Going Home Part 2

Dear Friends,
Going home is much more than theological discomfort. It is also great fun. My sister and I are very close and have been all our lives. It is always fun to hang out with her. If possible we sneak away to lunch at Olive Garden. Doubt we'll have a chance this time because our trip is so short this time. We are supposed to go up there tomorrow and leave Friday, so if we don't go on Christmas Eve we won't make it.

My mom loves to cook and is very good at it. I'm sure we will have great food at her house. We are having Christmas dinner at my brother's house. He has a tradition of ordering Omaha Steak burgers on line and grilling them on Christmas. Yum! We have burgers with all the fixin's, a variety of salads, some kind of beans, and dessert! My little family is bringing dessert this year. My son wants to make raspberry fudge. My daughter is bringing pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and I'm making cranberry stuff. You put a package of frozen cranberries in a pan with a cup of sugar, two cinnamon sticks, and a bit of water (not much), and let it simmer. Mmmm.

My brothers started a tradition of "the big game" (basketball) when they were younger and the kids were kids. Now the kids are teenagers and the uncles are late forties, so the uncles are the last chosen for the teams instead of the first! Ha. But they'll still play if they have a chance, I'm sure. Usually all nine cousins played if they could. Now I think they are down to seven or six that still want to play.

I guess it is mom's cooking that has kept our family together all these years. The cousins are really close, especially the three boys who are now 18, 17, and 17. They play video games on line even though they live in different cities. The six girls communicate mostly on Facebook. Now the oldest cousin is married with a baby, so we are four generations to gather for Christmas. When we are together all the generations often do a jigsaw puzzle and play board games, especially "Ticket to Ride." We call it "the train game."

The day after Christmas is cousin shopping day and my generation sneaks off to the movies. My mom gives each grandchild an invitation to lunch as their annual Christmas present. Normally the cousins get together and search the internet for restaurant reviews, picking out where they want to go this year. Each kid gets to pick the restaurant of his/her choice, but they like to go in groups. So, the week between Christmas and New Year's usually finds mom taking a handful of kids to lunch at least two or three different days. This year all of this will be different as most of us are leaving on the 26th. We have a lot of traditions to fit into just Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Going home is really a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it. After all, church isn't everything.
Imagine a wonderful holiday break everyone,
Mary

Going Home

Dear Friends,
I have changed. I change all the time. I suppose we all do. Entering seminary "should" have made me even more into the image of my family. I followed in the footsteps of so many who have gone before me. We should be able to converse easily with one another, using the secret language of the initiate. But, no. I embraced what they resisted. I have resisted what they embraced.

Once I had the great joy to attend a lecture given by my professor to a group of clergy that included a member of my family. This professor is well respected in his field and has published some 14 books or more. He earned his PhD forty years ago and has continued to read and study and write ever since. The man knows his stuff and I adore him. I leaped for joy, literally, when he asked me to serve as his research assistant. I have now been his RA for nearly five years. I've read most of his books, but one in particular changed my life forever. Here is the moment when my two worlds meet and the golden gate is opened for me to enter into the heart of my own family. He rises and speaks with such wisdom and grace, intelligence and plain old knowledge gained from so many years of disciplined work. We come to the first break and I seek out my family member and eagerly ask, "What did you think?" The reply, "Well, I disagreed with everything he said, but other than that it was okay, I guess." This family member then turned away from me and walked away.

Not long after that my mother was invited to do a workshop at a church in the town where I live. One of my friends is the minister of that church. He and I have coffee and conversations as often as our schedules allow. I admire him greatly and we talk easily about all things God and church. Actually, he heard about Mom's workshop from some other source, not from me, but when he found out she was my mother he was delighted. The day came for their first planning meeting and my mother introduced herself by distancing herself from me. "Nice to meet you," she said. "You need to know that I am nowhere near as liberal as my daughter." Thanks Mom.

I followed in the family footsteps but they led me away from them instead of to them. How can that be? And so I return "home" for Christmas, to attend church with loved ones who want nothing to do with me theologically. I should worship with them knowing they disapprove of me. Every other member of my family will participate in worship by singing in the band or reading scripture or serving communion or preaching. Not me. I will sit alone and observe worship as one with her nose pressed against the glass, too little and too late to enter into the joy of the family. Yet it would insult them if I were to choose to worship with people who embrace me on that holy night. Ah, is there room at the inn for me? Perhaps I should just make a pallet in the stable out back. Good enough, eh?

Sorry, no I do not think I am the Christ child. But somehow I feel an affinity for the predicament of being called for a mandatory appearance only to find there is no room for you there. And unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.
Imagine peace, hope, love, and joy with me. Would you?
Mary

Significantly Dissimilar

Dear Friends,
As part of my requirements for ordination I had to see an especially selected psychologist for a psych eval. The Regional Office (ordination authority) has an on-going relationship with this guy and they send all their candidates to him for evaluation. He uses the normal battery of tests and adds one or two at the Region's request. Mostly though, the difference between this psych eval and any other is that it is specifically designed to measure aptitude and fitness for ministry. The whole ordeal took three visits and a total of about six hours, I think. I tested for three hours, was interviewed for one hour and came back for another two hours to get my results. This, of course, also involved a lot of interaction, which was then considered for the final report.

I just pulled out the reports so I can write about it here, but what I remember without looking is this. He said my profile was "significantly dissimilar" from the cohort of successful female Protestant ministers. This cohort is determined by surveys sent to ministers who self report and also report on their colleagues. "Successful" means they are happy and satisfied in their work and their colleagues name them as successful. Something like that. He wrote in my report, "career satisfaction in congregational ministry cannot be predicted, nor can persistence in that career." Oh, and he said I "somatize distress." I think that is psycho-babble for "she is a hypochondriac." No place in the report did he mention that I reported having been diagnosed with narcolepsy, a neurological disorder, and that I am under the care of a physician. Whatever.

My Meyers-Briggs was INTP. I already knew that. What I didn't know was how severe are my introversion and intuitive proclivities. I scored: Introversion, very clear, 26 (out of 30); Intuition, very clear, 30; Thinking, clear, 16; Perceiving, clear, 23. He said that they have found that people who score that high on N, intuition, tended to have trouble noticing reality around them. They tend to "have their heads in the clouds," or be the "absent-minded professor" type. Yep. That's me.

The Strong Interest Inventory uses a 65 pt. scale. Don't ask me why. This is the "similar" or "dissimilar" test, comparing my inventory to a cohort of those who are considered satisfied and successful in that career. I scored 63 on "Editor," 61 on "Graphic Designer," 60 each on "Technical Writer" and "Translator," 59 each on "Librarian" and "Photographer," 58 on "Musician," 52 on "University Professor," etc. The score this guy was interested in was "Minister." I scored 20.

Do you think I should re-think my career choice? Yeah, technical writer/editor looks like the right fit for me, but here I am finishing a masters of divinity degree. Sometimes life is funny. One Day at a Time... Take it Easy... Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... . I seem to live by the Alanon slogans.

A couple of things make me hesitate to chuck ministry. First, my little church has stood by me and made my seminary education possible. They believe in me and think I'm a pretty swell minister. Second, I do the ministry the cohort of satisfied female Protestant ministers do not do. I allow people their pain and disappointment without promising them a rose garden if they will be baptized in my church and then tithe. Or at least tithe. Tithe means give 10% of your income to the church. It is based on the tax code of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Yeah. Tax code.

I am not personally offended by people who smell bad, have missing or black teeth, can't keep a job, spend their money inappropriately, get drunk or high, or practice promiscuous sex. Nor do I think it is my job to save them from such things. I feel no need to make them my best friends. I don't have any illusions about becoming their savior... from themselves, from hell, from an abusive marriage, or from anything else. Healing and growth are normal parts of human experience, as are sickness, dysfunction, and self-destruction. Jesus said, "Do not judge." Now that is a simple enough directive, isn't it? Yet, the cohort of successful ministers spend their lives doing just that. Excuse me, that was rude. I should not speak for a cohort I do not represent. But it sure seems to me that much of what we assume ministry is about is making people better in some sense.

I certainly hope that folks who listen to me preach and teach and who receive my ministry gifts will benefit by those experiences, but I am not responsible for seeing to it that they change. I am not there to diagnose their ills and straighten them out. And I absolutely do not think that adopting American cultural Christianity is the answer to everything from depression to alcoholism to cancer. "What would Jesus do?" Hmmm. He didn't baptize folks. He didn't accept money for healing them. He didn't tell them to meet Victorian sexual ethics. Seems to me that he ate with them, healed them, blessed them, forgave them, encouraged them with parables, and sent them on their way. Why can't we do that in the church and call it ministry?

Yeah. I'm "significantly dissimilar." God bless them. God bless me.
Imagine a good life,
Mary

Scandalous Christmas

Dear Friends,
It is time to read the nativity stories in the gospels of the New Testament, and guess what? Only two of the four are interested in his birth and they tell contradictory stories. In other words, we have no historical evidence of anything about his birth, except his mother's name was likely Mariam (same as Moses' sister), and she was unmarried at the time of his conception, but married Joseph later. It is unclear why he is not named as son of Joseph in the literature.

Adoption was common and even admirable in the ancient world. Caesar Augustus' name was Octavius and he was adopted by Julius. Julius was assassinated when Octavius was only 17 years old and he raised an army to defeat Antony and Cleopatra for the succession to the throne. One of Octavian's names was "son of god" ~ which was taken literally as Julius had been declared a god by the Roman senate. Oh, Greek uses different case endings on names, so you have Octavius in the nominative and Octavian in the accusative. In Greek the genitive would actually be "of Octavius" and the form is "tou Octaviou," but it doesn't work in English. Did you care? Of course not.

The point is that adoption was common and a sign of honor bestowed on the adopted son. In other words, Julius saw something remarkable in Octavius and brought him into his own lineage. If Joseph adopted Jesus we have no evidence of it. Infants were rarely adopted. The gospel of Matthew does say that Joseph named the child, so that is actually a claim of paternity. So the big question is, why is Jesus known as Jesus son of Mary or Jesus of Nazareth, but not Jesus bar Joseph? Honestly it makes no sense.

Place names were normally used either for the very famous (Herod of Judea) or the very common ~ slaves. Slaves didn't really have family names, or often their family name was lost as they entered slavery, so they became "John of Bethlehem" or whatever. Why didn't Jesus have a family name? We simply do not know the answer to that question. Actually, we don't even know for sure that he wasn't called Jesus bar Joseph during his life. We simply don't have literary evidence of it. The gospel writers do not call him that. I wonder why?

Matthew does the geneaolgy from Abraham through David to Joseph, but even Mattew doesn't use the name Jesus son of Joseph. Odd, huh? Also, take a look at the geneaology. He includes four women. That is really shocking in the ancient world. And the women he includes are not Sarah (Abraham's wife), or Rebecca, or Rachel and Leah (wives of Isaac and Jacob). They are scandolous women, all. The first is Tamar who slept with her father-in-law in order to produce an heir for her dead husband. The second is Rahab, the prostitute that helped the Israelite spies. The third is Ruth, a Moabite woman taken by Boaz after her husband Mahlon died, and finally "the wife of Uriah." We know her as Bathsheba, but Matthew wants to remind his hearers that she was someone else's wife when David took her. We have two foreign wives (Rahab and Ruth) and two sexually tainted wives (Tamar and Bathsheba). Then Matthew goes out of his way to spell out for us: Joseph is not the daddy!

Why do you suppose Matthew wants to begin his gospel in such a scandalous way? Just who did this savior come to save? The gospel ends with a call to "go and make disciples of the ethne." Ethne in Greek is a scandal word; it is a derogatory word for "those folks." In a world of inside group/outside group it was a bad word, a slang word, actually. My weak attempt at translating that would be, "go make students of the scum of the earth."

I find it exciting to worship a god who comes through scandalous women to live among and serve the scum, don't you? O Come, O Come Emmanuel ~ Come little one who is the flesh of God ~ God with us!
Merry Christmas,
Mary

Today

Dear Friends,
I've puzzled and puzzled and my puzzler is sore in trying to decide how to approach this blog. I give up. I'm just going to write and see what happens.

Graduation is looming large, even though it is a year and a half away. What am I going to do with my graduate degree and my empty nest? Shall I move to Michael's town, serve a church there, and see if we can make a life together? Shall I stay right here, keep my disability and my little church, keep my public housing apartment as long as I can so the kids will have "home" to come home to, and maybe write a book or start on a doctorate? Shall I start applying for a PhD program now and write a thesis to complete my master's degree? Where is the "hide under the covers" option?

Mike is working diligently toward applying to the police academy. He should be ready to apply next summer, but who knows how all the timing will work out. If he gets in, he should be finished with the basic school stuff by the time I graduate, but of course there are a couple of years of riding with someone and all that. He is building his life in his town and the whole thing assumes he will rely on his parents every single day to be there to help raise N. He is not designing a family life for the three of us. He thinks he is. Maybe he is. I don't know. I don't know how to sort through all of this. When he kisses me it is electric and I never want it to stop, but can I/should I move away from my kids to leap head first into his world where his mother is the center of all things?

I love writing and reading and doing research. A friend sent me his thesis yesterday and I need to read it soon and send him my notes. I love it when people trust me like that. This thesis is for his Doctor of Ministry degree and he apologized to me that it might not meet my standards! Ha! I haven't even finished my master's degree yet. He has the degree I'm working on, plus ten years as senior minister of a growing church. Yes, a growing church! That is very rare in our denomination!!! Still, he thinks my standards are too high for him. Wow, that blows my mind.

I wish I knew how to get into a job that pays steady and requires me to read and edit and comment all day. What degree is needed for that kind of work? Does anybody hire editors? I see that title around. How does one get that job? Would they want me? Would I be good at it?

I know about poverty, food stamps, medicaid, and housing. I know about disability, illness, weakness, and being blamed for one's own illness in our society. I know about rejection from family for not being Republican, marrying the right guy, owning a house, and loving the Lord ~ oh, and being healthy. I know what it is to lie on the floor completely helpless hoping someone I trust will come along and help me and also hoping most people will ignore me and leave me alone. I know that life is messy and hard and wonderful. I know that making meaning in certain moments shapes our lives, so I am able to do a wedding for a couple I already "know" will divorce. The wedding is a part of their story and it is valuable even if it is not the beginning of a whole life together. It may only be for a brief season of just a few months, but it is significant to them and should be blessed. Similarly I know how to do a funeral for an alcoholic man who abused his family and could not hold a job. I know how to sit with that family and help them make meaning of what it is to love someone like that, and to say good-bye with a certain sense of relief that it is finally over. I know how to listen to an immigrant who has been disrespected by the same police officer that rescued my neighbor's little girl from a very dangerous man once. I know how to appreciate that officer while not excusing his racism/classism/patriotism.

What can I do with my particular experiences, education, and gifts? All of my interests seem to point toward the abject and forgotten of society. There is no money in working with or advocating for folks like that. I have debt and I've been poor for a very long time. It would be so much easier to take a church position somewhere for a $42,000/year package and just live. But would it really be life for me? Or do I need to remain among my hardworking, heart-breaking, poor peers?

I don't know.
Thanks for reading, y'all. I do appreciate you making room for me in the blog world. I hope to post more frequently now. Life is good, if confusing and difficult at times.
Be well and happy,
Mary

Imagining a Future

Dear Friends,
I met the love of my life in August, 2007. Our first kiss was October 4 and it was wowie zowie at first sight. As I drove home from that first date I told my friend that if I believed in love at first sight, this was it. Mike is the sexiest, most gorgeous, strong, gentle, kind, and wonderful guy ever. We saw each other again and again and were soon saying the "L Word" ~ much sooner than my friends thought was prudent.

We waited a looooong time to make love the first time and it was soooooo hard to wait! Every time I saw him my heart jumped and bounced. I could barely breathe. I craved him with every inch of my skin and every sexual impulse of my body. When we finally did spend our first night together it was even better than I had imagined. That really doesn't happen in the real world, but it did for me that night.

Our sex life and our love just grew and grew. We were in love and all that goes with it. We had the stupid grins, the sighs at random moments, the little lover's secrets, and the big plans for a life together.

I knew from the start that he and his mother were close. I also knew he and his sons lived with her and her husband and their other adult son. I knew that Mike had moved in with his parents under extraordinary circumstances and that he had not lived with them since he joined the Navy to get away from them at age 17. He had only lived there three months when I met him. Surely it was only temporary. I understood. I was in love.

Mike's mom (M) escaped Cuba with her family when she was 12 and came to the US for political asylum. She is adorable and has a fierce love for her family. I liked her right away. I knew Mike was her pride and joy, so of course she'd love me. After all, he loved me and she'd want him to be happy, right? Can you say, "naive"??

She basically hates my guts. First, she is Baptist, so the very fact that I am a woman and a pastor makes me at least suspect, and more likely a straight-up Sinner! The man should be the spiritual head of the household, so how could her son be married to a minister? Then she mentioned once or twice that she and I should go to lunch sometime so we could have "girlfriend time" or something. Mike lives five hours away from me, so when I am in town our time together is precious. I just never made a priority of spending time with her alone in the early days. We finally sat down together to talk in March. She asked me to "make Mike" do some things (like quit smoking). I told her I don't know how to make another person do anything and if I did I wouldn't. I love and respect Mike as he is. I'll support him, but I won't try to change him.

I thought that was a loving and responsible thing for me to say. She thought I was uncaring and cold. She complained to Mike that I didn't spend enough time with Mike's little boy, N. Mike and I had already agreed not to invest N too much in our relationship until/unless we got engaged. N's mother has abandoned him and we didn't want to risk another mother figure abandoning him. Again, Mike's mom thought that meant I didn't care about N and would never bond with him. Clearly I was not the right one for Mike. Then she brought out the big guns and told Mike that she had prayed about it and God told her I wasn't the one. Then she had a dream about the "right one" and she wasn't quite sure who she was, but it wasn't me.

Oh, and for good measure Mike's parents "banned" me from their home. So now they hated my guts and never saw me, so there was no chance for them to get to know who I really am or to see me interact casually with N. Of course I never did anything to any of them. I was treated like a criminal, like it was dangerous for me to be in their home or something. I mean, who bans somebody from their house? I had never heard of such a thing, unless it was someone who had stolen from the house or something.

Poor Mike was living two lives; one inside the house and another outside. He had to negotiate time with me behind his parents' back because if they knew he was going out with me they would do something to sabotage it. Months went by and Mike never moved out of their house. Finally I couldn't take it any more and I broke up with him in September.

I've been meeting other men and have gone out with one new guy. I am supposed to be moving on and letting Mike go. But I'm still desperately in love with him I want him back, but nothing has changed. I don't know what to do. Somehow I've got to either imagine a way to have a life with him or imagine a way to have a life without him. Neither is working too well right now.

Be well and happy,
Mary

Resurrection in Our Time?

Dear Friends,
Today I am writing a paper on "resurrection." I struggle with wondering whether reducing it to simple platitudes and metaphors is good enough. Is resurrection "like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon"? Or like a seed giving way to a flower? Or like spring?

In my paper I am analyzing the movie, "Elizabethtown" (written and directed by Cameron Crowe, 2005) for its themes of resurrection. Have you seen it?

Our young hero, Drew (played by Orlando Bloom) prepares to kill himself after being told that the shoe he designed will cost the company he works for some $972 million. As he sits, gathering his courage to go through with the planned suicide, his cell phone rings. The ring tone is "I can make your grey skies bluer" from the song, "I Can't Get Next to You" (written by Barrett Strong and Norman J. Whitfield, performed by The Temptations, Motown Records).

Of course there is hesitation as he determines not to answer it, but finally does. It is his sister, calling to tell him their father has died and he is needed to take care of the arrangements. Of course he agrees, and the plot is off and running. So, in this film, the father's death literally "saves" the son. Interesting, huh? The film plays endlessly with the motif of life and death, death and life, purpose and purposelessness, and what is worth living for. It is a great film. I highly recommend it.

But, is it really worthy of analysis next to the letters of Paul? Paul thinks Jesus' resurrection means God is taking creation back from sin and is sanctifying and making it new. Paul thinks Jesus' death on a cross is the death of a martyr, who is then vindicated by God and exalted to heavenly status. Paul thinks Jesus' resurrection is the "first fruits" of the consummation of the story of God and human beings and all of creation. It flags the beginning of the return to paradise. It is proof that God (YHWH) is more powerful even than Rome. For Paul, Jesus' resurrection is "good news" that must be proclaimed, even at the certain cost of one's own life, most likely in the form of standard Roman execution, crucifixion.

Does anybody today have that kind of faith? That kind of zeal for God (or his/her conception of God)? We can point down through history to groups of folks who have killed in God's name. Some have killed themselves in the act of killing others, also for God. Some have committed suicide, alone or with others, in "obedience to God," or for the purpose of receiving some sort of eternal reward. But we are talking about a group of folks who proclaim, "God is Lord" in the face of the ruling power (Rome), without demanding insurgence or hunger strike or political action of any sort, but yet willing to die an unimaginably cruel and painful and humiliating death. It is beyond my ability to conceive.

You send a soldier to my house with orders that I either burn incense to Caesar or be arrested, flogged, and crucified? I'll burn the incense! And I don't mean that in a flippant or disrespectful way. In fact, I mean it with utmost respect. Who has that kind of fearlessness? That kind of trust in God?

Paul says, "if there is no resurrection from the dead, then we are of all [humans] most to be pitied." (1 Cor 15) Yeah. He isn't fooling around.

Our culture doesn't face anything remotely like that in our every day lives, for which I am truly and deeply thankful. Of course, our time does know true horror. But that brings me back to my question. Does resurrection demand a context of horror? Is "Elizabethtown" worthy of analysis in conversation with Paul?

The movie pokes at executives who take wealth too seriously. It says that corporate greed is nothing to live for and eventually it will be your un-doing. It says that love and connection and family and history and traditions are much more important than commercial success. Okay. Fine. Good. But is that worthy of a paper on resurrection? No wonder philosophers claim that we suffer a deficit of purpose. Is even that all there is?

Be well and happy,
Mary

New Friends

Dear Friends,
Welcome Matthew and Chris. I'm always quite flattered when others want to read my writing, and not just a little surprised. It is good to write a journal and share it. Somehow it draws me out of myself just a bit, so I am not soooo introverted and narcissistic. Perhaps I have a need to be a member of a tribe, working for something more than my own satisfaction or reward. Somehow the convent never appealed to me, though. Too many rules. Too little sex. I like to touch and be touched even as I like to contemplate. So, thank you both for dancing around the fire a bit with me. I enjoy both of your blogs very much.
Thanks for "following,"
Mary

My Stormy Love Affair with the Church

Dear Friends,
My father was a minister. My uncle is a minister. So are (big breath) my cousin and his wife, my brother and his ex-wife, my other brother's wife, my former father-in-law, my ex-husband, and now me. Two of my nieces who are in college now also plan to be ministers. You'd think going to seminary and becoming a minister would have brought me to the inside track of my family, but it hasn't worked out that way. I'll return to this in another post.

I grew up going to church. Duh. Along the way I developed a "personal relationship with Jesus" and even visited traditions different from ours in which people raised their hands while singing worship music. I loved that. There have been periods in my life in which I have prayed in tongues, held daily devotionals, even seen visions and felt God's specific answer to my prayers. When I was a teenager my brother called me a nerd-hippy-jock-Jesus-freak. Yep. That was me.

But growing up in a minister's family taught me something else, as well. There is a dark side to ministry and the church can be a very un-holy place, indeed. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that my dad was a sincere, hard working, smart, dedicated man who loved the Lord and his church with every fiber of his being. So, how could factions rise up from within the church he was giving his life to, and accuse him of things and try to get him fired? It happened more than once. My own youth minister sat behind me in an all-church meeting once and whispered loudly to the person next to him about how ridiculous I looked in the dress I was wearing and how glad he'd be when we were forced out and moved on. I wondered why that meeting was held in the meeting room of a building the church owned, but not in the sanctuary. I soon found out. They (some small group of people within the church) wanted to be out of sacred space to spew their venom at my father.

I don't remember what anybody said to him, or what the accusations were. They certainly were not questioning his morality. He was not accused of sexual impropriety or embezzling funds or any such thing. They were upset because he had over-hauled the youth department and the group had grown from 12 to 45. So many of the new kids came from the wrong kinds of families and the kids' parents didn't come and so it was too expensive to maintain that kind of growth. The church should be for the people who tithe. That kind of thing. They were offended because new people had positions of power and the old guard had a weakening voice. Anyway, they asked for Dad's resignation and he refused to give it, citing obligations to his wife and four children. If they were going to put his family out on the street, so be it, but he would not be complicit in that. Within three months he had secured a new position elsewhere and our family moved ~ right in the middle of my senior year in high school.

I can't tell you how many times in my life I have heard people tell me that I would be a minister some day. HELL NO! I was not interested in ever being treated like that for giving my life to something. I was very active in church as a lay person (a volunteer) and basked in the recognition I got as such a talented and dedicated young single mother, giving her life to the church when she was so sick and raising those kids on her own. Good for me. So, when the time came for me to go to seminary and to serve a church as their pastor I was very resistant. I still am six years later. I don't want it. Yet, here I am.

My little church is the great blessing of my life. They are incredibly good to me. I am very well paid for doing very little. Yet, they see value in my service. I don't know why. I really don't. I've had the privilege of doing weddings and funerals, grave side services and baptisms. I preach every Sunday, lead congregational singing, and sing solos or special music regularly. But, between you and me, I do less now than I did as a volunteer at my former church. This church is just a sleeply little church of aging folks who only have energy for church and Sunday School on Sunday mornings. I have no evening or mid-week obligations. We have no choir. We have no functional committees. We have nobody griping or complaining. We just gather, worship, and go home. And they pay me very well. So, how can I leave? Why would I?

Yet, I ask myself on a regular basis if I am even a Christian any more. And, if I'm not, am I ethically obligated to resign and leave the profession? When I talked with my professor of Pastoral Care, he was sure I was called to ministry and exhibit "gifts and graces" of ministerial service. He thinks the church and society need people like me to serve those who cannot be served by traditional ministers who spew judgmental morality and alienate those who most need acceptance by a God who's son reached out to the prostitutes and lepers.

How can I abandon those who are dis-enfranchised by the church they desperately want to embrace them? I say, if I were gay/lesbian I'd say the church can go screw itself. Who cares? But that isn't my call. There are same sex couples who long for a church where they can worship the Jesus of the gospels who called the meek and lowly the inheritors of God's blessings. Do I just abandon the church, dust off my hands, and leave those lovely people shut out?

Well, I can't tell my whole story in just a few posts, but this is a brief introduction to my ambiguity about ministry; why I stay and why I want to go.
Be well my friends,
Mary

Theological thoughts

Dear Friends,
Clergy are often asked, "How can God let bad things happen to innocent people?"

Of course we are trained in how to deal with such questions. We should prepare ourselves to listen, really listen, as we ask the person what has happened in their lives to raise this question and how do they sense God present in their lives and/or absent in their lives? Folks wrestle with the big questions and they come to their ministers to talk about them. They are asking us for hope. We are the hope-bearers. Okay, well enough.

But how about this for an answer: "What an arrogant, foolish question. Look at the first two commandments and shut up." Idolatry is either the fundamental sin in the biblical texts or at least it competes for the top spot. Commandment #1: I am YHWH your God, who brought you out from slavery. You shall have no other Gods before me. #2 You shall not make an image to worship.

The people who demand their "rights" to have the Ten Commandments displayed on public property (schools, court houses, government buildings or lawns) obviously do not read them or comprehend them. They are breaking the first two commandments when they scream their demands. The Bible is very clear on the point. Many, many issues are ambiguous at best in the biblical text, but this one is consistent. God is beyond image and anybody who says, "Look, there is God" is a fool. Fundamentalist Christians are by definition blasphemous. The attitude that "I know God. He is my personal buddy. And he is so weak that he demands of me that I defend him in American courts and force others to see the image I have made of him and to afford me the right, as a member of some so-called majority, to claim for my nation my image of God." Blasphemy! Idolatry!

Pardon me, I had a bit of a tirade there. Back to my point. Why does God allow bad things to happen? Well, first, it is a rather narrow understanding of God to assume that God is or has a consciousness that allows bad things. But, beyond that, how can we know hope if we know not despair? How can we know love if we know not grief? How can we know ecstasy if we know not abandonment? Is it fair that a child is born with a deformed heart and dies in a few minutes? No. Not at all. But fair is a value of the narcissistic. Pre-schoolers want "fair." The death of that child makes the life of all healthy children that much more valuable.

Is that justification for a moral God to condemn the one child to pain and early death? Of course not. But as we see and experience pain, loss, fear, degradation, and despair, so we are capable of experiencing love, peace, happiness, and hope. And so I am thankful for the horror I have seen, for it allows me on this day to rise to a new hope. And for the record, no I do not believe that any deity causes horror in our lives. God weeps with us when our child dies in our arms. I would not worship any conception of a loving transcendence that does not.

God/dess of resurrection, thank you for the hope that rises out of despair, the life that rises out of death. Accept my gratitude for making me finite, weak, and human. What a gracious creator you are.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Mary

Welcome

Dear Friends,
I am starting a new blog today because I want to create a new life for myself and I need to write it as I go. Life happens in imagination. For example, recently someone said to me, "wow, it must be nice to have four or five guys interested in you," or something like that. Hmm. It should be nice, shouldn't it? But it isn't. Not for me. Not in my imagination.

In my imagination it is a burden and a disappointment. I don't know what to do with these men. I'm quite sure I'm messing with all of them in ways I shouldn't, yet I mean no harm. I'm just lonely and reaching out however I can, making it up as I go along.

I want to keep a positive tone to this blog. I am hoping that the title will remind me every day that I am creating my own life in my imagination and what I imagine is being reflected back to me in all my interactions throughout the day.

So, I begin with a data dump ~ not positive at all. But I want to take a good look at what I have been thinking up for myself so I can evaluate it and make intentional changes. This life is really precious and I have so much to give. It would be a real shame to skip the work necessary to move into the great love of my life and bring fulfillment to myself and another. Remaining broken in my relationships is a poor choice. I want to make a better one.

What has been going through my mind is this:

1. I'm lonely. There is no one on this earth who understands me or really cares. Okay, I know that is not true, or not more true for me than for others. Let me try again. I have designed a life that is so fractured that nobody can know me the way I want to be known. Anyway, I'm lonely and I feel it every day. This I must face, experience, learn from, and move beyond. Loneliness is not to be feared or to be conquered, but neither is it to be wallowed in day after day after day. Time to find a positive direction.

2. I don't know how to have a relationship with a man. I don't know how to meet men responsibly. I don't know how to set good boundaries in the first emails and phone calls. I don't know how to carry myself on a first date. I don't know how to date several men at once and just leave it at dating. I don't know if I want to learn how to do that, but I do know what I am doing now is not working for me.

3. I have chosen a career path that has been the great blessing of my life and also my un-doing. There is no way I can do what I need to do with this blog without naming that career, so I'll tell you: Christian ministry. There it is. I wrote it and my stomach churned. I have such an attraction and such a revulsion to ministry that I cannot stay away and cannot get comfortable. This is a deep source of my loneliness. Oh goddess goodness graciousness, how I would love to be in relationship with a man who can understand, really understand my complicated feelings about this issue and still love me. I expect to write a good deal about my experiences in seminary, with my church, and my struggle to accept or reject my chosen path.

4. I'm sick. I've been on full time Social Security Disability for eleven years because I have narcolepsy. I don't think I'll write much about this, but it is a factor in everything else in my life. Briefly, it is a neurological condition that primarily functions as a sleep disorder. I do not have any stage 4 sleep (deep sleep). Nobody knows why or what to do about it. Therefore, I am almost always tired, sometimes profoundly exhausted. I have the kind of narcolepsy that is complicated by cataplexy. That means I experience random paralysis. The way I understand it, some portion of my body, or my whole body, just decides it is asleep. So, my leg can go out from under me. Or I can get double vision. Or I can just collapse. Or my speech might slur. On and on. I suppose the possible manifestations are nearly infinite. My most common experiences with narcolepsy are persistent fatigue, with episodes of paralysis in one or both legs, some slurred speech or difficulty forming words verbally, or whole body collapse. The whole body collapse is not total and is not completely sudden, though it happens rapidly. So! The good news is I still have my driver's license. If an episode comes on while I am driving, I have to go immediately to a safe place and rest, but I do have control of the car long enough to do that. If it gets worse as I age I could lose my license. Enough said about that.

Finally, I chose the name "Mary Poppins" for my pseudonym for this blog because I want to remember to go fly a kite and to jump into chalk drawings and ride carousels in my life. I have a tendency to take myself too seriously. I need to lighten up.

I'd like to leave this blog open, but already in this post I have given enough information about myself to be recognizable to people who know me. I mean, how many single woman pastors do you know who are in seminary and have narcolepsy? But, how can I write what I need to write if those factors are not openly discussed? So, let's try this. I'll leave it open for a while because I really think the chances are quite small that someone I know will happen upon this blog. If you do know me, please extend me the courtesy of telling me you've been here and understand that I'd prefer you keep my anonymity. Everyone else, welcome. Please leave a comment, and let's see if we can make a little community. Okay?

Imagine a good life!
Mary