What if This Happened on a Sunday Morning???

A taste into my mind: I love analyzing this kind of stuff. It is a good representation on how church really can come off to someone who has never been there before. Why is this humorous? Because it is contrary to the cultural mores in a church service. Later in the episode we find the preacher really enjoyed this, but interestingly enough Bree (the woman reacting sitting down) is always the one to want to live up to and exceed at what social expectations should be. So what is that saying about the culture of heading into a church building if one has never been there? Lynette (the blonde standing up asking questions) doesnt come back because it wasnt perceived of as acceptable to ask these kinds of questions in public. Its more okay for her to ask this in the private conversation with her friend Bre later in the episode. I think it pin points the way a lot of people tend to perceive church if they have never been there: a place not to ask questions publically, but keep them silently to yourself. It is also humourous for people who go to church because it goes against the culture in which the church operates. Interesting to observe...

The Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You

For some reason this song makes me think of my life right now.

Is High School Ever Over?

As I was getting a ride from a friend from the car repair place the other day, I got a phone call out of the blue from someone I had gone to high school with who I havent talked to in a while. And apparently my ten year high school reunion is coming this summer. Since I will be back in the midwest for the summer, I can't quite use the excuse that I live on the other end of the country and it is time consuming and expensive to go back. I realized that avoidance of such events are amongst my reasons for living at another end of the country.

This gets me to ponder the last ten years of my life. And there is a part of me not really wanting to rehash my college career, and the time before I decided to go to college where I was serious about my high school boyfriend. I am kind of wanting to avoid questions about such things really. I realized that I have lived an eventful, full life since I graduated from high school. And I honestly have never had a huge desire to look back on that horrific point of life.

I realized in high school there was a sense that I didnt really fit into any of the sterotypes that people fall into even then. I really question how much people really do fit into those molds in general however that is a point of life where it is so much more significant. I didnt cleanly fit into any of those molds really. The truth is I still dont but for some reason it has been less of an issue post college in terms of meeting people and making friends then it really was before that.

And the other thing about such events is that it triggers how I feel like I am not at the place I feel I should be at at this point in life. Being single, living off loans and moving around quite a bit still was quite contrary to what I always expected I would accomplish at this point in life.

However the thing is people tend to exaggerate their successes at such events. Some how the idea of going to a high school reunion makes me think that I should have completed a phD and be filthy rich (although I doubt that such items rarely belong in the same sentence). It also makes me think that I should be happily married and won some kind of big award like the Pulitzer, having needed to make arrangments to make sure they dont fall on the same weekend.

In all of these thoughts, I wonder if high school is ever really over. Maybe things like degrees, houses, salaries, travel opportunities, marriages and children are the adult versions of the way we measured ourselves in highschool. Maybe political beleifs, religious beleifs, sexual orientation, sports loyalties, careers and hobbies are the way we put ourselves into the molds in adulthood. In this, I really do not think that anyone cleanly fits into any of these molds. And its clear to me that I have always have had different friends and different activites bring out certain aspects of myself but there is this message that one needs to be defined one way or the other. For some reason I never truly identified with one group in high school.

Maybe its interesting right now that a bunch of us from high school are friending each other on facebook, but honestly do I really want to look backward in my life or do I want to look forward? I would be bold enough to say that life seems to have always gotten a little better since high school. But are the wounds that were inflicted during that time ever really over?

A Rough Weekend In Gods Loving Arms...

I had a tough session with my teaching parish supervisor this past Friday. Self Confidence is perpetually a growing edge of mine and she seemed really frusterated that I dont have a ton of it. However I felt like I have greatly improved in the context of teaching parish. When people go on and on about things that can trigger emotions easily, I tend to make an effort not to say a whole lot really because I do not want to say anything that I will regret. However she said things that made me feel like I should not have come back to PLTS at all when I started having difficulty with my contextual education office at school a year and a half ago. I wondered why the hell I have kept continuing. I will acknowledge that some settings seem to make me more naturally outgoing than others and for some reason I have had to push myself more at teaching parish, which I think really is the big question that I am wrestling with right now. Alot of things she said made me question my competency for pastoral ministry and if I need to consider something else.

I wonder if it was at all related to the fact that I had a very awkward encounter with someone in the parish who was asking me something that I felt was unreasonable and I got extremely nervous, not wanting to say yes for the sake of my own boundaries and not wanting to say no because of how uneasy that they felt. They might have talked to her which about this and this seemed to fuel all kinds of things she didnt like about me. My sermon last Sunday was on the list of things.

This conversation left me feeling like I have wasted a lot of my time, feeling sad, hurt and devastated. I channeled this energy into making this yummy chicken which is a South Beach alternative to Buffalo Wings. I let someone hanging out in the dorm kitchen try the chicken and he said that I did an awesome job on it. At that moment, I felt like I was living in an alternate universe as my comptence for pastoral ministry had been questioned and my cooking commended.

I wound up driving to a friends karoake birthday party in El Cerrito. It was a blast! I had a lot of fun singing and dancing during the night. The birthday boy requested to sing love shack with me, so I did. I also sang "Hopelessly Devoted to you" from Grease. This party was seriously the most fun that I have had in a LONG time. Sometimes I get in moods where I dont feel like partying but prefer the notion of relaxing. However Friday was a time where I needed to do something fun to distract myself from the conversation I had with my teaching parish supervisor during the day.

But as I was leaving around midnight I noticed that my contacts were really foggy. It probably was from crying much of the day. I enjoy having a drink or two at parties but I dont drink at all when I have been in a bad mood recently and so I stayed away. Despite my sobriety, my contacts made me ask a sober friend to drive my car.

The brake lights in my car had randomly come on in the past week. I was thinking I needed to get that checked out. And that night my friend driving the car noticed that my brakes were barely working. The next day she urged me to get it checked out. I knew that she was concerned but it kind of made me start balling because its been a very financially difficult semester already with lousy health insurance and my various loan check dramas. But I felt like I should go in to somewhere to get the breaks looked at. I brought it into the first place who ssaid that they would look at it on Saturday.

So I brought it into Big O Tires. They inspected it and told me that they couldnt let me take the car at all because all kinds of things were wrong with the breaks making it unsafe to drive. They gave me a listing of all the things that I needed to be charged for. When I saw that the amount was around 1500 I found myself very unhappy. And yet I have already lost a good portion of my life to the ramifications of a car accident, and preventing an accident that could easily kill another person and kill or severely injure me didnt seem to have a price tag on it either.

However the reality of the car made me feel even more depressed than I already felt because of the conversation with my teaching parish pastor. Then what happened with the rest of my day was just rather odd.

You see the thing is that I am a very introverted person. Sometimes I just crave alone time. However I was sad enough that I didnt feel like being alone on Friday and Saturday. I called my mentor on Friday evening and I went to the party. On Saturday, I had a dorm mate more than willing to help me out with whatever I needed. Then I got a variety of phone calls from people that I havent heard from in awhile, one of whom I hadnt heard from in years. I spent much of my weekend on the phone.

Its kind of funny really because alot of times I feel like I dont hear from people that I am not related to that often. And then I will have a stretch of 48 hours as the time where I actually get a hold of people or they actually call me. Its kind of bizzarre really. But this weekend was one of those times.

I tend to be cautious about how I say God works in my life. I am cautious because people who use that kind of language on a regular basis sometimes lack intellegent grounding for their faith. That kind of language is used as a sense of manipulation. And also I think that there are other forces at work in the world that are not from God that can be misinterpreted as God. Yet despite all of these hesitations, I know that hearing from all of these people in the course of this weekend was a work of the Holy Spirit. It was one of those prayers that I didnt know to articulate myself that God answered really. I didnt deal with the weekend alone by any means. I was assured of Gods presence through friends and family.

So when I went to bed on Saturday evening, despite all my sorrows and weariness that I had felt in the course of the day, I went to bed assured of God's love and grace when I realized what had happened. This doesnt mean these other details of my life dont need to be resolved, rather it gives me strength to face them. Friday night I kept waking up in the night crying. But Saturday night I went to bed assured of God's love and grace (and also emotionally exhausted) even if I am questioning the direction of my own life.

Stewardship

For my public ministry class I am working right now on a presentation for Monday on Stewardship. I've been distracted by many events from my weekend, which I will write about soon. I read the book Ask Thank Tell: Improving Stewardship Ministry in Your Congregation. Its not a bad book in terms of encouraging people to think about monetary giving as part of their relationship with God. I like concepts of encouraging people to give to the church first and then keep the rest for themselves. I like that aspect of the book.

Yet despite that, a concept that seems to perpetually bother me as I am reflecting over this is how I would talk about stewardship in a more impoverished area. Yes, its important to give to church. But isnt it alittle classist to think that people spend their money that they could tithe on fun things and things that they don't need? Its not to say that people in lower classes dont own or want to own these more fun things as well. Its more of this concern that its probably easier to tell middle class teenagers that they dont always need to have fun with their money but they should develop an attitude of giving. However what about being in a rural area where people dont make a lot of money or an inner city area where they have to work multiple jobs just to put food on the table? Settings where maybe having a warm winter coat for themselves or shoes for their children may be more of the dream?

I know that impoverished people are capable of giving. I think of the story of the widow that gave all she had to the temple. However how do I talk about stewardship in this kind of setting while still being sensitive to the financial constraints that people have. Yes, give to God because it all belongs to God. But if I am in an area where people are just struggling to make ends meet?

This is just the factor that seems to bother me in trying to figure out how to have pastoral sensibilities in the context of stressing stewardship. I wish it was something others would have been more eager to address.

Lutheran Non-Violence

Most of my Saturday I was at a workshop on Lutheran nonviolence. This was conducted by one of my friends from PLTS who works for this organization called Pace e Bene. I think that the things that we covered were really good for promoting nonviolence and understanding. We addressed that there are a lot of misconceptions about nonviolence out there.

We also had an interesting activity that addressed that we all have different ideas of what is and is not violent with discussion about it. For example, is a bar tender serving another drink to an alcoholic person who is visibly drunk a violent act? Is a woman spray painting a bill board that she found to be sexist a violent act? I found myself only finding one case where I personally thought was 100% violent: the outsourcing of jobs to Mexico, leaving people who had these jobs in the US unemployed and not having the labor in Mexico be regulated. That sparked some very interesting conversation, understanding the variety of perspectives people

The other activity that I thought was pretty interesting that I had already done another version of at another workshop was the discussing of whether homosexuals should be ordained in the ELCA from a variety of points of views: A bishop from MN, a social worker from NY advocating for GLBT rights, a homosexual pastor and a homemaker who is against the ordaination of homosexuality. I thought that this was a good excercize to be mindful of the humanity of the other. This is something I would definitely would want to have in my bag of tricks for some kind of adult education session someday. I tend to be on the side of thinking homosexuals should be ordained. However I think that alot of the rhetoric around it tends to ignite extreme emotions regardless of what ones stance is. I think that it really is important to step away from these emotions to really understand other perspectives on this.

We also discussed "Freedom of A Christian" by Martin Luther. Which is a document that I absolutely love and am always citing in my papers. And we discussed a reading by Dietrich Bonhoffer.

I would recommend looking at www.paceebene.org as a good resource for anyone who would be interested in the issue of nonviolence for some good resources and training opportunites. I purchased their book Engage which has a lot of the activities that we did with an eye for wanting to use some of these resources myself.

Looking back on it from a more critical perspective now though, even though I am a pacifist I do not know if it is fair to prescribe it as a Lutheran stance. Article 16 of the Augsburg Confessions by Melanchthon states that "concerning civic affiars they teach that lawful civil ordinances are good works of God. Christians are permitted to...decide matters by imperial and other existing laws, to imose just punishments, to wage just war, to serve as soliders..." So this statement could definitely be used against the idea of lutheran pacifism, especially in the light of the sinful world we live in.

I live amongst people who hate legalism and works/righteousness because of their lutheran identity. Ideally nonviolence would be a work of the spirit that is described in the book of concord. However nonviolence could also be a good work of the spirit and an example of how Luther says in freedom of a christian that a christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. I think that what I am saying is that I think that nonviolence is the best way to go personally and will continue my education on such manners. I can justify my Lutheran faith because of this. But I do not know if it is fair to prescribe pacifism as a lutheran stance even though I can justify a pacifist perspective from my lutheran heritage. However I can strive for a nonviolent approach in my own life as much as possible. So I think I am just nervous to say that nonviolence is Lutheran even though I can say that I am a Lutheran who would advocate for nonviolence. However a great resource for a lutheran nonviolence is lutheran peace fellowship. www.lutheranpeace.org A disclaimer is that I havent looked around on this website a lot yet, but I think that its something many of you who I know read this blog would appreciate as a progressive lutheran resource.

PREACHING

I praught on the Acts 2 text today at my teaching parish. It is Jubilee Sunday, so I tied in the Jubilee concepts into the sermon that I wrote. I must say that I thought that I would hate the act of preaching. I have found that this is not true. I love finding sermon illustrations and I love doing the exegesis that goes into a well thought out sermon. I think what really intimidates me is the idea of talking in a monologue for 10 minutes straight on my own with a group of people having their eyes on me. What intimidates me is having my thoughts and ideas out in the public domain which gives people the right to formulate opinions about me. So practice makes perfect, as I have spent a few hours at teaching parish building on my own this week practicing the sermon. This was preferable as I could get used to the flow that the enviorment of church offered.

I had a few nightmeres about the sermon. In one of the nightmeres, the pulpit was turned away from the congregation and I did not notice that. Then I couldnt remember what I had written and I had a hard time deciphering what I had written so I was engaging more with my sermon notes than with the congregation. Nightmere number two entailed sleeping till noon on Sunday. When I awoke with a start at 6am, an hour before my alarm clock, I rested assured that this was a bad dream.

I am happy to say that preaching itself went very well, however I felt like I had excessive nervous energy before the service. It really soothed me when my teaching parish supervisor took the time to pray with me before the service.

People loved my sermon. People told me that they like it when I preach. (this is the second time I preached) I am also told I come off as pretty confident and poised in front of everyone while doing this. (Contrary to the immense butterflies in my stomach and my desire to run away instead of having a crowd of people hear me speak). In fact, the president of my seminary attends this congregation and her family was visiting with her today. She approached me and said that she really enjoyed my sermon and she was glad that her children and grandchildren got to hear me preach. This is a pretty high compliment in my book.

I think that my teaching parish has a crowd of very educated people and I want to be sure to come off intellegent in my sermons as a result. Not only that there are retired clergy at this congregation as well. While these are all good people who just want to be a part of a healthy church community, there is also the wanting to make a good impression to them. It helps that they really seem to like me a lot and I have come to really care for them.

I think I finally figured out a formula that would explain my nervousness about preaching and public ministry roles:
(naturally introverted tendencies+self confidence as a growing edge)/trying to maintain appropriete professional boundaries = high tendencies towards nervousness+questioning self disclosure
Yet I have such a strong desire to be as close to the word and sacrament as possible despite all of this and a huge love of theology!!!