friends – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

Don’t Try… DO! #reverb10

Posted on December 18, 2010Leave a comment

For me, the word try has some negative connotations. As in – if you are trying to do something, you aren’t really, actually, doing it.
Kaileen Elise challegned us today:

December 18 – Try What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it?

My mind is a wash of a lot of things that I want to do, see, learn in the next year. I want to learn how to play the guitar. I want to lose 15 lbs and tone up some muscles and maintain that physique. I want to take writing more seriously. Professionally speaking, I want to empower my laity so that I don’t have to write the agendas for all of our meetings. I want a deeper relationship with God through prayer and stillness. I want to spend more time with my family

But as I think about all of those things, nothing strikes me as something to try at… either I’m going to do them, or I’m not.

So trying… what would I want to try? What would I want to explore? What do I want to collisally fail at? What do I want to take a chance on and see if maybe, possibly, I like it? What kind of one-shot experience do I want for 2011?

I have to admit, I wasn’t feeling very creative when I started thinking about this. In fact, I avoided the prompt all day long hoping for some inspiration. Finally, I got desperate. I googled… don’t laugh… “things to try.”

And I found a bunch of really interesting stuff!!!

First up, 10 frugal things to try before you die. I have to admit – I’ve done a number of these things already. Goodwill and Stuff,Etc. are staples for bargain hunting clothes. I’ve also been dumpster diving before. And I regularly try to salvage the fruits and veggies in my fridge that are going a little south…. maybe that’s not the same thing as “slumming” it… but it’s close! I can sew, knit, and crochet. So I’m doing pretty good on this list. Although, the drip tray pint might be an adventure that I can add to my list?

Next, Things to try at Wal-Mart when you are bored. Self-explanatory. But nothing that I really want to do… maybe if I were ten years younger.

There are a ton of bucket-lists out there, including this one, and this one, and oh yeah, this one.

Some highlights on those – things that actually might be possible for me in the next year:

have your portrait painted… I’ve never done this – not even those cartoon drawings at Adventureland.
run a marathon… How about run a 5k -that’s definately something to add to my list.
make love on the kitchen floor… yep.
make a hole in one… I don’t golf (oh, that’s another one to add to the list) – but I do disc golf and making an ace would be amazing… it’s definately something to try and shoot for!
play a round of golf… see above.
be someone’s mentor… being a young person, that hasn’t really been an opportunity for me yet – except there is this thing called reverse mentoring and a colleage and I are going to do it this next year
visit New York City… definately on my list. In fact, I would like to take a trip to the northeast in general this next year.
go skiing… I have never been snow skiing in my life. That’s a great thing I could try next year.
fly first class… this would definately be fun. something to experience, something I can probably afford to do only once =)
wear more dresses… I love dresses, but finding good ones that are staples for a wardrobe is hard – this might be a fun thing to try!
cook with herbs from my own garden… I have yet to grow herbs and this would be an awesome thing to try for next year!
try to cook a national food… this one inspired me to think about getting the kolach recipe from my recipe box and actually attempting to bake them myself.

Hmm… that’s a pretty good list of things to try! Possible things. Fun things. Some of them easy to accomplish. Some of them that might take some planning.

Is there anything like that from 2010?

Probably hiking up Koko Head Crater. It was something I always wanted to do and I finally did it, barely. That’s something I’ve talked about in a few of these other reverb10 posts.

I sang a solo in church, twice this year, which was quite an accomplishment for me. It was a little scary, but I actually did it! The first time was for a Good Friday Tenebrae service, and the second time I busted out a song as a part of my sermon – a capella!!!

Another big accomplishment for me this year is that I decided to try and make a full scale blanket by crocheting/knitting. It was a huge success and I’m now working on number three!!! A big step up from the scarves – which were my only prior attempts.

Long-Distance Friendships #reverb10

Posted on December 16, 2010Leave a comment

Being a pastor in a small town makes it really hard to build and maintain friendships.

Well, maybe that should be rephrased… makes it really hard to build and maintain the kind of friendships where you get to actually spend face to face time with one another.

In college, I lived in a small intentional community of folks with shared perspectives. We had a ton of fun – but we also studied together, we ate together, we did stuff in the community with one another.

In seminary, I had an amazing group of friends, both men and woman again, who I was surrounded by daily. There were the folks I had coffee with at Brueggers, the women I had drinks and pizza with on Tuesdays, my ministry intern colleages, my roommates, Glenn and Maggie… life was full of people my own age who were all doing the same kinds of things together.

I move to this little town back in Iowa, and suddenly I feel like my husband and I are the only single people under thirty. I know that’s not absolutely true – but I just don’t see other folks. We don’t have children, so I don’t meet them through school events, and we don’t have the same interests as parents do. As a pastor, I don’t feel comfortable going and hanging out at the bars – and to be honest, that really isn’t our style anyways. It isn’t totally appropriate to be friends and hang out with parishoners, and those are the only other folks I really get to meet.

That’s not to say that we don’t have other friendships. We have a group of guy friends (and Pam) who we hang out with pretty regularly. But the closest one of them lives 45 minutes away. Those college friends are clustered in Des Moines – an hour and a half away – and then far flung across the nation. My high school friends – who I keep in pretty regular contact with – are all across the country as well…

December 16 – Friendship How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? (Author: Martha Mihalick)

I was honored to officiate the wedding of two of those college friends this summer. And then I attended a conference in Des Moines in the fall and made a point to hang out with that same group of people. We got together for dinner. We hung out in the evenings. We laughed until our sides hurt. We told stories and caught up.

Being around those friends… watching them interact and seeing how their relationships have developed through this close knit interaction… was awesome. Every week they were together – often more frequently than that. They watched television together. They ate together. Their lives were intertwined.

When your nearest friend lives 45 minutes away… (yeah, Tree – I know you live closer on the weekends, but you have your own relationship to tend to!!) it is difficult to intertwine your life with someone. You can’t just show up on their doorstep. It takes gas money and energy and an extra hour and a half of driving just to hang out. You can’t walk home from Margarita Mondays when you have traveled that far 😉

I think watching them all interact and also being so welcomed back into that community, was a revelation for me. The switch from this life full of young people to this little town in Iowa was sudden… but I didn’t notice the changes because I was so busy adapting to a new vocation and making a home here. Being around all of them was like a burst of fresh air. We were adults, full of life, enjoying the company of good friends and the simple things in life (Captain Crunch Sushi, anyone?) I need those friends in my life again.

robed authority

Posted on August 23, 20102 Comments

I was blessed to officiate the wedding of my friends recently. And up until five minutes before the wedding, I couldn’t decide if I would wear my robe or not.

You see, I had packed the robe. And I was most assuredly wearing the stole. But the robe was an additional layer of formality, of tradition, of authority… that I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to assume at the time.

There is this great debate it seems among pastors about whether we should robe or not. As a woman, I have often argued that wearing a robe keeps people from being distracted by what we are wearing. It adds some authority simply by the fact that you are wearing something different from what everyone else is wearing.

But that in itself is also a reason to discard the robe when you are trying to be in ministry with people. It is a barrier between you and everyone else. It makes you distinct. Which in certain circumstances actually helps to conveys your authority and then I’m back to wearing the robe.

This was the inner dialogue I was having about ten minutes before the wedding – which ended when a family member said he was having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that I was one of the college friends and yet also had authority to do the wedding… I put on the robe. The authority and not the college student was the only image left to put out there… which of course also meant that when the ceremony was finished and the robe got put away, I felt more than comfortable dancing to “Love Shack” with everyone else.

You know how lawyers in England still wear fancy wigs when they are doing their official business in the courtroom? It’s a trapping of tradition and old sentimentality… and yet it also marks what they are doing as important. It sets that part of their life aside as distinct from the rest of their work and play.

I know that I allow myself to become something more… something different when that stole is draped over my shoulders. I read scripture in a different way. I preach and the words become more than what they were an hour before as I was practicing them at home.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:12-14

Putting on the stole and the robe are ways of taking on God’s authority, of literally wearing a symbol of compassion and gentleness. It is a uniform, as much as a police officer’s uniform is… it conveys my role and my task in that place.

Does a police officer stop being a police officer when the uniform is gone? Or a surgeon when she takes off the scrubs? Or a lawyer when the suit is hanging up in the closet? Yes and no… sometimes we simply put on other hats and become wives and dads and little league coaches instead. But I think that deep down, once we put on a vocation – a persona – we can’t really take it off.

Once I have put on this authority that Christ gave me, once I have put on kindness and patience and forgiveness – they aren’t really things that I can take off again. Once I have put on love… it is there to stay. Perhaps it is just easier for others to see with the robe on.

what it means to be a girl friend… and a pastor

Posted on August 2, 2010Leave a comment

This past weekend, I got to hang out with a ton of my friends from college. I felt almost like a completely different person while I was around them – even though I had a “pastor” hat on for a bit of the time. I had the honor and the privledge of marrying two of them while we were gathered… but at the same time, I was also just one of those crazy college roommates.

All of those people knew me before I was “Pastor Katie.” They knew me as a friend and as a girl who likes to giggle and while I was the religious life council girl back then, I was also the one who… well, what happens at the PAC house – stays at the PAC house.

But what happens now that you become a pastor? Where do you find good friends? Where do you find people that you can go to and talk about all of your problems and struggles and be really, really stupid with? Who do you stay up until 3am with?

For the most part, I have solved that dilemma because my husband gained some friends through his brother who then became my friends. Completely unchurch related friends. I can hang out without having to be professional, or worry about what might come up next. I still have to cut festivities short on a Saturday night so I can get up and preach the next morning, but I get to experience with them what I used to remember as a “normal life.”

But I think even with that bunch there is something missing, because aside from being the “pastor”, I’m also the only girl… or at least have been for a long time.

And I think I really miss the kind of companionship that a best girl friend offers. And I know that I have been lucky enough to have found some amazing best friends in the past… and right now, I really wish I had someone to shop with, and watch crappy girl movies with, and talk about girl stuff with. I miss the circle of friends who gathered every Tuesday night in seminary to have pizza. I miss the estrogen that radiated out of the upstairs of the PAC House or Bubbly Manor (the names of our in-famous college abodes). I miss the crazy antics of teenage girls… that somehow are rekindled when JSTACK has the chance to get together every year or so.

But what happens when that person doesn’t live next door to you anymore? What happens when the nearest girlfriend lives an hour away? And how do you get yourself to a place where you can find someone like that in your neighborhood, when you live in the parsonage in a small town? How do I find people my own age to hang out with… without also thinking about how I can get them involved in my church or what I might need to ask them to help out with next? How can I be a friend when pastors don’t make friends with congregation members?

you can’t please everyone…

Posted on June 20, 2010Leave a comment

I’m coming to realize that one of my greatest weaknesses is trying to please everyone. I have a very terribly hard time saying no. I agonize over the fact that I might be letting someone down by something I do or say. And lately this impulse… this attempt to please multiple people at once… has led me to double book myself, or try to fit too many things in a day when the problem would have been solved with better planning, a few no’s, and being honest about the fact that I can’t do something right this minute… but that I could possibly get to it later.

There was a conversation I had with my friend, Anna, not so terribly long ago, where we lamented the fact that we wanted to be superwomen. We wanted to have careers… but we also wanted to be moms. We wanted to be successful women and give our all to our vocation and yet still have time for ourselves and our husbands. And there was this twinge of guilt over the fact that maybe to have it all, we have to give up the very thing that we have been working so hard towards for the past 20-some years of our lives. Maybe to have the family and simplicity and well-balanced self, we really couldn’t have the jobs we had been chasing after.

Can we do it all? Can we make everyone happy? Can we be successful at our work and also be there for our spouses? Is it possible?

Today is a day when I think that the answer is no. Today is one of those days when I’m really glad that I’m not on the fast track to success, because, sheesh, my family would be left behind in the dust.

Just this afternoon, I have tried to balance time with friends, exercise, food, and going to a family funeral visitation into one four hour block.

And I realized that it wasn’t possible. And no matter how much I tried to justify one thing or another, the simple fact was that all of those things were good things. To skip any of them would be letting someone down – myself, my support network, those people I am supposed to be support to… A choice had to be made. And I really did try for about 2 hours to figure out how I could get them all fit in. And something had to go.

It’s silly that I agonize over these things. It’s silly that I am so completely indecisive about what choice is the best. Sometimes it is because I really have been disorganized and planned poorly. But other times, it is because I am blessed with too many choices. Blessed with too many people to spend time with. Blessed with work that I love and hobbies that I love. And a choice has to be made between two good things sometimes. And I need to learn to just be okay with that and know that I’m doing the best I can.

being hit on

Posted on June 18, 20101 Comment

**note: this post feels really disjointed. I’ve been thinking about writing this for days now and it is just as scattered as my thoughts on this are. So bear with me.**

Three times in the past week I have been “hit on” in our little town. Never mind the rings on my finger indicating my married status. Never mind the fact that I’m a minister and did 18 funerals last year in this little town. Never mind the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m half the age of some of these dudes.

It always happens at the strangest times and in the strangest places. Paying for my breakfast at the cafe. In the soup aisle at the grocery store. Someone walks up and makes a little comment and I feel embarrased and frustrated and I try to be polite and brush it off but what I really want to do is scream, “INAPPROPRIATE!”

Maybe it’s because I’m showing off more leg with my knee length skirts now that it is summer. Maybe it’s because my husband isn’t attached to my hip 24/7 and we kind of do our own thing when we aren’t home. Maybe it’s because I… why am I assuming it has something to do with me?

I guess I thought that the ring would protect me from advances. I admit that I’m grateful to have married my high school sweetheart – because I really haven’t had to mess with the dating scene. But the truth is… are women EVER able to stay away from guys hitting on them?

Being a pastor also adds an additional layer of complication. In seminary and in conversations with mentors I have always been taught that pastors should be friendly, but not friends with people in their congregation. And for the most part that has worked. It also helps that I have a network of friends outside of the community and I don’t feel the need to be best friends with people in the church. We have a work relationship, we have a pastor/parishoner relationship… and that’s good.

But what does that maxim mean for people outside the congregation? If I’m friendly to the guy in the coffee shop, he thinks I’m flirting with him. Or is he just being friendly back and I’m misinterpreting it? No, definately not. His response was definately not appropriate.

In the back of my head, I’m aware that at any moment, someone in this town could pass away and anyone in this community could become my parishoner. Someone might be getting married this summer and they will be at the wedding and they will in that sense be my parishoner. I’m not a community chaplain, but I’m also not going to turn people from the community away when they come knocking. In everything that I do in the community, I try to wear my professional hat and be the pastor.

But then I run to the grocery store in a tank top and jogging shorts to get hamburger buns for dinner and someone hits on me.

I refuse to dress like a grandma just so people won’t notice me. I desperately want to feel like a normal person some days. But c’mon people – it’s not okay to hit on a pastor in the soup aisle.

Last Fridays FF: Friends

Posted on May 22, 2009Leave a comment

Ever since I found out I could be the hostess for the third Friday Five of each month, I have not been able to get the thought of friends out of my mind. Being an only child (all growed up) who moved around a lot in my lifetime,
friends have always been very important to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once
wrote: “The way to have a friend is to be a friend.”

So today let’s write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like.

1) JSTACK – there is no other way to describe this group of friends than to simply call us who we are (JSTACK is based on the first letters of our names). We are six women (well, girls at the time) who fell in together somewhere in 7th grade and haven’t fallen apart since! Think “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” meets “Now and Then” and “Stand by Me” only there are six of us and we get together regularly. We have built some amazing rituals around watching each other get married and I can’t wait until some of us start having little ones! Our kids will have five aunts to love them!!!

2) My college “activist” friends – these are my friends who would drag me to protests and who I lived with in a community house with a focus on social justice and peace and the environment. We had a blast together and I did all sorts of things that I never would have had the courage to do on my own.

3) My college “religious” friends – these are terrible distinctions to make between people, and I had quite a few friends who fit both categories, but for the most part, I had my friends in the “progressive action coalition” house and then my friends in “religious life council.” These are the friends that I talked theology with, and discerned my call with. These are the friends that held me accountable through covenant discipleship groups and I worshipped with. These are the friends who worked through parts of the ministry process with me. Five of us went to seminary out of my graduating class.

4) My seminary friends. In many ways – seminary was the opportunity to meld together the “activist” and “religious” sides of my life. My seminary was also known as the “school of the prophets” so it was no surprise that my colleagues would protest injustices and would stand up for the rights of others AND that we had deep theological discussions about why we would do so. My one regret is that I wasn’t more involved in some of the direct action things that happened while I was in Nashville. Some of my closest women friends and I also had a regular tuesday night out during this time that WAS the deepest form of self-care that I’m still trying to find here in my ministry setting.

5) My husband’s friends. Well, they are my friends too =) Since moving back to Iowa, we started hanging out with my husband’s brother and friends – mostly playing video games and watching movies and playing disc golf. And now they are the guys (and I do mean GUYS) that I see most often. In some ways I miss having really good girlfriends around, but at the same time, it’s nice to just be able to hang out with the guys and not have any of the pressure of church around.

sigh of relief

Posted on March 10, 2009Leave a comment

Today was my BoOM continuance examination. In 2007 I was commissioned as a probationary (now provisional) elder and so last year and this year, I meet with my examination team to be continued in the process. THIS DECEMBER I will submit my papers for ordination.

I wasn’t too worried about the whole process, and really, was more looking forward to being in Des Moines for the day and getting out of town AND getting to spend some time with two blessed, smart, amazing women in ministry.

I headed out at 9am – had my examination (which went fine!) and then got to go shopping. I used a gift card we had from Pottery Barn (thanks Anna!) and sampled the tea at Teavana. I got my oil in the car changed! I dropped off resources at the Iowa Religoius Media Services office. I had a white chocolate mocha at Starbucks. I found an amazing jade green top at Banana Republic.

And then I headed BACK to the interview sight to meet Anna and Paula for dinner. We thought it was pretty amazing that we all got scheduled on the same day and spent a lot of time praying for and sharing with one another before today. And then we had some AMAZING Thai food and FANTASTIC conversation at a great place in Des Moines called Cool Basil. Yum.

The only downside of the whole day was the heavy rain the whole way home. Rain + poor car lights + stupid steering column = a LONG drive home.