PeaceBang

More Friday Cat Blogging

I don’t understand why the cat is getting fatter even though I’ve cut back on her food and am being really careful not to feed her off my plate.

Then it occurred to me: she’s sneaking out to the car when I’m asleep and using my new GPS system to locate all the fast food joints!!

From now on I’m leaving my keys where she can’t find them, and I think that will take care of that problem. That is, until the snake teaches her how to hot wire a Honda.

The Nefarious Plot Between the Cat and the Serpent

A few weeks ago I saw a cat toy in the hallway when I came in the house. At least I thought it was a cat toy until it began to wriggle across the floor, at which point I realized that it was a SNAKE!!

A SNAKE IN THE HOUSE!

I think I already told you about this, but bear with me.

This wasn’t a big snake. It was actually very small and pretty, so after my initial heart attack I decided I could handle this like a seasoned New Englander. I got some rubber-ended tongs and grabbed the little dude and tossed him into the garden (more accurately, “that mess of plants by the side of the house.”). Suddenly I remembered that if one wants to banish critters from the house, one does well to take them a farther distance than two feet from the front door, so I nabbed the little writhing sucker again, determined to take him out to the woods. But he squirmed and hissed in such a convincing manner, persuading me with all his snakely being that he was Deeply Unhappy with this treatment, I left him where he was with stern admonishment to stay outside.

“I have a CAT,” I told him. “I DON’T want you two to meet.”

And that, dear readers, should have been that. But it wasn’t.

A few weeks later as I was picking basil from my real garden, who do you think slithered right over my foot, looking very handsome and just a few sizes bigger than he had been three weeks before? We had words. I told him that if that was his idea of a neighborly relationship, I had worse than tongs in store for him. I didn’t mind him living in the yard but he was NOT to make personal contact, did he hear? Especially not over my bare foot!! Was he trying to give me a heart attack? He laughed at me from the yard.

The next morning, dear readers, I saw this in the hallway on the way to the bathroom:

What would you have thought?

But it wasn’t. It was, in fact, an old drawstring that Miss Ermengarde had apparently unearthed from somewhere and arranged in that fetching serpentine design for my maximum hysterical reaction.

Then it occurred to me: the cat and the snake are in cahoots! They’re trying to kill me and get the house and the car! And the snake probably wants my job, too!

I went downstairs to find Ermengarde doing yoga and informed her that I was onto her. She of course feigned total innocence,

but I heard her talking on her cell phone late into the night.

We haven’t seen the snake since.

I keep looking for him in the garden because for a snake, he actually has a lot of charm. Maybe he’ll want to come inside and live with us for the winter. He could be very cozy in a little terrarium. Ermie can catch mice for him to eat. It could all be very “Circle of Life.”

Comment Moderation

Sorry to those of you who contributed comments that got caught up in a queue that I didn’t know existed. It’s a long, boring story but I think we’re up to date now.
I do try to stay on top of this blog, but sometimes I fail.
Mea culpa.

An Offering For a Growing Congregation

I like to think of the Offering as a great moment for story-telling and sharing of pastoral observations on the spirit of the church. I just don’t like to see it as a “throwaway” moment in the liturgy, where someone says something incredibly brief about giving, using the most euphemistic language possible and then scrambles out of the pulpit like they just committed some kind of unspeakable indiscretion.

I often say that the reason we take up an offering during the church service is because we recognize the spiritual value of generosity and the importance of lifting that up in a worshipful manner.

I wrote this to use in my own church on Sunday and share it as an offering for other pastors in similar situations:

Last week I looked out over the congregation at this time and counted ___ adults after the children and the teachers left for Sunday School. All this bounty, and a good number of our members still have yet to return after summer hiatus!

This is exciting. It means that something within many of you urged you out of the comfort of your Sunday morning routine and into this house of worship, into the great project of seeking after deeper truths, and into the adventure of community with other flawed and faithful human beings.

We who have been at this for some time congratulate and welcome you. We will try to remember that the most important reason people come to church is to become part of a caring community, and we will make an effort to become that to you. We promise to make room for you in our hearts, our programming and in our pews.
We invite you to join us in all aspects of church life, remembering that we need to go slowly and respectfully as we get to know each other.

Church, as we prepare to take up the offering today, I am going to ask that you make a spiritual offering in addition to your financial gift. I ask that each one of us make a commitment to visit with two people we don’t know –or don’t know well—at coffee hour today and for the next few months. We have been blessed by sharing our lives together, and we are being invited to extend that blessing to more souls every week. Let us give generously in all ways to our beloved community. The morning offering is most gratefully received.

You have my permission to use these words. However, please do not publish them without attribution and permission.

Damn Yankees

My younger brother and I generally get along well. We can talk about most anything and there’s a lot of love there. When I last visited him, though, I broached the subject of introducing my nephews (2 and 3 years old) to the Red Sox. Oh no. Not in his house. My brother, a Yankees fan, is under the impression that Red Sox Nation is a disgusting assemblage of foul-mouthed creeps and beer-swilling losers. I yelled at him about the YANKEES FANS, did he actually think that my nephews should be part of THAT despicable phenomenon? He roared back at me that there’s a reason Sox fans are known as “MASSHOLES.” I tried to explain that we’re the underdogs, we’re always going to be a little bit scrappy, he just didn’t UNDERSTAND.

It was actually kind of hilarious because I was genuinely upset, and I only managed to watch one game while I was babysitting for my nephews (”See boys? There’s Kevin Youkilis. You yell ‘Yooooook’ when he comes to bat, okay?”) in direct rebellion of my brother’s wishes.

As we roll into the bitter end of the season and the Yankees are positioned to win their sixty bajillionth league pennant while my team keeps monumentally screwing up, I take special umbrage at this story, which I dedicate to my brother.

Am I right, huh? Am I right? The Yankees are totally vile, right????

Unmarried and Single Americans Week

Well, dang, kids, it’s USA Week!

Kind of interesting to know that, as of 2004 statistics, I’m one of 89 million unmarried Americans, and 53 million who have never been married.

The best thing is that I’m pretty sure that International Talk Like a Pirate Day is sometime this week, so we can celebrate single pirates!! “Argh, matey, come here often?”

The Pastoral Covenant

A case study we looked at in class today has got me thinking.

I know we’re trained as clergy to observe pastoral confidentiality, and that that’s part of the implicit covenant between us and our parishioners when they come to us for advice and counsel.

We are also expected to listen empathically and to represent God’s love to them. For non-theists, same general idea. Love is love and we’re expected to be in loving relationship with our people.

All good so far. Everyone knows those things.

But what about, for lack of a better word, chastisement? Or maybe I’ll say “spiritual correction?” Do we expect that these days? In the more liberal churches, I mean?

Here’s what I’m thinking. If I go to my minister and confess something I know is unethical, do I not, at some level of my being either expect or even secretly hope that he or she will bust me on it? I don’t mean in a judgmental, punishing way, but in an honest and theologically clear way? I think I would. If folks think of their clergyperson as someone they can tell anything to, that’s great! If they think their clergyperson will listen attentively to everything they say and never venture an opinion about it, I don’t think that’s so great.

In the case study today we looked at today, a female pastor (and D.Min. student) went to her seminary dean — a minister with whom she was friendly– and told her about the wonderful relationship she was having with a married man in the community. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s the gist. In this situation, the roles are very blurry — of course, the woman receiving this troubling information wasn’t the confessor’s pastor.
In trying to work this out (”why did she reveal this? what should the other minister have done?) the class considered Jesus’ question, “What do you need from me?”
Some folks thought that the woman needed attentive listening and understanding.
I thought she needed that, too, but also the proverbial smack upside the head. I figured that if she went to a minister with this confession, she must on some level be ready to hear a dissenting opinion on her decision to carry on a long-term affair. I figured that it would be most UNloving to deny her that, in fact.

Which led me to think about the unspoken covenant between parish ministers and their parishioners — isn’t part of the reason we join a church and stay with it to become well-known and loved by our pastors? And doesn’t part of the strength and mutuality of that relationship come from knowing that our pastor cares enough about us to actually try to help us stay healthy, whole and out of trouble?

I hope we haven’t lost that. While I don’t condone clerical shaming and judging, I think we’re like the tough old auntie on the porch who, when she sees you come home way past curfew, smelling like gin and with your shirt on backwards, whaps you upside the head with the magazine she’s been reading and says, “Girl, what ARE you thinking?” Then she pats the step next to her and you sit down and spill it all out how you’re seeing that bad boy Mickey Santelli on the sly, and she listens and goes, “mmmm hmmm” and when you’re all done she says, “Well, I just know you can do better than that, honey. And the next time you want to sneak out with ole Mickey, you just come see me and we’ll find something more productive for you to do with those hands of yours.”

Do clergy feel that they can be, not just listeners, but honest responders? Or is that too, I don’t know, authoritarian these days?

Interfaith Work

I had dinner with a dear old friend (and spiritual mother/grandmother) last night who has worked long and hard for interfaith awareness and alliances within Unitarian Universalism. We discussed the increasing isolationism of UUs, who seem determined to exist alone and entirely uniquely on the religious landscape, closing our eyes and ears to the broad evidence that we are no the only progressive faith tradition going, and insisting on creating exhausting initiatives for our tiny denomination to tackle instead of joining humbly with other religious folks who are working on the same issues.

As I said to my friend, “But if we did that, we might have to hear about GOD.” She nodded wryly. “And we might have to PRAY.” We shared a moment of mutual head-shaking — she the self-described “Shabbos UU” and I the Christian UU.

Unitarian Universalists claim to have respect for the wisdom of world religions and we like to use various people’s prayers and songs in our liturgies. Yet when it comes to actual encounter with religious people where we might have to either hear “What’s a Unitarian Universalist? Never hoid of ya” or sit quietly by while other people have big and good ideas, I think we largely balk. We seem to like to climb into crises where we can “save” people or protest prejudices (not a bad thing, of course, but only one way to do interfaith work), but do we live out our professed appreciation for other religions when we’re not leading a rally? Not so much. UUs often take our 8th graders on field trips to various houses of worship as part of a popular curriculum but I’ve never known of an RE program that went beyond the tourist approach to this encounter, helping our children define “us” as entirely different from “them.” Growing up UU, I certainly came away with the impression that WE were the sane ones, and those other weird people who did things like pray on their knees and drink Jesus’ blood were to be pitied if not downright disdained. We looked at them like specimens under a microscope. I sincerely hope it’s not the same today.

My friend made me laugh when she commented last night, “I can’t imagine not reading the Christian Century religiously!” I do, too, and agree with her. But of course that title alone turns a lot of UUs off and they have no idea that the journal is rich with news and theological conversation out of the liberal religious community. She said that she “despairs” of our clergy, so many of whom prefer to travel exclusively in UU circles.

I notice that our General Assembly offerings of late have been extraordinarily devoid of interfaith programming, and I hold out no hope whatsoever for our place at the ecumenical table of Christians (although this blog is certainly an ongoing ecumenical conversation, a fact of which I am very proud).

What’s your experience, friends? Whether Unitarian Universalist or other — or no religious affiliation at all — what’s your regular encounter with interfaith cooperation? If you’re a non-religious reader, what is your perception of what’s going on out there between religious groups?

Inquiring religious minds want to know. And hope to be proved wrong!

Bucking Bronco On the Prairie

I said to a friend today that I feel that ministry is a bucking bronco. You just get on there and hang on some days.

I switched my day off from Monday to Friday, which is making me a little bit confused this week, like “what day is it now?” But I’m excited about the change because it makes Sunday the beginning of the week rather than the end, which works for me theologically as well as energetically. It was weird to get up early on Monday morning this week and get into the office instead of sleeping late and lolling over my coffee, but I really loved being able to follow through with things that came up on Sunday, and I think I may actually be able to take the entire day off on Friday, amen! When I took Monday as my day off, I would inevitably start to hyperventilate at about 4pm wondering how many e-mails were piling up, and feel inexorably drawn into my study before dinner. How else to prepare for the onslaught that was Tuesday and Wednesday? I certainly didn’t have the energy to tackle that pile on Sunday afternoons or evenings! As a result, I very rarely took a full day off. It was more like a morning and afternoon off. That isn’t good.

So this is good. Taking Friday off also helps put me in better sync with the rest of the working world and allows me to say “TGIF” with everyone else, which makes me feel more like a normal person. I know that shouldn’t matter but it does — and if I don’t have ministry duties on Saturday morning or afternoon — wow! — it’s almost like having an actual weekend experience!

Even with all this massaging of my schedule, however, I am learning that unless I make space within myself that is free from the concerns of church, it doesn’t matter how much time I take off, or what days. I have been working on what I call “pathological availability” for some years now in my spiritual practice (put your hands together in a prayer pose, close your eyes and flare your nostrils when you say that…. “my spirituaaaal praaactice”) and am finally achieving some wideness in my soul that is unoccupied territory. I envision it as a big, wide prairie where nothing happens but the wind blowing through, and it feels really, really peaceful and holy.

(Wait a sec while I go dunk my head in the toilet before I get transported directly to heaven and ascend to the right hand of the Father and everything! whoo!)

But rilly.

Every few years I get a tiny intimation that what I am working on in the spiritually and emotionally is actually WORKING and I experience a lot of amazement and gratitude. You have to understand that when I got the call to ministry I thought it was the biggest mismatch of all time, like casting Zero Mostel as Tony in “West Side Story” or Carmen Miranda as Lady Macbeth: this is not a good idea!

I still feel that way sometimes. Like why is it a good idea to have a woman doing this work who has such a naturally testy temperament when there are so many truly good and nice people in the world to be ministers? Why come after me when it takes me a monumental effort to simply not spend most of my day totally disgusted with all of humanity, including myself? I keep saying to God, “why don’t you get a nice person? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?”

But you know how God is. God didn’t make me nice. But God did make me a big believer in the goodness of Church, and God did make me a hard worker and not too dumb, either. So I work hard for the Church because I love it, but the hardest work of all happens between my ears every day and every night as I fight my own nature and try to keep myself worthy of this work. It’s a flipping PARTY when I make real progress, and that’s what I’m celebrating now.

It’s not that things in the exterior world are calmer or under control (god awmighty they’re not, believe me!), but after years and years of working on it, I have finally succeeded in clearing out some empty spaces in my being where worries and plans, vision and creative process and strategizing, fussing and obsessing about the church used to take up every inch of territory. Now there’s a little prairie in there. It is the prairie where I said “God, I give up. I am anxious and preoccupied and thinking and planning and worrying almost all the time, and no one has ever needed me to do this. No one ever asked me to take vows of perpetual concern, no one ever required of me that the church occupy every corner of my heart, mind and soul. No one asked me, no one expects it, and only my ego has caused me to become sick with the notion that by worrying and obsessing I can achieve anything positive for myself or my church.”

Over the past two years I have become physically aware that neurotic anxiety about ministry colonizes my body far too easily and too often, like a medicine ball aimed right at my chest. Every day for two years I have gamely tried to throw it back, mostly just managing to drop it on my toe. But you know, either that medicine ball has become lighter or my arms have gotten stronger, because I started throwing it farther and farther in around August (I know — it’s easier when you’re on vacation!), and now it doesn’t come at me as often as it used to. Today I felt it coming at me and I did something I’ve never done before: I stepped out of the way and watched it go flying by. That thing is HEAVY. Damn. It could really hurt a person.

So I’m trying to stop carrying around that medicine ball and to stay in the prairie more often. I highly recommend it. One thing I have figured out is that carrying around that medicine ball doesn’t even make you a better minister, just a more burdened one.

And I think that’s enough mixed metaphors for tonight. Good night, ya’ll. See you on the prairie.

Quick Check-In (Tech)

Hi PeaceBangers,

I’m doing a lot of adjusting to the new computer and trying to stream-line my e-mail life from four accounts to one (gmail, which I still don’t love but it can clearly do the job). The MSN browser is actually worse in its new version than it was before, if such a thing is possible, and I want it out of my life forever. I’m setting up filters and folders on gmail so I can blend my personal and church accounts together. I hope it won’t be an overwhelming nightmare to get all that e-mail coming into one place. I get a LOT of e-mail and it helps me stay calm and organized to read my church e-mails separately from my family/friends notes. I’m not sure how I feel about this and not sure if I’m ready to do it.

My cousin got me to sign up for Facebook and I’m sorry I ever even LOOKED at it, because it is a very tempting little time-sucker. I will not sign in again. Enough. Basta.

Church has started up and is starting to hum like a beehive, and I start class tomorrow.

Hang on, Sloopy!

Boy, am I glad I did such a thorough office-cleaning and re-organization this summer! You could never tell by the looks of it today, though!