Getting Out

This weekend my very first friend came to visit (met in a playpen, longer ago than I should mention). The Boy had a sleepover with his Nonie, Aunt, Uncle and Cousins, and me and my posse went to see Thousands of One. It was so great to be out in the world dancing. Dancing is a sacrament you know...

Welcome to Spring!

My husband and Son picked me up at work on the Equinox, and exclaimed as I opened the car door letting in a gust of cold air and a flurry of giant snow flakes "Welcome to Spring!" The following day the meteorologist called for sleet, freezing rain, hail, snow flurries and snow showers. We had them all. What is it called when snow is shaped like hail, but still fluffy and white, rather than hard and icy? I don't know either.

Yesterday the sun shone all day. I took a phone call on the back steps and discovered that my back yard has crocuses in full bloom on the sunny side, and the last of the melting snow on the shady side. Little green shoots of courageous bulbs are coming up all over the neighborhood. This morning the sun is shining again. The thermometer says 25 degrees.

Welcome to Spring!

Sunshine

The sun came out again this morning! I think that's twice this week!

I was driving up Rt. 13 and the stands of bare trees were coated with ice. The ground was white with snow, melted and re-frozen. Then I turned East and the low morning sun was shining through the top branches, shining through the ice like they were all diamond glazed. I gasped with awe. It was a perfect moment, and I tried to some how capture it as I zoomed east on the two lane highway. I was yearning for my camera, but knew this moment was too amazing to get on film. I imagined myself pulled off beside the side of the road walking up and down the shoulder trying to get the angle just right, trying to capture the vastness and at the same time each shining branch. I came to a red light, where the electrical wires, also glazed in ice melting in the bright sun. Rods of ice 5 feet long fell 20 feet and shattered on the pavement. The combination of brilliant sun and the night's accumulation of ice had met for one awesome moment and that brilliance would burn away before the morning was over.

My Dentist

I went to a dentist today, for the first time since we moved. It just wasn't right. Sure they were friendly, and the office was decorated in cheerful colors, but my California Dentist did everything differently. She did all the work herself, without the aide of hygienists. She used old-style films instead of digital x-rays. She used the manual scrapey thing instead of the new sandblasters they developed while I was under her care. She was gentle and kind. She cleaned my teeth while I was pregnant, and gave my son his first ride up and down in the dental chair when he only had 8 teeth. Because of her, he loves going to the dentist. She recently sold her practice to spend more time with her young children, so even if I was still in California, I would have a new dentist now. But in the immortal words of Joni Mitchell "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." I miss you Dr. W. You were a great dentist.

Winter Rain

Today I saw a kind of freezing rain I've never seen before. It wasn't hail, it wasn't snow, but there was a layer of it almost a centimeter thick on the ground. Weird.

Rain
Freezing rain
Snow
back to Rain

All in one day,

It's night now and the rain is dripping noisily outside.

Self Tending

In a recent article about personal practice a colleague of mine referenced “that small clearing deep inside myself, which is self tending...”

This phrase has really taken root over the days since it entered my consciousness. "Self-tending" describes something about the "self" we seek in meditation that I had never articulated before. It describes what I think of as the most amazing part of being "grown up" -- the knowledge that there is a part of myself which does not need healing and soothing to come from outside; it is self-tending. It calls to mind the word "autopoesis" which means we are also self-creating. This is one of the defining factors of a living system, that it be self-sustaining. Of course we are not a closed system; we inhale and exhale, but we are in some fundamental way self-tending.

The larger systems I am part of push and pull. What they ask from me sometimes takes me away from my self. But if I can just remember to return to my self when I am confused or depleted, I need only look for that little gardener inside who is already restoring and creating the living system that is my self.

Different Dream

The preacher said this morning that when he was a child in fundamentalist Sunday School he dreamed of a non-dogmatic religious education, one where you could ask questions and doubt.

I grew up in UU Sunday School, and wanted someone to tell me it was okay to believe in something. As a child beset from a very young age by anxiety about non-being, I needed something to have faith in. It is true that when I visited more conservative churches I was glad to know I didn't have to fit into a dogmatic box, but freedom from dogma is not enough for me. What I needed as a small child, and what I want today is simply something to get me through the nights when one feels adrift in an infinite universe, and your non-being sits like a chaperon in a dark corner of your bedroom making the "why" of life seem urgent and ever-present.

As Nancy Shaffer writes in her poem "A Theology Adequate for Night"

"But-- this may work in the night:
Something that breathes with us, as others
sleep, something that breathes also
those sleeping, so no one is alone.
Something that is the beginning of love,
and also each part of how love is completed,
Something so large, wherever we are,
we are not separate; which teachers again
the way to start over.

Night is the test: when grief lies uncovered,
and longing shows clear; when nothing we do
can hasten earth's turning or delay it.

This may be adequate for the night;
this holding; something that steadfastly
breaths us, which we are also learning to breathe."

That is my dream for religious education: to learn again and again that there is something steadfast in the universe, to learn how to remember it in the dark of the night, and to breathe.

Practice what you Preach

Every winter I say something like this from the pulpit:

"After the busy harvesting and preparations of the fall, winter can be a time to quiet down and look inside, to reconnect with family and self."

It's hard to practice what you preach.

I am the kind of person who is in constant motion. I get confused when I am sitting still. But this past week or two I have slowed so far down that I don't even HAVE a to do list. I have yarn ready for a new sweater for Dog, and It just sits there next to me while my partner and I watch the Firefly marathon on Tivo.

The downside is the angst, and the sense of being adrift.

The upside is that I am many-fold more patient than I have been since seminary. I sat with my niece this morning on our matching child-sized chairs and had an extended exploration of grapefruit and its many mysteries. My son has been giving me lessons in "how to speak Super Mario." I'm a slow student.

I haven't made any progress on balancing my checkbook, on the dog sweater, or on saving the world. In the mean time I'm going to listen to my own sermons and believe that season is coming in its turn.

Stirring things up

Each time we unpack a stack of boxes, things feel weird for a while. It stirs up dust, that's for sure. It stirs up memories. But it must be stirring up whole eco-systems of microbes as well. Here are communities of microscopic fungi and bacteria ripped apart and relocated. If it takes we who have orchestrated the move and chosen the location of each object a while to get used to seeing that picture there, to get used to stepping around the corner to look in the mirror, to remember which drawer has the wooden spoons and which cabinet the light bulbs, imagine the change going on at a level so small we can't even see. It's more than dust we disturb in the unpacking process, and a multi-layered chaos comes over the house. The act of running a vacuum over the floor, smoothing a cloth over surfaces feels something like soothing an agitated person. Settling happens to all that was stirred up, a new equilibrium is reached, and we rest into a new wholeness.

Now What?

My sister and her family came to visit this weekend. At some level I have been getting ready for this visit since we first rolled into town with our U-haul. I've been working since then on creating a home that was welcoming, safe for toddlers, and could sleep 7. And they, at the same time, have been trying to imagine a way to take 2 very young children on a very long car trip. Well, with a little creativity required for sleeping arrangements, we did it. The kids immediately felt at home on our giant puffy sofa, our dog magically did not bark once, resulting in this remarkable statement from our dog-phobic niece "I want a quiet dog like Dog" It was a proud moment for all of us. The adults stayed up too late to give us a glimpse of the old days before we had kids, and drank much coffee in the mornings. As the weekend came to a close, and we realized that we were only going to eat about a third of the food we had assembled, and I began to imagine all the fun things we could do "next time." I realized that if we really are able to stay in this house for 12 years as we hope, Ithaca could become a place that my niece and nephew remember and connect with and look forward to visiting: the place with the puffy couch, and the quiet dog, and the great library, and our family. I started to visualize fun things they could do when they are in Elementary school, and where they will sleep when they are teens.

But when their car pulled away from our curb, and we went back into the house, the quiet was unsettling. Now that we have had Sister's Family up to visit, and the moms and dads. Now that we have found a church, and a yoga studio and a library. Now that we have really warm gloves and have a plan for a winter storm, what comes next? With 11.5 years to go, (or the rest of our lives if we put down really strong roots) What now?

Casework

My brother-in-law asked me the other day whether I liked my current job, or if I was still looking for a new one. I actually stopped checking job postings at the prestigious private college in town when I started this new job, and haven't updated my resume since. I like the people, and the work suits me. I also like the 35 hour week, which is a huge change from the 60-80 hours people expect from each other in Silicon Valley. (I used to get nervous defending the 40 hour work week in sermons...)

But some days the work boroughs into my heart. Each week I inspect at least a dozen homes. We are just looking for basic health and safety things. Doors need to lock. No exposed wiring or jagged pieces of glass. For the first month or two I was able to keep my equilibrium no matter what I saw, but after a couple of really bad days, seeing and smelling the filth of a unit vacated by the tenant, watching a toddler walk through piles of garbage as I conversed with the belligerent mother, it started to slip past my defenses. I know I'm supposed to maintain a professional demeanor here, but yuck! I really feel for the landlord that's going to have to clean out the smelly brown water in the sink, and the dirty litter box that's been sitting for who knows how long among piles and piles of abandoned possessions. I wonder what it's like to grow up in a home where your parents can't even get motivated to pick the food up off the floor when a housing inspector is coming. I went home that night and scrubbed the stove until it shone.

Now I want to be clear; most of the homes I see are fine. More often than the images I described above, we see homes that pass inspection easily. I am often impressed by people's meticulous house keeping, by the knitters and quilters who are glad for a chance to show off their work. You sometimes can feel a home that is full of love even when everyone who lives there is away at work or school. But some homes are old enough, or were built of flimsy materials to begin with, that the drafts and the mildew and the overwhelming sense of decay is an inevitable byproduct of poverty. No mater how conscientious a housekeeper you are, the windowsills are going to rot if you have to pin a blanket over the windows to keep your home warm. Who knew when we left California that in my new life I would be witnessing these most private corners of people's lives.

Aging Spurt

I watch my son go through another growth spurt, and have decided I may be going through an aging spurt. I can't believe how much I seem to have aged since we made this move to NY.

It might be the cold, it might be the challenges to my immune system from a whole new set of threats. A wise woman at my CA congregation said that when she worked as a nurse in a hospital, she noticed that people who were functioning fine in their regular lives suddenly took a dive when they came to the hospital. It just takes less energy to do familiar things in familiar places. If you wake in the morning and aren't quite sure where your clothes are, it just takes more energy to make it through your day.

Or maybe that's not it either. Maybe I just haven't focused on the progress of my physical form since I was last paying close attention. That would be around the time my son was born, and my physical form was massively transformed as it grew and shrank and responded to new demands. I look at the pictures from 2002, when I finally looked not-pregnant again, and realize that's how I think of myself. But time keeps it's inertial pressure on the body. I assume it should be consistent and steady, but why shouldn't it happen in spurts like it does for my son? It's just harder to track when I can't mark the changes on the colorful growth chart hanging in the crooked hallway by our bathroom door.

Recycle

We had 2 big unpacking weekends, 20 boxes the first weekend, 12 this past weekend. We knew before we opened the first of this abiding pile of boxes that there was not room for it all. I was not sure what to expect. Could I really have 32 boxes of Knick Knacks? This was my fear. I went in with a very "take no prisoners" attitude. If I couldn't find a spot for it, it was going to goodwill. By the end of the weekend I had 3 boxes of books and 4 boxes of miscellaneous stuff waiting by the front door for a new home.

But these books were ones that had already been through 3 earlier purges. I wanted them to have a good home. I started by bringing the books to a local minister's gathering. I carried each of the 3 boxes up the church steps to the meeting. My colleagues carefully selected a book or 2, then I carried all 3 boxes back out to the car. Next stop, the used book sellers. Once again he thoughtfully looked at each book while I browsed the children's section, and at the end he pulled out about 8 books, and paid me $14 cash. Back to the car with the 3 boxes of books. Finally I headed to the Salvation Army, the last stop on my recycling journey. I pulled out the 4 boxes of stuff and the 3 boxes of books.

"We only take novels, cookbooks and children's books." Says the lady who staffs the donations dock.

I said "well pull out what you don't want."

"That's your job" she said.

So back in the car went all the assorted theology and cultural studies books. I brought them in to the office, and the crew in housing took all but 3. One I kept for myself- I figured it was destiny, and the others went back in the box. Turns out "Friends of the Library" will take them all. The last 2 books started our "friends of the library" box on the mud porch, next to the good-condition clothing that goes to younger cousins.

That night we finally got a bite for the very last of the furniture we've had listed on the Craig's List since the fall. I found homes for the printer and scanner that Salvation Army won't take, brought a 3rd load of re-usable moving boxes to co-workers, and the next day made a run to the Tompkins County Recycling center with a car load full to bursting of packing paper and boxes so big no one wanted them. Phew. Our porch looks like a porch again, and that double-wide hallway is now the playroom instead of a storage locker.

I won't bore you with the story of the second weekend of unpacking, because I think you can imagine. Let's just say there are 2 boxes of really great books in the cafeteria right now that I'm taking to Friends of the Library after work and leave it at that. William McDonough talks about trying to recycle as high on the food chain as possible- re-using boxes instead of making them into pulp to make newspaper or something. He is one of many who encourage us to be responsible for the ultimate impact of the waste our consumption creates. Moreover, I hate waste, and want to see the belongings I am responsible for (many of which are in great shape and which I have some affection for) continue to be useful and even loved. I didn't expect it to be such a big job though. Being responsible for things when they leave our home makes me much more wary about what I bring into my home. As my old friend King Me used to say "open space is something we give away without thinking, we don’t treat it as precious, but it is as valuable as the things we could put in that space.

I think I'll skip the used book sale this year...

Old Friends

Before we left California I had nominated myself "staff member most likely to be able to put her hands on a document." That was back when I had a 4 drawer lateral file cabinet at work and a smaller 2 drawer system at home. But the process of moving required a great winnowing of documents to stay, to put in storage, to recycle. And one little plastic file bin with a handle to accompany us on the trip. When we and our belongings arrived in New York, any given file might be in boxes marked only "Study 15" and come with pencils and sacred art, or might be in a banker's box marked "Worship 2002-2004". The process of gathering my papers and books into one cohesive system in my home office has taken quite some time. But tonight I swiveled the new office chair my husband assembled (the frustration of which took at least a year off his life) I pulled out the smooth wooden handle of the new file cabinet he assembled (we think it took about 5 years off his life...) to a hanging folder filled with songs for congregational worship, right where I knew it would be. It was a beautiful moment.

Now to my right, is a shelf at rolling-chair arm-level filled with the well thumbed books I turn to first when crafting worship. Above and below are bibles and other sacred texts, volumes on religion, theology, congregational life and scriptural interpretation. Downstairs is all my favorite fiction, and references on knitting, cooking, and living in Central New York. How can I explain the joy of being reunited with these books, like having old friends around me again.

Green Today

This morning I was watching the 3 soundless televisions that hang over the lifecycles at the gym. A big logo came on that said "Today goes Green" implying, I suppose, that the Today show has now made environmental sustainability a priority.

Cut to Al partying with other staffers in the back of a huge sedan holding a cardboard beverage tray with 4 Dunkin Donuts coffee cups with plastic lids. The juxtaposition was priceless.

More God

For weeks I have been pondering the why of church. What would compel folks to commit their Sunday mornings to gather in worship? It's sure not peer pressure in this day and age. What is it that I want when I go week after week?

Then, this week I remembered. I want to be in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I want to be reminded that our journey is at its core a spiritual one. I want to sing praise and gratitude to God. With the codicil that I know in my own heart that the God I am grateful to is the one-ness of all that is. It is the spirit of life moving through all things. It is mystery.

Unfortunately I belong to a religious tradition where it is not really considered polite to mention God in church. I'm tempted to go worship with other communities in my neighborhood, but it's hard to do that while trying to provide a stable consistent religious education to my son. I begin to understand the members of the congregation I used to serve who attended worship themselves on Sunday mornings, after dropping their own children off at Hebrew School.

A Case of the Whys.

I have come down with a bad case of the Whys. As bad as a 4 year old gets them. I am very susceptible to this bug. I get it a lot. And I get it pretty bad too. Generally people find this reasonable behavior for a minister. They feel like I'm "asking interesting questions" and "getting people to think about things." Little do they know that I am genuinely confused. It's like misplacing your keys, which I also do a lot. "I know I put that reason for being around here somewhere...I just had it!" "Honey, do you remember why I go to church?"

I do actually write myself little notes for when I forget. I have a whole page devoted to "what to do when things seem really frantic in the autumn" I sneak them into liturgy like an preset alarm in my calendar. "It's Winter Solstice, time to prepare for the Dark Night of the Soul. Don't forget the return of Sun and Warmth."

Unfortunately, sometimes the answers change. For example, I used to practice yoga because it helped me reconnect with myself , and made me feel like a Power Ranger. Now that my joints are achy with cold, and my wrist injury prevents me from doing all those cool arm balances I worked so hard on for 3 years, I sure don't feel like a Power Ranger. I may be reconnecting with myself, but my self is saying "Why do you keep going to yoga? It's winter and we should be in bed."

Often this syndrome is cured by wrapping my arms around someone I love. Pardon me while I go give that a try.

Johnny Pewsitter

How strange it has been to sit in the congregations on Sunday mornings. It's not just that I'm used to being up front -- it's also that for me being in church on Sunday morning has been primarilly about community.

I attended the same church from the time I was dedicated until after I left for college. I was recognizable to many adults as the child of my mother and father, who were church musicians. Being at church was about the familiar, about knowing and being known. Before too long I was a church musician myself, and a leader in the youth group. During my high school years I HAD to be at church each Sunday to sell donuts after the service.

For most of my adult life I have been on staff at one church or another. Sunday morning was a time when there were so many people you wanted and needed to talk to, that it was a bit of an adrenaline rush. Sunday morning was a time when you were part of a team working to create and facilitate. On Sunday mornings I was sometimes envious of the parents and families who could talk and play together, who went out for lunch after the service. Now I understand how hard they worked to create that community for themselves.

In my new congregation, my son and I slip in the back as service is beginning. I feel like it's been a big day if I can figure out where to put my snow boots and where my nametag is. Attending regularly on the Sundays that we are in town and I don't have to preach at another congregation feels like a major commitment. I don't serve on a committee. I'm not working on any church projects.

I understand now that for the majority of the people sitting in pews on Sunday morning, the experience of listening to sermons and singing hymns is the totality of their relationship to church. They may not have a sense of connection to the other individuals in the pews, and they certainly don't have any business to conduct. When I was in seminary, the theory of church life was very community centered. This probably developed in response to a cultural articulation in the nation at large that people longed to participate in community, and felt it was something lacking in contemporary life. Now I understand that the congregation may be a primary community for those who are in leadership, for those who have attended for many years and been lucky enough to forge that connection, but for Johnny Pewsitter that one hour worship on Sunday morning is equal to church. The relevance, power and warmth of that service is primary. (I remember with some chagrin the times when I failed to protect that time from the creep of church polity and business.)

My son seems likewise adrift in his new church home. Being a PK (Preacher's Kid), he was practically a celebrity in the congregation I served since before he was born. He spent hours every week playing in the nursery or on the playground while I took care of church business. He was so comfortable in worship that he often joined in leading stories, or helping facilitate some aspect of the service, like passing out shaker eggs for a song. Church was a place where you knew people and they knew you. Church was a fun, safe, familiar place that stayed the same even when you changed schools or advanced to a new class. His church friends were the ones he dreamed of when the dream called for a companion. When we left, the artists there made him a quilt that now hangs on his bedroom wall. His new congregation cannot yet offer him anything to compare.

I have to reach deep to answer his question: "Why do we have to go to church?" Each Sunday I set the alarm clock and brave the cold I ask the same question. If you are not going to church because it's your job and your calling, why is it that we do this thing together each week?

Cold Bones

Part of the reason for our move was to try something new, to experience a different pace of life. We knew intellectually that any change takes energy, and proposes challenges, and we knew that we wouldn't really understand what that felt like until we were in it.

Now we are in it. The cold, the dark, the snow really do change the daily-ness of life. Living in Ithaca really is different: the cold, the different quality of light, the different texture of the air. I believe the days are even shorter because we are further north. The hills are different. The trees are different. The local economy is slower. On first glimpse the differences seem negligable, but as we move through the cycle of the year, the feeling tone of my days, the colors of my dreams have changed.

The cold and dark of winter here, the layers of snow on our neighborhood have drawn us indoors. Even leaving the house to buy groceries seems counter-intuitive. It has made us more introverted and home-centered. I am becoming a little hobbit, or other hole-dwelling archetype.

Cold Wimp

I finally got a set of gear together to get me through those morning runs. Some nice fleecy warm pants, gloves, ear-warmer, thermal top and an old IU sweatshirt. I had even warmer pants in reserve. Then winter turned it up a notch. I looked out at the 4" of snow coating the un-shoveled sidewalks, and the snowflakes swirling in the wind. I decided to join a gym.

A plan for the cold

I finally got my special cold-weather running pants and was so excited that finally I my legs would be warm on my early-morning run this winter. No luck- still cold! And it's only November! How do people who live in cold places run all winter?

Perhaps I should take my example from the squirrels; double my body weight and get a fur coat...

Itinerant Preacher

Today I preached my first itinerant gig in many years. It went well, the congregation was very warm, but it still felt weird. It felt weird just to leave afterwards and ride off into the distance. Preaching is such a relational act, and I put so much of myself into it, that it's diconcerting to preach out of context, not to hear the response to your part of the dialog.

My son came with me because he wanted to help with our children's lesson "Tacky the Penguin" which we had done together at our old church. He was clearly thinking about the old church on the long ride out into the countryside, because he mentioned missing his Sunday school teacher, and missing his close friend who was there at church with him almost every week, and often played with him while their moms were in a committee meeting together. After we arrived at the church gave ourselves a tour and introduced ourselves to some of the children, I think my son felt the strangeness too. The form of UU worship is so familiar, and we know "Tacky" by heart, but everyone around us was new to us, and perhaps he felt like I did; somewhat like an odd penguin in a Hawaiian shirt and purple bow tie.

I've been asked back to preach later in the fall. I'm really glad. It will feel good to be in dialog with a congregation again, even if they find a permanent minister to fill their pulpit right away . It's a small UU world up here, and I hope to be here for at least a decade or so. It will be good to get to know the neighbors.

Work!

I got a job! A real job, with cubicles and office hours and health insurance and everything. It's one of those 9-5 jobs I've heard so much about, except it's really 9-4:30. The position is "Housing Choice Voucher Caseworker." It has something to do with helping people get into section 8 housing. We'll know more September 10. And just in case I started to miss leading worship, I'll be filling the pulpit of a small congregation about an hour out of town at the end of September. And they even have a children's message in their liturgy!

I still don't know what my ministry will look like 10 years from now, but I have health insurance, a pulpit, and work that helps people. It's a good start.

Lammas

Last week as it was getting on towards Lammas, I hopefully went online in search of folks to celebrate with in my new town. Turns out the Pagans in Ithaca have thought this through and have a web page for folks like me. I got myself signed up for the yahoo list, and sure enough in came an open invitation to celebrate Lammas with a coven out in Freeville. By coincidence, last week I had a fresh bought of existential angst, and in trying to remember how I usually deal with my angst, realized I hadn't been to church since my ministry partner and I led that big multi-media intergenerational service back in June. I was glad to see that this Lammas ritual was open to children, because I hate leaving my son to go worship. If I'm going to be apart from my son on an evening or weekend, it should involve margaritas and live music. I want to go to rituals where a mom can be a mom.

My son was in kind of a bad mood come Sunday, so I packed up all his favorite snacks and CDs for our drive into the country. "I'm not going to know anyone" he worried. "Me either" I said, "We will have to make each other brave." He brought teddy along for extra courage.

We were doing great until the ritual actually started. While we were calling the directions and casting the circle Nick starts to say loudly "This is SO boring" and many variations thereof. For a moment I was angry. It reminded me of all those times that I've been leading worship, and it's my son who doesn't seem to know how to act during a service. Then it hit me. How would he know? Every time he's been to a service I've been leading it. He's never had his mom sit next to him explaining what on earth is going on, or even why we need to be quiet. At that last service in June, Nick walked right up to the pulpit while I was preachifying, and tugged on my robe to ask if he could go back to the childcare room. I said afterward that when I'm "telling a story" he needs to stay in his seat and not come talk to me. He said "Really? Why?"

So it was time for a new paradigm for experiencing worship together. I put aside our 2 lawn chairs, and spread out a blanket on the ground. We snuggled in close together, and very quietly I explained some of what was happening. Finally it was time to make corn dollys to burn. Quiet time was over and now we could really talk about stuff. They provided straw and yarn and little wooden stars. It was the stars that got his attention. He REALLY didn't want to burn it though. I figured there were enough for us to have 2, one to keep and one to burn. We talked about wishes, and gratitude, and leaving things behind. I won't tell you want all we said, because I DO try to give him a little privacy. He asked me to put his dolly on the fire (star tucked inside) and I said what he had told me to say. I realized that often as a parent and educator I try to encourage young children to wish for noble things, the kinds of mature things that adults wish for. Again I had an inner shift. I should honor the things that ARE most important to him right now in his own image of his life. Like Playstation for one. When I mention Playstation, he gets a real picture of what gratitude is. It has been a solace and a joy to him all summer. Ritual is a space where you get to feel your actual feelings. If you are bored or angry, this is a time when you can be honest about that. When it's my turn I can imbue my dolly with lofty adult things, including my own adult anger.

After the ritual I walked him around to all the altars, and we tried to guess which one was which. I was surprised to find that Water is still the West out here (I figured it was a Bay Area/ Pacific Ocean thing.) And then he was ready to GO I mean GO. We went to meet the family for Sunday Night BBQ at a local bar, and he was MOST glad to see them. But he held onto that star. And all on his own, he had an idea that he could put glitter on his star and use it as a wishing star to keep forever. So of course we did (I got one too once he had this great idea) And when we woke Monday morning, we both felt lighter. And Nick was talking about his star, and about wishing for things, and letting things go that you don't want anymore.

Which all goes to show: almost every ritual has a couple of boring parts, but sometimes they work their magic anyway.

Work

The other day our mortgage broker asked me "occupation?"
I wasn't sure what to tell her.
Unemployed Minister?
Home Maker?
Mother and Wife?
I went with Minister.
It turned up on my final application as "Unemployed."

Now I do believe that once you've been ordained into the ministry, you are a minister as long as you live. I believe there are as many kinds of ministrys as there are ministers. But now that my vacation has ended (and with it my paychecks) I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing when I get up in the morning.

I'm starting to realize how rushed I was in my minister-mom role back in Silicon Valley, because now when I take the time to cook food from scratch, keep the house tidy, drive my son to swim lessons or camp, and get everything in order for the purchase of our new home, that seems to fill up a day pretty well. But still, if I don't get a couple of hours of I-am-working-at-the-computer-on-important-things time in the morning, I start to question my reason for being. Sometimes I think that my work is applying-for-a-job, but you can only send out so many resumes each day. Finally I called up the Tompkins County Religious Task Force for a Living Wage to see what the local justice-loving clergy were up to. I met with them last week. They are very cool.

But more to the point, I remember once a man in my dream group shared a dream in which he lost his wallet. The group suggested that if it were our dream, it might be about how we often confuse our work with our identity. Losing the wallet was a reminder that "I am not my job. I am not my work." When I was in seminary I remember being introduced to the Buddhist concept of "being" rather than "doing". It all seemed so obvious then. Who would value doing over being? Who would confuse their work with their identity? Well, me, it turns out. Wouldn't it be ironic if that turned out to be my work right now?

Counting Your Chickens

Sometimes, folk-tale lessons aside, it is very hard not to count your chickens. Right now we don't own a house. We are under contract to own a house soon, but really, it's not our house. No one seems to be mowing the lawn over there, but it's not actually our house. We should get our son registered for school, but we won't actually own a house in that school district until the day before school starts. My partner needs a new driver's license, but if he gets one now it will have the address of our sublet preserved under laminate for the next 10 years. To qualify for our no-fee mortgage, we have to get a new checking account with direct deposit at the credit union. Do we order checks imprinted with the address of a house that we don't actually own?

We did finally break down and call the moving guys, because it's going to take them over a week just to get our stuff out here, so we are just going to have to cross our fingers that we actually have all the chickens we think we have, and that when the truck pulls up in front of the house, it will belong to us. One time as I was growing up it so happened that the financing was not ready on the day of close, and we didn't find this out until all our stuff was packed into the moving truck. That was Friday. All our stuff was on a truck that could not be unpacked until, at the earliest, Monday when we hoped the financing would be ready. Eventually everything was straightened out, of course, but it is memories like this that remind me that things rarely unfold according to plan, and how does one plan in a universe where you can't count your chickens until they've hatched?

I believe the fancy theological term for this period in our lives is "interstitial" (alternately, "liminal" will do in a pinch). We are in a place of between-ness. No longer what we were, but not yet what we are becoming. In reality, all beings are in a process of unfolding all their lives; just because the Peet's coffee always has Carrot Ginger muffins, doesn't mean they will have one this morning, but some transitions have poor visibility- the future, even the immediate future is just out of sight; you haven't even found a bakery that sells muffins yet.

So here we are camping out on the limen and trying not to count chickens.

Reality

As soon as we moved into our Ithaca sub-let, I noticed these flowers blooming in our next-door neighbor's yard. Full circle from my last pre-move blog in June. In a way I got to see those flowers bloom after all.

So here we are. We've been in Ithaca for 2 1/2 weeks, and the reality of it is pretty intense. Dreams are kind of light and full of energy. Actually building a new life is heavy. I feel sometimes like I'm walking under water. Each act takes so much energy, like clearing a new path through the forest.

The other thing about dreams is that they are huge and full of possibilities. Reality is very particular. Not "a house in Ithaca" but this house. In one afternoon we looked at, made an offer on, and went under contract for the home we hope to live in for at least a decade. It is beautiful- the most beautiful house we have ever lived in. It has a small yard: big enough for running through a sprinkler, or having a picnic on the grass, though not for Frisbee. It has a couple of garden beds that I can't wait to start weeding and discovering. It has no driveway, no garage. It's walking distance to the cool part of town, which also means the traffic is too intense for my son to walk by himself anywhere beyond our block. I woke the morning after we made the offer in a panic- realizing that by buying this home, we let go of all the others we dreamed of: the ones with big back yards, the ones in quiet neighborhoods, the one with a 2-car garage that would make a giant studio. I feel like a character in a science-fiction show looking down at my arms as they re-materialize after a long journey in the transporter. Who am I, really, in this new life.

Last Lilly

When we put our house on the market, I planted some bulbs to hide our hose. The tulips bloomed right away, but the lillies kept growing and growing and growing. Finally little buds emerged, but these split into many smaller buds which kept growing and growing...

Finally this past week the lilliess were taller than me, with many buds of different sizes, but not a blossom. I had hoped that on the last day in the house the biggest, orangest bud might bloom, but it was not to be.

We left the lillies, the herbs, the trees and the birds for the new owner.

I will miss them.

good news from the plant world

I have this orchid that was given to me with a whole slew of other orchids about 9 years ago. All the rest have died, but there is this one that perseveres, though it looks old and tired. When my plants were evicted from our home to make the house more "sellable” I pulled my orchid out of the midst if its browning companions, gave it some new soil, (had to drive to 3 different nurseries to find the fancy "orchid" soil), tried to find it a little more sun here in my office, and crossed my fingers.

Then, just last week not one but 2 little shoots poked up out of the soil. Hope and rebirth embodied.

mid life

I think Ani Difranco and I are having the same mid-life crisis:

"i think i'm done gunning to get closer
to some imagined bliss
i gotta knuckle down
just be okay with this

'course that star struck girl
is already someone i miss."
(from "Knuckle Down")

Country Music

If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be listening to country music and reading Fantasy/Sci-Fi I would have made a very funny face. And yet here I am driving around with Gillian Welch and the Dixie Chicks in my console (and Bjork too if truth be told) and cruising used book stores for Terry Pratchett's back catalogue. It's almost like once I'd overturned the parental taboos of my childhood, I had nothing left but to overturn my own self-imposed taboos. Or maybe I just like finger-pickin' and stories about the end of the world.

When they hand you the microphone...

Last week the church had this wonderful goodbye party for me. There was yummy handmade food, beautiful handmade quilts, notes and good words, choir music and silliness. On my way home from the party, I realized that when I had my turn at the microphone to offer my thanks, I forgot to thank the 2 who have been most supportive of my time with this congregation: my son and my husband. During all those night meetings and weekend events, husband took over parenting so I could be a minister. Through the rough times and the joyful times of ministry, husband was my support and my rock. He also helped me remember that sometimes I needed to just relax and have fun. Thank you husband. And to my son who came with me to worship, to meetings, and to potlucks, who is always the last child in childcare, and who helps me practice my Family Chapel stories. Thank you son. You both gave so much, so that I could bring to this ministry all that I had to give.

Slow Surgery

Yoga, according to my teacher, is like slow surgery. He maintains that trough the consistant practice of asana, the body can be substantially changed over time. It's true! Imagine my surprise the first time I got my knee behind my shoulder, or touched my chest to my thighs. It's pretty mind blowing, really.

Sometimes in church life we want some kind of out-patient lasar surgery to make us into the church we long to be. It's good to remember that there is an alternative; that slow consistant practice can also lead to real and deep change. For example, last year our congregation formed a Conflict Resolution Team and adopted a Relational Covenant. Nothing magic happend to end all conflict forever, but with consistant application I see that change is possible. Perhaps if we keep at our daily practice we will be surprised at how we are transformed.

My teacher also says "Check your hands, check you feet, after class you get to eat" but that's for another time.

Dog

So I just caught myself gazing affectionately at my incredibly cute, incredibly friendly, obedient, loyal, gentle, fun, snugly dog. I have had this feeling lately of discovering her for the first time, which is weird because back when I worked part time she followed me from room to room and sat at my feet while I worked at home, and I felt just this same way. So why this feeling of discovering a new friendship? Today I realized that she has been eclipsed by my son when he was a baby, like the moon comes between earth and sun sometimes. When you lap is always full of baby, there is no room for dog... incredibly cute, incredibly friendly, obedient, loyal, gentle, fun, snugly Dog. A blessing and a friend.

memorial

In an hour I will be performing a memorial service for a dear woman at the church who always was kind and present with me and with my son. I have had this feeling of dread about the service for a few days now that has become quite acute. As any minister will tell you, being asked to perform a memorial is a tremendous honor. It is during such times that you get a glimpse of what is real and important about living and dying. But there is no getting around the fact that when people gather to remember one who has died, the room is filled with powerful emotion. It is hard to prepare myself to be with my own grief and the grief of the community. When I pull on my robe and walk into that room I will have to admit (on some level which my grief has not yet reached) that she is really gone.

Muir Woods

I made a final pilgrimage to Muir Woods, wanting my son to see it before we headed east. I asked if he wanted to go on a hike- to which he responded emphatically NO. So I asked if he wanted to go on a photo-walk to see plants as old as dinos, and that he was interested in.

I wondered if it would feel as magical as it did that first time, even with the rain and cold, and it was truly magical. My friend who studies Traditional Chinese Medicine assured me there is something about trees that can absorb the toxic energy of anger and stress. It sounded reasonable to me; if they can make food out of our old CO2, why not our anger as well?

So lovely it was to be in such verdure, so many shades of green, so lush, so fertile. So lovely to be surrounded by good friends gaping at Mother Nature's artistry, and breathing the clean moist air.

Spring is colder than you think

Seriously. I remember being a little kid and getting some cute puffy sleeved Easter dress and then having to wear a giant coat and boots with it. I always forget that the whole deal with spring being a transitional season is that it is having a winter/summer identity crisis. For every unseasonably warm day there is usually an unseasonably cold day. Maybe next spring I'll remember.

My Creek

This is the creek I told you about back on February 6. Can you believe it's cement-lined? The little black dot way in the back is one of "our" ducks. We look for our ducks every day when we walk to school or the park. Today the water was so clear we could see the shadows of fish swimming. Friday I saw one of those amazing big white egrets. What a way to start the day.

Neighbor Trees

Today I went for a walk with my 5 year old son and his friend-from-across-the-street. I took pictures of some of my favorite trees I will miss when we move.

Cycles and Systems

"We are part of multiple overlapping systems that we are not aware of" a colleague of my said years ago, and it rings in my mind today. I remember noting to myself a few springs ago that spring is not as easy as it looks- the bright sun and cheery flowers convince the mind that all is well, but the body has a hard job with this major changes of temperature, light, bits of things floating in the air, and the change of seasonal food.

(By the way, the blackberries this year are the best I've ever had. Eat some now before they fade!)

The emotional body follows along, uplifted by the growing light, confused by the body's transitions. So maybe what I'm feeling right now is just spring.

But I've also noticed that each year our congregational system shows considerable anxiety each spring as our Annual Meeting approaches. We have to approve a budget, and no matter how much money we raise, we always raise more great ideas about how to spend it. We have to elect new officers, and the worry that we won't fill all those slots disturbs the sleep of those who have to fill them. Congregational leaders have been working hard all year, and may be tired or burned out. Their term ends in April and we prepare for the transition of elected leaders in May. This year in particular the congregation and I are anticipating our impending separation. So maybe the weirdness I feel is from being part of that congregational system.

And moreover, we finally closed on our house. We went out to celebrate at the NICE sushi place. But within a day or two all 3 of us had weird tummy trouble and a hard time sleeping. (Even our dog seemed to have troubled dreams).

So do I feel the way I do because of the seasonal transition, congregational transition, family transition or personal transition, or are there other cycles and systems effecting me that I am not even aware of?

Really I'd just like to go through all these transitions without feeling any grief or discomfort. Is there something I can take for that?

Roots

Now that all the Geraniums have been stripped away from the base of a giant Mulberry tree in our front yard, I am seeing the roots anew each time I enter the house. They have such wonderful curves and bends to them. I fact, a lot of the trees in our neighborhood have cool roots.

Then I started looking at my feet last week in yoga, how the bones and tendons remind me of the exposed roots of an old tree. Feet are cool too.

Bags

Dear Baggers of the world,
The reason I bring canvas bags to your store is not so much that they are sturdy, and hold a lot of stuff, or that I get $.05 back. It's really about how I hate waste, and I hate coming home with a fistful of brand new plastic bags that I then immediately have to put out in recycling. The reason I bring my veggies loose to the checkout is the same. My spinach does not need it's own private bag, that twist tie holds it together fine. My shampoo also does not need it's own plastic privacy. If it really creeps you out to have spinach and shampoo touching, feel free to give each her own canvas bag. I brought 10; there are plenty to go around.

The same I implore of the good folks at the drive-through. The Salad you gave me was already hermetically sealed in a plastic shell. I only ordered one item; I'm okay without a bag.

It appears that your training strongly emphasized the value of using the largest number of containers per customer, (I too know what it is like to receive bizarre instructions from a trainer) but I invite you to join me in an underground rebellion against the proliferation of bags. What corporate doesn't know won't hurt them.

Sincerely,
Ginger Root

Guide Mama

Recently I got asked to be a God Mama, or more precisely, a "Guide Mama."
It was this totally amazing un-expected thing to be asked.

It was particularly amazing because my son has 2 fabulous God Parents. God Mama lives 3000 miles away and thankfully is the ultimate pen pal (since she was in Elementary School. She was precocious that way.) God Papa is nearby and is so present and engaged whenever he and the boy are together. He has such a wonderful enthusiasm for the whole thing.
And I just kind of took them for granted- of course they would be great godparents.

But now I've been asked to be a God Mama, and got a neurotic rush of performance anxiety. I mean baby (I) has only one God Mama, and I don't want to let her down. And a God Parent is for life, right? That's the whole point. It's very unique to be bound for life by a promise to another person, especially one you have just met.

I can't wait to take her to an Ashram when she turns 14.

Out of Gas

I've been a little off my game recently. It's been one deadline on top of another, and I still haven't brought all the trashcans and frying pans back in from the garage (where they were stored for our "no one lives here, wouldn't you like to buy the place?" period.)

So when I noticed I was running a couple of minutes late for a meeting I made the conscious choice not to turn off into the gas station. "This is the kind of choice I make lately- I do a million errands and chores when I should be focused on being on time." It was only a mile or 2 later that my car stopped responding when I pressed down on the gas pedal. The car is going slower and slower, and I'm on 101, one of the biggest busiest highways in this part of the country. I'm trying to figure out whether I'd like to be stuck on an exit-ramp overpass, or on the shoulder of the highway. I've got my hazards on, but still folks are honking as they whiz by. I find a good sized shoulder and pull over.

A policeman stooped by almost immediately. I had been trying to dial the campus group I was going to visit, but when he walked up to the car the phone shot out of my hand into the darkness. I explained my predicament, he offered to call AAA and even loaned me his flashlight to find my phone. Before he left he reminded me to keep my seat belt fastened until AAA arrived. It makes sense, I thought. If I were hit from behind, it would be good to be buckled in. Not that I would be hit from behind, but it could happen, what with all those hundreds of cars coming up behind me at 80 mph in the dark. Now I am anxious. Moments are crawling by, and I'm flashing back on my childhood when my ride would be late to pick me up from play practice or school or whatever, and you prayed every set of headlights was for you, but it usually wasn't.

Finally in my anxiety (you know, theologian Paul Tillich's "fear of non-being") I call my husband's cell and get my son. He tells me a rambling story about vaguely complaining about the way I got his dinner ready before I left. Finally I tell him where I am, and try to make it entertaining. He listens patiently and then says "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

Finally a set of headlights pulls up behind me and stops. As the man approaches the car I say "You must be either AAA or a serial killer" he replies "Yes one of those." I'm soon on my way to my meeting, and only 45 minutes late. I call my contact who kindly offers to meet me at the visitor parking lot so that wandering lost around campus doesn't add additional delay. They were all very sweet and kind, and it was great to be with them. Embarrassing and disconcerting, but ultimately everything turned out okay.

A few days later I was low on gas and cutting it close on a meeting. I figured I'd better stop for gas.

Colic

At a BBQ this weekend I met the 3-month-old baby of some friends I haven't seen in a long time. The baby slept peacefully for most of the party, and then started to wail. It was that kind of wail that makes mothers from all over the house come to see why the baby is being tortured. Baby, of course, was in mom's arms, and receiving loads of love and care. Finally Mom handed baby to sister who said, "Mom needs a break."

I suddenly flashed back to my son's infancy. He was a "colicky" baby, which means "crying for no discernable reason for many months." I remembered all those times my son would cry and helpers would say " I think he wants you" but really my son was just going to scream, no matter who held him, no matter what anyone did. (Although bouncing in just the right way while standing-not-sitting would help somewhat). And come to think of it, it was my sister who understood and would hold him even when he was screaming, so Mom could just go somewhere 12 feet away and take deep breaths.

My partner hates the word Colic. He thinks it's just a word doctors use to make themselves feel better about how there is nothing they can do to help you with your screaming baby.

I kind of like the word; it works as a euphemism for "a special kind of hell" so that you can talk about it with other parents without sounding like a bad mother.

Large Trash

This is the season when piles of large trash bloom in our neighborhood each year. In front of almost every house is a pile of stuff, some piles large enough to fill multiple pick-up trucks. Still-usable furniture and broken furniture are mixed in with tree clippings, old cardboard boxes, bits of broken glass, appliances, bags of used clothes, stuffed animals, baby gear and straight-up trash.

As I jog each morning I am hypnotically drawn into the details of each pile. The waste is maddening. A charitable organization comes around every few months to pick up used clothing; why didn't people set out their used clothes one of those mornings? Or just drive the 2 blocks to the Good Will? And why is the "clean green" (plant matter) that we all put so carefully in our green bin each week laying here mixed with broken glass and melting cardboard? Couldn't the city have 2 separate large trash periods- one for non-plant stuff and one for plant stuff? What about a recycling amnesty period, where you can bring out all those old cardboard boxes without having to break them down and tie them with twine? What if the city helped sort through all this stuff and recycle the mattress springs and other special metals that don't go in your weekly curbside bin?

But here it all is, pile after pile. It all gets shoveled up with a back-hoe, and carted away by a tractor-trailer truck to be land-fill. Seems like at least 3/4 of it could be recycled or reused, but instead it's all mixed together in giant truck-sized piles that make me feel silly for putting each piece of junk mail and every paper-towel tube out on the curb each Tuesday in a brown paper bag.

I'm going into hibernation. Please wake me when large-trash season is over.

Messaging

For years now my co-minister and I have been fretting about "messaging" (This is a word they didn't teach us in seminary. We had to learn it from "West Wing".) How many times would you have to say something before most of the folks in your congregation heard you? How many times could you say something before folks said "enough already." It turned out both numbers were much higher than we expected.

Last week a woman complemented me on a recent sermon. She said something like "it's nice to have a break from all that talk about the environment." I was thrilled! Apparently it takes 2 years of non-stop messaging to get to some kind of saturation point. (And with only 3 months to spare...)

I wanted to call my co-minister and say "We did it! We did it!"
Can you call someone on their maternity leave to talk about messaging?

Priorities

Yesterday, as I dashed to my office to get a roll of painter's tape, I had to walk around our 2 oldest classes of youth who were all on the sidewalk looking at a huge eagle sitting on the very tip top of a fir tree. 2 entire classes had been completely disrupted over an eagle sitting, and were quietly gazing upward. I was so glad the teachers had their priorities in order. No matter what else the children learned yesterday, they learned that seeing an eagle is worth dropping everything, calling all within earshot, and being quiet for.

bedtime worries 2

Tonight's Questions:

Where should you go in a tornado?
Are there tornados in New York?
What if there is a War in California?
What if there is a World War?
What happens if you don't have any blood in your body?

I swear, I just read him "Mush, a dog from outer space"

bedtime worries

Lately my son (N) has been worried at night.
After I turned out the lights and tucked him into bed on Tuesday he asked, "What happens if an earthquake comes while I’m asleep and I die? What happens if you and Dada die?" We had just read a book called "Meteor" by Patricia Pollaco, which is a fun book in which nobody gets hurt, but which reminded him about earthquakes, and so we explored many questions of earthquake safety and existential angst.

Last Night I tell him I have to go do our taxes and he asks, "What happens if you and Dada go to jail?" I realize we had read, "Henry Climbs a Mountain" the week before. This is a cute picture book about the time Henry David Thoreau was thrown in jail for refusing to pay his taxes to a state that allowed slavery.
Me: I would call your uncles and aunts, and they would take care of you until we got out. But we're not going to jail
(N) What if they were all sick?
Me: Then we'd call your grandparents (I name them one by one)
(N) What if they were sick too?
Me: Then we'd call your Godpapa or Godmama
(N) What if they were all sick?
Me: Then we'd call our friends
(N) What if everyone was sick except the police?
Me: (after some thought) then the police would call Child Protective Services to make sure you had a safe place to stay while they tried to get your family on the phone.

I think the words Child Protective Services sounded comforting to him, and he was quiet. I remembered when I was a child wondering what it would be like to be all alone in the world, and knew he probably just wanted to know that it would still be okay for him to be a child. That there would always be an adult who could make sure he had a place to stay and food to eat.

I wonder if there is anything I could read him tonight that will lessen his angst, and make him feel secure in his life, or if all the transition and growing in his young life will inevitably well up into bedtime worries.

Confessions

As we walked back into our renovated home I took a deep breath in and wondered...
What's our carpet made out of?
And what kinds of chemicals are in our paint?
And what kind of cancer are we going to get from breathing in all these fumes?
And how did I get the whole way through this process without ever asking about green options for carpet or paint?
And how come I didn't re-landscape with native plants?

Must learn something about native plants in New York. Maybe next time I'll be ready.

Escrow

We did it. The house is in escrow. This massive weight is lifted off my shoulders, and I realize I've been clenching those muscles for months now.

I want to write little notes to the couple who (God willing and the creek don't rise) will live here starting this summer and introduce my plants one by one.

It's as if the plants were waiting too, because just now (after the open house is totally over) the back yard is covered with tiny white petals from our spring-blooming tree. Just now are our tiger lilies growing robust green stalks by inches each day. Just now are the wisteria vines and lilac trees starting to bud.

102 days

Friends and companions are starting to say, "let's be sure to se each other one more time before you go."

Before I go in June?

There are so many days between here and there. 102 approximately. I'm not dying or something, I'm just moving to New York.

All of those days I will still get up, listen to music, get stuck in traffic, go to work, be a mom, care about society, worry about stuff and celebrate stuff. There will just be more boxes around towards the end.

Is it going to get weird once people start saying goodbye? Will we be able to say "hi" again when we run into each other in the street? Can I call them to go get a drink or take the kids to the playground?

Let's think of it like summer romance instead. Those 6 or 8 weeks at summer camp seemed a world unto themselves; they were powerful and left memories I'll always have. A lot can happen in 4 months.

In spite of the tulips

Today is a sad day. I know the sun is shining, and the birds are chirping, and the pink tulips I planted in front of the house to hide our hose are opening in a hopeful way, but I'm sad.

My partner in ministry, with whom I shared the sublime and ridiculous of our work together, and of living on this earth, just began her maternity leave. Which is definitely a really happy thing. Her baby is so sweet, and they are such a beautiful family together. I had the privilege of holding that new life in my arms last night, and sharing that amazing feeling of magic that emanates from a new family. It's a dream come true.

I just miss my partner is all, and tangled up with that are all the other losses still to come: this congregation, this community, this place, this home, these dear friends.

But today is Tuesday, staff meeting day, and in place of our regular meeting, is this blog, which can’t come close to holding the sadness of ending our partnership, or the miracle of that precious new child.

deja vu

I have been having so many flashes of dreams entering my waking reality. Just now I had another one- about registering for housing at GA, about writing myself a reminder, and about flashing back to a flash back. "What was I supposed to remember?" I wondered "What was important about this?" Then I remembered the flash back of the flash back. Entirely ordinary experience says the flash back. It was a let down in the first flash back too.

I wonder if when I check in to my hotel, I will flash back on my flash back of this flash back....

by size

As part of our ongoing effort to ready our house for market, I have just arranged all my books by size. Seriously. Over sized books, spiral bound books and books with staples on the spine were banned to the garage or to our storage pod. I keep finding a book that's just a couple millimeters taller than its neighbor, and have to get back into the fray. The funny thing is that I must have done this as a child, because I remember thinking about some of the really old books "yes, this one is just a bit taller than you think." If that won't feed a person's OCD I don't know what will.

Which brings us to the deep existential question here:

Why are books not a standard size? Or a standard set of 3 sizes? Why would one book be 2 millimeters taller than another?

Processing...

This past week we had to be out of the house while we got the place painted and re-carpeted for the sale of our home. We thought- hey if we have to pay for a hotel every night anyway, why not see Leggoland. And hey, if we're going to be in Southern California anyway, why not Disney? So after the marathon of getting every piece of thing we own off of any piece of furniture we own and off of all the built-in bookcases, and packing for a 9 day trip (and of course work last Sunday) we finally made it to Legoland. The weather channel kept promising an intense winter storm, but we woke in a hotel WAY out of our league and very cushy, to a beautiful sunny day. Leggoland was perfect for our 5 year old son, and nothing makes a parent happy like a joyful child. There was something in the way the place was designed that felt sweet, that felt caring. I kept saying "We are so blessed" just to grasp hold of this peaceful, happy, sunny day with my family.

But soon enough we're onto Anaheim, where showers again loomed. And Disneyland is freaking HUGE by comparison, and not so child-centered as Leggoland. We got the boy to "Winnie-the-Pooh's Great Adventure" (or something. He gets so mad when I get the title wrong) and he even got a real hug from Pooh. My partner got his turn on Space Mountain, and with our life-goals achieved, we braced for the deluge, which in fact came while we were on Dumbo's Whirly Adventure Something (sorry Son). We stumbled back to our hotel satisfied, but a little overwhelmed.

Imagine our shock when the next morning the sun was shining gloriously. So glorious, in fact, that I seriously under-dressed. It was a relief to walk the park again with no goals and no rain to drive us. The day was lovely, and I was glad to have the time with my family, but I kept wondering about this notion that Disneyland is the archetypal story that drives our industrial-growth society. We long for a place like this where we can have all our needs met (with great competence and attention to detail, it must be said) as long as our needs are shopping, roller coasters and corn-dogs. But stay off the fences and walls, just keep moving on to the next 45 second ride, the next 30 minute line, the souvenir shop for each thematic area. The closing fireworks display was beautiful (by this time I had bought my souvenir sweat-shirt to make up for my bad planning) but the narrator kept saying "dreams do come true." I thought, "like going to Disneyland?" I am still wondering, is there any there there? Is it empty? But it was a good day, a memorable day with my sweet dear husband and son. And there was dancing (like real professional dancers with skills and all) in the parade, and fireworks, and free tortillas at the Mission Brand Tortilla Demonstration, and beautiful landscaping, and a tree house 3 stories high. And Winnie the Pooh gave my son a hug.

Processing...

A place for birds

I am so thrilled that our buildings and grounds committee has gotten serious about putting in a new garden at the church. Maybe some native plants? Maybe a place for kids to plant stuff?

The project got a boost when the curriculum committee wanted to plan lessons for spring that included both gardening and building-and-watching bird boxes.

So Sunday as I'm leaving church, one of the women on that committee stops me: "Look it's a robin" she says. So it is. One and then another

"They all live in that old oak." she adds. "The oak is supposed to come down in the new garden plan."

"Crap" I think.

"I'll have to ask my friend from Audubon what kind of tree we can replace it with that will be as good a habitat."

And now I'm deeply happy. I'm so glad the conversation will happen, that someone will ask about the birds, and where they will go if we cut down their tree.

A girl told me last week at church that they were studying the Rain Forrest at her school all year. I keep thinking, if only we knew about the birds in our own back yard, and thought about them with each choice we made, how powerful that would be.

Getting Out

Sunday was one of those days when I managed to get myself, my son, and a posse of parents and kids out of the church and into the community. It makes me nervous, because it's never as simple as you think it's going to be. This was set to be super simple- we were going to make up bags of helpful things for the families at the Opportunity Center. 18 bags, one for every family. We planned to do it this Sunday because it's a holiday weekend, and we always have smaller attendance, hence a more manageable crew to take on adventure. The thing about holidays, though, is that people don't like to commit to be anywhere. My program coordinator (M) and I were nervous that we didn't have a lot of advance commitments, but trusted that this would be great like all the previous special events, where people turn up at church even on a holiday, and want to be part of the fun.

By coincidence, we had just received a donation of FABULOUS papers and stamps from a crafter who had recently moved out of state, so we started the morning by making cards and notes for each family. The older kids were sorting out our donations into piles of like objects to create an assembly line for the bags. I had our math whizzes dividing our total sponges by number of bags, and adults bustled around seeing how we could make every bag come out even. A couple rushed off to the store to buy "everything else." ("Really?" I thought "That seems like a pretty big donation" but they really meant it! People can be so generous.)

As usual, some of the children were totally absorbed with the drawing and writing, and others were done in a few minutes and ready to run circles. I called them all together to read a story called "Tight Times " by Barbara Shook Hazen. The illustrations are beautiful drawings, very expressive, and the story always feels very real; what it's like for a family when times are tight, and how on earth you explain that to your 5 year old. The kids were so quiet and attentive while they listened, it really gives the impression they took it in. (I can only hope that was more than my projection.)

But still the shoppers were out shopping, and the running-in-circle kids were back to running in circles. We were due to leave for the Center, but we still needed "everything else." It is moments like these when I wish someone more patient and less anxious than myself was in charge.

But when "everything else" came, the children and youth lined up and filled their bags, the adults made sure the bags all came out right, (M)handed me a big pile of field trip forms and a list of who-goes-in-what car, and after I convinced my son's playmate to join us, so that my son would be willing to leave his water games on the playground, we headed off. Almost every parent of every child wanted to come, and each transported a few of the bags. By some miracle I was the first car to arrive, and there was our Case Manager (K) who was sweet and gracious, (and patient with our lateness) and took over being in charge. I had been to the Opportunity Center once before, but none of my posse had seen it for themselves. It is such an amazing space, with such care in aesthetics as I have hardly seen in a place designed to serve families experiencing "tight times." My son was devastated when I told him it was time to go. He just wanted to stay on his rock in the sunshine, out in the front open-space of the center.

I am leaving this church in June, leaving this region, and that means leaving behind places like the Opportunity Center. I just thought if these great parents and children could get to see it, they would want to stay connected.

the ducks are back

There's a stream that runs near my house. I cross it every day when I run or walk my son to school. I guess it is still called a stream even when they line it with concrete. It's this amazing ecosystem that has, from time to time, fish and ducks and even the occasional crane. And every summer they stick a bulldozer in there and doze it all up. [Pause to restrain environmental rant].

Yesterday I ran by, and stopped to look at the tall green plants, taller than me I guess. And the little green ones. And the soft-looking dirt of the creek bottom. And the ducks. Eight of them. The ducks are back! That little cement creek managed to renew itself in time for the migratory season of our ducks. Amen and blessed be.

Landscaping

In preparation to put our house on the market, we took the realtor's advice and hired a landscaper to come make our yard look like a vacation wonderland. It cost as much as some cars I've bought, but it really does look like a special place. So why do I feel so weird? I feel weird because it's still winter, and most of the plants are still asleep- so even after all that work most plants are still a little droopy and dormant. I feel weird because it used to be my special place, and now it's kind of not. I feel weird because I usually garden in this micro kind of way where I can't pull out one tiny half-dead plant because I feel like I know them personally and I'm not going to kill them just because they are going through a hard time. These amazing professionals are of the "only the strong survive" philosophy and cleared out all my mutts to make room for big sturdy nursery-grown plants that will be very impressive when the house finally goes on sale next month. And they did it all in 8 hours, with a little follow up the next day. I feel like I was hit with a Mac truck of beauty and order and I don't know how I feel about that.

desk time

I can't believe I haven't posted in 2 months. But I guess that's about how long it has been since I had a minute to sit and think. Since the holidays ended, I have somehow had 4 to 8 hours of meetings a day (meetings defined to include groups, one to ones, classes etc.) I had a meeting cancel, which gets me down to 4 hours of meetings for the day. It felt so luxurious to have 4 hours in a row to figure out what all these things are that pile up on my desk on any given Sunday. I know I am still a couple hundred e-mails behind, and have an order of service due by 2:00, but I just had to give thanks for a little quality time with my desk.

Feedback

Sometimes in a committee meeting someone will venture the idea that we need new ways to give feedback as a congregation.

Today was a pretty usual Sunday. I got feedback about my worship service (8 for 1 against), about my choice of announcements (1 strongly against), about the way I wear my hair (1 strongly against) and about the way I wasn't clear who was to bring snacks for the children in childcare (1 against).

How do I begin to explain that from my point of view lack of feedback is not the problem here?

Intergen

It turns out Intergenerational worship is hard. I've been working on it for 7 years now, and the thing is you are really trying to make worship that is accessible and inspiring for every generations. That means 2 year olds who need to wiggle and move, and 80 year olds who have trouble hearing. It means 5 year olds who want big fun stories, and 14 year olds who think stories are uncool. Really, it means that if everything works perfectly, everyone compromises a little and everyone gets some little thing out of the service. But mostly what people are hopefully getting is each other.

The Machine

Sometimes, on a morning like this, I feel like a locomotive, or backhoe. I feel like I'm responsible for driving things forward

And I think about those old locomotives, and I wonder what kind of cloud of smog I leave in my wake. I wonder how a person finds a source of cleaner burning energy...

Form

For those of you playing at home, this week's sermon was in the general form:
Why?
What?
How?

But here's the thing that bothers me about form. In music, form can be so precise:
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus

I mean, when we were studying sonata form or fugue forms in school, they always map out so elegantly. Your Theme is always the same number of measures, and each time it repeats it's the exact same length. But unless you are writing sonnets, it's really hard to use words to create these elegant symmetrical forms that always balance mathematically. One of my heroes who was a musician before she was a preacher says that's exactly how she writes, in Sonata form or Rondo form or whatever all else, but I just can't see it. This week "what" had 3 parts and "how" had a set of 2 and then a set of 3. Maybe this is why I like knitting so much, the beautifully repeating geometric forms.

Catalogues

So since I started thinking about the relationship between catalogues and old growth forests in Canada, I decided to call or write all the catalogues I get and ask them to cease and desist. Since then I've gotten 4-5 catalogues a day! I can't keep up and it's not even the peak catalogue season yet. Aargh.

Seeds like Lifeboats

I preached about lifeboats lately, and since then I imagine the lifeboats shrinking smaller and smaller until they are seeds, until they are the strands of DNA in the seeds that we are leaving as we pass this way. A seed provides not only the information about how to grow, say, a maple tree, but also food that the seed will need while it establishes its first roots and grows its first leaves. A seed has a hard coat that protects and contains the food and the genetic material while it waits for conditions to be right, and a seed has a plan for getting to a good place to live and grow- like the little wings on the maple seed.

Counterpoint

I was putting together a worship service this morning, and ended up choosing a hymn by my old counterpoint professor Thomas Benjamin (this goes back to the time when I was studying at the Peabody Conservatory and thought I was going to be an opera singer). I knew he was in our hymnal; I had sat next to him at a UU Musicians Network conference many years ago. I just forget sometimes that I used to take counterpoint, and had to write a fugue over spring break...

exhale

I finally saw "Inconvenient Truth" and without giving away the surprise ending for those of you who haven't seen it, there was one graph that totally changed the way I am experiencing autumn. Gore was showing a graph of the increase of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, and though the general trend was steadily up, it wiggled up and down every year. He explained that the trees in the deciduous forests of the northern hemisphere released enough Carbon Dioxide with the dropping of their leaves in fall to change the CO2 for the whole planet. Right now the trees in our hemisphere are exhaling. No wonder fall feels different than spring. I mean, they both are transitional seasons, right? It can't just be the quantity of light, because fall and spring do feel so very different. Spring is what it feels like when there is more oxygen in the air, fall is a time with more CO2. The air you breathe in fall is literally different than the air you breathe in spring (and that doesn't even account for the radically different plant matter in the air in each season). This is seriously blowing my mind.

blog lazy

Sorry for the long silence. On Friday the 13th I spent the day at Hidden Villa with an environmental leadership program called "Be the Change." It was SO what I've been hungry for- to spend time literally staring at a tree and listening to birds. Ever since I started reading Thomas Berry, it became clear how important it is for each of us to know our own place, for me to know the seasons and plants and birds of my own neighborhood, my own eco-system. It's also good to get to know my political eco-system as well. Did you know that there was a comprehensive trolley system in the Bay area in the 1920s that was bought up by private interests and ripped out to promote the car and highway system? We live in such a highly mobile society, that it's easy to loose site of the fact that each place is different, follows different patterns, offers particular gifts. We risk doing damage if we are not paying attention to our particular community, and we risk missing out on the beauty that is uniquely ours.

Then last weekend I went up to Bioneers. It was my second year, so of course I'm all jaded and harder to amaze. Okay, I was amazed by Paul Stamets and the crazy creepy world of mushrooms. Apparently during the first major extinction on the planet (we're in the 6th right now) some asteroid hit the planet and the earth was covered by a dust cloud for about 10 years. The plants could not survive and the fungi ruled. Or how about that 2,400 acre mycelium mass in Oregon? I'm not even going to describe how a mushroom can kill an ant- it will give the little ones nightmares.

And of course Lois Gibbs is amazing- to hear what they went through trying to get officials to pay any attention to the residents of Love Canal was really disturbing.

But for some reason what really got inside me was hearing Tzeporah Berman from Forest Ethics talk about the loss of forests on the planet. Only 3 countries in the world have forests left that are big enough to maintain full bio-diversity. She has been fighting for the "Great Bear Rain Forest" which runs along the North West up into Canada. They re-named the forest because it is the last habitat left for the Great Bear. It is known to the government as "Mid Coast Timber Supply." It's this clash of worlds that made me grouchy with my family all day Sunday when I came home. It's not just that beautiful balanced habitats and communities are being destroyed for short-term financial gain, it's that the people who are making 1,000 year old trees into Victoria's Secret catalogues don't even see living beings- they see "timber supply."

And what can I even do from so far away? It's not much, but I can call the companies who send me catalogues and ask them to desist. I can try to remind my church why they really do want to spend the extra few dollars to use post-consumer paper. And I can vote yes on Santa Clara County Proposition "A" and save the little bits of "open" space left in my own community. I suppose the Buddhist Teacher and Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy would remind me that it's not about avoiding despair, but hoping that this heart break will give me the courage to do something real to save what matters.

The Whole Elephant

Sometimes I get a little confused about who I am and what I'm doing. Not in a "see your doctor" kind of way but in a "what does it all mean?" kind of way. Sometimes I even get confused about what it means to be a minister. In most situations I'm the only minister in the room, and everyone is coming from a different paradigm- engineers, teachers, project managers, full-time parents, doctors...

I feel a little like the elephant in the Buddhist story.
The project manager says "A minister is one who is in charge of making sure our projects run smoothly"
The Finance team says "A minister is like a CFO who takes care of our fiscal health"
The deep thinkers say "A minister is the one who provides the deep thoughts for the congregation."
The Caring People say "A minister is someone who is there for us in times of sadness or angst"
The Activists say "A minister is a prophet who helps make the world a just place."
The Marketing people say "A minister is the public face of a congregation, representing us to the wider world"
Each person seems to have a different piece of what ministry might be, that grows out of their own experience of the world, and their own calling within it.

And I get a little confused, because I know that a minister is all those things, and that those are all important ministries: our world would suffer without the ministries of all those people. Perhaps what they are really saying is that they believe that their own ministry is real, and important. I could not agree more. The path and values each of us is called to in our lives is real ministry.

But when I go to be with my colleagues, and am surrounded by people who have given their lives to be something called a Minister they say "a Minister is like nothing else but a Minister."

And more importantly they say "A minister is like you."

And all of a sudden I remember who I am and what I am doing.

My First Mistake

I was recently remembering the first big mistake I made at this church, back when I was so new that I imagined I was making mistakes every minute. I foresaw these mistakes would become visible slowly over time as people knew me better and trusted me enough to reveal the fact that I had stomped on their toes while I was getting settled in.

At my first church I had been the closet queen. I had gone through every art supply and piece of fading construction paper with a team of volunteers and had put a bi-annual closet cleaning event into the church calendar.

When I first came to this new congregation the closets were SERIOUSLY over-stuffed. Even in my own office there was not 6" for me to hang a file in the overflowing file drawers. The rooms were also rich with art supplies and books and games, and by rich I mean junky-looking.

So I said in an offhand way to our church administrator "These closets are gross, and what's up with the junk in the classrooms? This is not acceptable."

Her brow furrowed, "but (T) your predecessor worked so hard on those. She was in there for weeks cleaning things out. We've been working together to make things better for you." It was proven out over time that (B) our administrator had been on junk and clutter patrol, and kept on it for the next 3 years we worked together with relatively minor assistance from me. Before she was taken from us, the junk was down to respectable level, and the closets and rooms were totally usable. Our closet volunteers have done a great job maintaining the order, and all I have to do is preside over seasonal purges.

The moral of this story is: When you see something in your community that does not meet your standards, ask first "What's the story?" because you may find that it took a lot of hard work just to get it to the place it is.

Day in the Life

Sometimes I wonder if because most of my writing is so pondor-ful, people imagine me sitting in the lotus position trying to solve the great mysteries of the universe all day, but really most minister days would look familiar to most people who work in an office. What if my blog read like this:
Answered e-mail for 4 hours today
Committee meeting and working group meeting
Wrote board report

I mean, I'm falling asleep writing it.

My work is extremely engaging, don't get me wrong. Even on these very ordinary days, I usually spend my final moments hopping from foot to foot with my key ring around my index finger trying to tie up those most urgent loose ends in time to beat the clock at my son's daycare. (If you are late you pay $2 a minute, and people look at you like you are the worst mom ever).

I'm just saying that the challenge with ministry, as with most jobs, is to find balance and spaciousness. And so the preponderance of pondering in this blog.