Christmas Grief

I'm thinking a lot about grief this holiday.

It's the first time in 15 years that I haven't been forcing people to think about Advent before flinging ourselves into Christmas.  The first time I haven't been preparing a Christmas Eve Service.  And since I've always found profound spiritual depth in the preparation for others, I find I've missed the discipline of the preparation and of sharing my meditations with others. 

There's also grief around living in an absolutely different environment that I've ever lived before.  It's very hard for this girl from the North to believe it's nearly Christmas when it's in the 80s and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  All my Christmas stuff is in storage in Massachusetts.  I did find two of my nativity sets and I bought some poinsettias at the store, but...I was determined to eschew all the "traditional" (i.e., English/Germanic) traditions of American Christmas, to find ways to celebrate that reflect my environment, an indigenous celebration as it were, but I really don't know how to do that.  There is one florist with a decorated palm tree, but essentially everyone here puts up evergreens and  snowmen and decorations in green and red plaid.  It's 80 degrees and Target is selling flannel sheets with snowflakes on them. I can't find a way to mark the season that feels right.

I'm also very aware of folks who are dealing with real grief and loss.  I'm reaching the point where more and more friends have lost a spouse, a parent, a dream.  I've always been aware of the issues of depression around the holidays, and worked hard to reach out to folks in a special way around Christmas.  But somehow it seems even more real this year, and I don't know how to help.

I've always believed that Christmas is about joy and not merriment; about God entering the world of pain and grief to share it with us, to transform it (and us) and not to just to wave a magic wand and make it all go away.  But I don't think I've ever experienced it as deeply as I am this year, not in the year after my grandfather died, nor the years we were struggling with infertility, nor the years I spent as a single woman alone.  Because theology is important in life, but it isn't the only way we understand our existence.  And celebration isn't our ultimate goal, but it is important for our well`being.

I've got one Christmas CD here, carols done in a Celtic style, which is helpful, because it reflects the minor key of my emotions about this, but also carries notes of hope and lilting possibilities of joy.  Joy is never unalloyed, and grief contains possibilities of joy.  At least at Christmas in this life.

The Worst Person I Know...

Mu-uther-in-law!  Mother-in-law!

I remember that very old song from a cover by Herman's Hermits, back in the early, early 60s.  This past month, I BECAME a mother-in-law, something I've been waiting for for nearly 10 years now.  I'm so delighted to welcome the son-in-law, to have shared that momentous life passage with my daughter.  It's a very strange experience when your daughter suddenly has a new name.  Nothing changes, and everything changes. 

I hope I will be a good mother-in-law.  My son-in-law's mom died when he was a teen.  His dad remarried just this last year.  I don't ever want to take his mom's place; I never could and it would be foolish to try.  But I hope that he'll think of me as "another mom", like some of the women to whom I've looked in my life when I needed the perspective of someone I knew cared about what happened to me, someone who wanted the best for me and who would tell me the truth when I needed to hear it.  I hope that he will forgive me when I'm pushy because I want the best for his family, who just happen to be my daughter and grandsons.  I hope he'll put up with me when I remind him that this crazy family came along with his wife, and that we love him whether he wants us to or not.

I hope, most of all, that he doesn't think of me as the worst person he knows.

The Tempest in the...Cup

So I haven't actually SEEN anyone who said they were going to boycott the Coffee Empire because of their "anti-Christmas" cup, just lots of folks who are roused and sputtering, or withering and disdainful, or pious and redirecting in response.  I've indulged in the last two responses myself.

This leads me to wonder where this all comes from, and I've decided that the whole "War on Christmas" thing really has outlived its usefulness to whomever STARTED it and it is now being kept alive on artificial life support by those who have benefited from pointing out how stupid it was to begin with.

Yes, I used the "s" word.

As we embarked on our Florida adventure I needed to pare down the "things" we were storing and moving.  I also wanted to think about separating the celebration "requirements" from the celebration essentials. I got rid of the snowmen and most of the Santas, keeping the ones that looked more like they might actually be the Bishop of Smyrna and not the shill for Coke.  I got rid of all the fake greenery that represented my Scandinavian and German ancestors' attempts to provide a resting place for evil spirits and which supposedly began to be used in Christian homes to represent eternal life and everlasting love (when it was real evergreen, not textured polyester).  I got rid of most of the green and red stuff because those colors seemed to me to be more representative of a northern Christmas.  I have not a shred of fact to back that up, it was just a gut feeling.

Anyway, my desire to have a Christmas celebration that was more reflective of my new locale was made a necessity by the Beloved's decision that we were NOT going to empty our storage unit in Massachusetts until we have a house in which to put the contents.  That is not going to happen before Christmas.

And I have to tell you, it is a surreal experience to walk into a store and see a fully lit and decorated faux-Blue Spruce Christmas Tree when it is 81 degrees out and you are in shorts and flip-flops.  It's wrong. Just wrong. I'm delighted to learn that there are pine trees here, because I can have a real greenery wreath, and of course pointsettias (forced out of season, I know, but still, far more plausible than snow-flakes!).  Stars are universal, and I will have to find a nativity set, which to me is the most important representation of the Christmas message.

Is it more Christmas-y to buy a Santa made in China (a place not known for a lot of Christmas Spirit) at a store where they say "Merry Christmas" or to purchase gloves for someone who needs them at a store where they wish you "Happy Holidays"?

My point is this:  I do not require that the people from whom I purchase things believe in the same things or celebrate holidays the way I do.  That would be hard, 'cause I'm kind of quirky.  I DO, however, try NOT to support companies whose policies violate what I believe God requires of us:  to love mercy, to seek justice, and to walk humble with others. 

So I am boycotting the products of a mega-company that sells food products because their CEO doesn't think that you have a right to clean drinking water if you can't pay for it.  I recently decided that I will not buy chocolate candy from a number of companies until they stop buying their cocoa from suppliers who use child labor.  I LOVE chocolate, but I can't enjoy it when I know it was harvested by a nine year old who is held in virtual slavery so that it's cheap for me.  I don't know that it will make a difference in either case,  but I don't have to contribute my support to such things.  And yes, I'm willing to pay a dollar more per bag for fair trade coffee.  And I'll look for that nativity set at a fair trade store.

And, in truth, as I understand the Gospel, I don't think Jesus would care a whole lot about our celebration of Christmas (which is a slang name for what the Church calls The Feast of the Incarnation) at all except that we understand it not merely as "the birth of MY Savior" but as the starting point of God's example of how we are to regard each other, treat each other. The Apostle Paul reminds us that the meaning of Christmas is this, that Christ didn't consider that it was enough to be the same as God, but rid himself of the right to glory and adoration, taking the life of a slave and honoring, serving, and lifting up those who were poor and broken and powerless (Philippians 2).  If our Christmas doesn't proclaim that, all the snowflakes and reindeer and tinsel in the world isn't going to make a lick of difference.

What I Wish I Had Taught My Children

Last April I  spent an incredibly wonderful week with female colleagues -- other women pastors, all active in leading congregations.  Following the theme of "Weaving Our Stories" we discussed scripture, prayed, worship, ate, and laughed together.  We shared ideas for creative leadership, processes for writing sermons, and pictures of kids and grandkids.  We had private space in which to reflect and recharge because, though you would never have guessed it from the noise level, many of us are introverts by nature.

In the midst of one of those conversation times I realized that I had never really taught my children about preparing for life.  I taught them how to do their homework, but never how to prepare to learn in school.  I never taught them how to prepare to take a trip or do their taxes.  We taught them to pay bills, but not how to prepare and stick with a budget - to be honest, we didn't really learn how to do that ourselves until fairly recently.

We tried to teach them to enjoy being in nature.  We took them camping in the deserts of New Mexico, the mountains of Colorado and the forests of Kentucky.  One spring when they were 4 or 5, we went out every evening to check on the progress of the budding trees, trying to see how long it would take them to become leaves.  I did my best not to cringe when they brought home worms and insects and snakes, even let my daughter bring the snake into the house.  To her bedroom.  Which was next to mine. We took them to the ocean and out in the snow.  They had fun.  But I'm not sure they ever connected with Nature as a way of healing their hearts and spirits.

I tried to teach them the difference between hurt and harm -- that there are things and people in life who will hurt you but who cannot harm you, permanently damage you, unless you let them.  So there are a lot of things in life that we simply have to release. By the same token, there are choices we make and things we say that diminish who we are, to ourselves and in the world.  It's important not to worry about what other people think and it's important to live in ways that are loving and kind, that have integrity and honor.  I'm not always sure I was clear about those balances. And I'm still not sure how to handle true harm, malicious and intentional hurt, myself.

This isn't about beating myself up -- I did the best I could at the time, and to be quite honest, I'm not sure how much of those things I understood myself while they were young and impressionable.  I just wish I could have taught them those important concepts so that they could have had them in hand as they became adults.  But maybe those lessons can only be learned through experience.  Perhaps the only way to prepare for life is to live it, one day at a time.

Reflections on the Sharing the Word

One of the truly new experiences for me in this new phase of my life is that we have to find a church!  In college, I just went to the American Baptist Church in town because that was what I knew.  In seminary I had class assignments or jobs in churches and as an adult churches found me. 

But this past Sunday the Beloved and I visited a church.  We had a good experience -- not perfect, but I certainly know better than to expect perfect. We were welcomed vigorously by a number of people beyond the "assigned" Greeters.  Several people sat down to chat with us at the fellowship time following the service.  The preacher gave an EXCELLENT sermon, and she did it all without any notes.

I am in awe of those who preach without any notes at all.  I've only preached from a manuscript once that I recall (maybe twice), but I've always used what I referred to as a "thick outline" or a thought map or note cards.  For one thing, I tend to be a "late writer" -- as in often writing early Sunday morning.  I've been thinking about, working on the sermon all week, it's just that sometimes it doesn't come together until Sunday morning in the shower.  That doesn't really give me time to memorize it, not even the outline.

I also don't trust myself enough to preach without notes. If I don't write it down I have both a tendency to wander as I speak extemporaneously and to forget important points I wanted to make until we're singing the closing hymn. 

I offer all this because several people in the fellowship time asked us if we liked the service.  I don't know how to answer that.  "Oh, yes, we had fun!"?  "No, you used non-inclusive language and I don't like singing without music and I do a different order."?  My response was to smile and say, "Your pastor is an excellent preacher."  And one woman said, "Oh, yes, isn't she?  And she does it all without notes.  It really comes from the heart." 

This struck me because in one church I served a man continually told me I should preach without notes because he wanted me to preach "from the heart."  And it bothered me.  Why should preaching with notes, or a manuscript for that matter,  not be from the heart?  Does writing something down negate its sincerity, its authenticity?  Are love letters not from the heart?

My preaching process has always been a kind of a mystical experience for me, which is to say I work on it with a heart and mind tuned to the Holy Spirit's guidance in what to say and how to say it.  After a number of years I began to see preaching as a kind of performance art -- there was no way I could duplicate or recycle a sermon ("dip into the barrel") even if I wanted to -- the circumstances of who was listening and the time in which it was delivered were different and because it was from the heart, the sermon changed as well.  Sometimes the tinkering was minor, but it was always different.

A sermon is an odd kind of a creation, and the best ones are born of a love for God, a love for scripture, and love for the people who are listening.  The preacher can give it a liveliness in delivery that it does not have on paper; most sermons are average reading at best, even when they created electric reactions in their hearers.   But a sermon that has been written and memorized so that it can be delivered without notes is no more "from the heart" than one that is read from a manuscript.   A  love letter, read aloud may be (may be) more authentic and sincere and can be read again when one needs to remember a word of encouragement, reassurance, and inspiration.

True Confessions

I really like TV.

I would like to think of myself as someone who is a little more sophisticated, a little more cultured, a little more oh, I don't know, engaged than your average TV watcher, someone who's beyond the mind-numbing lowest-common-denominator programming of most TV.  Someone who reads, who is creative, who participates in society, who is "beyond" entertainment for the masses.  But I'm not. 

This fact was brought home to me by the fact that effectively we have been without TV for a good four months now.  Getting packed up and moved out of our house, spending time in Europe, staying with my parents (where we watched a lot of baseball, but not much else), visiting friends and family, and now being two weeks in our new home without any broadcast source, I find I'm sad.  I miss football.  I miss "my" programs.  I didn't get to see many of last years' shows because of work commitments and then I didn't get to see the reruns because I wasn't here.  I've missed the first couple of episodes of the new season of some of my favorites:  Dr. Who and Castle, NCIS and the Big Bang Theory.  Fixer-Uppers.  Usually when I can't sleep at night I turn on the NFL channel and it lulls me to sleep.  These days I lie awake playing Every Word until my eyes are bleary and I still can't sleep.

And because the Beloved and I are really new here, it's just the two of us at each other's mercy.  So we've played cards and computer games.  We watched a couple of DVDs, but we've seen them all before and the ones I want to watch again are not the same ones he wants to watch again.  I've pulled out the knitting, but knitting is something I do when I'm watching tv. 

I'm making plans to connect with friends in other parts of the state, not too far, but close enough for regular "Let's go get a pizza" get-togethers. We're a little loathe to get too involved in the community because we are short-timers. 

But I really miss TV.

It Seems to Me I've Heard that Song Before...

For those of you who are under 40, the title of this piece is the title (and first line) of a song from... well, to be quite honest, I'm not sure when it was first popular.  But my parents used to sing it when one of us made a promise about something which we had made at least once, and usually several times previously.

"It seems to me, I've heard that song before...it's from an old familiar score...oh, yeah, I know it well, that melody..."

It's probably unseemly, but it's what I thought of today with the reports of the Oregon campus shooting...the wringing of hands, the expressions of sympathy for the victims and their families...the cries of "How many more?"

How many more?  As many, obviously, as we will tolerate.

Someone said that Sandy Hook ended the debate on gun control because we realized that we could live with many children being killed.  Not like it, but live with it.  Because we didn't change anything.

We pray for the victims and their families and ask God to end gun violence.  I suspect the Almighty is asking us, "You can do that yourselves.  What are you waiting for?"

Here's some modest suggestions. 
1. Stop voting for people and parties that refuse to address rational, reasonable governance of guns.  You have to register your car, why shouldn't you have to register your gun? 

2. Engage in honest conversation about the issue.  This does not mean just listening in order to respond, but at least SOME listening would be a start.  Decide where the boundaries are set as to what is off the table and what we can talk about, think about, work on together.  This can be done without demonizing each other.

3. Use common language about violence in our culture.  Have you noticed that if the gunman is black he's a gang member, if he's middle eastern he's a terrorist, and if he's white he's mentally ill?  (that is, I suppose, another rant for another day).  But violence is violence, and we are extraordinarily tolerant of violence in our culture.  Furthermore, we need to share some common language about what we accept and what we cannot accept.  And yes, that means we all need to question our own presuppositions about what's acceptable and what's not. 

For my part, I do not believe children should be sacrificed on the altar of the right to bear arms.  I understand that that clause was originally put into the constitution to ensure that COMMUNITIES had protection from tyrants.  But does it really function that way today?  After all, even armor piercing bullets are hardly a defense against stealth bombers and radioactive missiles.  And our communities seem to be far more dangerous when every person with a grudge and a perhaps tenuous hold on reality is walking around with a Saturday Night Special or a shotgun or whatever was used in Oregon today than they are promoting the general welfare.

Pray for the victims.  Raise funds to help their families.  BUT DO NOT ACCEPT THAT NOTHING CAN BE DONE BECAUSE UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOTHING WILL CHANGE.  And we will have permitted it to be so.

The Importance of Place

For the last two and a half months I have been homeless, essentially.

Which is not to say I've been sleeping in my car or on the streets.  Far from it.  I've been travelling, hosted by family and friends, staying in hotels.  I've been to Europe and up and down most of the Eastern Seaboard. 

I've never been the kind of person who gets homesick.  Far from it.  Wherever I am, I'm at home.  As much as I've loved most of the places I've lived (and I have) I've never felt a sense of loss when I moved on somewhere else.  But after 10 or 11 weeks of sleeping two nights here, three nights there, rarely as many as four nights in a row, never an entire two weeks in the same place, I'm ready to have a place I can call my own.

As I said, friends and family have been phenomenal: welcoming us, putting us up, feeding us, entertaining us.  We've stayed in some very nice hotels, some pretty basic hotels, all clean, all livable.  But I've been living out of a suitcase.  And I've discovered that I need a place I can call my own, where I have my pillow, my pictures, my things.  A place where I'm not aware of being a guest, which is to say a place over which I have control. 

It's not like I'm going to punch holes in the wall or paint them black.  We are, in fact, going to be living in an apartment, so there are absolute limits to what we can do with our space.  But it will be our space.  And we're looking forward to welcoming the guests who come (hoping to payback some of the folks who have been so hospitable to us these past months!), to moving the furniture, to knowing where the silverware goes, to having breakfast any time we want, to being completely at rest, which is hard to do when you are in someone else's space.

This makes me mindful of all those folks who have no place to call their own:  to those who ARE on the streets, or sleeping in cars or in shelters.  What a terrible stress, what distress, to live with that sense of uncertainty, of being uprooted or rootless.  What a terrible burden to live with, not having a place where you can be completely at ease, a place to call your own. 

Private Black Holes (or Where Does It Go?)

I'm not talking about things like socks that go in the dryer in pairs and come out solo or your favorite barrette that somehow never made it back into the drawer.  Those things get lost regularly and everybody loses things that way.

I'm talking about car keys.  Specifically a set of keys to the car, the house AND the office, all on a good sized black cord key fob.  My keys.  One day last summer I was looking for my keys to go to work and couldn't find them so I took the back up key.  A couple of days later I decided I really should have both sets and looked for my keys but by this time I couldn't remember if I had missed them at home or at the office.  I frequently can't find the keys, grab the back ups, get to the office and discover I now have two sets of keys in the purse.  Whatever. I just knew I had to have lost the main set in the office or at home because I had the car and had gotten home at some point, so they had to be one place or the other. But now I've emptied out my office and pretty much cleared out the house and I can't find them anywhere.  The only thing I can figure out is that they got thrown out somehow.

This is not a minor thing these days.  You can't just run down to the hardware store and get a new key made.  Car keys have micro chips in them and a blank costs $135!  This for a five year old car that doesn't even have automatic locks, let alone a fancy dashboard computer. 

And it's not just keys.  I can't find my sunglasses.  Not a cheap pair that you laydown without thinking because you don't normally wear glasses or they're clip-ons -- these are prescription sunglasses that always go in a hard case because I'm switching them out with my regular glasses because without them I couldn't find my way to the kitchen table.  They "live" in my purse or on the counter by the back door...except when they don't.  And apparently the black hole swallowed them.

The necklace that you KNOW you had in the house, in your bedroom, but which disappears never to be found again.  The special tool that you only need to fix one specific object every, oh, eight years or so.  That paper that you've been moving from counter to table to desk because it's in your way but you know you're going to use it next week...when it will have disappeared forever. 

My personal belief is that the places where you keep things, where they tend to accumulate, begin to create a gravity well and a black hole appears, sucks things in and they never come out again (unless maybe it's in an alternate universe).

The Magic of Music

Dumbledore is right, I think that love is the most powerful magic of all...but I'm pretty sure that music is a close second.

It's not just that, as they used to say, it "hath charms to soothe the savage breast"  -- to calm and reassure us when we are being driven by anxiety or frustration.  It's not just that it has a way of expressing exactly what we're feeling when we're in love or brokenhearted.

Music can transform our mood.  I don't care how frustrated or angry or worried or sad I am...you play "Old Time Rock and Roll" and I'm going to dance, and I will be joyful by the end of the song.

Music brings the dead back to life.  Not only do we hear the recordings of artists who are long gone, but when we hear music associated with them, it is them we hear, not the artist doing the cover.  No matter who's singing "Strangers in the Night", it is Sinatra you hear. But it does not merely raise the famous; today I heard an amateur musician entertaining at a nursing home.  When she sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", I not only heard my grandmother singing along (well, actually singing, "Dee-dee-deedle-dee", as she did when she forgot the words, which she did frequently),  but I felt her presence, I could see her there in a room in a state she had never visited. 

Music has magical power to set free those feelings and fears we've been trying to bury inside.  I hear the songs my parents listened to when I was 4 and 5 years old and they were in their 20s or the snatches of songs that they have sung to each other over the years as a kind of shorthand language ("Hey, Good Lookin', whatcha got cookin'?", "Ain't she sweet?  See her walkin' down the street...") and I grieve that they are aging and I anticipate the time when they will no longer be here.  I wonder how many of my contemporaries actually know all the words to "There Is a Tavern in the Town" or "Anchors Away".  I do, because my dad used to sing them to us, along with college songs whose words had been edited to be appropriate for the Elementary School set.

An aside here about my dad -- we always gave him a hard time about not being able to sing.  Granted, he doesn't have a great sense of rhythm, and he'd never win American Idol, but his voice is not unpleasant, and you can get a sense of the song when he sings it.  So I'm sorry, Dad, for the times we made fun of you.

I don't know if my kids sing to anything, or if they sing to anything other than the radio.  I wonder if I gave them any incantations they will be able to use so that I can be with them when they need me and can't get me by cell phone or text.  When I was in elementary school we had weekly assembly when we would learn songs from the 1890s and 1920s and 1950s and our own 1960's.  I would read references to those songs in books and hear them on tv and in the movies.  Does anyone other than entertainers in nursing homes sing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" anymore? We used to sing in the car on long trips and Sunday drives, when you couldn't get AM radio and there was nothing on FM worth listening to. 

We all need to sing more.  We can't judge ourselves, or worse yet, silence ourselves because we don't sound like professional singers (who are often electronically manipulated to sound on key, or like they have a fuller voice than they actually do).  We need to sing to create that second hand language with those we love and with the wider culture in general.  We need to sing to invoke the powerful magic of music and all its charms.

It's a Small...No, a Big...It's a Different World After All.

Yesterday the Beloved and I spent the day at Old Sturbridge Village.  It was a beautiful day, perfect temperatures, light breezes, the sun playing hide and seek behind the clouds.

Old Sturbridge Village (OSV on those oval bumper stickers) is a recreation of a Massachusetts farming village in the 1830's - what would seem to us to be halcyon days, 50 years after the War of Independence, a full generation before the Civil War.  Even though you can hear a low hum from the Mass Pike and an occasional overhead jet, you do get a sense of a different way of life living on dirt roads with homes separated by stands of trees, property marked by stone or post fences. 

Some people's lives were really just a step up from camping...you had to be middle class to have one of those new "stoves" and even wealthy people still did the bulk of their cooking in the fireplace.  Many homes were essentially one room, and nobody had indoor plumbing.  Having a wash basin and ewer in your bedroom was considered a luxury. 

My own town of Lowell, the first planned mill town in the US, would have been about 10 years old at the time...girls from Sturbridge would have gone there to work and probably would have been amazed at people living so close together.  But what really struck me about Sturbridge was the small world in which it existed. 

Without cellphones or satellites or telegraph, at a time when most newspapers only published weekly (because the process was so labor intensive, a printer couldn't make enough money to live on even at that schedule) there would have been little news of the state or nation, let alone what was going on in the world.  Packets would go out to missionaries in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and letters would come back occasionally, farmers might make the trip into Boston once or twice a year, but your world would pretty much be contained within the distance you or your horse could walk in a day.

We talk about the world getting smaller with the advent of high speed information and travel.  I once flew from Chicago to Tokyo (via Dallas) in less than 24 hours and the next day I was in Manila.  How long would that trip have taken a woman from Sturbridge?  But in the same way that we get information from around the world almost instantly, our world has not gotten smaller, it has gotten larger, because there is so much more to comprehend, so many more people about whom we worry, of whom we are afraid.  There are so many more disasters that tug at our hearts, so many more places we want to see and know.  While the world has become more accessible it has also asked far more of us than we could ever have imagined, and in truth, I think that imagination has been one of the first casualties of the deluge of "fact."

How do we deal with all the appeals to our better natures without being destroyed by our inability to meet every need?  How do we use our resources effectively and justly?  I have always marveled at the courage of those who do triage in emergency situations -- to make decisions about where the limited help will do the most good is heart rending.  Yet spending all our money on band-aids for everyone does little good in the end. 

What Sturbridge reminds me is that there is power in community -- people helping those with whom they live so that everyone lives better.  And what the modern world reminds me is that communities can help communities -- the principles do expand to larger scale.  So instead of each of us fretting about how little we can do as individuals (or perhaps simply isolating ourselves from others because of our sense of impotence) we may need to rethink the creation of small communities -- neighborhoods, faith communities, service communities that are not merely organizations but organisms of commitment to each other and to the big/small world which we share.

What if....?

     My dear, wise friend used to tell me, "What ifs don't count."  She was right, of course.  You can't look back at your life and ask, "What if I had chosen another course?" because you DIDN'T and there's no way of knowing what might or might not have happened.  It's useless to regret the what ifs, because it doesn't change anything, and often they are things we had no control over anyway.

      But I'm beginning to think about "what if" in a new way - not as a missed opportunity in the past but an open opportunity in the future.  "What if" is the question of inventors and dreamers that can change our future for the better.  A "what if" has been growing in me since an electronic conversation with another dear friend. 

     Her son struggled with academics his entire life.  He is bright and personable, generous and kind, and he has a learning disability.  He's in a dead-end job that he hates and as a young adult he's beginning to despair, feeling like he has no future.  He wants to establish himself in life, make a commitment to a partner and have a family, but he's afraid he can't support a family.  He can't even move out of the house at this point. 

     This is not going to be a political rant.  It's more the beginning of an exploration about changing the way we think.  What if we truly valued people based on who they are rather than what they did?  Why should a bright, hard-working, generous, kind young man consider himself a failure?  What if the only failures we identified in life were the refusal to help others, non-participation in the communal good?  What if we labeled people a success or failure based on the number of people whose lives were better because of them? 

     As a pastor I tried to do that, particularly at funerals.  I have often spoken of people as "not a VIP but a VSP -- a Very Significant Person," someone who had an impact on the lives of others. Any person, male or female, who goes to work each day to supply their family's basic needs deserves a living wage, whether they are keeping your grocery shelves stocked or wiping your grandmother's behind.  And nobody -- nobody deserves $20 million a year to play football.  Nobody earns $50 million a year, not even running the biggest company going, because they are NOT making all that money on their own.  They are doing it on the backs of the people who run the fork-lifts and put the doo-hickies together and create better ways to do what they do. 

     What if we started with a real living wage for anyone who works 40 hours a week?  What if we limited the percentage of a business' personnel who could be employed at less than 40 hours a week?  (My son works for a large grocery chain where only Department Managers are given 40 hours.  Everyone else, including Supervisors works 30 hours or fewer).  What if we insisted that companies share a set portion of their profits with all the workers equally?  What if we accept the restrictions and lack of ease involved (and possible added cost) and refused to support companies that do not treat employees like valuable human beings with lives outside of work?

      And what if we rethink the ways we value and celebrate what people do?  What if we honored in a meaningful, public way the people who spend their lives being decent human beings?  What if we re-define what it means to be successful?  Because as long as we hold up people who amass money and power as the image of success we are dooming ourselves to a society where putting poison into food, wide-scale extinction of species and species diversity, and crushed human spirits are the cost most will pay for the success of a few.

Checking in

I was rereading old posts and noticing a number of editorial errors...missing negatives, inappropriate apostrophes...sorry.  I'll try to do better. 

I went back to the start of the year and I noticed that I had made a resolution to do something nice/helpful/good for someone else every single day.  EVERY SINGLE DAY!  Who did I think I was kidding?

There are days when I don't want to talk to or listen to anyone.  There are days when I feel snarly and the air in my car is laden with words that would cause my mother to wash my mouth out with soap TODAY if she heard me say them. 

Does not inflicting myself on others on those days count as doing something nice for them?  I think I'm going to go with that.

Whaaaaa?????

Over the past few days I've seen little blips online about various politicians who claim that Josh Duggar is being persecuted by the media because he is an "anti-gay warrior" (and his abuse of his sisters wasn't really abuse because in biblical times they would have been of marriageable age); that climate change is not the result of human activity, but God's punishment for us allowing gay marriage; and that the US has ONE culture and you'd better buy into it or get out.

What are you people smoking?

Let's be clear about this.  Females were considered marriageable at an earlier age in biblical times.  This is true.  They were also considered property and were bought and sold as such.  But just to be perfectly clear, it was not considered acceptable in Hebrew culture to grope your sister.  It was your job to protect her from that kind of behavior and to avenge her if it happened.  To break that kind of taboo was to be like "the pagans."

There is a little truth to the idea that climate change is punishment for sin, but consequence is probably a better word and the sin is our wanton use and misuse of natural resources in our world, specifically the gluttonous use of resources by so-called "First World" peoples.  Our insatiable appetite for more drives a greater and greater use of raw materials and energy, our refusal to abandon the use of non-renewable, polluting energy sources is sinful.  And climate change is the result.  And the way out of sin is repentance -- to STOP and turn around and go in a new way. We have got to get serious about this NOW.

As a sidebar here, I am so sick of people picking a few passages out of Leviticus as their definition of what it means to be Christian (and I'm pretty sure our Jewish brothers and sisters are less than happy with that kind of misuse of their sacred scripture as well).  If you want to call yourself Christian, try reading the Gospels first, and see what really ticked Jesus off.  It wasn't sex that got him crucified.

Finally, anyone who's lived in a number of places in the US (and I don't mean moving from Middlesex County to Bergen) knows that there is not one culture in the US.  Move from NJ to California and it is a whole different world.  The Upper Midwest is NOT identical to New England.  And Texas?  Please.  Each of these places was originally settled by people from different places and they have kept many of the attitudes and traditions of those earlier settlers.  They have been shaped by the people who came there later, and by the weather and by whether they are areas where people have long established roots or are transients, arriving and leaving within a few years' time (when I lived in California a lot of our neighbors worked for IBM, which they said meant "I've Been Moved.").  The Air Force base down I-495 is a whole lot different than Southie in Boston. 

Yes, the majority of us speak English.  But English is itself one of the most hybrid languages imaginable, borrowing words and syntax from the language of the Angles, Saxons, French, and Germans, among others.  Pure English is an oxymoron (and this is from a Grammar Maven).  And if you want to get biblical about this, the faithful are repeatedly told that they are to welcome foreigners as an act of grace that reflects God's dealings with them.  Hospitality is holy.

So maybe climate change is because we've outlawed slavery or considered females to be of equal value with males, right?  Or maybe we should reinstitute the laws and cultures of the Puritans since they were the first to settle here...oh, no, wait, that would be the Spanish in St. Augustine and California...or the indigenous people who established a culture here thousands of years before...

Take your choice.

What I Did for My Retirement

I keep thinking about that old Cheech and Chong routine where the kid is supposed to read his paper on "What I Did for My Summer Vacation":  "The first day of vacation I got up.  I went downtown to look for a job.  Then I hung out.  The second day of vacation I got up.  I went downtown to look for a job.  Then I hung out.  The third day of vacation I got up.  I went downtown..."

The first day of retirement I got up.  I went down to the office to clean it out.  In the early afternoon my dad fell and cut his head open on the concrete, so I took him up to the ER.  So I spent the first day of retirement in my office and at the hospital...kind of like a day I might have expected at work!

The second day of retirement we drove Mom and Dad home to PA.  The third day of retirement we drove back to MA.  Yesterday I cleaned the house, went grocery shopping, made cupcakes for my brother-in-law's birthday, and did paper work.

I didn't expect to feel differently, but I don't even feel like I'm on vacation.  I've been waking up at 6, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  I did force myself back to sleep this morning, so I didn't get up until 7 (so lazy!).  Every now and then I think, "I don't have a job!"  and get highly anxious, but then it passes.

I did get up yesterday and walk because I want to establish some kind of routine, however suggestive it may be.  I also want to write regularly and I need to figure out when the best time for that will be.  This morning it was thank you notes and more packing, doing errands and planning for the summer's adventures. 

The End is Near

So.  I have one more "normal" work day and Sunday's Pentecost service before I am officially retired. 

Today's plan is to finish packing up my office (sharing books with two colleagues who are coming to glean from what will not travel with me), move everything out (transporting it in my Mazda 3), make my final farewell visit with a shut-in, and decorate the sanctuary for Pentecost.  Oh, and write the sermon.  Yeah, probably not going to happen.

Those of you who know me know that I am a somewhat demonstrative person.  I wear my emotions very close to the surface.  I am worried about getting through this without a full-fledged meltdown.  Not a two-year old's "I don't want to go" tantrum  -  because I DO want to go, I am anticipating a wonderful new adventure and I'm excited to begin.  But saying good-bye in a worship service that is thickly-layered with emotion to a group of people I have come to love and maintaining the demeanor of a worship leader is looking like a daunting task.  I've left churches before, but I was generally going to another church, or knew I'd be taking "a break" but going back soon.  This time I am closing a door in a far more definitive, far more permanent way.  I do not believe I will ever be the Pastor again.  And in or out of work, I have been a Pastor for the last 31 years.

And they want to sing "the song": Blessed Be the Tie that Binds.  Now on an ordinary communion Sunday, standing in a circle around our worship center, looking at that extraordinary array of faces and cultures and stories, it is hard for me to get through one verse of Blessed Be the Tie.  I tried to talk my lay leader into doing "We Are One in the Bond of Love", which we've been singing most weeks as our response to the benediction for some time now.  But no.  He wants The Song. 

How I will do this without breaking down, I do not know.  I'm not talking tears trickling from the corner of your eye and a few sniffles.  I'm talking face-hiding-snot-on-your-hands sobbing.  Sharing this fear in a colleague group yesterday, I was reminded that we do our most significant ministry from our own brokenness, that Henri Nouwen's image of the Wounded Healer is our model for helping others and our willingness to share our weakness is an opportunity for the grace of God to work through us (and in spite of us).  I don't think my folks who are first generation Americans will have a problem with it, though my African-American members and my Euro-Yankees may be very uncomfortable.  I just don't know.  And I'm not sure I have a whole lot of control over the moment. 

So I guess the only choice is to let go, as I must let go of them in every other way except the love that I have for them.

We have signed papers to begin accessing a pension.  The house is in escrow.  There are packed boxes in the basement and more things to give away now that we're not showing the house to potential buyers.  One more sermon.  The end is near.

Leave-taking

I had intended to pay close attention to all that was involved in the leave-taking process as I retire, especially during the last 100 days.  We all know what good intentions pave.  I am now 12 days from the end, and I'm comprehending (that is understanding in a wholistic way) what I "knew" -- that it is a little death, that changes who I am and how I understand myself, and how I am related to people I have loved.

I made it through Christmas Eve (when my Beloved and I knew I would be retiring, but no one else did) without any emotional issues.  I made it through Holy Week with just a little gulp on Good Friday.  I've been purging and cleaning and working my way through the house, my office and my calendar.  I made it through the last Communion and even singing Blessed Be the Tie that Binds, looking at the faces of my beautiful, diverse congregation. 

I was in denial. 

Now it is real.  I nearly lost it in the middle of listening to the Time with Our Children last week.  I had a colleague come in and take books yesterday.  I gave away left-over objects that I've used to reinforce the message of a sermon or to make a prayer focus more concrete. 

Now there is a heaviness in my heart, the kind you feel when you sit at the bedside of someone who is dying.  It's not necessarily sad -- endings are often a blessing.  But it is that whole bag of emotions that comes when one life ends and a new way of living in the world begins.  No, perhaps it IS necessarily sad if the relationship has been good.  Maybe it's better to say that the sadness is not "evil", not something to be avoided, not something that is inherently destructive. 

At any rate, I have one more memorial service, a retirement party, one more service with baptisms, an entire office to evaluate and to pack up what is essential, then a final worship.  And the traditionally significant 12 days in which to do it.

Thoughts on Mothers' Day

Once again, the FB world is full of posts reminding us that not every female on the planet will have a Happy Mothers' Day, that we should not assume motherhood is the highest aspiration of every female, that not all of us had saintly mothers.

I get it. As a woman who struggled with infertility, for whom Mothers' Day was quite literally the Worst Day of the Year (I even created a Mothers' Day liturgy by that title), I know it's hard.  As a pastor who has walked with people struggling with deep psychic and spiritual wounds inflicted by cruel mothers, I understand.  As someone who has a loving but still sometimes challenging relationship with her own mother, I'm realistic.  But really, can we all just lighten up a little bit?

I know that Mothers' Day has become a commercial bonanza...Diamonds for Mom?  Really?  But so has Christmas, and very few people are in favor of pretending it doesn't exist.  And since  Mothers' Day began as a call to MOTHERS to stand against war, so I think it has some pretty decent roots worth celebrating.

And mothering is not an easy job to do at all;  very few of us do it perfectly.  I used to celebrate Mother's Day by making it the one day of the year on which I refused to do laundry.  Since I've always worked on Sundays since my kids were old enough to pour cereal into a bowl, I've never had breakfast in bed on Mother's Day (nor any other day on which I wasn't sick).  Heaven knows I was far from a perfect mother -- probably even from being an above average mother.  But even being an average mother is hard work, and Mom deserves a word of thanks for that; and if Hallmark has to remind us to do that, it says something about OUR self-focus and not their greed. 

If your biological mom or your legal mom was an abject failure, I truly, truly am sorry.  And I'm pretty sure that there was probably some woman, a grandmother, an aunt, a teacher, a neighbor, who took you in and nurtured you so that you grew up to know what was desirable in a mother.  If you weren't able to have children, if you lost children, my heart breaks for you.  I have wept those tears.  And surely there are children out there that you know who need someone to just love them and encourage them without expecting anything back.  If your children have special needs that make it impossible for them to make a paper flower or sign a card or dial a phone, I know that you weep for dreams that will never be fulfilled...and that you love them with all your heart none the less.

And if you never had the desire to be a mother, and followed through on that inclination, I applaud you!  A lot of bad mothering was done by women who were forced into motherhood by social expectations -- you did us all a favor by being true to your soul.

The point is, I guess, that mothers are imperfect and kids are imperfect and we rarely have relationships that are mirrored in the commercial world.  "May your Mother's Day as complicated as our relationship...Sometimes I love you."   "You're a mediocre Mom, but I know you're doing your best."  No one gets out of this world without their heart being broken.  If we outlawed every holiday that someone else found hard to deal with there would never be any celebrations in our world.  And God knows we need celebration.  Sometimes we need to celebrate with and for others even when we can't celebrate for ourselves.  For their sake.  Because that's what being human is all about. 

By the way, I'm the kind of person who refuses to repost those statuses that demand that you share them if you have a heart, if you love your country, if you want to go to Heaven, if you are proud of your children...I HATE being told that I have to do something to prove that I am who I am.  So if you don't want to wish anyone a Happy Mother's Day because your own mom is dead or was awful or because you can't be a mom or lost a child...don't.  And if you do celebrate in some way, don't shame the people who don't.  But do find some way to share some love and gratitude and joy.  Because without it life is pretty grim.

Changing the Story

     This is not about moving or retiring, or anything like that.  It is about changing the way we think about a single thing can change a lot of things.

     My mom is...well, I won't tell you how old she is, because she would kill me.  But I'm getting ready to retire, and she was not an under-aged minor when I was born...well, actually she was, but the age of majority was higher in those days, and she WAS married.  Anyway, she has lived a good life, surpassing her biblical three score and ten.

     She was lamenting the fact that her legs have gotten old.  I don't think they're any older than the rest of her, but she told me she wears pants most days because "I have Old Lady Legs."  And I thought, "You SHOULD have Old Lady Legs.  What's wrong with that?"  Like my Mom, I look in the mirror and see everything that I don't like about my body.  Some of the things I hate are probably attractive, but they are not what I wish they were.  I've hated my body in general since I was 8 years old.  I tried to ignore it, and pretend that it didn't matter.  I dreamed of having a body that I would NEVER have because, quite honestly, those genes don't exist in my family's gene pool, and hated myself because I couldn't achieve it.  I dieted.  The grapefruit diet.  The nothing but protein and water diet.  The nasty shake diet.  I over-ate.  I obsessed about it.  I tried to ignore it.

     Today I heard her and without thinking I said, "You know, your body has served you well for XX years.  You ought to thank God for it every day.  Your body has served you beautifully.  It's a gift you should be grateful for."

     She said, "I do give thanks for my good health."

    But I think for most of us "good health" is an abstract idea and I think that a lot of women don't connect it to the body that we inhabit, the body we see in the mirror.  We look at that image and we see things that don't fit the popular definition/image of beauty.  We don't think about the wonderful things our bodies do -- until they can't do them any more.

     I remember when I was a child there was this sentiment that after 40 a woman could "let herself go" -- that she didn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about her hair, make-up, figure.  Then Gloria Steinham (who has absurdly fabulous genes!) declared "This is what 40 looks like" (a Playboy Bunny).  Today for some reason, women who are great-grandmothers are hating themselves because their bodies have done what they were programmed to do and instead of being freed to focus on being creative or intellectually curious or socially involved, we still have to think about looking like a 30 year old model.  We know we can't do it, we know the actual 30 year-olds always "win", but we hate ourselves because we don't look like TV stars, even when we know that without a wardrobe department and makeup artists, neither do they.

       My body carries me through each day and provides me with a presence and potential in the world.  It climbs stairs and dances.  It takes in the world through five miraculous senses.  It is not the extent of what I am, but allows me to be part of the cosmos in a way that my mind and even my spirit alone cannot.  So today I thank God for my body, exactly as it is.

Shedding Yet Another Identity

     So we had the first of our "clear it all out" moving sales this past week.  We had snow the first day and rain the second, so we didn't get a lot of Passer-by traffic.  But we did have a pretty good day on Saturday.  I put out the cross country skis...

     I bought my skis the first winter I lived in Wisconsin.  The Beloved and I used to go out a couple of times a winter BC (Before Children).  I have not skied since 1987.  And yet I have moved those skis to 7 different homes.  I was determined to get out this year.  Unfortunately all our snow came in a two week window and the snow was so high I couldn't have skied even if it hadn't been miserable cold....there's always a reason.  I'm pretty sure that I won't get much use out of them in Daytona.  I'm feeling sad about it though, because I really wanted to be a cross country skier.  Cross country is cool without being pretentious, it's athletic without putting a lot of strain on your joints...it screams "healthy' and "ecologically aware."  I really wanted to be those things, but apparently I'm not.

     There's something very gratifying about people wanting to buy something that you've created or updated and something vaguely insulting about them looking at all the stuff you've put out and walking away without picking anything up or showing any interest in those things that have so many memories attached for you.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to hide all the stuff we didn't sell until the final sale (after the house sells)   You can only hide so many boxes, and I really, really don't want to haul it up to the attic or down to the cellar.  We WILL be donating a lot of the stuff, but figuring out what goes to which cause can be harder than you would think.

     My sister says I over-think and over-plan and try to do too much in a short period of time (she accuses me of the engineer on the Crazy Train).  I'm wondering if it will be possible to truly relax in retirement.  And I realize that it will only happen if I start to practice it now.  So....I'm not getting upset about the weather or the sale and I'll let go of the concerns about storage...it will work.  And I WILL be laid back.  If it kills me.


   

O Come, and Mourn with Me A While

That old Lenten hymn is in my thoughts as I begin this Holy Week.  As I was ready to begin the Palm Sunday worship yesterday, I was hit with a wave of grief -- it's the last time we will do this together.  The emotion surprised me, because even though I had made the announcement of my retirement in December, I knew it was coming.  I expected to feel some sadness at the end of the Christmas Eve service, but I didn't, so I wasn't expecting it yesterday, either.

Then today I was talking with a friend who is also a colleague and again I was overwhelmed with emotion thinking about the congregation I serve and what a wonderful context it is in which to preach.  All of a sudden I'm deeply aware of how much will be changing very soon, how much the structure of my life will be different, how deep ties of affection will have to be altered.

You can't be a decent pastor without loving the congregation you serve.  People invite you, as a pastor, into the deepest, most tender, most intimate areas of their lives, and you can't share that with them if you haven't loved them first, nor if you don't honor and respect that vulnerability.  And you can't do that from a position of superiority -- you have to be equally vulnerable, equally transparent and honest.  And you don't just walk away from those relationships without a sense of loss.

During Holy Week we're thinking about Jesus' sacrifice for the sake of humanity.  My sacrifice is pretty puny in comparison.  I'm just thinking about how intense the emotions of this week are in a good year, and getting myself prepared to experience and live through what will come.

Requisat in Pace - Libuse Reed

In the midst of an incredibly crazy week, I got word that Libuse "Libby" Reed had died.  Of course, none of us ever called her "Libby" to her face.  She was always Mrs. Reed.  She had the doctorate, but she was always Mrs. Reed, and she always referred to her husband, the Head Librarian of the school, by his full name, John Reed:  "I said to John Reed..."  She looked like she had developed her hair and dress style in the 1950s and decided to stick with it:  a very proper dress or suit with a feminine blouse and a pair of sensible high heels.  She always wore lipstick, but it didn't seem like she wore much else in the way of makeup.  Someone once whispered that her bright red cheeks were an indication of high blood pressure.

At the time I studied under Mrs. Reed in the 1970's, she was actually younger than I am now.  Gee, that hurts. But I would not be who and where I am today without her at that point in my life.  I grew up in what I now know was a very sheltered life, in a fairly conservative family.  I was a middle class girl who grew up in the late 50s and early 60s, the era where role models were the daughters on Life with Daddy and Father Knows Best.  My options for what I would be were first of all,  Mom, then possibly a teacher, a nurse, or a movie star.  My family did not support the last option.  Because we were a religious family, it was possible that I would be a teacher or a nurse as a missionary or the wife or mother of a minister.  And that really didn't bother me.

But it did bother me that there were things my younger brother could do that I couldn't because I was a girl.  It did bother me that no one was particularly worried about me getting a job because it was assumed that a man would marry me and support me.  And I don't blame my parents for those assumptions -- they were the general assumptions of all the families of all the girls I knew.

I took Libby Reed's course Literary Perspectives on Women the fall of my sophomore year.  She was already legend on campus having taught for twenty years, a rigorous instructor, a challenging moderator of classroom discussion and debate,  a VERY critical grader and editor of tests and papers.  And she was a Feminist before the word became a denigrating epithet. 

She certainly never looked like a bra burner -- she was neither Gloria Steinam nor Bella Abzug.  She looked more like a Mamie Eisenhower wannabe.  But her reputation for being a fearless defender of women meant that a lot of males avoided that class out of fear that they would be both in the minority and targets of wrath or discrimination or something along those lines.  They never were, of course, and a good many others, Chem  and Business majors took her course in Business Writing because word from alumni was that it gave them a major edge in their jobs.  She taught them to be concise and clear, to write well. 

Literary Perspectives and Libby Reed changed my life.  I still thought of myself as a girl that autumn of 1975.  I thought of myself as a person, but not as a woman.  But one of the first assignments she gave, one which took the place of an entire research paper, was to keep a daily journal on "What it means to be a woman in America today."  We were to write for 15 minutes a day on what we saw in news and entertainment and advertising about the images and expectations and experiences of women in America.  It was remarkable.  It forced me to pay attention to all those things and to examine them through that lens.  I began to ask, "Why?" and "Why not?"

One of the areas we considered was the image of women in religion, from the writings of Thomas Aquinas to the teachings of 20th century fundamentalists.  We studied women who had led religious movements, and I began to learn things I had never known, and to think about things I had believed without question my whole life.  Mrs. Reed was always available to answer questions about what we had read and later on that year she became my academic advisor, so she was one of the people who wrote a recommendation for me when I applied to go to graduate school at seminary, not for an "Mrs." but an "M.Div."

I am fortunate that in my denomination I was not in the vanguard of women seeking ordination -- women had been ordained locally to pastoral ministries in small rural congregations for nearly a century at that time and single women had long been commissioned as missionaries in the US and abroad.  Our denomination was the first to elect a woman as its president back in the 1930s.  But it was still rare for a woman to be ordained in a way recognized by the national organization, to lead sizeable congregations on their own.  I was the first "regularly" ordained woman to serve in the state where I began my ministry.  And it was all possible because I began asking the questions, "Why?" and "Why not?"

I kept in touch with Libby Reed over the years.  She always included a personal note in a Christmas card, sometimes  brief, sometimes  quite newsy.  She celebrated my career and choices in ministry and my time teaching collegians.  And I continue to journal, even after 40 years, about what it means to be who I am as a woman in my life and my times.

This past Sunday our opening hymn was sung to the tune of Lancashire:  if you grew up in a church you might recognize it as the tune to Lead On, O King Eternal or The Day of Resurrection.   But because I had been preaching on the story of the Exodus and Covenant, I used words that I had saved from a worship service in which I had participated in seminary.  I include them here with apologies to the author because I saved them from a time when we didn't worry about copywriting "new" words for hymns and they weren't acknowledged at the time.  But I have cherished them a long time.

            When Israel camped in Sinai, then Moses heard the Lord,
           "This message tell the people, and give them this my word.
           From Egypt I was with you and carried on my wing
          The whole of your great nation from slavery I did bring.

         Just as a mother eagle who helps her young to fly
         I am a mother to you, your needs I will supply.
         And you are as my children, my own who hear my voice,
         I am a mother to you, the people of my choice.

         If God is like an eagle who helps her young to fly
         And God is also father, than what of you and I?
         We have no fear of labels, we have no fear of roles
        If God's own being bind them, we seek the self-same goals.

         Our God is not a woman, our God is not a man.
         Our God is both and neither, our God is I WHO AM!
        From all the roles that bind us our God has set us free.
        What freedom does God give us?  The freedom just to be.*

Libby Reed was a faithful Methodist.  I don't know if she ever heard those words sung to that familiar tune, but as I sang them Sunday morning, I could see her face, smiling with approval, and I felt a rush of gladness, of gratitude and of grief. 

Thank you, Mrs. Reed.  May you and John Reed rejoice together in eternity.

*If anyone knows the original source of these words I would love to give credit where it is due.

More than Just Stuff

I came to an epiphany the other night.  I was answering the nightly 3 a.m. wake-up call from my squirrel brain, and I was thinking about more stuff I could be getting rid of, because I'm feeling like no matter what I do, it's not enough.  It's like the multiplier curse on the Lestrange vault in Gringott's...I touch one thing and it seems like there are suddenly four more as well.

Anyway, I was thinking about the basket of sheet music that I stumbled over on my way back from the bathroom, and I thought," I should get rid of that."  I gave away the piano that we had lugged to the last eight residences several years ago.  (I was never a real pianist...once we had kids I never had a real chance to practice when the kids were awake, and I was afraid to play while they were sleeping, for fear of waking them.  Plus, I was only able to play decently when no one could hear me.  But when I thought about giving away the sheet music, I realized that I wouldn't just be getting rid of stuff -- I would be giving up part of my identity.  

Somehow I always thought that when the kids were grown, I'd be able to play again.  I didn't.  Then I thought that when I gave the piano away, I'd buy an electronic key board and get back into practice.  I didn't.  I had a clench in my solar plexus as I realized that I am not going to be someone who plays the piano.  I will never fulfill that fantasy of sitting down and playing so that people can sing.  As if anyone actually does that anymore.  But, you know, hope springs eternal...

When I was in seminary, I had a friend who had been a classically trained bass violinist.  And I do mean classically trained, as in a graduate of the Eastman School of Music.  But when she decided to go to seminary, she sold her bass to pay for her tuition.  She said that it didn't make sense to keep it when she knew she would be able to practice the way she should in order to play the way she could.  And she talked about a sense of grief, a struggle to redefine who she was and who she would be.

It was more than just stuff.

I've also decided that I will get rid of my Blue Willow dishes.  Now I have loved the Blue Willow pattern since I read the book The Blue Willow Plate as a young girl.  I've had a blue and white kitchen most of the last 20 years, decorating with the odd plate or tea cup that I found at yard sales or Goodwill.  Finally, about 12 years ago, our local grocery store started offering them -- you know, the plates are at a special price this week with the coupon and a $20 food purchase, the bowls are on sale next week...and I built up a set for my every day dishes. 

But I've also got a set of dishes my grandmother gave me when I got my first apartment in college, and I remember THEM from her house when I was young.  And I have a set from when I sold kitchenware at home shows -- a basic white set that goes with everything.  I love a clean white plate.  I've been rotating the sets seasonally over the last number of years, but really, who needs THREE sets of everyday dishes and a set of good china? 

I've decided to get rid of the Blue Willow set.  I love the pattern, I love all the associations, but one decorative plate truly will be enough.  And I've asked my niece if she wants my grandmother's dishes, and I've yet to hear from her.  I don't know what I'll do with them if she says no.  But I think I'm going to stick with the white and be done with it.

It's just stuff.

Ordinary Time...

      In the calendar of the Christian Church the Sundays in the seasons of Epiphany (January 6 through Ash Wednesday) and Pentecost (from the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Easter up to the first of the four Sundays before Christmas) are sometimes referred to as Ordinary Time, not because they're not special, but because they are weeks, Sundays that are counted rather than recognized as special holidays (remember ordinal numbers in math class?). 

      But there's a double sense to those times, because the scripture lessons that are read during these times are scriptures about the revealing of God in Christ and the sharing of the good news of God's love.  And I love the idea that we focus on extraordinary news in "Ordinary Time."

     In this extraordinary time or preparing to transition my life professionally AND personally, I find I'm constantly torn by the call of the extraordinary and the needs of the ordinary -- trying to carry on the normal activities of life while taking on extra-ordinary tasks so that the transition will be as smooth as possible.  Exercise and grocery shopping are compromised by the need to sort through books and craft supplies.  Interestingly enough, most of this transition in my professional life are being focused on the seasons of Lent and Easter -- both of which require extraordinary services and special preparations, and which encourage an intentional discipline in one's spiritual life. 

    The clue, say the spiritually wise, is to celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary:  to find rest, nurturing, a sense of the holy in laundry and in newsletters, in filing and in washing the dishes.  So I think I need to stop rushing from one thing to another, which simply encourages me to forget what the heck I was doing when five other tasks jumped in front of me, to be intentional, to focus on what is before me, and not to neglect the ties that bind us to each other.

Releasing

Talking to a good friend this afternoon about my impending retirement, I had several "aha!" moments. 

I've been a little surprised that so far I haven't had many overwhelming moments of "the last" -- the last Christmas Eve Service, the last Ash Wednesday Service...I haven't gotten emotional over them even though I feared I might.  In the past when I've left a congregation it's been with a fairly short transition period, anywhere from one to two months.  But with five months lead time, there's many opportunities to note or create "milestone" out of our yearly routines.  And even though I have chosen this leaving and I'm excited about what's coming, I sometimes think I must still be in the denial stage of grief.

I also realized that it's not only about leaving this congregation.  In the past, even though I didn't always know where I was going to be working next, I knew I would be in ministry.  I know we're not supposed to define ourselves by what we do, but it's pretty hard not to do so when what you do requires a round-the-clock availability and a personal emotional, intellectual, and spiritual investment in the work itself.

Who will I be when I am not a pastor? 

I realized this morning that I'm beginning to manifest some anxiety in my body -- psychosomatic expressions of some of the inner uncertainty.  I remember this from my senior year of college, when I knew I was going to seminary, but had no idea what that would mean in my life or how I would live in that environment.  I had headaches, stomach problems and general malaise.  I know I'm going to retire, but I have no idea what that will mean for me. 

So I don't think I can release my identity as a pastor just yet, because my congregation deserves 100% of my pastoral attention until I am no longer in their employ.  But I  do need to begin to think about how I will define myself, what my purpose will be when I am no longer serving them. 

Recycle

This idea has an impact on my life in two ways.  The first is that firm conviction which I've noted earlier that "I can use this again somehow."  The other is that I have somehow become the family archivist -- the things that other people don't want to keep but don't want to throw away, they give to me. 

Now, for much of my life I needed second-hand goods.  We've always lived on a pretty tight budget, and I was thankful for second hand furniture for my first apartment, an unwanted kitchen appliance I couldn't afford to buy, or an extra set of cake pans.  And I'm pretty sentimental, so I appreciate having a teapot from each of my grandmothers, or a beautiful vase from my late sister-in-law.  But I get everything...a kitchen table donated for my daughter's first apartment that she didn't want; a collection of art-glass that my sister-in-law was trying to move out of her house and which her daughter didn't want.  Clothing that someone got too big or too little for, that's in great shape, and quite lovely, but really not my style. 

I'm good about recycling clothing and really useable housewares with organizations that help folks moving out of transitional housing into their own places.  But the "artsy" stuff and the fancy clothing that most organizations don't want is tough.  I confess that I hate to dump stuff that won't be appreciated or valued.  And if I recycle it, I also give away my control over it -- ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!  Pretty sure there's a clue there!

It's just stuff.  It's just stuff.  It's not the person who gave it to me, it's not the relationship, it's not my love for them, it's just stuff.  And if I can recycle it, it may bring joy to someone else as well. 

Re-use

I am too creative for my own good sometimes.  Or maybe I'm just cheap.

I know that part of my clutter problem is that I have the ability to see multiple uses for lots of things, and so I hang on to them because I know I can use them again.  The pretty tins that Barnes and Noble tea comes in...I've seen tea tins used as herb planters on Pinterest.  I can put the cheap tea I buy in big cardboard boxes from the grocery store in them to keep it fresh.  Maybe I could use them like a vase...We try to avoid storing food in plastic (because the Physics teacher is pretty convinced of the science about nasty chemicals leaching from the plastic into your food), so we re-use glass containers for storage.  Peanut butter and spaghetti sauce jars are great for most things, but sometimes you just need a little container, so I've got a ton of jars from artichoke hearts and those fancy jellies you get in gift baskets.

Of course, those are easily recyclable and every so often my partner goes through and edits them.  But I really think that the root of my problem is that I love getting a second use out of anything that most people consider to be a one use item, AND I hate having spent money for something and not being able to use it forever if it's not something obviously "consumable."  To me throwing out those tea tins is just wasteful and I grew up in a family where waste was considered to be one of the seven deadly sins. 

However.

My parents don't keep things like that.  My sister doesn't.  My brother doesn't.  Just me.

My friend Polly is right that we need to think of those things as doing better "out there" if someone can use them rather than letting them take up room shut away some where in our lives.  And I don't have as much trouble getting rid of them for the move as I would if I were just trying to clear out space for myself.

Perhaps the solution is to re-phrase the question "Do I have room for this?" to "Am I willing to give up space for this?"  and to be intentional about keeping things, because I think I just sort of keep them without a lot of thought. 

I'm also committing to the 40 bag challenge, starting today, to get rid of one bag of "stuff", whether it be garbage, recycling, or donations for the next 40 days or until I run out of stuff I can truly get out of my life.  I'd like to think that I would run out of days before I run out of stuff.  I'll let you know.

Reduce...

How did we get all this stuff?

I enjoy shopping, but I am not a compulsive buyer.  I can spend an entire day in a mall, feeling things, trying them on, thinking about how I might use, them and go home without having spent one red cent and still be perfectly content.  In this I am different than my Mom, who feels like she has to buy SOMETHING, even if it's a pack of gum.

And I don't go out "trolling", without a purpose in mind, just to see if something strikes me as a purchase.  With the exception of white knit tops, I don't buy duplicates of things I have (six pairs of jeans, three navy skirts).  I only buy one white top per season (long or three-quarter sleeve in fall/winter, short sleeve in spring - I don't do sleeveless) and I do that because I'm a slob and a white shirt rarely lasts more than two seasons, never more than three.  And they go with everything, so they get a lot of use.

I do have two pairs of black high heel pumps. I keep one pair in my office closet for Sunday mornings and one pair to wear everywhere else.  The pair in my closet is for emergencies when I've gone to work in shoes that won't work in the pulpit.  Leopard print may be considered a "neutral" but it does not work with a Geneva gown (John Calvin in leopard pumps.  Now THERE'S a great mental image!). 

My point is that I'm not someone who buys things just to buy them.  I would never buy anything if I didn't have (or at least couldn't imagine) a use for it.  And I think it's that parenthetical justification that gets me in trouble.

I am full of great ideas. 

I see things in stores sold at absurd prices and think, "I could make that myself!".  Then a few days or weeks later I see one of the components of that item on sale and the lights start flashing and the bells start ringing and I say, "Oh!  With that I could make that wonderful thing that I saw that I said I could make."  And I buy it, on sale, put it someplace safe...and never buy the rest of the components for it.  So now as I am cleaning out the house, I have cute little tags that say "Made Especially for You" for attaching to gifts -- except I've never had the time to make the gifts.  I have jars I've been saving for those wonderful homemade gifts you see on Pinterest.  And since I am both a knitter and a quilter, I have stashes.  If you are a knitter or a quilter you understand what that means.  If you are not, I can't explain the emotional attachment to a piece of fabric that has not yet become the creation you envisioned when you bought it. 

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, my craft closet is where it starts.

And as I am paring down, there's a real emotional struggle.  Because it's not just giving up that great idea of what you are going to do.  It's facing the truth that I am not a crafter as much as I am a person who would like to be a crafter (and now that I'm going to be semi-retire, I'll have time to do that project, so I should probably save it, right?????).  See my earlier posts, Lies I Tell Myself and Lies I Tell Myself, #3&4.

But it also means facing the truth that despite my best efforts I am a frivolous spender.  If I decided I was going to make something, scheduled the time to do it, went out and bought all the components I needed at once (even if they WEREN'T on sale) I would probably wind up spending less money overall and would certainly have less clutter in my life. 

And so I feel guilty for having spent money unwisely and worse, I feel ashamed for it.  In my efforts to be frugal I've actually wound up spending more than I ever would have if I had been honest about my abilities, my potential time and energy and my true desire to just have rather than to create.

So today I am going to be ruthless about getting rid of the "someday" projects, the yarn and fabric I bought because I liked them (and they were on sale!) and not because I had an actual plan for them, the cross-stitch stuff that I don't really enjoy and the various bits and bobs that are stealing time, space, and self-respect.

Reshuffling

So we spent our holiday weekend moving furniture...again.

Three years ago my elderly brother-in-law moved in with us after his wife's death.  To ensure that he had space of his own we moved our "den" to the upstairs and he had a bedroom and bathroom that were "his".  To do that one of us had to give up our office, but we still needed (well, wanted) private space for paper work and hands-on tasks.  So we moved our bedroom into the second office, and both of our offices into the master bedroom, which was big enough to "subdivide" with book shelves to give us each space where we could leave projects out, etc. 

It worked well.  We don't spend a lot of time in our bedroom anyway, so it was adequate, room for our bed, dressers and nightstands without knocking our knees.  The den is cozy and comfy.  We still had beds for guests. 

But Brother got ill and has been in residential care for almost a year now.  And this weekend we began moving furniture back to its original location -- sort of.  The den is staying upstairs because the effort and engineering it took to get the sofa bed up the stairs made us decide that the only way it is going back down the stairs is in pieces.  But we moved back into the master bedroom and I realized I had missed it.

Our house is a wonderful little post-war 1940s Cape.  When we moved in it had the original kitchen, complete with counters that were about 4 inches shorter than current standards.  But the second floor had been raised and remodeled about two years before we bought it.  And while the master bath is lust-worthy, it was the master bedroom I fell in love with when we were buying a house.  It has two just slightly-larger-than-standard double closets (not walk-ins), and it has room for a sitting area, though it's not huge.  But it has a cathedral ceiling and a "feel" that I just love.  Even with my less than professional décor it's peaceful and welcoming.  I laid in bed last night and I felt so happy to be back there.

I have absolutely no regrets about what we did and I would never have said I "missed" being in it, but it felt so good to be there again.  I don't think I will miss it when we move, but I'm glad to enjoy it while I can.

There are boxes everywhere and piles everywhere and the original downstairs den is a "staging area" for the yard sale that is to come.  Fortunately I have a high tolerance for chaos and disorder.  I kept going to the wrong room to get dressed this morning.  But we're getting there. 

Moving On

Back to the downsizing, transitioning process.

It's truly amazing what you can get rid of when you realize you have finished that portion of your professional life.  Those copies of papers for the baptism/discipleship classes that you were going to organize someday -- recycled!  I got rid of an entire paper carton full of "things to be filed" today.  There is a bit of glee in getting rid of things related to the tasks that are not high on the list of "Things I Love to Do." 

I also went through the LARGE basket of recipe's I've torn out of magazines and newspapers, collected from the grocery store and on trips and whittled it down by at least half, if not two-thirds.  There were a lot of duplicates and some that I thought to myself, which of these recipes did I ever think I might make? 

The recipes are physical expressions of aspirations -- I will make healthier foods; I will plan far enough ahead that I will make thoughtful, handmade gifts for holidays; I will expand my repertoire of "go to" meals for those days when I stare into the refrigerator like the last almost-living zombie at the end of the world.  (Why do zombies only eat human brains?  After all, dolphins, chimps and elephants are pretty smart, right?  Wouldn't a well trained German Shepherd do in a pinch?  And what happens to zombies if they don't eat brains?  Can they die of hunger if they're already dead?).

But I digress.  Some of those recipes were at least 12 years old and there's still a good thick stack of them.  Why do I think I'm actually going to start making them?  And that's ignoring the recipes I've pinned on Pinterest .  Does electronic clutter count as hoarding?  At least I don't have to pack it.

Today marks the 100 day count-down to my retirement and I am simultaneously still not convinced that it's going to happen and in full panic mode in contemplating everything that will have to happen before that day.  I'm in the process of pulling out things for a yard sale and  trying to rearrange rooms for staging, so it looks like someone ransacked the place.  Today I will create a space for a clutter-free respite.

I'm not your Honey!

First of all:  Ever since I became an adult I have been appalled at the way the elderly are infantilized, particularly in institutional situations.  People talk to them in baby voices, call these people who were very aware of appropriate titles and address by their first names, and say things like, "How are we feeling today?"  I'm feeling angry, how are you?

Second:  Women, do you remember how horrified you were the first time someone called you "Ma'm"?  For years and years you had been "Miss" -- suddenly you became your mother when the bag boy (or worse, the store manager!) called you "Ma'm". 

Well, it gets worse.  Because suddenly, somewhere in your 50's you become "Miss" again!  Even worse, you become "Dear" or "Honey" -- to 20-somethings!  Oh. My. God!  Do I HAVE silver helmet hair????  Does my face look like it's a leather mask? 

How did I get that old?

In my mind I'm still approaching middle age, not waving good-bye in the rear view mirror.  I know that that's crazy.  I'm certainly not going to live to be 116.  But seriously!  When someone calls me "Dear" or "Honey" I feel like I'm doddering.  I feel like I'm wearing a straw pillbox hat with a veil and a crushed silk flower, stockings that are bagging around my knees and orthopedic shoes.

Words are powerful and they tell us what other people think about our effectiveness, our abilities and our authority.  Just because I'm a woman doesn't make me less informed or capable in my profession.  Just because I'm not 35 does not mean I'm senile.  And even if I were senile, that wouldn't make me a child. 

The elderly do not need to be placated or infantilized.  They have earned respectful care and should be asked how they would like to be addressed.  I have always made it a practice to address anyone older than me as Mr./Mrs./or Ms the first time I meet them -- if they give me permission to use their first name I do.  But I avoid "Dear" or "Honey" at all costs!

Lightening the Load

Because we don't know where we'll be living or exactly what we'll be doing when we enter retirement, we are in the process of radical downsizing.  The Beloved wants to be warm, at least to be warm enough to never, ever have to shovel snow again, so we will be moving.  And rather than paying to move all our stuff, we figure it makes more sense to get rid of most of it and then to buy ONLY what we truly NEED once we get down there (wherever "there" may be.)

This will not be easy.

For one thing, we've been fairly peripatetic for the last 31 years (yes, it's a show-off word.  I love it, and I so rarely have the chance to use it).  The longest we've lived anywhere was eight years and we lived in at least four places for less than a year.  So we've moved a lot.  And we've gotten rid of a lot of stuff over those years.  But when we left our last abode we threw stuff out, we had a garage sale, we gave stuff away -- and we still filled a decent sized van to the max.  I swear, people put stuff in there when we weren't looking.  Except it all looked familiar.  I don't know HOW people move after 15 or 20 years.  The mere thought is terrifying.

But previously, every time we moved we knew wither we were moving.  I had an idea of the size of the rooms and the layout of the house and what would work and what wouldn't.  This time I have no idea.  And a lot of our furniture and accessories are decidedly non-tropical.  We tend towards traditional and cottage style things and colors.  I have a lot more things for furnishing a log cabin or a lake house than I do a cottage or apartment near the beach.

So we are taking only what we truly love, what has sentimental attachment for us.  The kitchen table that we bought, unfinished, for our first house has made the cut, as will the dining room table we bought for our tenth anniversary and the hutch that houses teapots from both my grandmothers and crystal glassware that my aunt gave us when we got married.  We'll probably take the bed we got for our twentieth anniversary, though not the matching dresser, which has drawers that are extremely uncooperative.  I'll take the living room couch, because it's only a couple of years old and I love the style, but when we moved the hide-a-bed couch upstairs it took three strong young men a great deal of effort and required removing the front door AND the kitchen door to do so, and we swore that when it comes downstairs, it's coming down in pieces. 

The problem is the "in-between" things, things that I love, but don't really need. There are the library chairs I bought from the college where I worked, that I stripped and refinished.  They are so comfy and sturdy.  How do you walk away from a library chair? I have a cedar chest that Beloved made for me.  Obviously, it goes.  But I really like the carved fake-Chinese chest we inherited from his brother.  Do I really need TWO massive chests?  I have a console table that I got at a super-duper price after lusting after it in a catalog for more than a year.  And console tables are handy things to have.  But I also have a nice one that I bought as a substitute when I couldn't afford the one I really wanted.  Should I take it? 

And then there's books.  I pared down my books at home significantly when we moved here.  But I've added a few more since that time.  I completed a series (of twelve thick volumes) that I will probably want to read again.  I have a couple of series (is there a plural of series?) that are like my children -- all of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels, Harry Potter, and The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. I may retire The Chroincles of Narnia, which are mostly in pieces, and get a new set when we settle.  I'll probably get rid of most of the decorating and gardening books, but what about the quilt books? Or those college English texts with all those things I should have read but never quite got around to?  I was hoping to read and to quilt in retirement -- how can I get rid of them?  And then there's the quilting materials and the knitting materials...

I hyperventilate just thinking about it.  So I'm doing a little bit at a time.  Today I sorted through cookbooks and got rid of about half of them.  I'm also working my way through the paper piles, a little bit at a time. 

Don't ask about the stuff in my study at church...

Liminal Thoughts

Yesterday I announced to my governing board that I would be retiring on May 25.  For most people that means Memorial Day.  For me it means that my last worship with this congregation will be on Pentecost, which is, quite honestly, my absolute favorite holiday in the entire ecclesiastical calendar.

But this is scary, standing on the threshold of a new way of living.  I'm too young for Medicare or Social Security, so I will have to work for some time to pay for health insurance.  But my Beloved is not getting any younger and we have things we need to do together while we still have energy and health.  I've decided to see if I can actually do a job that I don't take home with me, wake up thinking about in the middle of the night.  That would be nice.  I could work part time and make enough to keep myself in insurance.  That's comforting.

We're going to have to sell the house and I'm already working on downsizing.  I've been watching those shows about tiny houses and I would love to live that way, but I know that I am a collector and a clutterer and there's no way on earth that I would ever be able to manage without creating a death trap or driving myself insane.  Besides as much as I love the Beloved, I am a true introvert and need time to be ALONE.  Even when we've talked about exploring the country in an RV, I've told him it has to have a separate bedroom where I can be by myself when I need to be. 

It started as we were putting away Christmas stuff -- deciding what we would keep and what will go out to a garage sale.  I narrowed down collections to one or two items to which I have serious emotional attachments.  We have never had a "designer" Christmas tree, and most of our ornaments are one of a kind, or something we bought on vacation (which we've kind of done as a small souvenir over the last couple of years -- it's a nice reminder in the dark and cold and harried days of warmer, sunnier, more relaxed times). We put aside some things for the kids if they want them, but got rid of all the garland and wreaths and bows, etc. 

It was 31 years ago today that my Beloved and I agreed to journey through this life together and it's kind of reassuring to begin this next new phase of our life on the same date.  After all, the first phase has gone pretty well.

Anyway, I'm thinking I'll be sharing this experience with you if you're interested -- the process of changing life in a very intentional way with a time limit looming.  Tomorrow, we're talking books.