RGBP Friday Five - Business Trip!

Mother Laura over at RGBP writes:

I spent a good bit of time today registering and making travel arrangements for the American Academy of Religion meeting in Chicago at the beginning of November. (Anyone up for a meetup? Shout out, okay?) I'm not presenting this year, so I'm busy sending out resumes and cover letters, but at least I'm not stressing about getting a paper written.

I'll see friends and teachers from grad school, try to resist temptation in the book hall, attend some presentations if time permits, and, God willing, have some preliminary interviews in the everlasting college-teaching-job-search process--prayers welcome, as always. And, thanks to my dear Mom who agreed to babysit and donated some frequent flyer miles, it will also be a busy-but-happy getaway with my sweetheart.

So for today's Friday Five, you're invited to share your experiences with the exciting, challenging world of business travel....

1. Does your job ever call for travel? Is this a joy or a burden?
Typically, I don't travel at all for my job as associate pastor - but the church where I work is 35 miles from our house, so I do commute! The commute is becoming a burden more and more as I spend more hours there, as gas prices go up (and thankfully recently came down) and as I want to be at more of the congregational activities...

2. How about that of your spouse or partner?
Ah, this is different. Starman is an experimental astrophysicist (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) and his current experiment is in Argentina, a long way from the upper midwest US where we live. He has always traveled for his work, from South Africa, to two three-month stints in Australia just before we were married, to Albuquerque where his last experiment was. Because he works with international collaborations, he often goes to meetings overseas - last month he was in Switzerland for a week working at CERN, where the Large Hadron Collider was turned on and then broke right away (nope, he didn't break it!). It is because of his extensive travel (up to one week every month) that I have chosen to dial back my career to half time or less while our three daughters are young.

3. What was the best business trip you ever took?
When I was an environmental engineer, I spent three weeks in Kalamazoo, Michigan, floating down the Kalamazoo River in a small motorized rowboat, doing oversight for the EPA while another group took sediment and water samples. I became good friends with the crew I worked with, and we had a great time together, joking and laughing and getting to know one another on the river, eating and even dancing together in the evenings. That was the time I loved my job the most.

4. ...and the worst, of course?
Hard to say. I like to travel, but I guess the hardest time for me was the month I spent in Detroit, living at my inlaws and working in the city an hour away on a sewer mapping project. I was working by myself, in another consultant's office, and they were not as friendly as my rowboat crew, so I spent my long days alone, poring over maps, and my nights trying to get some sleep away from my new husband and not put out my in-laws (who were very gracious). I was exhausted and bored.

5. What would make your next business trip perfect?
Well, I leave Monday for three days at an Order of St. Luke Convocation/Retreat - but I don't have any close friends in the Order, so I will not have any joyful reunions. I am looking forward to attending the Lectionary Homiletics gathering in the spring, when I hope to be able to meet some RGBPs, see some old friends, and stay with a friend from our Chicago days...springtime in Atlanta sounds just about right!

Thanks Mother Laura!

Swim Test

This is a post that is hard for me to write, but I am trying to work through some things, and I would love to hear any comments or suggestions.

Last night, Freckleface (our 7 year old daughter) and Skye (our 9, almost 10 year old daughter) went to a pool in Next Door Town to "try out" for the swim team. I say try out in quotes because there really was no failing, as far as I could see - all they had to do was tread water for 1 minute and then swim one length of the pool. Now, Skye has been taking a private 15 minute swimming lesson every week for the past 6 years. That's right, 6 years - every Tuesday, we go to a nearby nursing home with a 92 degree pool and all four of us (Brown Eyes included now, she is 4.5) get in the pool, and our wonderful teacher, Miss Mermaid, gives the girls each some part of her time. Every Tuesday.

We had been working with Miss Mermaid for weeks to prepare for this "test" - Skye and Freckleface had been swimming laps, working on strokes, and when they weren't working with Miss Mermaid, I had them swimming laps with me. They were ready.

The pool was a lot bigger than they are used to, but they have swum in big pools before. And all they had to do was get to the other end

Freckleface went first. She easily tread water but had trouble getting to the other end, so she got out and tried again, and made it.

Then Skye got in the pool. She easily treaded water too, but then as soon as she started to swim she stopped. The pool was too deep, she said (12 feet). She didn't want to look down at the bottom.

I told her not to look, but she got out, crying. She got in again, but got out right away, sobbing that she couldn't do it. It was over.

I can't even hardly write about this without crying too. Skye is extremely bright, does very well in school. But she will not push herself phsyically. Or in any other way. She had the chance to take up an instrument this fall, but refused, because she didn't want to practice. She had the chance to play piano and take lessons, since we recently were gifted a piano, but she also refused to practice that. She said she would play soccer this fall, so I bought her cleats and shinguards, and signed her up, and she played for one week and now refuses to play. She can't ride a bike yet, despite many hours of my and Starman's working with her, and now she refuses to try.

I am getting tired of all these refusals. I know she can swim, and I know the team will be a good thing for her. She doesn't need to compete, just practice, no one is forced to enter a meet. I think she needs the physical activity, especially as she heads toward adolescence, and swimming is a sport you never have to give up. In short, I am considering forcing her to keep going to the tryouts until she makes it, and then to keep going to practices.

But part of me just wants to give up. Stop pushing her. Let her face her own consequences.

Sigh.

Ouch

I was getting all the girls in bed (Starman is in Geneva, yes, Switzerland this week) when I found out that a parishioner I visited a couple of times in the hospital, whom I fully expected would go home just fine, had died. This is the second visit I have made to someone in the past four weeks who has died. And I just started doing visits five weeks ago. It hurts, although I barely knew her. It just hurts to know that those she cares about are grieving, and that someone I prayed with, someone I prayed for, is no longer here.

WisePastor just wrote "Part of the problem with being a "parson" (ME person) is that you work with your heart, and it gets broken over and over again" Ouch.

I am feeling rather raw tonight anyway, with Starman gone, and having to take care of three girls and a dog and two cats all by myself, and, well, just life - figuring out what it really means to take on this mantle of pastor, to be God's representative in the world (that seems too presumptuous anyway!). I need a big hug, but I will have to settle for three little ones - I guess that isn't that bad. My heart is broken, but that means it is also open, open I hope to hear what God has to say to me through all of this.

Slow Down

So every Wednesday I come out here to BigChurch in MediumCity and I see things I would like to do or change. But every week I remember that I am not WisePastor the senior pastor, and I have not been here very long, and I have not even been doing ministry for very long. And usually there is a very good reason things are the way they are. So I tell WisePastor what I think, and he agrees, but then he tells me that before he got here, things were even more not the way we both want them to be, and they are slowly going in the direction we want them to be - fortunately at least, he and I tend to agree on where we are headed. It is kind of like piloting a large cruise ship, change takes time. I am used to steering a canoe, not a cruise ship. A couple of J strokes, and you are back on course. Not with BigChurch. There are more layers here than I know, and making a turn involves moving that rudder slowly, and changing engine speed slowly.

God, help me to give up my paddle and learn to ride the waves, not crashing through them like a destroyer, but slowly piloting the ship on the way YOU want it to go.

Mother Laura over at RGBP writes:
It's time for a Back-To-School Friday Five!
1. Is anyone going back to school, as a student or teacher, at your house? How's it going so far?
Four of the five of us over here are back to school. Starman started teaching August 25 - 69 students in a physics-for-masochists class at the unversity. Freckleface and Skye started 2nd and 4th grade respectively on August 26, and Brown Eyes has been slowly starting at her co-op preschool - she will be in class 4 days a week for 4 hours a day when it is all up and going on the 22nd.

Starman seems incredibly busy grading homework, posting solutions, answering email, but he is a very accessible professor. Skye has had at least three total meltdowns about all her homework. Freckleface has made a new best friend, as usual. And Brown Eyes just loves school!
2. Were you glad or sad when back-to-school time came as a kid?
I loved, and still love, school. I love new pencils and new notebooks. I loved seeing old and new friends and I love to learn! I got bored by the end of summer and was ready to have homework again, at least until high school.
3. Did your family of origin have any rituals to mark this time of year? How about now?
There was always the back to school shopping, and still is, although I limit it to one outfit and a pair of shoes for each girl (clothes are really expensive!). That was about it, and is about it. We take lots of pictures on the first day, with them lined up in front of the front door - it is cool to see how they grow!
4. Favorite memories of back-to-school outfits, lunchboxes, etc?
I had a Snoopy lunchbox I just loved. And I thought I looked really "mod" in 1972 starting kindergarten with my yellow tights, plaid miniskirt, and red jacket, made by my aunt. And my pixie haircut!
5. What was your best year of school?
Far and away my second year of seminary. The first year I was too busy worrying how to take notes and "do" classes when it wasn't an engineering school. By the second year, I was loving my classwork, enjoying my new friends, and loving my new baby, who was dropped off every day by her sitter in time for us to go to chapel together...what fun!

Thanks Mother Laura for a great Friday Five!

Clergy, or not?

So, am I clergy, or am I not clergy? I have been trying to figure out this question for some time now. Once I started seminary I kind of felt like I was headed down the path to becoming clergy. What did that mean? For me, a rather introverted engineer, it meant I was finally claiming the name Christian for myself in a very public way. It meant that I was willing to consider myself a representative of the United Methodist Church, although I disagreed (and still disagree) with some of the policies of that church. When I had to wear a clergy collar as a chaplain intern at a Presbyterian nursing home/continuing care facility, it felt right.

Then we moved to Big Midwest City from Biggest Midwest City, and I became more of a mom than a pastor for a while, especially after I graduated from seminary. Then I became a youth ministry coordinator, and the senior pastor treated me more like an associate pastor, having me assist with communions and baptisms, leading worship several times a year. It felt good and right.

Then, a new senior pastor who told me at our first meeting that I was a layperson. She was right. I went back to sitting in the pew every Sunday. That didn't feel right. So I rooted around and WisePastor asked me to take over the Saturday night service at BigChurch in Medium CIty and boom - I was clergy again, in voice but not in name. I was reminded once a month when I had to find an elder to do communion that I was not ordained.

Now, I am a licensed local pastor, so within the walls of this church, I am clergy - I can marry, bury, and perform the sacraments. But outside these walls, I am still a layperson. So when I went to get a badge for the hospital, they asked "are you ordained?" - the answer is no. Do you want the title Rev. on your badge? No, I am not the reverend MumPastor. Yet.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the district office sends me mail to the church addressed to Rev. MumPastor.

So, am I clergy or lay? Does it really matter? I have the work of God to do, and I am thankful. Confused. But thankful.

First Solo Communion Celebration and a sermon too

I preached and led worship as usual this Saturday night at BigChurch. The difference was, when it came time to lead the communion service, I was it. There was no elder there. As a licensed local pastor, I get to do it all myself now. Well, not really myself. Actually, the Spirit, the people and I work together. I have been waiting to do this for a long, long, long time. It didn't feel much different, really. But it felt good.

once I figure out how to do it, I will post my sermon from tonight.