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?