true self – Page 6 – Salvaged Faith

Vocations?

Posted on June 3, 20102 Comments

Today at our county ministerial alliance we talked about the multiple vocations that people have in their lives. The conversation sprang from a book we are reading together and a scene in which a Catholic priest approaches his bishop to let him know that he has fallen in love. The priest both feels called to the ministry and called to love and marry this woman that he has met.

Good old Wikipedia shares that vocation is: an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which they are suited, trained or qualified. While being a wife wouldn’t always be considered an occupation… it is work. And parenthood falls under the same consideration. As do our hobbies and livlihoods. And potentially our jobs. As we talked, we became more and more aware of the multiple vocations that have an influence on our lives.

In my own life, I am called to my husband, to my family, I am called to ministry as an elder in the UMC, and I’m sure that there are many others. In seminary I wrote often about a deep calling to rootedness… part of which comes from being a Midwesterner and the daughter of a farmer. It is a calling that I am currently living out both by attempting to build deep relationships in my community and with gardening.

The problem comes however, when these various callings that God has placed within our lives don’t always neatly fit together. The conflicts can be painful. How do we divide up our time and our resources and our energy? What takes priority on what days? These is a complex dance that is stepped between these obligations and loves. Not always do we make the right choices and not always is there a “right choice” to make.

Recently, the juggling has been more difficult in my life. And try as I may to give myself fully to my husband and my church work and return the phone calls of my parents and tend to those pesky weeds sprouting up in the garden, there are also the distractions that somehow sneak in and ruin the delicate balance that we create. I spent far too much time this past week reading Grey’s Anatomy fanfiction. No lie. It’s embarassing really. And over the weekend, as I prepare for Annual Conference, I’m struggling with how I can possibly spend time with the family who are coming into town, while at the same time I have obligations for rehearsals and plenary sessions. I struggle to balance how long I stay after church on a Sunday and heading out to the river to be with my in-laws and my neice and nephews. I struggle with what to do on my Fridays off with my husband when a special meeting is called in Des Moines. I struggle with finding time to get the sermon written when a funeral comes up and find myself taking time away from sleep to get it accomplished. The pull between these vocations is intense!

As I sat down to think about this idea of multiple vocations, my mind drifts to the saints who have walked before us. What biblical characters struggled with these demands? Which founders of our faith successfully navigated these waters? My mind draws blanks. I think about the ones who didn’t…. Paul’s urging of those who were unmarried to stay that way. John Wesley’s failed relationships. Even Moses left his wife and children with his father-in-law, Jethro, for a time (Exodus 18)… and I’m not sure that when they came back they came back to stay. I’m hoping others can point me to some better role models!

Modern brain science has taught us that we really cannot do more than one thing at a time. When we believe we are multi-tasking, we are really just switching incredibly quickly between one task and another, giving each full attention… even if just for micro-seconds. But it leaves us fragmented and tired, even though our brains are quickly adapting and getting better at this dance.

What are we to do? What is the right balance? And if it comes down to it, what will be our first priority?

“this beautiful mess” part 1

Posted on February 23, 2010Leave a comment

I have been trying to read more. There are far too many books on my shelf – delicious books – just waiting to be picked up and devoured. So I decided to start with Rick McKinley’s “This Beautiful Mess.”

The writing style just draws me in… it’s conversational and pulls me in. But even more than that, he speaks to the core of my longing for the Kingdom of God. As he starts out the book, he describes it as a “permission slip… get out of religion free.” He invites us to recieve the book “not as the last theological work on anything, but as a well-intentioned, God-loving invitation to go and grow and be where you haven’t before.”

And then, McKinley takes those pithy sayings that drive me nuts and transforms them into solid truth in a way that I wish I could do. For example:

…when our lives are all about us, the appeal of that kind of bumper-sticker dumbness is irresistible. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” gets turned into a tool of the self to assure my business success instead of a promise that brings peace to my soul when all hell breaks loose.

Peace to my soul when all hell breaks loose. That’s what I’m craving. Yeah, it would be nice for the hell not to break loose at all. But it does and it will and Christ never promises that we won’t have trouble. Maybe that’s what I was getting at a few weeks ago when I blogged about my car accident. I never expected that an accident wouldn’t happen. I never expected to be so protected by the hand of God that no trouble would ever befall me. I do expect that Christ will be with me through even the darkest valleys, however.

I have now been in ministry to the congregation I serve for two full years now. Maybe it’s because I’m young, or don’t yet have the self-confidence in my own vocation, but it’s taken me this long to be able to challenge some of those simplistic and pithy characterizations of God. I find the confidence to do it in sermons – mostly because the Holy Spirit is at my back… or rather, I pray over my texts that she will be. I just don’t go into other conversations in the same way… and I should! Perhaps with more prayer and with more confidence in the God who gives me the voice to speak, I can continue to affirm the faith of my people while at the same time giving them a “get out of religion free” card. I can give them an invitation to think deeper and to go where they haven’t been before, to move beyond Jesus and me in heaven by and by to Jesus and me and the poor with my sleeves rolled up here and now.

It’s not an either/or. I’m foolish to paint it that way. It’s a both/and. Breathing IN and Breathing OUT. Letting Christ be King… but King of his own Kingdom and not the ones we create for him. Changing our allegiances. Challenging the politics of it all. And doing all of that with grace and humility.

the potential demise of “the beast” and whether or not God cares.

Posted on February 10, 2010Leave a comment

Those of you who know me on facebook or twitter will be aware by now that I was in a car accident on Monday. “The Beast,” as many affectionately call my dad’s car is in a ditch somewhere. While I’ve had my share of bumps and taps in a car while driving (I have both bumped a car in front of me at a stop sign and been bumped from behind at a light… and then there was the whole hitting of the cement pole thing that is a very long story) – and even was in another accident when we hit a deer on the interstate, this accident was very scary.

As I have had to recount the incident dozens of times – both in my own head and to insurance adjustors and to family and friends, I’m not necessarily going to do that again here. In part, because it all happened so quickly… or so slowly… I can’t tell if time was speeding by or slowed down and everything took place in half a second or half a minute. All I know is that I had changed lanes to avoid/give room to a vehicle that lost control and as that vehicle came back into my new lane, I hit the brakes and prayed that we wouldn’t collide.

We did.

As a pastor, I’ve thought about where God has been in all of this. It’s easy to both be absolutely grateful and absolutely pissed off. On the one hand, no one was really hurt in the accident and I am utterly thankful for that. It could have been worse – much worse. On the other hand, it could appear that all of those prayers for safe travel fell on deaf ears. I not only was in an accident, but I also couldn’t make it to my ordination interview. Really, God? Was that a part of your plan?

But then as a person of faith who wrestles with God quite often, I also find myself not wanting to do either of those things. I find myself not really wanting to place God in the situation at all. I chose to drive that day. The other driver also chose to drive. The wind changed directions, the road got icy, stuff happens and we collided. No where in that entire scenario does God have to intervene. There were choices made and actions taken and then there were appropriate consequences.

I guess it’s the battle between free will and determinism that is wrestling inside of me. I read the scriptures that says God knows the number of hairs on my head and that God won’t leave me or forsake me. But does that also mean that I think God will protect me from bad things happening my entire life? Not at all. Do I think that all actions have consequences – good and bad? Sure. Does that mean that God intentionally sends things into our lives to teach us lessons or to punish us? Not really.

I know that my little “adventure” on the interstate nowhere near compares to disasters and tragedies and heartache that others have felt in their lives and that we all will continue to experience in this life. At the root, however, I guess what I’m wrestling with here is a question of theodicy.

And the only answer I can come up with is that God was present in how we chose to respond to the situation. The woman who was in the other car and I sat down at a Perkins Restaurant over a pot of coffee and some pie and we talked. We got to know one another a little better and talked about our families and why we were both on the road that day. We cried together over what had happened. And we knew that despite it all, in spite of being far from home and not knowing what to do next, that we were not alone. We experienced table fellowship and allowed this yucky thing that happened to bring us closer together. We felt hope in the midst of despair.

If that’s not God… then I don’t know what is.

do I want to be a blogger?

Posted on February 2, 20101 Comment

Maybe you’ve noticed I haven’t had a lot of posts recently. Maybe you never really paid attention in the first place so you don’t really care. Either way, I’ve been kind of taking a break from it all for a bit to think about what this whole blogging thing is about, for me, anyways.

I think when I started this blog, it was a progression from other random attempts at journaling in the past. I never actually kept a paper journal, unless you count the random one time-entries that I have posted in about half a dozen notebooks throughout my house (that I now use for taking notes when meeting with families for funerals). But in college, I started using livejournal because my friends were doing it. And I would write and think about being in a long distance relationship and how frustratingly wonderful and terrible it was. sometimes it was fairly emo. I never really cared if people read it – mostly it was for me. I was out there – people could read it if they wanted to – but that’s not what it was really about.

At somepoint, I stopped using livejournal and for the life of me, I can’t remember what I did in between. I had a lot of wonderful men and women around me during that time, so there were probably lots of other places to vent/discuss

This blog started in seminary as I was trying to navigate the waters of my faith. There were certainly things that I wanted to wrestle with and process and save and think about and some of that I wanted to do with other people. And I was preparing to leave a very supportive community and head into ministry all by my lonesome. So, I jumped on the blogger.com bandwagon and away I went.

The question that keeps coming up for me though, is what is this for? Is it simply an online journal? a place to express my thoughts? Or is the goal of this to build connections with others and to have community? Is the goal to create a network of people I can think with and wrestle with?

If it’s the second of those two options, then I’m not serving my task very well. JoPa Productions put out an article about how to build up readers for your blog – which isn’t so much about numbers, but about how to connect with more people. And the simple fact of typing something and putting it out there isn’t going to make that happen. It doesn’t happen in ministry that way either – just by announcing something doesn’t mean anyone is going to show up – it takes personal invitation and the building of relationships.

I haven’t done very much of that at all with this whole blogging thing. I’m kind of doing my own thing – casually reading others here and there as I have time. I’m not putting a whole lot of effort into building relationships, so I shouldn’t be surprised if no one comes knocking on the door.

I was a lot better at this whole thing a year and a half ago, but life has gotten in the way. Ironically, the more I need this kind of deep thinking theological community, the farther away I have pushed it.

So it’s a turning point for me. Do I keep doing what I’m doing, occasionally journaling here and there? Or do I take a step and put in the effort to build the support network? Do I make sure that I take an hour or two every day to read the work of others and engage them in their thoughts? Do I strive to post something that I’m wrestling with on a more regular basis so that I can seek the wisdom and advice and creativity of others?

I think deep down, I really do value this kind of networked organic community. I like the fact that I can build relationships and talk about common problems with people half a world away. I just need to stop being lazy.

How do you think?

Posted on January 28, 2010Leave a comment

Today on NPR – Talk of the Nation, I heard the story about Temple Grandin, a woman with autism who has transformed how we treat our beef.

Part of the story was about her work and an upcoming biopic on HBO about her life (which makes me really disappointed that we just took HBO off of our programming). But the other part was talking about how she as a woman with autism thinks.

While autism comes in many different forms, she is a very visual person. She thinks not in words or generalites but in specific images. She explained that when someone tells you to think of a church steeple – a typical person would kind of have this sort of vague image in their mind. the essence of a church steeple if you will. She thinks of specific church steeples that she has seen. She thinks in pictures – not essences.

So I got to thinking about how my brain works. How do I think? And the closest that I can come up with is that I think a lot like those “Bing” commercials…. you know the ones where someone mentions a word and there is a lot of random thoughts taking off on that one word? that’s how my brain works. It’s like a tree with branches and an infinite number of possibilities and splits and directions that I can go. One thing leads to another in quick and rapid succession.

How about you? How do you think?

The Most Effective Witness

Posted on January 13, 2010Leave a comment

For the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ in the world and the most effective witness to the Christian gospel and in consideration of your influence as an ordained minister, are you willing to make a complete dedication of yourself to the highest ideals of the Christian life; and to this end will you agree to exercise responsible self-control by personal habits conducive to physical health, intentional intellectual development, fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness, integrity in all personal relationships, social responsibility, and growth in grace and the knowledge and love of God?

Above all, this question is about whether I am committed to not only talking the talk, but also walking the walk. In a word, yes!

I must admit there are times when the weight of this task and calling feels very heavy. I am only human, after all, and I am still on this Christian journey, just like the rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ. What I can do, however, is to embody a healthy and constructive lifestyle to the best of my ability and empower the congregation to do so in their on lives. But where I struggle personally, I must not hide my sin, but I must be honest and ask my congregation to join me as I wrestle to be more faithful.

Our world is torn in two by excess and lack of basic necessities. We see it in dietary illnesses like obesity and anorexia, in the sexual scandals of religious leaders and politicians and sports stars, in the consumerism that runs rampant while children are dying for lack of shelter and medicine. And all of these things we hide or we forget as we rush to make sure the bulletins are printed or the ushers are doing their jobs. Our faithfulness as Christians – our dedication to the highest ideals of the Christian life – come not from these menial tasks, but in how we care for our bodies and the bodies of those around us; how we advocate for our own mental health and that of those around us; how we use and not abuse the soil and the water and the air that surrounds us. All of these must have a place not only in my personal life, but in the worship I share with my congregation and in the witness of our church.

Photo by: “clix”

Nothing witty or profound

Posted on January 5, 2010Leave a comment

Lots of people are doing out with the old, in with the new posts. top ten lists. best of’s.

I have been so busy that I don’t have the time or energy to really think about something that witty or profound.

But one person did have this question posted on twitter on New Years Eve: what were you doing 10 years ago?

And it made me smile. Because 10 years ago, I was partying like it was 1999 – and it was =) 10 years ago, I was hanging out with friends at a high school party. I was a senior and I had recently had my very first date with a classmate named Brandon. It was the winter Millenium Dance. And I asked him to go with me (so progressive!). So two weeks later, as I was hanging out on New Years Eve at this friends place, all I was wondering all night long was whether or not HE was going to show up. I knew he had other plans, but I still wondered. I think I even got to talk to him that night – a friend of mine called a friend of his he was with. It was a time of giddy excitement and the beginning of a relationship and it was all quite fun.

10 years later – I got to kiss that same man after the decade turned at midnight. 10 years later, we are married, and happy (lol – most of the time!) and I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.

The valley of the shadow of death…

Posted on December 28, 2009Leave a comment

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Holy God,

You sure do have a sense of humor.

The week that was supposed to be quiet so that I could procrastinate and finish editing my ordination paperwork has turned into chaos.

This season of birth and life has become a time of remembrance and mourning for many families as they say goodbye to loved ones.

And you bless me with the honor of walking with them through that valley of the shadow of death.

I hold that task sacred and pray that you will help me lead them faithfully… despite my distracted spirit.

On this day when I thought I would have the quiet of a warm office to write in, you have graced me with an elevator that rings constantly at a high pitched frequency… and service calls that need to be made.

When I want to bask in the still, small light of the advent wreath ablaze and the Christ Candle shining brightly in its midst, the wicks seem to have a mind of their own and I’m sure to set off fire alarms with their foot high flames.

The quiet innocence of our children’s pageant on Christmas Eve, turned into a chorus of wild angels as they ran and leaped and jumped and sang all throughout the sanctuary.

The family that I have held so close all of these years now brings tears to my eyes and pain in my heart… and yet you bring me other family members as well, some blood related, others chosen, to see me through the darkness. And you bring my own family closer together as we care for one another’s spirits and try to be honest and faithful.

I am not at all where I want to be emotionally or spiritually right now. And yet, I am constantly reminded that you are right there with me.

And I thank you.

Amen.