true self – Page 5 – Salvaged Faith

robed authority

Posted on August 23, 20102 Comments

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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?

Some things are more important than bulletins

Posted on July 12, 2010Leave a comment

Today a young woman walked into the church and asked to use the telephone. Not a problem, I said. And while she sat in the office dialing numbers and getting no response, I sat at my desk trying to pick out hymns for Sunday.

Are you stranded? I asked. She had just been released from the county jail, she said, was 80 miles from home, and no one was coming to get her. She finally got a hold of a friend or a neighbor… someone she thought might help and was chewed out over the phone. She hung up in frustration.

Do you need a ride? I asked. She had no other options. She was seven months pregnant and needed to get home. We got in my car and headed out. And on the way out the door, she asked if she could have one of the bibles on the shelf.

As we drove, we talked about where we grew up. We talked about semi-trucks. We stopped for food, because she hadn’t eaten all day. We talked a little bit about church – but only enough to learn that she had never found one that had felt like home. She had dreams that she wanted to fulfill… but also was raising her kids by herself and didn’t know if it would ever happen.

But she got home. And she will continue to be in my prayers. And I pray that God will open up pathways before her and that a community near her will open their arms wide and help her back on her feet. But for now… she got home. And that was way more important than the bulletin.

For a few weeks now, I have felt in a bit of a church rut. Maybe a spiritual rut is more like it. I’m doing the church thing, I’m going through the motions, but isn’t there more that God calls us to than preaching and teaching and organizing my desk? Let me take that back… the rut has been deeper and run longer than a few weeks, but only in the last few weeks have I noticed. My ordination really brought some things into perspective.

Growing up, I loved to play “office.” I liked staplers and to make documents. I’m good on the computer. I would make a fantabulous secretary. But I’m not called to be an administrative assistant. And I’m not called to be an administrator. I’m called to share God’s love with people. I’m called to be out in the world, as the hands and feet of Christ. And doing church often gets in the way of that. I sometimes let the church get in the way of my doing that.

When she walked into the church today, my heartstrings tugged a little. It was like God was saying… I hear you – I know you want to serve me – It doesn’t matter that you have been a little off course lately – Feed my sheep. Open your eyes and let go of all that stuff you think you are supposed to be doing. Go…. do… love.

This beautiful young woman had a thousand different needs, and I couldn’t begin to meet all of them. But I could get her home. I could let her know that I didn’t care if she had spent a few nights in jail or a thousand years or if she was Mother Theresa – but she was loved by God and by me and she deserved to have someone help her. I could do that. God could do that through me.

The bulletins? They can wait for another day.

chaotic peace

Posted on July 6, 20102 Comments

The other day, B strongly encouraged me to organize my pocketbook. It seemed like such a silly thing at the time, but there it was, busting at the seams with reciepts and cash sticking out and no hope of ever closing. He said – if you can get that thing to close right, maybe there is hope for you after all. And I did! =) All I had to do was take the checkbook out, put the cash in the right spot, and tuck my recipets in the pocket where the extremely seldom used checkbook had been.

I think my husband would describe me as a person who thrives on chaos. What he would mean by that is that I kind of let things go and forget about them and let everything hang out flapping about until a kind of critical point is reached. And then I jump into this frenzy of action and wham bam boozle – somehow, things kind of work out.

“Kind of” is the operative part of the phrase there.

It is true that for much of my life, that is how I have viewed the world. I’ll put something off until the absolute last possible moment. I hate confronting conflict or unpleasant tasks. I ignore things until I have to face them. And while I have, for the most part, been successful in this way of doing things, it is not my best. And it doesn’t work for everyone.

This last week, I preached on peace. And as is sometimes the case as a pastor, I felt like I was preaching to myself. Because peaceful is often the last thing that I feel in this chaotic way that I operate. Peaceful is not the word to describe the way relationships sometimes turn out due to this way of operating. Peaceful is not the word to describe the garden space on the south side of my house. Peaceful is not the proper adjective for newsletter creating, or bulletin producing, or sermon writing… at least not in my life.

As I spent some time wrestling with peace this week, I was reminded of the hebrew idea of shalom. Shalom is more than peace – it is right relationship, right order, wholeness and harmony. And not in some fuzzy, hippie, feel good sense. You know how you look around and see that things are just out of whack? when you can’t figure out how to make things fit or you know in your gut that something is off… that is the lack of shalom. And an article by Bruce Birch caught my attention when he wrote that the opposite of shalom is chaos.

You see, as much as I thrive on this chaos… as much as I am comfortable with the way that I operate… that doesn’t mean it is good for me. The peace that I obtain as I work this way, as I play this way, as I love this way is not full. It is partial and it is grasping. But to open myself up to right priorities… to find balance in my life… to seek out order and a proper time for things… to allow God to guide me… to let go of some things and delegate others… maybe that could bring shalom. Maybe letting go of my comfortable chaos might help me to truly find the peace that passes all understanding.

How I end up finding this order in my life is a different question. It’s not enough to just pray about it. I am firmly of the belief that prayer also requires action on our behalf. I’ve already organized my pocketbook, so at least I’m starting somewhere. I consolidated all of my google calendars so that all of my appointments show up at the same time on my blackberry. But just ready to come to the surface is the realization that the way I do church has to radically change. I need to hand some things off. I need to let go and find people to take over a few things that may have been the pastor’s job in the past… like doing the newsletter… so that I can be freed up to do the things I am called to do. As much as I enjoy them. As much as I am comfortable doing them. They create chaos as I try to stuff everything in and clasp the darn thing shut. And letting it go might be the answer I’m looking for.

taking the first steps to healthy

Posted on June 28, 2010Leave a comment

I might have posted something about this before… but pastors, in general, and in the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, in particular, (did I use my commas correctly there?) are pretty unhealthy. There was some outstanding (and not in a good way) statistic a year ago at conference that said that our group for health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield has like 2x the rate of cancer and 3x the rate of diabetes as any other group that Wellmark covers. Insanity.

Now, I’m a young woman, relatively healthy, but I admit to myself that I have room for improvement on this front. It would be great if I could look back on this time of my life and say that I was in the best physical and mental and spiritual shape that I could have been.

To try to coax pastors in our conference to be more F.I.T. (remember that challenge from a few posts ago), we are signed up with this program through Virgin Healthmiles. Virgin as in the company… not Mary…

We can get a pedometer and set up an account, and depending on how many miles we walk in a year’s time, we can actually earn money! The thought is that if we are encouraging people to be healthy and rewarding them for their work, they will actually save money in the long run by decreasing health care costs.

So, I got my pedometer in the mail. And I’ve been using it pretty faithfully for a week now – although I forgot to wear it over the weekend. My goal is 10,000 steps a day… and I’ve only hit that goal twice (well, three times if I had worn it yesterday). It is a reminder that I really do need to get out there and exercise, and this morning, I made the extra effort and went for a run.

It had been such a long time and my lungs screamed at me, but I did it. And I’m going to keep doing it. Because the extra cash would be nice to have… and if I keep on track I’ll need it to buy some new clothes… but most of all, because I deserve to be healthy and fit.

So – first step is actually getting off my hiney and getting out there and moving.

Step two is following that up with some healthy eating. I started off today with a fruit smoothie – inspired by Alton Brown. He measures his fruit and juice in oz’s and then dumps it all in… I guess I’m following technique more than anything else. Mine this morning included blueberries (which I bought on super sale and then froze myself), frozen peaches, fresh strawberries (the remainder or which were frozen for the future), blueberry/pomegranate juice, and 1/2 a scoop of whey protein.

Step three is trying to gracefully avoid and limit what I eat at the church. There are homemade cakes and casseroles and snacks everywhere. And you feel bad if you say no, because people are being gracious hosts. But you know what… that’s probably the number one reason pastor’s are so unhealthy. We Methodists have too many good cooks!!!!

KEEPER!

Posted on June 21, 2010Leave a comment

A fellow pastor has a blog entry entitled “keepers” for this week. My blog post will be nothing like his. Although, his made me think about the fact that it was about time for me to write this post.

If you are not a woman, you might want to skip this post. Just come back in a few days and read about something completely different.

If you get grossed out really easily, you might want to do the same.

Because, I have a completely different type of “keeper” to talk about.

About once a year, I like to do my own public service announcement about the joys and benefits of menstrual cups.

Yes, you read that right.

In college, I began to learn about being eco-friendly. I was about a decade behind my friends who went to the other elementary school in our district. They put on this awesome musical called, “Recycle It” in 2nd grade or something. They continued to sing the songs through high school… but I never really got into the whole recycling and environment thing. I was a republican, after all. And we lived in the country. And we burned our own trash. It was just how we did things.

But in college… wow – my whole world turned upside down. In a thousand different ways. And perhaps the best way was this amazing group of men and women who cared about the world and the people in it and continually challenged me to make a difference – even in the small things that we do.

We served at the Catholic Worker House. We protested. We reduced, reused, and recycled. We lived in community (most of the time successfully!). We slept outside in winter to raise awareness about homelessness. And we had lots and lots and lots of conversations.

One of the conversations that personally impacted me the most was the one about menstrual products. For years, I had done what most women in the United States do. I went to the store every month and plunked down my dollars for pads and tampons. I had no idea that there was any alternative. Suddenly as a result of that conversation though, keepers, and lunapads and natural sponges were on my mind. I was intrigued. I was curious. I decided… what the heck! I’ll try it.

It has now been seven years since I purchased my first lunapads and my keeper. I spent a grand total of $65 and since that time I have spent NOTHING on disposable pads and tampons. My keeper is my go-to for my menstrual cycle, but I like the flexibility of having the lunapads if I want to use them overnight.

My first major traveling experience with my keeper was a two week European trip, and it got me through all sorts of different kinds of bathroom experiences. The best part was that I could empty it in the morning and when we got back at night and never worry about it during the day when we were unsure about the bathrooms we would find. It works wonderfully for swimming, it is comfortable, and most days I don’t even notice that it is there.

My husband never has to run to the grocery store to stock the cabinets with feminine products. And for that he is grateful. We don’t have heaps of trash to deal with. (For a REALLY stunning picture of the difference for the environment this switch can make check this out!)

I really feel like it is one of the best decisions that I have made for myself and for the environment. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask me!

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.

it causes me to tremble…

Posted on June 6, 2010Leave a comment

Day two of our annual conference has completed. We have voted on exactly 7 items of legislation. And we have celebrated and praised and prayed and remembered and sung and danced and ate and hugged and sat and walked and listened.

Some brief highlights for me so far:

“Hi, I’m Fred.” Our “priest” for the conference introduced himself and welcomed us into a spirit of worshipful work and I truly have felt this particular time of conference has felt different because of it.
advocating for young adults at our legislative section and dreaming up possibilities for community college ministries
Rev. Doug Ruffle’s challenges to be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the Kingdom of God…
crazy fast and delicious dinner at A Dong
even though clergy session was inhumanely long – it had a wonderful spirit to it as we gathered to worship (thanks clergy band!) and celebrate the ministry we share… and have good conversation about itinerancy
ordination!!!!!! being surrounded by family and church members and friends, the weight of all of those hands upon me, the feeling of the bible underneath my fingers, singing with joy
the reminders throughout the day of the gift of the scriptures: Bishop Kulah talking about Jesus expounding the scriptures; Barbara Lundblad’s take on radical love enfleshed in John’s gospel (love that bends down, that reaches beyond, that puts people before rules, that is here in this moment, that renews itself as soon as you think it has ended); Bishop Job sharing what a day, a year, a decade’s worth of living in the word can do for our lives; a friend’s amazing rendition of a song from the musical Philemon during prayer;
the Rethink Rock video
the voices of young adults who stood to speak out of love for what they care about on the floor.
sharing deeply with one another truths about things that have hurt us… so that we might give them over to God.
our conference artist’s work… and the poetic description of what God is sharing with us through it. The idea of being baptised into the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ being symbolized by a font filled with shards of glass… of chairs of hospitality inviting us to take our seat… the challenge that being radically hospitible brings… of the chair on the cross being an invocation – asking for God to enter our lives.