RevGals Friday Five: Closet Case

Okay, it's my first chance to play Friday Five since joining RevGalBlogPals, and I want to make sure I get the chance to play before going on vacation! (Also, packing for vacation is a great way to get thinking about all the crap you usually keep in your closet and how much you actually NEED...)

Today's questions:

1. Are you a hoarder, or are you good at sorting and clearing?
Little bit of both? I try really hard to keep my closet edited, but I have those things I just can't let go of. For example, I AM going to fit back into my "skinny" jeans someday, after I'm done having kids and whatnot. They're about two sizes smaller than I am right now, but they are definitely my goal jeans, and I think they're realistic. I try to use some of FlyLady's methods to help me sort through my closet, and I love the feeling of taking a big bag to one of the Salvation Army receptacles nearby. It's just that sometimes when I sort, I have trouble saying goodbye to something that's probably been in my closet for longer than necessary.

2. What is the oddest garment you possess and why?
Hmmm...oddest...I'm going to bring my husband in on this one, because I really don't have too many odd things. I really have tried to edit out the crazy, never-gonna-wear-it odd stuff. However, he hangs onto things more than I do, including 4 insanely ugly (I would love to show pictures if I weren't in the throes of packing for the beach) Hawaiian floral shirts that he won't throw away because "his grandma gave them to him and they hold sentimental value." Seriously. If you knew my husband, you'd know that's a bunch of bunk. He actually likes them. That's the scary thing.

3. Do you have a favourite look/colour?
I admit, I have a lot of black and grey. You just can't go wrong. I'm really trying to edit my closet so that I have a "look" to some degree, and that I have some classy pieces. My goal, once I begin at my full-time call, is to purchase some nice J.Crew cashmere after I start getting larger regular paychecks (an increase from working part-time for the last 7 months or so.) I think I look pretty decent in winter, with lots of nice sweaters and good pants, but in summer my look kind of goes downhill with too many flimsy t-shirts. I want to do more pulled-together short-sleeved sweaters and shells, and nice capris or long pants, not so many jeans and t-shirts when I'm trying to be professional!

4. Thrift/ Charity shops, love them or hate them?
I don't hate them, but I don't frequent them. I have some good friends who've gotten tremendous buys, but I am not a digger, and so I often avoid them unless I'm really in the mood to hunt for something good. It would probably be worth my time to become more frequent at them, though, even for household items. My friend just found a brand-new Kitchenaid stand mixer for only $100 at our local Goodwill!

5. Money is no object, what one item would you buy?
Well, I am going to say this even though I don't even know if I'd like them...but I've heard so much about Lanvin flats that I'd have to splurge on a pair. I would hope that they'd fit my feet nicely and be like walking on clouds and all the lovely things that people say about them. (If they didn't work out, I might have to chase down a Marc Jacobs bag.)

Well, I hope I made a decent go of the Friday Five! Looking forward to playing again in two weeks -- you probably won't hear much from me until at least next Saturday, if not later in the week of July 13th.

Blessings to everyone on the 4th of July weekend!

Singer in My Soul

I think my brain is completely empty lately. Maybe it's the moving on from one place to another (though not yet, so I'm definitely in the "in between" time). Maybe it's that we leave for vacation tomorrow so I'm all twisted up with vacation-planning thinking and worries about whether or not I will forget anything (and HUGE amounts of negative brain power wasted thinking about how awful I'll look in a bathing suit this year). But anyway....

I offer up this poem/prayer by Joyce Rupp from Prayers to Sophia for nourishment both for myself and any readers this morning:

"Singer in My Soul"

Singer in my Soul!
I long for your song
in my empty heart.
Is there a place
where you can hang
your notes?
If not, whisper them,
in the thin air.

Chant little threads
of your wisdom
in the hollow spaces
of my emptiness.

Sing me the old stories
that strengthen me,
stories of your beauty,
tales of your compassion.

Enter into my day
with the tender press
of your unfailing love.

Singer in my Soul,
arouse my listless spirit
with the sweet sound
of your hidden presence,
and the gracious melody
of your continual kindness.

"There is a spirit in her that is...irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure."
~Wisdom 7:22

Impressing Myself

Well, who'da thunk it (or how do you write that, anyway?)? I actually wrote some good posts back in the day when I didn't "really" blog. I'm kind of impressing myself right now just reading them. So I think I'll refer you to them and see if you're also impressed (not really, who knows...but at least it'll give you something to do if you're bored.)

This one about a particularly awful church meeting.

This one about a quote that applies to both environmentalism and ministry.

And, this one, a rant about toy recalls back from the days when Jack, who is now a toddler, was a little bitty and referred to as "Baby J."

Happy reading!

Farewell Message

Here is the message I preached at church this morning: shorter than the normal message, but it was a good thing because I did get emotional. I realize this may not be interesting reading for everybody, but I thought I'd share anyway :)

**************************************************************************************************

This has been one of the hardest sermons for me to write, ever. I think it’s mostly because I don’t want to say goodbye. As I mentioned in the letters that I’ve written, in the newsletter and the one that was mailed to members, I am looking forward to my next endeavor, my first full-time sole pastorate with St. Peter’s Lischey’s in Spring Grove…but I would like it if I could just close my eyes and click my heels and be there without the messiness of moving and the tasks of packing up, and the especially hard task of saying goodbye.

However, I do believe there is sacredness in being intentional about everything we do in life, and that includes saying goodbye. There is closure and an important sense of the moment when we take the time to say a proper goodbye, instead of just rushing off to the next thing.

In the Gospel lesson for this morning, we have a healing within a healing. We have Jesus being approached by Jairus, one of the leaders of the synagogue, whose daughter is so ill he fears that she has died. While Jesus is on his way to Jairus’ house, another healing happens. This is the healing of the hemorrhaging woman, who we might also know in more modern language as a woman who the Gospel says has been menstruating continuously for 12 years. In the language of the temple and according to purity laws, she should probably not have been among the crowd; she certainly “shouldn’t” have touched Jesus. But she had faith and the conviction that “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” And it was so.

And Jesus knew that he had been touched—he felt a healing power go out from him and he asked who had touched him. Even in the midst of a crowd of people bumping and jostling up against him, he knew that this was a different kind of touch, one that had a different level of meaning and significance, where something had really happened, not just an unintentional nudge by someone rushing past.

It never really struck me in this passage until reading it this week that the healing of the woman happened while Jesus was on his way to do another healing. And so I’ve been thinking that we are all, like Jesus in the midst of the crowd, on our way to somewhere else. And for me as a pastor, I have to say that ministry is a bit like that at times. Ministry involves being on the way to something, whether it is a meeting, or planning worship, or making visits, and in the midst of being on the way, often something profound happens. Someone touches us, the ones who are supposedly set aside to touch others, and we are ministered to through the grace of God; or we somehow allow God and the Holy Spirit to move through us in a new and different way and have the chance to minister to someone who maybe, in all honesty, we hadn’t really planned on ministering to that day.

So much of what has happened here at St. John’s during the more than two and a half years since I began has been intentional, and planned, and so much has been of this other, more unexpected variety, where I’ve been touched when I thought I was on my way to somewhere else.

I learned about how much ministry could be done through the administration of the church; when I was working in the office I had the chance to get to know members of the congregation more deeply and with more regularity than I may have if I was only part-time as the assistant pastor for this whole time.

I learned how friendly and caring the congregation of St. John’s is—you not only offer up the serve, you do follow through. My first experience was coming here as a visitor when Pastor David was giving me more information about the Assistant Pastor position. He invited me to a Sunday service, but failed to let me know that it was Red, White, & Blue Sunday; you may have heard me tell this before…so I think I was wearing pink, and Don was wearing green, and of course we stuck out like visitors…but we probably would have anyway! Everyone was so friendly to us; helping us with the hymnals, just greeting us because we were unfamiliar faces. It was really impressive because that summer we had been visiting some other churches and did NOT experience that level of friendliness in many of the congregations we visited.

And the follow-through came quite quickly after that; I started working here when I was just about eight weeks from giving birth to Jack, and I remember the outpouring of cards that flowed after he was born.

Before Irene was born this past winter, I was rearranging rooms in our house and moved a box of those cards that were sent after Jack’s birth, and I know that when the cards initially arrived, they were signed with names of people I didn’t know very well yet, but when I read them through this winter, I knew every single person, and I knew of the love that you had shared with me and my family even when you barely knew us.

And certainly when Irene was born; the care and compassion given to us leading us to her birth and following was just tremendous, and made us feel like a real part of the family.

I think one of the hardest things about leaving will be moving our children to a new church from one where they have been so well-cared for. I hope that it is part of the culture at St. Peter’s Lischey’s to care for them as well as all the children here are, and I trust that it will be true.

On the Saturday prior to my trial sermon, when Lischey’s had an open house for the members to meet me and my family, we had told Jack that we were going to be spending the day at “mommy’s new church” (keeping our fingers crossed that we weren’t being too presumptuous.) One of the things he said that day that I will never forget was, “Is Jesus going to be there?” Of course, the reason that he asked if Jesus was going to be at church is because he knows that Jesus is here at this church. This is the place where he has learned about Jesus; we haven’t really delved into the life and times of Jesus in lessons yet at home (though we did touch on the resurrection the other day, not sure how well that went over…), so I know that he got it from Sunday school and nursery time here at St. John’s.

On the Sunday prior to my trial sermon, where we all got quite emotional, one of the things that brought me to tears was moving Jack and Irene away from this, their very first nest as newborn Christians, where they have been loved and held and taught. And I am so very grateful to everyone for that. You know the way to a mother is through her children, and this congregation will forever have a special place in my heart not only because of the love you have shown me but because of that very special love you have shown my little ones.

You have healed my heart and ministered to me in ways that I can’t even explain, and I’m going to keep this message short because by now I’m probably emotional, and we’ve chosen the hymn to give the essence of the Gospel lesson since I’m not really telling the whole story in sermon today.

As we’ve been on our way together, I trust that we have both grown and stretched, that we have nurtured each other and taught each other some lessons that we’ve all needed along the way. Now our paths will diverge, but will not separate completely. The beauty of the United Church of Christ, and York County, means that we will stay connected, collegially and spiritually.

I wish all of you amazing, manifold blessings in your lives and on your journeys with Christ. And I thank you many, many times over for the experience of ministry that you have given me here. Thanks be to God. Amen.

read it

This is an absolutely beautiful poem on death and grief and faith.

You should go read it. Right now. Please!

It's Not About the Boxes

I've got myself all in a tangle right now. I am irritated because I know that I had quite a few nice boxes for packing things -- you know the copier paper boxes that are nice and solid and have lids? Well, as I looked for them and couldn't find them, I realized that apparently I gave them to my dad (as if he needs anymore boxes. If you saw his house, you would appreciate this.)

As I'm sitting here stewing, I'm realizing more and more, it's not about the boxes. It's about the fact that I need to use the boxes to pack up my office at the church where I'm currently working to get ready to move to a new position at a new church. This is an exciting transition -- but it IS a transition, and I'm no good at them. It's a bittersweet move this time anyway; it's not like I'm so miserable where I am that I just can't wait to get out of there. It's a pretty good gig, I'm just moving on to a new adventure where I know God has led me. Yet, I still have to pack first.

It's not so bad, I have about four shelves of books, some files--probably 90% of which I won't be bringing unless they provide a template for something I'll be doing in the new place. So, over the next two weeks I just need to weed through everything and take what's mine, and leave the rest. Pitch some, pack some, store some away, leave the rest and say to the church, all of this stuff is still yours, it's not mine. I don't have to find a home for every errant scrap of fabric that has found its way into my office; I don't have to personally place every single thing in its perfect home, especially if it was in my space when I got there. I just need to pack up what I own and move on. And I think that's getting to me. I thought it was all good, but between this grouching over the boxes and the fact that I haven't a clue what I want to say to the people this Sunday when I preach (why am I preaching my last Sunday? why did I agree to this?), I know that it's getting to me. It's not about the boxes.

Choices and Being Conscious

This is just a quick little jotting on an observation I made today (at least I think I made this observation; I'm still fleshing it out in my head.)

There's something about the awareness that what you do is a CHOICE that leads to a higher consciousness about your life. I know I'm on the verge of a discovery with this one, it's just on the tip of my mind, like when a word is on the tip of your tongue.

I've always been attracted to people (not romantically, but in that I-want-to-be-around-you-all-the-time-and-learn-from-you sort of way) who own their choices and who don't whine about being put-upon (even when I'm whining TO them) and who stop when they've had enough and don't overextend themselves. (And when they do overextend themselves, they don't act like martyrs, but instead know that they were the ones who made the choice to overextend themselves, even if it didn't feel like it at the moment.)

Add that attraction and impression of others to what I'm learning about parenting, where offering choices to a very strong-willed toddler is often the only way to make peace in any given situation, and I'm learning how strong the power of choice is.

The trick is, we have to acknowledge and own that WE CHOOSE. I'm reminded of the Sex and the City episode where Charlotte yells, "I choose my choice! I choose my choice!"

I think the thing that is unfortunate (and, to be honest, irritating to me -- which I know also means something) about people who don't acknowledge that their own choices have contributed to their life situation is that they're just going through life so unconscious of what is happening to them. I probably see a decent amount of myself in them, which is the cause for my irritation, and it's also because of my constant striving to be conscious, which of course is not foolproof.

So, the bottom line to this long and winding post...I'm committing to watching myself make the choices I make, and to take ownership for those choices; I think this will lead to even greater consciousness in my life and awareness of the things that I do, and the knowledge that the choices I've made have brought me to where I am today.

If you feel like, let me know what you think, and if I'm on the right track or not!

Durnit.

Ugh, I am such a bad blogger! The "relaunch" of my blog was supposed to occur on Mother's Day, and tomorrow will be Father's Day...I've posted all of TWO TIMES since then! If there are any dear readers out there, I promise I will try to post more often, I really really will!