Two Years Ordained Today!

Fall 2005 - Opening conversation at the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises, taking place in a small office at John Carroll University, where I am taking a course on Ignatian spirituality and have decided to dive in and make the Exercises with my professor.  We barely know one another.



Me, former lawyer, teacher in Orthodox Jewish school, Presby elder: 

I'm thinking that I might be, you know, called to ordained ministry in my own denomination, but obviously that would be ridiculous, so there's no need for us to discuss it.


Spiritual director, 75-year-old Jesuit: 

Umm hmm.

Ninety

 

 

I stopped by the assisted living facility today.  Very funny morning.  (Ignore if you've been reading FB.  Photo from there as well; I'm just in the mood to post some oldies but goodies.) 

*****

Conversation overheard while waiting for elevator, after dog has been seen walking down the hallway:

"People are allowed to bring pets to visit, and sometimes therapy dogs come."

"I don't like animals. Never have. I would never harm an animal, but I wouldn't want one either. They're a big responsibility."

Pause, and then the same lady adds:

"I don't like plants either. You have to take care of them, too."

At that point I burst out laughing, and thus was discovered standing behind them.


*****


90-year-old man's assessment of sermons at assisted living facility: "They don't preach sermons for old people here! They preach about Jesus and love and all that stuff; we've got that down."

Me: "What would be a good sermon for old people?"

My parishioner: "Celebrate us! Celebrate our lives of work and service!"


*****


Wife: She's 100 years old. She looks pretty good, don't you think?

Husband: Oh, yeah. She certainly doesn't look 100!

 

Small Church Small Church

A few weeks ago I told Professor Who Preached at My Ordination that I was at my wit's end.  I will never have the kind of career trajectory that younger pastors might have once expected (of course, these days, they probably won't either): small church, larger church, tall steeple church.  If I am lucky, I will have another decade in active parish ministry, after which I intend to do spiritual direction, lead retreats, write something-or-other, and take my grandchildren to the beach (the last being the activity of primary importance). 

 

I just wanted to find a way to make the most of this decade in whatever form it takes.

 

And so I spent a lot of time in prayer of the most restless and haphazard sort, and talked to some churches, and observed my own church and what I was doing there, and drove about a million miles (seriously, my car is going to require some major recovery time).  And now, in a month, I will become the pastor of a small church in an inner ring suburb, a church with no children or youth, no choir, and an income largely produced by building rental rather than church stewardship.  A church which has accomplished a lot in the way of self-reflection over the past three years and is poised for . . . the future.

 

Task 1: Re-watch all the episodes of the wonderful British series Rev.

 

This church will require of all my creativity and ingenuity, but if offers me the opportunity to serve a church and its local community in ways that have been impossible in my current situation, with my congregation located one and one-half hours from my home.    It's a ministry that will enable me to resettle into my own house (a mess), be around as my children settle into adult relationships and careers (fascinating, to put it very mildly), perhaps help my husband retire, and re-connect with neighbors and friends.

 

I am planning to steal a page from the Benedictines for the next decade.  Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of stability in addition to the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and I am much focused on stability these days.  Stability has not been a feature of the last six years of my life, and I know better than anyone not to bother with predictions for even the next five minutes, but I am going to do everything possible to hold high the ideals of stability of place and community and focus for the next ten years. 

Most especially where my church is concerned.

 

Then can we please move to the ocean?

Open Secrets (Book Review)

 

 

For the last several months, the practice of rural church ministry has been an increasingly problematic challenge for me. So many dimensions to my difficulties:

 

The hour and one-half commute, meaning that I stay overnight in Small Church Town two-to-four nights a week.  I have noticed, as time has progressed, that I am making an effort to limit those overnights to as few as possible.

 

The task of making friends.  In my two years there, I have found one potential good friend among the clergy, a Methodist pastor who left after one year.  Others are cordial, and we often work well together ~ but we are not connected in that ineffable way that makes for deep friendship.

 

Country life.  I expected to enjoy it, but by the time one of my older members told me, only some months into my pastorate, that she and her husband were in the process of a move out from their very small community "because I'm really a country girl at heart," I had realized the opposite about myself.  I was, honestly, surprised; I grew up in a similar locale and my father, at 81, still lives down the road and across the creek from the house in which I grew up.  But the truth is that I went off to boarding school at age 12 and that, even though for many years I studied at institutions located in rural areas, the schools themselves were bustling and diverse communities.  Yes, even my Catholic boarding school, out in the middle of Ohio cornfields: South American and African girls, Baptist and Methodist and agnostic girls, and nuns with advanced degrees, hearts for the poor, and minds for social justice, opening their arms to the changes wrought by Vatican II.  And I have lived in cities ever since I arrived in Providence forty years ago.  I love backcountry hiking and canoeing, but I want to live in the city.  I really, really, really want to live in the city!

 

The ever-widening gap between my own willingness to consider just about anything and everything as possibility, and the inherent conservatism of central Ohio rural life: political, social, economic, and theological.  I could write a book, but someone else has taken care of that:

 

As I have struggled to make sense of life and ministry over the past several months, Seminary Professor Who Preached at My Ordination suggested that I read Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery by Richard Lischer.  And so I put down Nadia Bolz-Weber's Pastrix, which might have spoken  to a reality I'd prefer, but not to the one I've been living, and devoured Open Secrets in less than a day.

 

Every line spoke my reality.  Richard Lischer is a Lutheran pastor, now a professor at Duke Divinity School,  who arrived at his first church filled with the enthusiasm of a newly-minted Ph.D. and discovered that he had been assigned to a small, rural congregation in the Midwest.  His portraits of the geography of the town, his rendition of his conversations with his congregants, his attempts to dispense with certain traditions and his reluctant accommodation to others, his family's efforts to become part of the life of the church, and his discovery of the narrative underlying each interaction ~ every word rings with the clarity of truth lived.

 

The conversation "in which the pastor seeks to remove the flag from the sanctuary" and comes to grasp that the flag is not about misplaced worship, but is about the story of beloved community, is completely, if not exactly, the story of my experiences with Veterans' Day and the men for whom the memory of comrades lost constitutes the proclamation of the good news.

 

The recounting of the story "in which the pastor's wife hires a babysitter so that she can sit out back in a lawn chair and read and work on her dissertation" and the manner in which the church comes to accept her behavior is a very funny rendition of how pastor and congregation circle warily around one another  and finally meet in a place approximating the middle.

 

How much of myself I see in this book!  Insight, denseness, hopefulness, love, arrogance, determination, relinquishment, compassion, frustration, and a simultaneous sense of being in exactly the right place and completely the wrong place.  And perhaps most of all: coming to the realization, as Richard Lischer did, that I have missed a great deal, despite trying so hard to be present and appreciative.

 

I'm getting ready to move to a congregation in the city, or at least in an inner-ring suburb, but I am going to treasure this book as a reminder to be attentive and appreciative to what lies right before me.

 

 

(P.S. Amazon is selling the book under two slightly different titles; hence, the picture above, which differs from my Kindle version.)

 

 

Esq - Almost!

At 7:00 a.m. this morning the Supreme Court of Ohio posted the list and yes! son Matt has passed the bar examination!  My phone rang at 7:04; apparently neither one of us got much sleep last night.

In another ten days we get to go to Columbus for the swearing in.  Here's what I remember of my own:

1. My beautiful black wool suit with my deep tan (?) silk blouse with black piping at the wrists and collar.

 

2.  I drove from Columbus on down to see my family and show off my new certificate.  My grandmother burst out laughing at the "Esq.", which bewildered me until I learned that "Esquire" means "gentleman."

 

3.  My grandfather immediately ceased and desisted from all lady lawyer jokes and began introducing me to his friends as "my granddaughter, the attorney."

 

This one will be much better, simply because one's children's achievements mean so much more than one's own.  And, like his sister, Matt has completed his formal education under the most challenging of circumstances, has excelled, and is employed in his field.

 

Well done!

 

 

Hymn to the Eternal Flame

My friend Rosa is making a 30-day retreat and somehow found the time to send me this amazing gift.



Josh ~ Chicago Graduation
Family ~ Arizona
Memorial Service for a Young Woman
My Mother and I
Igantius the Pilgrim  ~ Guelph Retreat Centre
Boats in Poulsbo WA
Family ~ Adirondacks
My Birthday
Marissa and Ursuline Sister Agatha
Matt ~ Law School Graduation
Heart Glass ~ Ordination Gift from Rosa
Chapel of the Martyrs ~ Montmartre
Tanner's Annunciation
Wernersville Jesuit Center
My Mother and Brother
Josh ~ Lake Michigan

Breast Cancer Courage

Cheryl of A Song Not Scored for Breathing has posted her post-mastectomy image today to mark the first anniversary of the day she awoke from anesthesia without a breast.  She's participated in a photography project in which she's the first woman (in that particular project) to allow herself to be photographed without some sort of illusionary covering designed to conceal the bare naked truth.  I don't know whether she'll post in her blog, but here's her FB link.

 

I'm not posting it here because, truthfully, I'm not as brave as Cheryl where this one's concerned.  I've had reconstructive surgery, but I can't say that I look much different that she does.  And when I look at her photo I'm reminded of the conversation I had with either my surgeon or her nurse practitioner a year ago, at my one-year check up:

 

How do you feel about this?

 

I think it's hideous.  I cringe whenever I accidentally look in the mirror.  I'm so sorry I bothered with the reconstruction - months of pain so that I could more closely resemble Frankenstein.

 

Wow.  You know, most women do pretty well with this.  Would you like to talk with someone?

 

Not particularly.

 

Most women do pretty well with this.  I've wondered, once in awhile, what that meant.  Or why, once again, I was subjected to a comparison to those mythical "most women."  Most women just want it gone.  Most women follow their doctors' recommendations immediately.  Most women don't experience this type of pain.  Most women are grateful for their foobs (fake boobs.) 

 

Of course, I understand.  The doctors really are in the business of healing, and they project their own hopes - women will do well with disfigurement and loss and pain ~ and two years later continuing tenderness and discomfort and mystifying challenges related to getting dressed ~ because those are better than the other options.  As indeed, they are.

 

Most women do pretty well with this.  Let's see.  I have loved and cared for my family, I was ordained and have pastored a church for two years, I have done all kinds of speaking and writing on behalf of suicide prevention, and I.went.to.Chicago, which may have taken more guts than all the rest of it  . . .  do I really have to look in the mirror at the mess on my upper torso and say "Great!", too?

 

Nah.  I don't.