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on the need for calm...

3/18/2020

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Good heavens, it's past a year since I posted anything on this blog, time during which I have considered canceling it (three times), written a couple of false-start posts, and then just ignored it. But.

Coronavirus has arrived in the form of COVID-19. If ever we needed calm, this would be the time. My work this week has largely been listening to and containing anxiety--my own as well as others'. 

Here is what I know at this moment (because this week, it seems that each moment is different):

COVID-19 has taken the lives of almost 9000 persons. The CDC and New York State have banned gatherings over 10, so in person-worship is canceled for the time being and we are trying mightily to come up with ways to continue the continuity of our faith community and create worship and ministry in meaningful ways, even during this difficult season. My father is currently hospitalized in Atlanta with complications resulting from deteriorating health as a result of a particularly nasty cancer. We don't know when he is going home. I just went to visit him last week with my daughter, and he went into the hospital the day after we left. Nate is "work from home" until May 14 at least. My daughter's jobs are the same. The United Methodist General Conference has been postponed from its May 5-15 dates, and this is a BIG ONE-postponement delays some resolution the church has been looking for.

"Anxiety in my life is epic right now" might even be an understatement at this point.

So, what to do? 

First, I wash my hands. I know, I know. What does the meme say? "We thought we'd have flying cars by now, but we're still teaching people to wash their hands." But, I find it a small and immensely comforting thing I can do. I can't vaccinate, I can't cure the thousands who are ill, I can't make it better for everyone who is suffering right now, but I can wash my hands. That small act is actually very helpful to me. It's solid, it's tangible, and it absolutely protects me and those around me. 

I am also working hard at protecting the people in my care, by creating safe spaces and new opportunities for people to experience church while at a distance. 

I am also taking time to breathe, and sleep, and do right and good things wherever I can. I've told our gym (which has had to close its doors for now, as has our church) to keep taking our auto payments; Nate and I walked the 4 miles of the rail trail this afternoon in that lovely spring sunshine on his lunch break; tonight, we had supper from a local restaurant where we hold our congregational book study each week, and we left a large tip for our usual server when we picked up our meal. This all felt really good, and yes, we are well aware of the privilege that allows us to do it without worry or fear.

I think it comes down to the fact that small things really do count. 

What are you doing to calm your anxiety in this strange and turbulent season? It's a good conversation to have, my friends. It's the little things.

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tidying up...

2/2/2019

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Who hasn't been watching Marie Kondo? 

She personifies my compulsive side which abhors clutter and detests dirt. This is the side of me that my darling hubs just doesn't get, especially when I am losing my mind over the thing that's been misplaced for the three-hundred-eighty-fifth time. Marie is a little extreme, even for me--I absolutely cannot get on board with only.thirty.books, for example. But she speaks to my soul. There is so much to tidy up in my life, and I don't just mean my house. 

But let's start there, shall we? January was spent as I spend most Januarys, being tired of my surroundings, fighting the urge to rearrange all the furniture, and feeling like everything is just a mess. That's a fair assessment, actually, as December in a pastor's life means one can either do church stuff or housekeeping, but not really both at all well. So, in November, I do all the errand-running I can possibly do, I stock up on all the dumb things one has to get at the store--toiletries and supplies, etc. I get all the checks written for all the bills, and I line up all the January bills, too, so I don't have to face them in that awful, exhausted week after Christmas. And I do some good cleaning so I can give myself a pass in December. It's really the only way I have managed to make all this work.

And then January comes around after all that every year, and my compulsive tidy self is sick of the unclean house, and the stuff that's never been put away, and the need to find new spaces for whatever came into the house in December.

So, I tidy, and clean, and hoe out the junk. One fine day, I super-cleaned the bathrooms, including scrubbing shower walls and getting limescale off the shampoo and stuff holder, and cleaning out the vanity cabinet and linen cabinet. Amazing how, even when you keep things to a minimum, some age out before you can use them up....

Another day, I tackled our "study" upstairs, which had taken on the additional role of becoming my craft room/studio when my MIL moved in with us at the end of September.  More stuff! But we had files, lots of paper files, all filled with paper, taking up space and calling out to the tidy monsters in my soul. 

Being an itinerant minister in the United Methodist Church means I have built-in milestones for marking time. We moved into this house in July 2014. Some of this paper had not been looked at or used in all that 4.5 years. So I dragged the hubs in there with me, and we went through files. I emptied the downstairs fire safe, too, and we went through that as well, just for fun. Do you think I took photos of all this? Nope. But it looked a little like this person's desk when the hoeing-out was finished (only on the floor, not on a desk):
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Two absolutely full recycling bins later, the mountain was gone. Important files are in the safe, and there will be a Part II of this story when I redo the remaining files in my now-only-one-instead-of-four file drawers/bins. I'm coveting some cute file folders, but at the same time I am feeling like I should just grit my teeth, scan the stuff, and go completely paperless. I'll keep you posted on how that internal argument turns out. We also have the hubs' electronics hoard to go through (10 spare ethernet cables, anyone?), but for the time being, all that is nicely contained in bins in the closet--that's the fruit of another January project before moving here. But hallelujah, the junk is gone!

To cap that glorious January success, I have started February with a bang by spending the better part of two hours cleaning the refrigerator. Nobody likes to do it, but it really needs to be done, because eww. I think the hubs assumes it has a self-cleaning function like the oven, or that the fairies or elves take care of it, but it doesn't, and those magical stinkers never seem to visit our house. I wasn't intending to do it today, actually, but I am avoiding the fight with a stubborn sermon that doesn't want to get written. And I saw goop on one of the shelves. And we were down to very few leftovers. And away we went....

Out came everything. A lot of washing, wiping, and vinegar rinsing later, it looks like this. Yes, it is tiny. But it came with the house that came with the job. And it GLEAMS. And no, I am not showing you the "before."
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Let me tell you, I don't know how that crap gets in all the nooks and crannies. And I found a spot I had never found before--under the bottom shelf in the door. How have I missed it in the (barely) two times I have cleaned this fridge--let's not do the math on that or dwell on my refrigerator-cleaning deficiency-- but it was nasty. I mean, beyond gross. Even if I had thought to take a photo, you wouldn't want to see it. It's not gross now, I promise. 

Having everything out gave me the chance to fix the broken things--shelves and racks, etc. Some glue and tape-clamping later, we're good to go. Do not ask about the freezer. My fond hope is to acquire a larger freezer for the basement so I can do more make-ahead meals than I have been able to cram into the approximately 3 cubic foot freezer in this unit. I'm holding out on cleaning the freezer until I can move stuff into a new one. How's that for a viable procrastination excuse?

I have to admit, I've opened this door more than once today, just to admire the tidy, germ-free-ness of this work of art.

That's how it's been here, at the beginning of February. There's more to clean up in the house (always), but i'm working on me, too.... more about that later.​
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picking it up again...

1/2/2019

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New Year, new resolutions... don't we all? There are several things I mean to do differently in 2019, and I am going to track them here, but baking is the first one.




​I am so beyond excited that I received a KitchenAid stand mixer this Christmas from my wonderful hubs! It's been a wish for years, but I always dismissed it as a frivolous purchase we did not need to make. I used to love to bake, and did a fair amount of it. I haven't baked in years, and there are several valid reasons for that, among which is Celiac Disease. Everything has to be gluten-free, and let me just tell you, that's no fun on the baking front. Additionally, I have been following a keto protocol for a year, so that eliminates sugar and carbohydrates. Take out grains and sugars, and baking gets more complicated. Fast.

But, I have new resolve to do things for myself this year, and baking is one of them. Especially with that mixer! 

And my work-in-progress baking station crafted from an odd corner built-in kitchen desk:

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​How can I not bake? For the first day of the New Year, I made a keto banana bread (yeah, that's a bit of an oxymoron, but it was a treat) with some gnarly bananas left from Christmas week, and some cute blueberry squares using up some blueberries we had defrosted for my MIL to make blueberry pie for the kids. All sugar-free and grain-free.

Someone said you should do on New Year's Day what you want to do more of in the coming year. So, I baked two things! 

The Banana Bread Recipe is here: https://delicrunch.co/banana-bread-recipe/, and the Blueberry Crumble Bars recipe is here: https://www.lowcarbmaven.com/blueberry-crumble-bars/ 

In case you were wondering...they were delicious!

This urge to bake again is interesting to me. I can only think that some good and amazing creative stuff that's been happening at work is overlapping into life, and I am totally ok with that. I need a lot of it, because there's a lot to get done around here. There's organizing to do, planning to do, restoring a farmhouse to do, and so.much.more. This is how I stay calm in the crazy of my life. Stay tuned. 
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september hectic...

9/12/2017

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It’s been what I can only describe as a hectic week. I’ve been absurdedly super busy, as I begin to enter all that the next few months has coming. I always feel this way in September—church schedules run pretty similarly to school schedules--pastors see September coming much like teachers see a school year coming, with most of the same emotionally oppositional things running through our messed-up brains. (Excitement! Dread. Anticipation! Disappointment. You get it.)

Today, I have five meetings. All of them were important, all relevant, all about continuing good work in the world. All were with people I care about deeply. But.Five.meetings. And I’m out of the office the next two days, and there is still work to do for this weekend, and I’m going to be away for almost a week at the end of the month…

That’s about the way a good part of the rest of my month looks.

So, how do I survive it? Good question. This is the 21st year of this kind of yearly rhythm, so I hoping I will start to get good at it soon.

Last week, I signed up at a fitness center for a promotional six-week program, which, yes, I think feels crazily counterintuitive, too. Adding one more thing? To this crazy schedule? Barmy.

But what I know is this: I’m awfully out of shape. I have limited strength and barely any stamina. I’m carrying more pounds than I should be, and I get tired very quickly. Oh, and I get winded going up stairs—I’m particularly mortified by that fun reality. People look at me and tell me I’m small, but I feel huge and clumsy, and tired. Just tired. And old. Did I mention the birthday coming up next month? I’ve got to do something.

So, my alarm rings at 5.30am, which sounds less problematic if you know that I am a born morning person, and am usually naturally awake around 6 or 6.30. I go and prove to myself that I was totally right about how out of shape I am—it’s terribly frustrating. And embarrassing. And painful. And more tiring than I thought it could be (what about those endorphins everyone promises? Where are they? I wouldn’t know one if it hit me upside the head).

But there it is. I know that I need strength to get through this hectic work. I know that I need stamina. And I also know that these things don’t just appear overnight. So here I am, slogging away, hoping I can get good at it, so that I can be better at the work I have to do.

Wish me luck. And lots of arnica cream for the sore muscles. And an extra day each week. I’ll let you know how it works out.
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sabbath, ready or not...

7/9/2015

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I've been taking a sabbath from this writing. It wasn't intentional, nor was I particularly feeling the need of a rest, but Sabbath happened. Somewhere in my mind and my spirit, I moved inward over the last few months. Writing here is such an external process, a giving over and turning inside-out process. To set things into prose and offer them to others to read, digest, comment, evaluate is an extroverted thing, and it requires the right frame of mind, even for an extrovert's extrovert, as I am.

My first year at my no-longer-new appointment to this congregation and community is over. The first year is both exhilarating and exhausting, and this one has exhausted me more than that first year in most of my previous appointments; perhaps my age is a factor, or maybe my experience in ministry has taken its toll, or maybe it's that I've invested more deeply this time around. Whatever the case, the first year has passed. As we have learned to work with each other to find out the ministry we are called to develop together, we're learning that we don't have to use party manners all the time any more. We aren't so shy around one another. We now know what to do with our hands, and when to speak and when to keep silent, and what the outlines of our boundaries look like, and what our capabilities are. It's been exciting and wonderful and sometimes fraught with the arranged-marriage glitches in the get-to-know you process. My writing effort has been for the preaching in this place. Perhaps I just needed to rest from that.

I've been working on that dream I mentioned, as well. That's been some complicated emotional and logistical work, and I'm not quite ready to talk about that. Maybe that's why I needed a rest.

Sabbath isn't always intentional, but it is always necessary. It will take us, if we don't take it. Moses tells his people in the giving of the commandments that if they do not observe Sabbath, they will die. It's a simple, yet powerful statement. It may mean to Moses and his people, and the author of the story, of course, that God will smite them if they do not honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. But what if it has another meaning: might it just mean that when we do not take time--rest time, sabbath-time, breathing time--we will die, because we cannot sustain the pace most persons try to keep; we cannot keep not breathing, not resting, not stopping.

I'm finding my lungs again. I'm learning to re-pace again. I don't credit that to my own power. I have felt called to breathe and to rest, and that did not come from me alone. In that rest, I have realized that I have lost sight of the light, in some ways. In that rest, I have observed that God is trying to lead me to still waters and is trying mightily to restore my soul. In that rest, I have seen my center shift, and the ways God is trying to shift it back. I am grateful. My Sabbath came, ready or not.
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how to build a dream...

2/2/2015

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I had a dream-building day today. It was a snow day, and I did not go out; I am so very done with winter. I gave myself a break from work and worked on my dream instead.

Here’s a confession: I never had dreams about what I wanted to be or do when I grew up. I never could answer that question when curious adults would ask, though I did occasionally make up answers to stop them asking. As I did eventually begin to grow up (though I will not claim to be completely grown up yet), I discovered a sense of vocation, and some goals and ambitions, but never had that “dream” everyone was supposed to have. What did I really want to do, and who did I really want to be? After a particularly tumultuous recent episode in my life, I decided that it was about time to figure that out. After all, I’m closer to retirement than I used to be…

But wow, how does someone who’s never had that kind of dream go about constructing one?

I think a dream of that kind is about the things your mind wanders off toward in spare moments, or just before sleep. It’s about the passion you have between the tasks at your day job. It’s about the possibilities you cook up in your mind and heart. And it’s about stepping beyond the things I usually do, and beyond the things other people expect of me.

So, here’s my simplified blueprint for building a dream that could actually become real:

1)      Pay attention. Where does my mind wander? What are the daydreams I have? I started holding those close instead of letting them just fly away when I had work to do.
2)      Add some practicality. Can the things I dream actually happen? All things being equal, can I actually do the things I need to do to make this happen? Do I have the skills or the resources-or am I willing to develop them? What do I need to learn, and from whom do I need to learn it? What research do I need to do?
3)      Take a risk. Am I willing to make a leap to make this dream happen? What am I willing to give up? How am I willing to think differently, what am I willing to do differently, even outside my comfort zone?

Three things. I’m working on them. I’m building a dream. And sometimes it scares me, and sometimes it exhilarates me--which I think is the point, after all. It wouldn’t be a dream if it didn’t do both. I’ll tell you about it some day...
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reclaiming my inner and outer space...

1/12/2015

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Out of clutter, find simplicity. –Albert Einstein

Anyone who knows me, knows that I despise clutter of any kind. I’m forever picking up stuff that isn’t where it belongs, always looking for new organization ideas, relentlessly tidying up my desk and the areas around me, and not always being super-kind to my husband (who is less clutter-averse than I am) when he leaves things out.

Maybe that makes me a perfectionist or a compulsive hot mess--I don’t know. What I do know is that when I have taken the time to clear the space around me, I have cleared a space to breathe, and think, and create. With fewer things occupying the valuable real estate of my life, I can focus on what happens on the inside. I’m not pouring my energy into finding the thing I misplaced. I’m not frantically trying to choose between the four identical things I have because I forgot I had three and so I bought another. I’m not worrying so much.

What I know about clutter is that it also takes up brain-space, and it takes up soul-space, and I don’t want to be captive to it.

There are a million and one de-cluttering websites out there, but the simplest way I have found to do it, is to ask three questions about whatever it is that takes up space in my life:

Does it have a current useful purpose?
Does it bring me joy?
Am I keeping it because I am worried about what someone else will think if I get rid of it?

If it does not have a current (not past or future) purpose, or it does not bring me joy, or I am keeping it out of a sense of obligation or worry, I don’t need it. This applies to all kinds of things, from clothes and objects and calendar items to relationships and obligations. Clarity comes from shedding anything that fills my life for no good reason. I'm not perfect at it yet, but I'm working at it.

It’s hard work, but it's worth it for me.
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the season of light...

12/24/2014

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photo: Jugen de Clercq, by permission

It is the season of light. Many religious traditions teach about the power of light for our bodies and souls. We know it ourselves, instinctively. Here where I live, we haven’t seen a sunny day in weeks, and this week, when the sun suddenly broke through the clouds for just a little while, the difference in the atmosphere was tangible. I have friends who have already pulled out their full-spectrum lights and are sitting faithfully in front of them for hours each day. There is something deep within us that craves the light.

How do we get in touch with it?

Sure, sunny windows and therapy lamps and Vitamin D supplements are great for the body—they can work wonders.
But we need light for our spirits, too. The calm soul breathes light: in for energy and life, out for sharing with the world. To breathe in the light is to invite it into every part of ourselves. To hold that light within is peace and restoration. To let it overflow is to become light in the world.

Tomorrow is the Christian celebration of light and life coming into the world, the celebration of the shining of a star and the birth of a baby whose life was Light itself. For those who choose the Christian way, his life becomes ours as we become his, and his light becomes ours to share.

So, light a candle and catch a glimpse. Breathe in the light and find some calm. However you celebrate this season of Light, may it fill you and grant you peace.

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