ask and ye shall receive

So. I pour my heart out to the Universe about missing preaching. Out of the clear blue tonight I get a phone call from a cousin (very distant, probably like 2nd or 3rd). I haven’t talked to him in years, maybe decades. We grew up seeing each other every Christmas. His mother is my paternal grandfather’s youngest sister, so his mother is my father’s aunt. Anyway, J is in charge of the vestry at his church and his preacher is going on vacation at the end of June. He wanted to know if I’d come be their guest preacher for the day. I’m soooooo excited! There’s a children’s sermon/time and everything. It’s a little more than an hour or so away from me, but that’s no big deal. It also happens to be on a Sunday when T is not preaching so he can manage the children at church, and I’ll get easily some sermon prep time that week.

annual conference

Annual Conference was hard. lots of emotions up there: lots of pain and sadness; clergywomen getting screwed over, salary-wise especially; our bishop retiring and uncertainty at who the next episcopal leader (who will be appointed in September) will be; clergy morale in our conf. is very low. anyway, a hard week. I need to leave it all on the mountain and just get back into the swing of things in our little lives down here.

sigh. for 51 weeks out of the year I feel good about my decision to stay home with my kids…but that one week, the week I spend with all my colleagues, the week where I am reminded beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am called to preach, I feel guilty. horribly guilty. like I’m letting down God. like I’m being left out. or left behind. my appointment (to my nonprofit) is technically half-time, or I get half-time credit for it (it even requires a special vote each year at Conference to approve me serving less than full-time). This year will be my 10th year at half-time. So, I have only gotten 5 years of pension credit for the past 10 years of service. and of course I have not made any contributions to my pension plan during that time either because I have not made any money in the past decade. kinda pathetic. best years of your life to save money are your 20s and 30s. and I didn’t do it in either decade.

I know I am making the right decision for my kids. I also know that when I am 75 I will not regret the 8 years or so I will have stayed home and out of the itinerancy. But right now, sometimes, I really think I ought to just go tell the bishop that I need a little church to love on, a place to preach every week, some folks to visit when they’re sick and a few funerals to preside over. I miss it. good lord, I miss it. I miss being good at something (as opposed to motherhood which I constantly feel like I’m fucking up). I’m a good minister. I know how to do it. I know how to orchestrate worship and how to administer the life and business of the congregation. I know how to help people face death and prepare for marriage. and I am a good preacher. I just miss being able to use my gifts and graces. I feel so inadequate as a mother; and I feel pretty good about myself as a preacher.

It’s been a hard week. a sad week. and yet a fun week. I love staying with friends, especially other clergy couples (where both members of a couple are ordained) and seeing how their children have grown; love experiencing worship done by people who are professionals. worship in the local church is good and fine and all that, but worship done by worship professors and famous preachers and amazing choirs is just the closest thing to the Kingdom you get this side of glory. so, some good stuff, for sure, but just a lot of tiredness now.

I’m back

Annual Conference is over. AC is my professional organization’s annual meeting. All the clergy in my denomination in this geographical area gather for worship and business. It is the one week each year that I seriously doubt my decision to stay home with my children. I feel guilt. I feel sadness. I feel left out. I miss preaching every week. I don’t miss a lot of the tedium that is church administration, but I desperately long to be in charge of worship again. I long to be by the side of the sick and the suffering, to do funerals and pastoral care. I miss it. I really really do. I believe that what I do with my children is valuable, is important, is their best chance to have a healthy life. But I know I am called to the ordained ministry. It is always good to have that reaffirmed, but it is hard to leave my colleagues (even as the System known as the Church frustrates and saddens and inspires me).

beginning a conversation

I’ve been in conversation with some colleagues around the subject of discrimination. I sent the following email to two of them:
Talking about injustices, it is VERY difficult to parse out what wrongs happen to us because we are women vs what wrongs happen to us because we are merely clergy living in an unjust system. I know that the longer I’m in the UMC, I see injustices to regular old white boys, too, even ones I don’t like (hee!). The appointment system is often random but at the same time feels very rigged; there are lots of people “screwed over” every year. I also watch the BOM make really difficult decisions that could be construed as discriminatory if you don’t have all the facts. I’d imagine that the Cabinet makes decisions that also could be construed as discriminatory if you don’t know all sides to it as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that there are plenty of wrongs perpetrated against women and ethnic minorities, but getting those separated from regular ol’ injustice will be difficult and fraught with lots of pain.

Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go down this path, just that we should do it with our eyes open.

I wish I had known back in 1990 just how unjust the UMC was (and how unbelievably unorganized and primitive some of its structures were). I may have made some really different career choices.

good idea

I like to think I helped pioneer the idea of a “Blue Christmas” service, having devoted a whole Sunday service to it, usually the second week of Advent, when I was a full-time pastor back in the mid-1990s. I like the idea of having a special service, though, because it acknowledges where many people really are emotionally during the holidays.