It Takes a Village

Hey, ELCA citizens of the blogosphere and theological kissing-cousins! I have a favor to ask you, by way of our pastoral intern (have I mentioned that she's doing a terrific job?).

First some backstory: Our church, like many others, has a difficult time these days gathering people together in real-time to do religious formation. Those days when parents dutifully brought their children to Sunday School and their adolescents to catechism class week after week on a consistent basis are no more, for a variety of reasons.

A couple of years ago our Education Committee, at the request of frustrated parents, came up with a program of monthly educational packets -- an assortment of lessons, prayers and activities that families could do together -- that we've been sending to families of small children. This is supplemented throughout the year with special educational events/family worship. In our locality, this seems to be a workable alternative to traditional Sunday School.

Now parents of older kids, tweens and teenagers, have asked the Education Committee if a similar program could be developed for confirmation class.

Knowing all the creativity that goes on in other congregations, I am asking my online friends for help in finding resources to create a confirmation-class packet. We have until recently been using a resource called Free to Be, but we need to update and upgrade. And we are open to thinking outside the box in terms of utilizing "homegrown" materials, including online resources, that congregations have developed themselves. I'm also interested to hear how other congregations are navigating religious formation these days when it's so hard to get people (including FT and me) committed to a physical classroom presence on a week-to-week basis.

Thank you in advance for your helpfulness and creativity.

"Leave Her Alone"

Today's Gospel lesson

The other day I happened to visit the blog of a certain Reformed-tradition Evangelical author and professor -- it was one of those links-you-stumble-on-while-looking-for-something-else -- who regularly opens his page up to contributing bloggers. Reading through some of the guest-blogger posts, I noticed that whenever a woman was guest blogger, the reader responses became more critical, more patronizing, more preachy; lots of imperious mansplaining going on. (Sidebar: For an interesting discussion of this phenomenon, read Tony Jones' recent blog query "Where Are the Women?", the response of some women, and the response of Jones and other men to those responses.)

"Leave her alone," I found myself thinking as I read through post after post by nitpicking, tall-stick-afflicted know-it-alls dogpiling on one female guest blogger.

Even though this was all going on in a religious milieu different from my own, I felt a certain kinship with this woman. Like most of us, I suspect, I've been at the receiving end of nonconstructive criticism, scorn or outright bullying for being who I am, for saying what I think, for expressing how I feel -- sometimes as a perceived personal attack, sometimes as a perceived attack on a group to which I belong. (This essay, for instance, makes me feel that I'm not young enough, heterosexual enough or fertile enough to be part of this pastor's vision of the Reign of God. What I hear in this "missional" message is, "So die already.")

"Leave her alone." "Leave them alone." Sometimes I'd love to hear those phrases resounding from heaven.

But, thinking about this week's Gospel lesson, I wonder about the times when I'm the one needing a calling-out by Jesus for disparaging other people's expressions of faith.

This past month our church has been collecting surveys from parishoners. They ask what's been working for people and what hasn't in terms of worship, education and so on. FT and I completed our surveys after a particularly unfocused Sunday that just seemed to highlight things about our parish life that tend to drive both of us crazy, and so we expressed some of those frustrations in some detail. It felt very brave and liberating at the time. But in retrospect -- what if some line item we've chalked up to carelessness or incompetence is actually just the act of someone who, like Mary, is simply "doing what she can," however inexplicably or imperfectly, for the love of God? Even with the understanding that we were being asked to be candid and specific, were all of our critical observations valid, or were some of them simply projections of our own psychological stuff? I mean, I can be OCD; I'm someone who notices typos and crooked pictures hanging on walls and flat notes. If there are enough of those things going on, I get anxious and wanting to get busy "fixing" so the world is returned to my idea of wholeness. At what point is does that element of my personality cross the line from being a useful quality in a community setting to being a destructive force? How do I know?

But nowhere in this story do we hear Jesus telling either Mary or Judas, "Leave me alone." And maybe there's a lesson in that, whether we're the beleaguered recipients of others' negative judgments or the highhanded judges ourselves. That gives me hope.

Sunday Dinner: Latin Spice Roast Chicken

Sunday dinner (or what some of you would call supper) is a big deal at our house; it's a kind of holy Sunday afternoon project for us that allows us to take care of one another in a fun, creative way. (And  it's even more creative these days, with FT on a soft-foods diet while her reconstructed jaw joint mends.)

Here is what we had for dinner today: Latin Spice Roast Chicken, using a plump, beautiful bird from Graham's Organics in Weidman. We paired it with FT's Spanish rice. The chicken was wonderful without involving a lot of fuss; it was second-helping good, in fact. The chicken rub's smoked paprika has a flavor reminiscent of chipotle without the heat intensity, and the lime adds some citrus zing. If you're like me you might be skeptical of the hot oven, but this is the second time in the past month that we've roasted chicken start to finish in a 400-degree oven, and both times the resulting bird was appealingly golden on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. (Sorry, Mom-who-always-roasted-meat-at-350.)

If you follow the link, head farther down the rabbit hole and visit the original recipe that inspired this one, for an orange-enhanced version. I might also use both lime orange next time -- there will be a next time -- or I might play around with more Spanish-inspired flavors.

Bored by the Bible

FT and I had lunch the other day with someone who does children's ministry in our congregation. While  telling us about some of the things she was doing with the younger members of our church she confessed that she was finding it difficult to keep the youngsters interested in Bible stories. You see, she's a masterful storyteller who can make up tall tales on the fly; and the kids, frankly, get much more engaged in her own highly imaginative stories than in the Scriptural stories the tall tales are intended to lead into.

I have to admit that, many if most days, I'm with the kids here. Sometimes, to me, the Bible is pretty boring. Sometimes boring on the level of slogging through the Gilgamesh saga, one of my recent Great Books projects and one of the most neuron-numbingly incoherent and dull stories I've ever encountered; sometimes boring on the level of, say, sitting in a church council meeting where some concrete thinker has spent the last 20 minutes parsing an obscure line in the church constitution that may or may not really have anything to do with buying a part from Home Depot to fix the broken furnace, and while sitting there wearing your meeting game face you're actually thinking (unless you've already dozed off), "Who the hell cares what it says in the footnote to line 10 of subarticle D?"

Leviticus...Numbers...I and II Chronicles...great swaths of the New Testament epistles...Revelation...for me they're kind of like the Gilgamesh bromance and/or the Council Meeting From Hell.

Yes, it's true: It is sometimes very difficult for me to engage with Scripture, especially the non-narrative texts, in a lively way. I can fake it by reading commentaries and contextual aids, looking for new insights there, or by reading sermons and essays describing what other people in my religious milieu have gotten out of their own Bible reading; but just reading it to read it-- not so much. 

I'm sure some of my readers will find this distressing or appalling. But in the spirit of Lent, even in the context of my very minimal observance of Lent this year (which is pretty much, "Oh -- I'm observing that now it's Lent), confession is good for the soul. 

The last time I was really geeked about Scripture was when I was in training for lay ministry and got to study and discuss it  in an academic way with professors who knew what they were talking about and who were able to convincingly articulate the idea that the whole of any given text, and of the canon of Scripture as a whole, was greater than the sum of its parts. But that mojo is hard to keep going outside a particular kind of supported atmosphere.

It makes me wonder how other non-fundamentalist Christians -- people who don't have an oracular, magick-book approach to reading the Bible, but who read and study it in different ways as part of an ongoing spiritual discipline -- power through the drearier parts. What keeps you reading? Have you ever consigned a particular book or part of a book to the land of  "been there, done that, ain't readin' it no more"? What are some pluses of tackling the entirety of Scripture -- good, bad, ugly, boring? I'm genuinely interested in how others deal with this dilemma...or if it even is a dilemma.

A Wired Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five questions have to do with our relationship to technology: 

1. What types of technologies, like cell phones, computers, tvs, etc., do you routinely use? How frequently?
At our house we have two televisions, one in the living room and one in the bedroom (contrary to common wisdom, we sometimes find it helpful, after a tiring day, to unwind watching TV in bed, with no negative afteraffects); we each have a smartphone, the last-generation Samsung Galaxies that we generally love; we each have a laptop computer; and we each have a Kindle -- I have a tablet-like Kindle Fire that does pretty much anything, and Fellow Traveler just got a used Kindle from her upgrading sister that we need to add to our account. So we're pretty wired around here. We are usually within arm's reach of a phone or a laptop, and I do a lot of bedtime reading with my Kindle. Oh...and we have a seriously underused iPod somewhere on premises (I think in the family technology drawer under our DVR -- wait; there's another thing). I don't really enjoy "portable" music when I'm walking around; it feels like I'm missing out on important voices and sounds around me, especially when I'm walking outside. 

2. What social media and/or games do you like to play? How often? On which device do you occupy yourself? Which method of social media do you prefer?
I am not really big on online games. I do enjoy playing Scrabble with FT and assorted others (even though I tend to play for words, not for points -- it's just a thing); I went through a Words With Friends phase last year during our Florida sojourn but got pretty burned out on that; every so often I play Word Drop 2 or mah-jongg. If I play, it's usually on the laptop; I have such fumble-fingers, it's hard for me to play especially timed games on my phone. As far as social media -- for me it's Facebook (far too much Facebook, frankly). I don't have enough Deep Thoughts to tweet, and other social media outlets either seem too kiddish or too much like work.

3. Do you separate online activities between home and work? Or is it all the same everywhere?
Well, since I don't have a "real" job at the moment, it's all the same. 

4. Do you have a smart (or I-) phone?
Oh, yes. At times our phones are smarter than we are. FT and I especially rely on our phones for directions, since we're both directionally challenged. We have named our GPS app Priscilla, and she has gotten us safely through LA and Chicago -- no small thing. Again, because of my clumsy fingerwork, I don't do an awful lot with my apps, but I do like my weather app, my Yelp app, my compass app and my emergency flashlight app. And I recently discovered Evernote for my laptop, and downloaded the Android version onto my phone for tasks like finding grocery lists. I'm open to suggestions, though, for good apps.

5. What do you wish you had--or do not have--in relation to these devices?
I can't think of a single other piece of technology I need, other than bionic fingers.

Bonus: What is the difference between your attitude towards these means of technology and a generation older or younger than you?
Around here I think it's less of a generational difference than a difference of place. I am shocked by the lack of technological literacy in the area where we live. Part of it has to do with lack of access, both because of low incomes and because of lack of reliable high-speed Internet in some neighborhoods. But perhaps a bigger barrier to use is a sort of localized cultural aversion to technology. I was shocked, for instance, a couple of years ago, to hear an otherwise savvy young woman in our congregation state that, "My husband is the one who uses the computer. I'm afraid of them." We hear variations on that theme all the time around here from 20-somethings on up; although I think the era of smartphones is eroding that sort of Luddite refusal to engage with information technology.

And now...this exercise has reminded me that I don't know where my Kindle is. Gotta go!

A Neat and Trim Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five question, in honor of the United States' sequestration dilemma and almost inevitable government spending cuts, asks participants what in their lives could also use a good pruning.

Hmmm....lemmee see...

1. My hair. This seems to be a common theme among many RevGals/Pals. In our household we're about two weeks late for our regular haircuts; Fellow Traveler has had to delay hers because of her jaw surgery -- until recently the scalp on the right side of her head was just too tender -- and as for me...well, I've just been too busy. So my perky bob has, over the last month-and-a-half, turned into kind of a retro Moe-of-the-Three-Stooges mop. I have very thick hair, too, so this sad state of affairs makes me reflexively run my hands through my hair all day long, something that drives my partner and me both crazy. It's just too much hair. It's coming off next week though, finally.

2. My Facebook time. You know, I always intend to pop on for a few minutes just to see what people are doing; and then before I know it I've watched several cute baby animal videos, exercised my righteous indignation over various current events, played a few rounds of Scrabble and Word Drop, given advice/encouragement/random commentary...well...you know. Facebook is the online version of a black hole, sucking us and our precious time on earth into its bottomless vortex. I could probably do with less Facebook...although these days it's the primary means for me to keep in touch with most of you.

3. My weight. Thanks to my genes and my love of food, this is a challenge that I suspect I'll have to struggle with for the rest of my life. Now that FT is on a limited, soft-foods-only diet that has made her shed pounds too fast, I feel extra pressure to lose weight too -- not only for health reasons but because we wear the same size clothing, and life is just a whole lot easier with an interchangeable wardrobe. Maybe if I made myself eat the pureed pork chops and pasta I make for FT, I'd lose my appetite.

4. Reading the Comments section below any news article on the Internet. I really need to wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it smartly whenever I am tempted to read the deep thoughts of vox populi  regarding news stories. It's not a good way to inculcate confidence in the goodness and intelligence of the human race.

5. Sleep. Most people, I know, do not get enough sleep. And I've gone through insomniac jags where I wasn't getting enough sleep. These days, though, instead of luxuriating in my nightly eight hours, it always feels like too much the next morning; leaves me draggy. I'd like to shave off about an hour, and wake up at 6:00 am. That's the time that has always felt right to me, that seems to optimize my day.

I hope that your personal "pruning" is all voluntary and beneficial!

Temptation, the Gospel and How I Learned to Love the AARP

Today's Gospel lesson

Back when I was in my thirties, my parents joined the AARP. I should say, my dad started paying for an annual membership so he could get a discount on homeowners' insurance; he actually thought that AARP was part of The Communist Plot, but it was a deal with the devil he was willing to make. (That actually doesn't have much to do with the point of all this, but it's a little ironic, considering.)

Anyway, my first exposure to the AARP was the AARP magazine. And, as a 20-something flipping through it, my reaction was, "Why the HELL would anyone read this thing on purpose?" Because by this time the feisty senior self-empowerment movement I'd remembered from the early 70's had seemed to degenerate (with help, I'm sure, by the sorts of advertisers interested in the magazine's readership) into a kind of sad-sack, victimized whine. Oh, the calls to political organization and self-improvement articles and "Golden Girls" human interest stories were still there, but they were overwhelmed, at least in my young eyes, by an underlying message of powerlessness and sadness: You're getting old. You don't feel good, and it's only going to get worse. Actually, you're going to die soon. And you're probably getting a little soft in the head en route. Mean people are trying to take advantage of you in multiple ways, you poor, weak, crippled, confused old people. We will try and help you, as a needy and pathetic demographic, go more gently into that good night by our advocacy with young whippersnapper politicians who need to be reminded how sad and vulnerable your lives are...and meanwhile, why don't you buy some laxatives and long-term care insurance? Thanks! Look for our next issue!

Needless to say, about 30 years later when Fellow Traveler bought me an AARP membership as a gag gift for my 50th birthday, I had to work to find the humor in it. Getting significant hotel and insurance discounts dulled the pain a bit, but I have to admit that, month after month, my AARP magazine went directly from post office box to recycling bin.

The other day, though, while sitting in the waiting room during FT's follow-up visit with her oral surgeon, I found myself reading the latest issue of the AARP magazine. I actually read it from cover to cover. And damn if I didn't enjoy it. It made me feel like signing up for cardio class and learning another foreign language and making Ina Garten's chicken recipe for my beloved and kicking idiot politicians in their sensitive bits. Apparently somewhere in the intervening decades the AARP had an "aha" moment where it realized its message was losing the interest, and the membership fees, of a good swath of its target market, as well as alienating the coming-up generations. So they got cool. Their magazine spotlights rock and roll icons of my misspent youth, other celebrities and simply interesting individuals whose graceful aging hits the aspirational buttons of people my age. They have an enhanced website where you can do things like play the "brain games" engineered to keep your mentation nice and sparkly. The publication makes a casual reader feel good to be alive -- not only good, but a little defiant, a little in-your-face about it -- instead of anxious and defeated. I mean, there may have been a Depends ad in there somewhere, but I didn't see it.

With all that in mind...fast-forward to today's Gospel text, and Jesus' temptations in the wilderness. They revolve around power. The devil keeps egging Jesus on, in the text, to use his divine power in ways that would ultimately violate what the Incarnation was all about: as a handy vending machine/magic act; as a means to temporal power; as a way to bypass the physical laws of this world in order to feel affirmed as God's Chosen One.  Jesus rejects every proposal.

While there are certainly ways that reach of us can abuse the own power we've been given in our lives, no matter how disempowered we feel or are told we are...to me, in my own life at this stage of the game, when I have my own wilderness moments with Satan, the gentle suggestions I hear whispered in my ear are not appeals to hubris or manipulative use of power; instead, they're messages to not use the power that I have, period; to just give up. Like the old AARP magazine of my youthful memory, these messages tell me that I'm the helpless victim of my own mortality, of various forces inside and outside myself over which I have no control, of antagonistic or exploitative others.

Just give up on Christianity already. Most Christians are anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-intellectual idiots who hate you, and the ones who don't are in denominations that are swirling the drain, and the whole thing is just an increasingly shallow and unsatisfying mess that doesn't enhance your experience of living. I struggle with that one a lot, even though wilful ignorance, political bloviating, misogyny and homophobia are not things I generally experience on a day-to-day level in my own denomination or faith community. But these tropes are so pervasive in American popular Christian culture that you yourself can  move in the most intellectually lively, woman-affirming, gay-friendly Christian circles around and still feel at times like packing it in: "You know, it's been fun and all, and you're good folks, but I just can't do this anymore. So long; thanks for Bach and all the potlucks."

You're washed up vocationally. Look at you. You don't earn a paycheck anymore. You sell antiques, for God's sake; that's one step up from "Hoarders." There's nothing for you to do at church that fits your skill set -- if you even have one of those anymore. When's the last time you've written anything? Now you're a Hausfrau and not even a good one of those. And -- you're 52! Game over, loser! Stick a fork in you; you're done. Listen to this long enough and you'll find yourself sitting in front of the TV all day watching "NCIS" re-runs while you stuff Doritos into your mouth. In these underemployed, uncertain times, I suspect Old Scratch gets a lot of mileage out of this general script.

You almost died. How long did it take you to get over that medical mishap with the anesthesia? Two years? One moment you were fine; next moment you were checking out; then months of feeling less than competent...being afraid to fall asleep, afraid to take a shower, afraid to walk; feeling numb and  slow and confused. All the organic food and healthy living couldn't save you, could it, from that episode? And don't you think that's affected you permanently on some level? Made you a little more vulnerable? Do you really think that you're ever going to be healthier than you are now? 'Cause you're just running to keep up right now, sweetie. Maybe you should just "number your days," take it easy, keep reminding yourself over and over again how close to dead you really were and how many fewer years you have left. There's a thin it seems, between the hope of second chances and the fear of losing them. And at least for me the devil keeps wanting to nudge me over that line into a life of anxiety and resignation and low expectations of myself physically and mentally.

So far the Holy Spirit has always managed to show up in the midst of these soul-bruising, endless-loop internal conversations, like the disability advocates who picketed Washington with signs reading, "NOT DEAD YET." S/he can be ornery, that one. And she seems to be teaching me, slowly, to be ornery too; to stand up for myself, to make choices instead of making no choice, to defy the voice of Satan disguised as common wisdom and listen for real Wisdom instead. And that is my takeaway from our Gospel lesson, too; not a meek and mild Jesus, but a strong and engaged Jesus giving the devil his due -- which is to say, nothing. I want to be like that when I grow up.

Giving Up For Lent

Lent is a dangerous time for church nerds and other religious overachievers -- and that means you too, fellow Lutherans. There's just so much to do, or not do, for Lent. Shall we revisit our neglected reading of the Daily Office? Go meatless a couple days a week and donate the grocery savings to charity? Work on some chronic moral failing on our parts? Blog about our interior spring cleaning?

In years past I had big plans for Lent. And I failed at them all. I've even failed at failing. 

This year is different. Part of that is simply due to the spiritual and emotional focus we've maintained on getting Fellow Traveler's surgery. That has been such a central theme of our lives for the past several years that the relief of it finally coming to pass has been an almost giddy, happily disorienting thing. Chronic pain is a terrible, debilitating condition, and when it can be treated it is a kind of miracle.So my head is not in a reflective place, to put it bluntly. It's in a "Thank God this is behind us so we can move forward," place. And I'm not going to feel guilty about that. 

Part of my stepping back from my usual Lenten focus this year, though, is a function of stepping back from involvement in our church. Without going into a lot of detail, because this isn't the place -- it's something that both Fellow Traveler and I have been struggling with in our own ways for the last couple of years. What used to be a "duty and delight," as the saying goes, has increasingly become a duty, period. I don't feel that there's much of a call for me to do what I really love to do, which is thinking and writing and sharing ideas. And FT, who is not a cradle Lutheran and who admits to gaps in her religious education, wants to be in a worshiping community where she can learn more about Scripture and Lutheran theology in a structured way. Now, some of you may be reading this and getting all excited ("Substance! They want substance!") thinking about offering us a signing bonus to join your shack; but I have to tell you, we're not hipsters. I doubt we're on the A list of desired sociodemographics for most churches.that want to be on the cutting edge. On the other hand, we are not tabulae rasae; we know how to do church and behave ourselves, mostly, and we can also rock your church potluck. So there's that.

We have friends in another congregation; we've been to a couple of services there and enjoyed them and were treated warmly by people in general. On the other hand, we would miss some people in our present congregation very much; we are very cognizant of the "grass is greener" illusion that can afflict casual visitors to other churches; and we might find ourselves in the same formational spot there anyway. So at this point we are, as they say, keeping our options open. But this isn't an easy decision. I have heard "Instead of asking what the Church can do for you, why don't you ask what you can do for the Church?" so often that, these days, it can feel like a sledgehammer; it's not helpful or motivational or kind in our situation.

All of which is to say -- we're kind of sitting out Lent at our house this year. We've given up Lent for Lent. It's not a statement about the goodness and value of anyone else's Lenten practice; it's just where we're at now; a quiet place.

On the Mend

Those of you who follow our household exploits on Facebook know that Fellow Traveler finally -- finally, after a four-year odyssey navigatng the VA system in two states -- received surgery for her RA-ravaged jaw. And as we wished, we were able to have it done right here in Michigan; as it turned out, from one of the best oral surgeons in the state, someone who has taken on surgical cases for the VA in the past. Since outsourcing services tends to make VA bureaucrats' heads explode, we were especially fortunate to connect with this doctor, who was not only happy to help us but who had the experience and professional pull to get things done.

Because my  medical jargon isn't what it used to be I can't tell you the exact name of the ectomies and plasties involved, but the surgeon smoothed out the ragged ends of the jawbones, removed loose bits and created a new disk from a thin flap of skin removed from FT's backside. As one might imagine, this was a fairly involved surgery; it took five-and-a-half hours. FT had researched it extensively; I'm an incessant worrier, and after seeing one photo of a dissected jaw that, honest to pete, looked like cookbook instructions on how to de-bone a chicken, I decided that I was going to limit my grasp of the proceedings to a need-to-know basis and instead focus on aftercare. Which I did, and did well, for three days.  I was one of those pain-in-the-ass loved ones who walks around with a notebook in hand, who measures input and output and how many feet my patient walked down the hallway per day and who asks lots of questions. I recommend proactive patient advocacy highly --partly because it helps overworked hospital personnel do their jobs, partly because it keeps less engaged employees on their toes and partly because it seemed to earn me special privileges, like raiding the Employees Only nutrition station for FT's ice cream.

From what we'd read about the procedure beforehand,and from what the doctor had told us, we had every expectation that FT was going to come out of surgery looking like the Elephant Man, with a melon head and a huge scar running from temple to chin, and that she would be unable to communicate verbally for at least a couple of weeks.. None of these things happened. When I was ushered into the recovery room FT, still high on anesthesia, was joking with the staff and practically giving high-fives all around; her face was wound up with gauze like the ghost of Jacob Marley, but was otherwise pretty normal looking. By Day 2 the fun and games had ended, but her face still looked fine -- and when the bandages came off there was only a small scar along her ear; one hundred stitches, we were told, but most of them internal. By Day 4 we were on the way home. It was the most amazing thing.

And it still is. The best part is that FT no longer feels the constant grinding RA pain of bone on bone; just the ache of mending tissue. Her doctor is delighted with her progress, although he cautions that it's going to take a full year for a complete recovery. (FT is looking forward to her first therapeutic exercise -- chewing gum -- but that won't be for awhile.)

For all of you who've been following our saga, thank you for your prayers and good wishes. We appreciate them so much.

It's in My Nature

If you don't care for nature -- if, like one thoroughly urbanized child of ours, unidentifiable insects and strange birdcalls and midnight shufflings in the shrubbery make you all verklempt -- living in the middle of outstate Michigan is probably not for you. We are not, technically, "out in the country" -- our property borders a subdivision at one end of our small town -- yet we are surrounded by trees, giving us the illusion three seasons out of the year that we're all by ourselves in a large forest; our large back yard is home to everything from Michigan's ubiquitous chickadees and downy woodpeckers to occasional turkeys, a fox, an opossum and about a dozen deer who wander through the neighborhood every day.

We enjoy nature. We enjoy it around our house (even our tribe of skinks who spend the summers sunning themselves on our patio and landscaping rocks, when they're not fleeing from the cat); we enjoy living two minutes away from a huge patchwork of farm fields and woodlands, from quiet country roads lined by trees whose branches meet overhead, from lakes and rivers. And because one of our daily rituals is taking Chica the dog on a long, energy-expending run, every day is like a field trip for us. The other day, for instance, we saw not one but two bald eagles -- no longer rare in these parts, but certainly not common birds -- circling in the air above us as we drove down an unfamiliar lane. A couple of miles away, passing the rows of brown stubble in a harvested cornfield, I noticed, out in the middle of the property, easily the largest elm tree I have ever seen in my life -- a stunning, vase-shaped beauty silhouetted against the sky. 

Being a farm kid, and an only child, I've always spent lots of time exploring the out-of-doors; I used to practically live in our pasture and hayfields during the summer. I was tacitly encouraged by my father; someone who, ironically, couldn't say the word "environmentalist" without preceding it with "goddamned," but who nonetheless possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of wildlife borne of a lifetime farmng, fishing and hunting, who for all his gruffness could be startlingly sentimental about some wild things (taking the time, for instance, to save a trembling young fawn from harm while cutting hay, waiting patiently for a reunion between baby and mama away from the hayfield before he commenced his work again) and who held to his family's Old World principles about engaging with flora and fauna -- for instance, considering it good luck to feed birds in wintertime, and to plant trees where there weren't any. My maternal aunt and uncle were also great amateur naturalists who knew the name of every plant and animal on their farm, whose reference books regularly shed pressed leaves and flowers, whose windowsills always held found objects from their fields like fossils and arrowheads.

Fellow Traveler is a city girl, but her 15 years in Maine, as well as our rural life now, has given her an ever-increasing appreciation of nature. And she has that "beginner's eye" that can make me appreciate what I tend to take for granted. 

So the other day I started a nature journal, with a nice, softbound leather notebook that Fellow Traveler had given me one year but that I'd been reluctant, given my sad record of diarist follow-through, to "spoil" with my handwriting. I've given myself generous parameters in this project -- I can journal, or not, anytime I want; I am not keeping to a given format; I am using a mechanical pencil, not a pen, for writing and sketching. So it's not exactly The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. But I feel that at least some of what we see is too interesting or beautiful or odd to simply try and preserve in memory alone. My goal is to keep my journal lively, and to actively pursue a bit of mess -- pressed specimens, photos from my smartphone, notes in the margins. I'd initially considered keeping sort of a multimedia journal online...but I think it's good to actually write with a pencil once in awhile, to attempt hand-drawn pictures instead of always falling back on cameras and clip art, to create a written work exclusively for our household. 

So far I've accomplished one page -- a short summary of our eagle and elm sighting the other day. I'm sure I'll have material aplenty for days to come.

On Taking a Break, and Why That's Not a Bad Thing

In the world of relationships the phrase "taking a break" is usually a bad thing, at least for one of the parties involved...but in my church relationship, taking a break from lay ministry is, for the time being, a good thing.

Our team of lay ministers had been front and center in our congregation, either as assisting ministers or preachers, pretty much nonstop for the past couple of  years. With the arrival of our pastoral intern, we had to rethink the schedule; for the first couple of weeks we found ourselves trying to lead worship with an awkward trio of pastor, intern and lay assistant, something that felt like much of a muchness in our small, MOTR/down-the-candle congregation. And then one lay-preaching Sunday one of the other lay ministers delivered a sermon that was so -- well, without going into details, I'll just say, as a stunned listener in the pew, that it was not a good day for anyone, especially a hapless visitor, to have attended the service expecting a sermon compatible with Lutheran theology and comforting/edifying to the faithful  -- that at our next lay ministry meeting our pastor basically called a lay ministry time out, at least in terms of sermonating, for all of us for the near future.

My response? Relief. I'm tired, even with our relatively relaxed one-Sunday-on, three-Sundays-off rota. Especially in this past year when I was recovering from my seizure, sometimes not feeling steady on my pins or comfortable preparing for whatever the day entailed, this modest schedule was still a burden, especially if one of the other players needed a substitute on a given Sunday. It's also nice, frankly, to be able to sit in the pew with my partner and simply experience worship without having to lead it, especially now that we have a new voice and perspective in the pulpit.

I'm still our congregation's Facebook editor, a job that I spend, I think, a good hour on every day just providing some daily content to keep our page fresh and informative, and I'm happy doing that. We seem to have about 55 frequent fliers out of 167 "Likes," which I think is great considering our congregation's general lack of access to the Internet.

In the meantime, I'm rethinking my role in lay ministry -- not rethinking it all that hard, but wondering what the term "lay minister" even means, or at least what it means for me at this point in my life.  It's never been all that defined in our congregation.  Is it something that is useful to others and satisfying to me to a degree that makes me want to continue to be one? I don't know. But at least I have a hiatus in which to think about it. And to do other things.