sometimes I really do think God has a sense of humor.

Happy Easter.

Walking Holy Week

The week is all out of sync. Yes, Holy Week....but also not going to work as usual due to workshops and doctor's appointments. The temperatures are suddenly in the 70's. While that is wonderful, it's a little disconcerting at the same time. After a winter that seemed interminable while it was happening...suddenly it seems almost as if it never was.

Sunday was, as expected, very churchy. It all went off as planned. The nursing home was a little sparser than I had hoped. It seems that my call to the activities director didn't produce the hoped for resulting coriwd after all. I'd heard that her staff was not bringing folks to the chapel for siervice, so I thought maybe a call to say that for sure I'd be there with Palms and Passion in five voices would get something rolling. Oh well. I think the folks that were there mostly did appreciate what was there. They sang and prayed along....and my readers did a great job, as did my piano player on the new electronic piano, with its bank of buttons that looks like something from the Starship Enterprise that produce seemingly random rhythm section selections that could lead a whole marching band across a parade field if she hit the wrong one. But she maintained control of the thing and played a lovely set of Lenten-ish preludes as well as leading us through the hymns.

So here we are in Holy Week. Starting tomorrow, there will be that slow walk to the cross. We do Tenebrae on Wednesday....it isv a slow, almost ponderous chanting of Psalms while light is extinguished. One cannot come away from this without feeling moved, sobered. Then on to the Eucharist and foot washing of Maundy Thursday and Stations of Friday. Watching and waiting. I always feel in Holy Week like I am living in two worlds. Get up, go to work, life as usual by day, and by night, a move to another dimension where things slow and we focus, we watch, we slip into another level. Back and forth, a foot in each world, trying to navigate daily life while not really in it fully again until after Sunday, yet trying to be present because this is, after all the world in which I am called to live.

Another Week of Lent Slides By....

Another Monday (and Tuesday!) come and gone. Another week of Lent gone, too. It's winding down (or up) quickly. This week (and next of course) are very churchy ones. I have the Soup and Sermon preaching spot today. Seems I am always in this last spot. What do they call that when you are the batter? Beats me! Anyway, I think this will be my fourth year in the wrap-up position, winding up this little ecumenical tradition in our community. I'm preaching on the Gospel for the day...the grain of wheat that dies, with a bit of a nod to Archbishop Romero. It's his feast in the Lectionary, and I think he deserves some props. Also preaching this week for Palm Sunday and doing the nursing home Sunday afternoon. I'm really rather pleased about that as it will be a chance to give them the whole Palm/Passion deal. We will do the Passion there in several voices as I have recruited some volunteers from my church to come along. And we will do all the good old hymns...Were You There, Old Rugged Cross, and all. I'm hoping we have surplus palms (we always do) to bring along so we have those for the Palms portion of the proceedings as well. I'm going to give the activity director a heads up that we are going all out so she can let her folks know to bring their friends. One of the sweet little ladies there told me one Sunday "Oh we like it when you come, Pastor...it always feels so much like real church." Yep, that would be me, the liturgy geek...real church follows me wherever I go, I guess.

And that will of course be the entree into the week. We do Holy Week at St. J's. Starting on Wednesday with a Tenebrae service and rolling right on through till Sunday. No vigil, we are too small to pull that off, though we have threatened to try. We typically do have a small noon Holy Saturday prayer service, usually attended mainly by the choir who are wrapping up the final rehearsal about that time. This year we are having to forgo that as the choir has vaporized somehow...much to the dismay of Rev. M, maven of liturgy and music. It will be congregational singing for Easter this year...Mrs. C is off to see the lovely grands, RM, the nurse, is pulling a shift at the nursing home. And R and I too will not be at St. J's for Easter. We have made the call that this year we need to gather with the K Clan at his sister's. So my Easter service will be in another Episcopal church, three hours from home with friends I have not yet met. I know the priest slightly from clergy gatherings. It will be strange not to preside at the service...a first since Ordination on a major feast....but...yes, every year is a new one...life moves forward and changes. But I will be around, participating in various ways for the other parts and pieces that do feel like Holy Week at home....the solemn Tenebrae chants, the Maundy Thursday Eucharist with its gradual movement from what starts out feeling more or less like any other service....and ends with that....empty....silent....altar. And Good Friday. We have Stations. And this year we will have our organist back who does things on the organ. Makes it shudder and moan and cry, unearthly sounds really, that make the hair stand up. So that will be the week. Immersion, really. All else kind of slips into second place for those days of Holy Week.

But for today I need to get myself focused to go preach to the Soup and Sermon crowd. Strangers for the most part. My folks are all at work or school or otherwise engaged. A midday activity is not their thing. But for some folks this is an important Lenten tradition. So it's a good thing to step up and provide this nourishment for body and soul in the middle of the workday.

Another Monday as I Wander Thru Lent

My goodness we would like to see the sun. I know that on Wednesday it will be two weeks. It may be that already, but as of then I will be sure. It is warm (well by our definition anyway) and the snow is fading amazingly quickly, but it's just so unrelentingly (yes, indeed) gray! Despite this, we are courting Spring and had a nice weekend. We will grill every chance we get these days...of late on the little charcoal-er that we bought because it takes the gas grill way too long to heat up in the winter. And I have to admit, there is something about the taste of that charcoal! Last night it was steak, with some wonderful early asparagus. Spring, indeed.

And Lent, in all it's moderate gray Lentedness poddles on as well. Yes, I know, I have euphoric recall about that one wonderful, show-stopping Lent....the one where the Spiritual disciplines and my readiness to be "Lenty" somehow all came together in the perfect holy storm and it just was....right and good, and nothing will ever be its equal. All it needed to be in the way of preparation and readiness...never known before and alas I am coming to believe, never to be again. Yes, I know....all things are their own things and in their own time. You can't go back and recreate something because you are never the exact same being in the exact same frame of mind or spirit again. And my saner rational self also has a guess that it really probably wasn't quite as wonderfully spiritually uplifting as in memory, because things just never are, are they? This one, containing very reality of of life and death and the whole point of all in before us in the life again brings me to a bit of somewhere that I think is probably very authentically Lenten...the problem is I am just not able to articulate as well as I'd like just exactly where it is it does bring me!

I teared up in church on Sunday as I consecrated. I haven't done that in a very long while, nor have I had that sense of the Communion of Saints around, beyond, and amidst me in quite some time as I did on Sunday....that sense that stops time and tends to make me lose my place in the proceedings. Bad enough in the familiar words of Rite II....it could be fatal as I falter my way through the thees and thous and hasts of the Rite I we adopt for Lenten Sundays. But there it was (they were?) none the less, and there was not a blessed thing I could do about it--nor wanted to!

St. Patrick will be celebrated in fine style by us on Wednesday night. We are having a Celtic Eucharist....singing some beautiful music and using a lovely setting of the liturgy to take us back and away and quiet us down a bit. There will be a drum too if mine comes in the air in time. Me in an alb with a drum....yeah, I can't help thinking about some of the good sisters of my childhood. "What has become of that girl?" For some I'm sure it's tantamount to no good end. But you know, I think that my lovely Irish Catholic mother will be having a great giggle over all of it.

So there we are. Monday winds down. It's off to yoga now....a spiritual thing in my day (thinking still about that Friday Five) that was far too full of things that were maybe religious and maybe simply things. But in this there will be quiet, and I will pipe down and find a space for God to settle in me for a time and we will dance a bit as we play with Spirit and breath and asana in the space created there.

Passages and Connections

It's hard to believe it's been over a week already. Time has just kind of slipped away. Thursday was spent with the family planning services and such. Friday I went back to work, I think, though I sort of don't remember. Last Saturday was a very long day as I recall. R and I kept trying to think of things to do to fill time. We ran some errands, played with the dog...urging time to move, both dreading Sunday and wanting it to come, waiting and not for things to move on. Sunday was his dad's wake...the harder day in some ways of the two days of saying goodbye. So many people came to be part of this. Big families are so different for me. R is the "baby" of nine in his family, and his dad's own birth family was large as well, so there are just a lot of people in this clan of his. And I guess when you live in the same area for a big part of a ninety-six year life, you get to know a few folks as well! Sunday there was a rosary at three and a prayer service at seven. Almost every chair in the funeral home was full for both of them. And there was a steady stream of people in between. The funeral was last Monday. It was sad and lovely as only a big Catholic funeral in a very old church can be. The entire front half of the church on both sides was full of his family. The rest of the pews were pretty full, too, of friends of L’s as well as friends of all of his kids. The priest did well with the sermon. He knew L a bit, and it was obvious that he listened well as the kids talked about their dad as they planned the service. The hymns were some those that L chose…Amazing Grace, The Old Rugged Cross, Here I Am. Hard ones, good ones. We all cried as we sang, of course.

After the service we were well-fed by the ladies of the church while we gathered to talk and remember L and honor his life as we slipped gently back towards our own. Funeral hotdish, more salads made with whipped cream than you could count and lots and lots of cake to sweeten our memories.

So, we are moving back into life as usual. Back to work, back to planning this next big event of ours which now assumes a bittersweet edge. R is writing lots of funeral thank you notes as I am collecting RSVPs from wedding invitations. Again, the circle of life, beginnings and endings. I am so glad I got to know L, even for a little while. We are who we are at least in part because of who we come from, because of those who pass before us and those who are connected to us. For both of us now the generation before is gone on and we stand in the front of the line. But we’ll stand there together, he and I, remembering those we are connected to…and it will be ok.

Best Laid Plans

Well we know about them don't we? Saturday's changed to include a visit to R's Dad. The good news was that I got to meet a couple more nieces, and it was a much nicer day for the hour drive than the last time we made it with blowing snow and finger drifts on the highway. The bad news of course is that Dad is continuing to not do so well, and that is hard to see. By the time we got back neither of us felt much like zany comedy so we decided to skip the play. It was a take and bake pizza and fall asleep in front of the Olympics night instead.

Sunday went a little more according to plan. The sermon did take Spirit wings and manage to fly. Always a grateful moment when that happens. Our discernment meeting went off well, too. Two more people will enter into formation to become part of our ministry team, one for youth work and the other to work with young adults with the idea that he may have a call to the diaconate. R and I did get to meet with the organist to pick our wedding music, so that is one more thing to check of that list. After church I finished off the invitations and they will go in the mail today. Check, check, check....off they go, those things on that list! We spent time on line last night looking for a bagpiper. It is one of my fondest wishes to have one playing us out after the ceremony...and it turns out that our little corner of the world is short on them! They apparently congregate in big cities, too. We may have a lead from a pipe and drum corps over in SD (2 hours away)...so we will see. I may have to forgo this little wish...sigh. But everything else is moving along. R's job today is to rattle the cage of the DJ...we still haven't heard from him about a time to meet. Mine is to mail the invites. Tomorrow I'm going to talk to the florist. Check, check, check. My goal is that pretty much everything is done a month ahead so I can stop worrying and enjoy the last month in peace (or so I say). We shall see!

For now, it's back to work and winter and Lent. Life where it is lived every day, plans made and kept and plans gone astray. Off to them.

Winter...Coming and going

After the Friday Five I guess maybe my thoughts really did start turning to ways to stave off the winter gloomies. As we were walking into the grocery store together yesterday and talking about what to make for dinner, a sign advertising rib-eye steaks caught my eye. "Look, " I said to R, "they have steaks on sale, we could grill out!" Now mind you, it was about 25 degrees at the time, and a light misty snow was falling. But the idea grabbed us both, and as soon as we got home, while R was blowing out the driveway, I got after the back steps and the grill area and got it all dug out and ready. As I was taking off my boots, R came in with a look that told me his brain had been busy while he was out there with the snow blower. "I have an idea," he announced. "Let's try the hot tub." "Seriously?!?" "Sure, why not?" So, while the grill heated for the steaks, and the snow lightly fell, we steamed away in the tub. I had kept it full and heated this winter with the thought that "maybe one day" we'd give it a try. I think we have a new winter pastime! It was such an incredible thing to be sitting there all warm and cozy looking at the piles of snow in the yard and the huge icicles hanging off my roof. Getting out was not at all the torturous experience I expected either. I was so toasty from the tub I didn't even notice the cold air!

We enjoyed the grilled steaks, too. It was hard to get the gas grill to heat up, though, so today we went out and got ourselves a little charcoal grill so we can cook out anytime we want. If spring can't quite get here soon enough, we will just have create our own good times and as Jimmy Buffet says, take our weather with us...only the best kind though!

On another note....please pray for a "good weather Monday" and safe travels for L. My congregant is taking him to his new hometown in the morning when he gets out of jail. He is still unsure of where he will go for sure in the long run. The Salvation Army is helping out for a few nights, he will be connecting with social services from there. But the weather here is not looking very nice tomorrow and she has to get into town to get him out. So I am being pretty specific in my prayers tonight...good roads, no winds, safe travel tomorrow. Please and thank you.

Places and Times

I enjoyed reading the comments on my last post, and have continued my musings about the times and places of our lives and being shaped by them. I don't know if it really is just the January blahs and the tail end of sick, but I am feeling seriously less enchanted by life here than I have been at any point since my arrival. The darkness, the towering snowbanks, the routine of work, it all seems to be kind of grinding right now, and I find myself less patient and tolerant, more anxious and cranky. I had two dreams last night in succession in which things were closing around me to keep me in a place in which I did not want to be. Yeah, it does not take much to interpret that! In both dreams I had wandered innocently into something and gotten either lost or into trouble by doing something inadvertent to set off an alarm that started closing doors and gates.

I wonder sometimes if God goes to some warmer place in January. I always seem to have a harder time making contact this time of year. Seriously, I know it's me....not that I would blame God a bit. All those cruise adds are looking seriously tempting.

It will be Lent soon. Yep, it's one of those years. Ash Wednesday in the middle of February, a little over a month away. I think I'd better start thinking about it, Lent, that is. Or it too will slip away like Advent did. I'd like a Lent-y Lent this year I think. Need one to get my spiritual house in order. That place too impacts how we are, doesn't it?

Wherever You Go.....

One of the community groups I sometimes attend is having a discussion tonight about the impact of where we live on our happiness. I won't be there. Not because of my usual reason--the time conflict with my yoga class, but because I'm sick. The crud that has been circulating caught me late last week and I have been laid low through the weekend and am still not up to par today. It's probably just as well that I am not going anyway. I would not be a cheerful influence right now. Where I live in the cold dark North is having an impact on me right now, and I don't think it's a particularly positive one. It's not just the virus, though that certainly doesn't help, but the whole package. January is just not my favorite month. Has not, is not, won't be. At least not here. Oh well. Enough of that whine.

It is an interesting thought, though. That idea of place and how it impacts us. It's one that has intrigued me for a long time. I know that it took me a while to adjust to flat when I moved out here. And to be fair, it's not really flat flat here. Not like some places I've been. It's more gentle, rolling a bit here and there, and in some spots broken by small glaciated hills. But compared to the river bluffs of my childhood...flat. There is no place to really get "up" and look at things from that vantage point, and I miss it still. My friend from the UP says something similar. Only for her it was the open space that was hard. She misses the enclosing sense of the trees there among other things.

My relocation here was my first experience of small town life, and I have written a fair amount here about how much I have enjoyed living in a place where people really do have names to go with their faces, and where almost everywhere I go I can see someone I recognize. I know people who do not like this facet of living here as much as I enjoy it, however, and find it sometimes stifles them, and causes them to act in ways that feel less than authentic to them.

I sometimes idly play with the notion of who and where I would be in life now if I had not come here. If I just simply kept moving forward with the life I was living in the Big City, trying fruitlessly to pay off impossible student loans because I was too afraid to take the risk of change and move here. Or if I had stuck to my guns once here and said no to the invitation to consider discernment for the ministry team, insisting on my "temp" status, that I was going to "serve and run" once my loan commitment was done, so what would be the point of involvement...in the church, the community, in life here. There would be no priesthood, no R, no Soul Sisters...no circle of friends and web of community, virtual and IRL. There would of course be something else and I would not know there was no this. But I cannot help think how much poorer my life would be. In my mystical Celtic soul, the one that eschews all the rational modern notions of life, I know that I was meant to come here. That this, as I say in my sidebar, was the life that was waiting for me to find it. It was like falling down the rabbit hole and once here, it was home. I am intuiting now that the place may not be forever. Winter is wearing very thin for us and R and I are dreaming warm and beachy dreams for the not too distant future. And that place, wherever it may be, will shape us further into who we will become.

So how about you? What are your thoughts about this notion of sense of place and how it shapes us?

On Christmas Day the Snowflakes Came and Came and.....

It's still snowing....R has blown out my driveway once today so the dinner guests could get in. R said he thought there were about eight inches at that point. That would have been since he blew it out yesterday. We did have church. And that sermon did get used after all. What with one thing and another, M did not get hers done and asked me about half way through the day yesterday..."since you have one, would you?" And of course I said yes. So we split the service, concelebrated the Eucharist and I preached after all. We had a choir of two priests, one choir member and R, who also did doubles as acolyte. The total attendance was sixteen with the four of us and the organist. But we were there and church was had and a joyful noise was made. Our little choir did a rather nice four-part rendition of "O How a Rose Ere Blooming" with very little rehearsal after we decided we had to abandon the anthem for lack of choir. We had the traditional candle lit "Silent Night" after Communion, and we sent ourselves off into the night with a fairly rousing "Joy to the World" recessional. Immediately following our service R and I hustled ourselves back to the Presby church for a very quick turkey dinner and on to C's service there. My friend and her daughter sang, C did a wonderful first person meditation from the point of view of a shepherd, and we did the traditional candle light singing of Silent Night! You just can't do that too much on Christmas Eve!

Today has been a quiet and lovely Christmas. The original plan was to travel with R's daughter to his sister's house about an hour from here. But of course that got nixed with the weather, so he invited his daughter here to have dinner with us. Her mom got invited too, so she wouldn't be alone today, and the four of us had a lovely time enjoying R's fabulous lamb curry and rice, apple pie and pumpkin cheesecake. Now the comapny is gone, , the dishes and clean-up are done, I am in my sweats and there is nothing left to do, no place to be until Sunday morning when I will celebrate and preach again.

It's been a lovely Christmas all in all. Unlikely blessings in strange places. But that, in the end is where they often come when I remember to look.

Check, check, check

OK....the wind has died down, the temp is still in the you don't want to know range. (It's minus eight in case you really DO want to know). The car groused a bit, but it started, and there were no driveway events. So all in all, we are off to a good start today. I'm on-call for the day job today and my phone rang while I was in the shower. Now while that's better than in the middle of the night, it does have it's complexities as well. Like finding a pen to get the info down, and the fact that all my referral info is out in the cold, cold car. Thankfully, they live here too and can be patient with such human fraility.

Further progress is being made on the "get'er done" list. All writing tasks have been accomplished and the ones that needed to be sent off have been duly dispatched to their respective places. The remainder of today will be spent in catching up on day job paperwork that got neglected while I was mad rushing to meet all the other deadlines. Tonight R and I are going to a holiday concert. The group is called Tonic Sol Fa and they are quite fabulous. They started out as a local group in one of the small cities not far from here and developed a national following. I try to catch the holiday concert every year if I can. This will be R's first time to go with me, so it should be fun. Saturday night is the holiday party for his part-time job. We are going bowling! Other than on wii I haven't bowled in years, so that should be interesting. I am laughably bad. So bad that I have been known to throw my ball into the next lane. When we used to go regularly back in the day, other bowlers would request not to be next to us.

Then Sunday it will be church, church, and more church. Mine, the nursing home and mine again for Lessons and Carols. I only hope to be transported once again by the singing of the L and C. It is often the thing that jumpstarts my Christmas spirit. Something needs to, because it is a little on the paltry side. We have some garland on the porch railings and an Advent wreath. This could be it. R is in retail. He is not gung-ho about my home decoration....he has been there and done that with wreaths and trees several weeks or so ago already at his mall. Some years it really matters to me....last year it did as I reclaimed my space. This year, not so much. I don't really Christmas shop anymore. That used to get some juices flowing. But there is little of that to do, and the pushing of the Heifer and ERD buttons, while very satisfying, is just not quite the same. So I'd say on the Ho-Ho-Ho scale I'm about at a Ho. Not really Bah-Humbug as I have been some years, but not really at Merry and Bright either. I think I have not totally recovered from last week's adventure as far as my mood and general state of being. And I am aware how many people are struggling right now with losses and suffering of various kinds. My clients, my friends IRL and in blogland. Sometimes that awareness makes it hard to get that holiday jolliness all ramped up.

On a bright note....XDO has found someone new and is getting married on Friday in a small private ceremony. They seem very happy together and appear to be well-suited to one another. I wish them blessings and a long and happy life. This is good for us all.

So I guess that's about it from the cold snowy prairie. Time to go to work and get that paperwork caught up.

Just Thinkin'

Well, the "so what" showed up and the sermon got done. The hymns are picked and the bulletin is all neat and tidy and ready to be run. Now if I can continue to ward off whatever bug seems to be wanting to brew up in me....Sunday is good to go. I like being ready for Sunday on Thursday. In this new rhythm of my life, long Saturdays of sermon writing and service prepping just don't do it for me anymore. It doesn't seem to take me nearly as long to write sermons as it once did. I think some of that is experience, just developing an approach to the whole business of sermon-craft that works for me. And I also think that some of that business of spending all my time writing and doing "stuff" for church was clearly other things. That whole overfunctioning business that occupied the first part of my ordained life. It was at least in part driven by my need to be the perfect little priest, which all came before God's graduate courses in post-ordination formation that have finally convinced me that a) I can't be and, b) even if I could, there is no point because God is fine with me as the beloved flawed human priest God called me to be.

It was also driven by a need to fill time and not deal with things, and what better way to be busy! Between my day job, my church life, and oh, yes, teaching when we threw that into the mix, I could just run forever and never have to stop and listen to my heart and my spirit. Except of course that it didn't work. Because it never does. Really. Not beyond a certain point. Beyond a certain point, all it did was leave me frazzled, strung out and exhausted, never mind so far from my center that I wouldn't have recognized her if I tripped over her! At any rate, I am truly truly happy that the Energizer Bunny has gone into retirement.

It was also driven by a little bit of arrogance. "I am soooo busy because I am sooooo important in the scheme of things, don't you know." Every time I "confessed" that I had no idea what the current popular TV shows were because I "simply did not have time to watch them," I have to admit, I felt a little frission of what I must admit was pride. I had to find my self-esteem somewhere, and that seemed like as good a place as any, I guess! There's that functional atheism thing again! It seems to crop up in many guises. I needed people to see me as important somewhere because I did not see myself that way. It's, as they say in the Twelve Step world a character defect...and a long-standing one, this inability to see my true self. I seem to have an internal fun house mirror that pops up and distorts me in my own eyes (and its equivalent in an audio speaker for the critical voices). But the mirror grows dimmer and the volume on the speaker quieter these days. And it leaves me free to hang out on the couch with my sweetie and revel in a good episode of House or even Two and a Half Men for no other reason than it's fun and I LIKE it. Whew! Even now I can hear a little critic screaming in there...."YOU DID WHAT!?!?!" But...it is what it is....and yes, I am doing less these days. But I think I'm doing it with more integrity, authenticity and certainly with more joy. That tight little spring in my center unwinds a little more all the time....and nobody cares, and for this, yes, I am grateful.

Ramblin' Thoughts

This month is getting away from me. Someone said to me last night, "October is always such a crazy month for you, isn't it?" And yes, it's true, bracketed on one end by clergy conference and the other end by Diocesan Convention, and usually with some other travel thrown in, either for work or church, October seems to be my peripatetic month.

I am supposed to be writing a sermon right now. It's "some" done. The groundwork is laid, the bones are there...but I'm sitting with the "so what" part. I've noticed since we have been doing Gospel Based Discipleship in conjunction with everything, that my sermons have unconsciously begun to fall into the pattern of ending with the last GBD question, "what is it are we being called to DO as a result of hearing this Gospel" or the so what question....so that's where I am right now. And its not that I don't have some thoughts. It's just putting some language on it, good language, fresh language. So I'm procrastinating. If I were home I'd clean closets or straighten drawers. At work...I blog! I've been enjoying this journey through Mark, Jesus' lessons on discipleship. I've been preaching about every other week, enough to feel like I have kind of a series going that I can hang together, one on the other. That's the good part...themes develop, things can repeat and build. The downside of course is that repetition can get to be simply that if it is not used creatively....so I'm trying to walk that line.

Speaking of repetition....it's raining again. Egads! Good news? It's not snow. But it's cold and gray and it's already starting to feel sort of endlessly that season. I'm thinking about doing gratitude posts in November again. I was at a couple workshops last week, one on the brain and one on forgiveness. They were as different as could be...the first all science and brain scans, the second very spiritual and holistic (my two "me's"), but they both pointed to some similar truths. We go where we point ourselves. Our thoughts are powerful things and they change us. The scan guy showed evidence that they actually physically do that! Just as much as the food we eat, the toxins we are exposed to, the amount of exercise we get....what we say to ourselves and others about our daily experiences affects the amount of blood that moves in our brains, which impacts how the synapses fire, the chemistry works and essentially how everything happens, including perhaps how long and certainly how well we live. The other workshop operationalized a way to "do forgiveness." I was the test subject for the afternoon's demo. I worked through an issue with my brother. I have needed to forgive him since 1992 for some pretty big stuff. Was it a miracle? Am I done? No, of course not! But, there is a little a chink of light that was not there before...and as some of us who were also at the other workshop said after the demo...."I bet there is more blood flow in Kate's brain right now!" So I'm thinking about gratitude posts in November. I do remember the last time....that wonderful month of NaBloPoMo on gratitude. I'm not thinking daily....necessarily....but maybe....who knows. I certainly have thirty things to be thankful for! And I need to write more and be more intentional about reflection in my life, as that has slipped a bit. It could happen.

But for today....it's back to that sermon for a half hour or so as the day begins and we will see if "so what?" takes shape.

Fall Falls

It's hard to believe October is almost half over. Not of course if I look outside....out there it almost looks like it might be November that's passing. The trees have dropped many of their leaves, some without even bothering to change from green, and they wave bare branches against the chilly gray sky. The "s-word" is being mentioned again in the forecast for tomorrow. That would be our third snow already this month. My farmer friends tell me "it's gonna be a long one" and R has ordered a whole pallet of salt for the mall lot. He says he feels it in his bones too. And after fifteen years of managing his mall, his bones know what they know. We scrambled this weekend to get some things done, cleaning the garage to make room for the car, hauling some things to the thrift store, picking the last of the tomatoes before the frost. This morning I brought out the winter clothing bins from the other closet. I can only make layering my summer clothes go so far. It's time for the heavy stuff...and today was a turtleneck day!

Fall is always kind of a strange bittersweet time for me. It feels like a time of new beginnings, probably because I've spent almost half my life starting school every fall! But it's clearly also the end of things...the ease of warm, warm days which I love, fresh produce from my garden, long long days full of light. And out here on the prairie, it's the end of a kind of simplicity of plans. Because from now until spring, everything we do becomes weather-dependent at a more significant level. And for me, winter driving chicken that I am, plans to travel any distance can be scotched at a moment's notice at the mere hint of an ice storm or impending blizzard. The weather channel, NOAA, and the driving conditions sites on my computer get frequent visits, and if a trip is a must, I am pretty uptight about the whole business until I'm sure it's clear skies and dry roads all the way.

Tomorrow has the makings of one of those days. I am due for a 5 a.m. departure for the Big City three hours from here to attend a workshop. A "wintry mix" had been promised earlier in the week. It now looks more like it might be just rain....but it's supposed to be around 32 degrees at 5 a.m. and even rain right at freezing makes me jumpy. I'm trying to do all those things I tell my clients...stay in today, not worry ahead, deal with it when it comes...yeah I talk a good line....but inside I am anxious and fretful, and also hopping mad that I have to start dealing with this crap in OCTOBER! I picked this workshop specifically because I figured the weather would not be a factor. There I go again, thinking I am in control. What was that phrase? Oh yes, "functional atheism," the belief that I control everything. We do not -- can not -- save ourselves.....I believe I heard that preached somewhere very recently. Apparently I am not listening to my own sermons again.

So once again the seasons change. Some things change with them and some things are constant. The trick, I think, is remembering which is which.