What's Next

Whoo-hoo - or - I still blog here sort of

2006-06-23T19:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been away for awhile or perhaps you've noticed.

I am very excited today, because I am now officially a freelance writer!! I have a gig writing for a Lutheran confirmation curriculum website. It's really a small thing, but to me, it's amazing! (And total validation that networking counts - the editor turned out to be someone I went to jr high and high school with!)

So this is all very exciting.

I will also start part-time as a baker at the new Super Wal-Mart in my little Iowa town sometime in the next two weeks. I expect it should be odd to see what that will do for my perspective on Wal-Mart. I guess I kind of think of Wal-Mart workers as gnomes that live in the store and pop out when you need to check out or the Kraft dinner shelf is empty. Now I'll get the picture.

Ok, well that's my news for now.

And to copy Mark over at Stumbling, I too am going to an ordination this weekend at 3pm on Sunday. She was one of my bridesmaids and one of the people who knew me best at seminary. I hope I make it through the the service without crying, but somehow I bet I'll probably tear up at least once. (The weird thing is my husband probably could process in with the other rostered leaders. OK, that's odd.)

More news hopefully on Monday.

Amazing post at Real Live Preacher

2006-04-26T11:05:00.000-05:00

Check the state of the blog address at Real Live Preacher. It's amazing. I cried and thought - that's exactly what I've been looking for with my sisters and brothers in Christ. That's what's been missing. How does one create that or find that? Where is this party hiding? And where does every one go after they leave?

I had a great birthday party yesterday. Mmmm...pizza. We went to Chuck E Cheese. We had fun and plowed through 180 tokens. Crazy.

I'm going to try to get some work done now. Let's see if I can do it. I've been struggling to write because Sunday School curriculum is not catching my imagination. Let's see if I can do better.

I bet I can.

P.S. Congrats to Tara Ulrich the 109th Diaconal Minister. She was consecrated this past weekend in North Dakota. She's a first for her synod. Blessings, Tara, as you start your ministry!

Keeping promises

2006-04-19T19:38:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm not doing very well on starting my habits for good work. In fact, I've found a number of them easily superceded. I need to actually write something substantial this week to make me feel like I've completed something. Hopefully, that can be tomorrow.

On the other hand, I have been doing research reading rather steadily. I'm reading one of my church history textbooks that I didn't read in seminary. It's really good. I'm perplexed that I didn't find it interesting in seminary. However, I'm thinking there's a difference between reading for a test and reading to savor something.

I'm getting ready to dive into the first Sr High Discussion Group that I'm co-leading at Kevin's church. I'm a little nervous as this is his place and I'm not quite sure who these kids are. I think it doesn't help that I'm part of an experiment to re-shape the discussion group from a free-for-all back to a discussion group. However, I'm a little nervous that no one is going to show up for our part of it. The older kids were pretty much scared away by the younger kids who didn't want to discuss anything and have been disruptive to every attempt to pursue discipling or devotion. Maturity gap I guess. I'm just shocked that the disruptors kept coming and the one who wanted to be there left. What does that mean????

Well, we'll see what happens. The older ones are being enticed back with carrots of reform, but let's see if anyone remembers that it starts the week after Easter.

After I helped the high schoolers with their fundraiser Lenten soup suppers and Easter breakfast, I kinda feel like Easter graduated us out of church commitments too. (That's a really terrible thing to admit, but part of the truth of the year before National Youth Gathering. Fundraising is the youth program this year.) I'm just hoping that I will be pleasantly surprised.

Ok, I'm ready to go see what's going on in the ten minutes leading up to the group.

God, I'm ready for a surprise!

Too Gay for Cumberland

2006-04-12T11:03:00.000-05:00

So a young man just got the boot from University of the Cumberlands for being gay. The quandry seems not so much to be about his sexual orientation (he's gay and at a Baptist college in the South - what did he really expect?), but about the student handbooks that stated the policies of the school.

The handbook he came in under didn't explicitly state homosexuality as an expulsitory crime. However, this last school year's handbook did. So which handbook is applicable? And then comes the question was it necessary for the proper enforcement of the new policy to give the kid the boot just weeks before the end of the school year, especially when he was already planning to transfer out the next year.

The skeptic in me says that this was two parts stupid. One part stupid belongs to the school that probably was hoping to use the young man as an example. Message: Get out before you are kicked out. The other part stupid is that this young man knew the climate he was in and that the new policy was in place, yet he advertised that he was in direct disobedience to that policy on his MySpace site. Both parties are going to reap the whirlwind on this one. The school may lose it's government funding (more than likely a good idea to begin with - public funds should not be used to advance narrow private agendas that are not to the greater public benefit) and young man won't get credit for his work this past semester (and the shame of being told to get out the very night he was confronted).

However, to this young man I say that if you want to stand up against the powers that be in the form of free speech, be prepared for things like this to happen. I'm sure there was a clause in your admission contract that says the handbook could be altered at any time. You made a choice, and right or wrong, you put yourself on this path. The Internet is not a closed book that only a few can see, and there are snitches everywhere even as you grow up. But if you want to be an activist for your own identity, be prepared for the responsiblities and consequences that come with that decision. You may have just learned your first real lesson of college. And of growing up.

Am I "emerging"?

2006-04-11T10:55:00.000-05:00

I'm wondering if i am actually "emerging" (as in emerging church) or if I'm actually just hoping to get in on the next new thing.

It's amazing that the further I explore the Big E Emerging church (aka Emergent, the talking heads of movement, Peter McLaren, etc) that I'm finding less that I'm interested in and more fad wrapped in academic language. I'm not saying that there isn't something genuine in the midst of this. I really respect some of the ELCA players (Karen Ward, Nate Frambach) in the larger discussion.

However, what does anything of this mean towards multi-generational/modern/post-modern/post-post-modern people all in together? How does this change anything ultimately to have one more new splinter group? I'm suspicious after watching the Willow Creek phenom become the mega-church monster. It is just one more cool group. One more spiritual product or designer label to buy and be popular. It's popular to be emergent now, just like it used to be popular to be seeker-friendly.

What I hope will stick will be a reflection on micro-community awareness. Karen Ward talks about her "tribe" and how her faith community reflects their particular needs, strengths and weaknesses. That just makes sense to me. Just like a new leader can't walk in to a foriegn community and authentically demand the entire community conform to that leader's idea of correctness, a generalized theology of "Every Church" that prescribes styles, practices and functions to everyone regardless of who, where, when and what they are as a part of the whole.

Anyway, it's a thought.

On another note, don't put stacks of folded fabric into a washing machine until the machine is full. Apparently, when i tried to wash my grandmother's sewing stash last night (they had four inches of sewage in their basement last week, yuck), I actually put *four* loads in the washer because I didn't unfold the material. Oops.

Forcing myself to electronically write

2006-04-10T10:54:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am again. But with a difference...

Now I've quit my full-time computer-harnessed temp position to actually jump into writing full time and mainstreet America part-time money wrangling (whatever will hire me downtown basically).

So to make sure that I am treating this as a regimented thing, I am forcing disciplines on myself. One is to read Karen Ward's aggregated emerging church blog. Two is to keep up with the Emerging Leaders Network. Three is to blog here regularly. Four is to read for an hour from a theological book. Five is to walk somewhere at some point in the day. Six is to write for four hours on my porfolio for Augsburg Fortress.

This will be my reflection place where I don't have to work about punctuation and that sort of thing. I just need to flow here to get my praxis (the joining between thinking and practice) on.

I can't believe I just committed to that. Very exciting stuff.

Now for the clean-up break and grocery shopping so I can get back for the last three steps of the day.

Updating - do I really wanna?

2006-03-02T20:48:00.000-06:00

Well, I guess it's just human nature, but I wanted to make my friend, the Spiritual Ninja, happy and update my blog.

Maybe I should take this on as a Lenten discipline. I don't know.

I'm trying to write more. A little bit everyday. I'm trying to put a writing sample together to apply for an MFA creative writing program. That's due in October. But what I am feeling like writing about - I don't want to write about.

My husband's brother attempted suicide this weekend. I don't want to talk about it, but I do. I want to talk about how going into his apartment and cleaning it out while he was locked in the hospital made me feel. I want to talk about how others have talked to me about it when they were trying to comfort me. But I don't know if I want to write about it.

It doesn't feel like it's my story to tell, exactly. He's not really related to me by blood. I'm not really part of the family. But this time (he's tried four times now that we know of) it's opened something up in me. I dont' know how to explain it yet, but it spread life out before me like opening a pop-up book. Things were thin and squeezed to together. Now life is wide and unfolded - three dimensional.

It's not necessarily a good thing. I had trouble watching some of my favorite crime dramas this week because the bodies reminded me of things I didn't see in his apartment, but envisioned in my mind. His organization of the things he marked for his parents, brother and ex-wife. The careful lining up of pill bottles along the bed. Even making the choice of what to watch as he lay down on his bed expecting shortly to die. Then the emptiness of the apartment after he was taken to the hospital, the discarded remains of desperate actions outlining the negative space of him. He was taken away. Somehow the act remained. In the room. And hung there as we cleaned things, threw things out and carried boxes of things away. It hung there when we left and stared down at us from the window. And we left it there.

No, I don't think I do want to update this blog tonight. But maybe it helped. Some.

New Jobs!

2005-12-21T17:31:00.000-06:00

Oh the grace of having new jobs.

I just was furthered in the job market today. I have a final set of tests to take and then I will be the proud employee of temp agency's client. It will last for six months, and be a great blessing on us!

Christmas is shaping up nicely. I'm just getting over a cold. I really hope my husband doesn't get it. So does he.

I've also gotten some of my new textbooks. I've already started work on the first five lessons in my German textbook. I also got a copy of Bonhoeffer's Life Together in German so I can start translating it as I learn grammar and vocabulary. I'm excited.

I don't think I ordered a Spanish language theology book. I'll have to wait and see.

I'm just plain excited about life.

So merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Times they are a changin'

2005-12-15T14:55:00.000-06:00

I love to open a blog post with good news!

My husband just started his first day of his first real call. Hooray for you, Kevin! We can say that it is his first real call, because now that we have gone through the call process and seen the paperwork from the synod that you get when you are called, we know that his last position was not a called position (even though it was supposed to be). So we are going to consider this the real first call and not feel at all bad about it.

The church is called to has already started planning a blow-out commissioning, so we are mucho excited. It is just a very different beginning, and my hopes for God's work on and through Kevin in this position are great. I am also very glad to report that I will not be overly involved with his call because....

I have a job and another interview next week! Hooray!

I was asked by a congregation to supply preach twice in January and they are looking at me for a more full time supply position after that. It might even carry over into the fall. (Something to help pay the doctoral degree bills.) I'm very, very excited.

So what does this mean for my diaconal aspirations right now? It means that God is putting together the means for me to afford my education and dig out of the financial hole we are in currently doing at least one job that keeps me in the church community and studying the lectionary on a regular basis. I am very pumped for this. And I really feel that it is God's doing on this one in a good way. (The last time I entered with trepidation knowing what was coming, but this time I am optimistic and patient. Maybe because I choose not to base my entire identity on it.)

Anyway, I am really excited about everything that is going on.

My goddaughter's first ever Christmas pageant is this weekend. She even has a line. We've been practicing the songs as much as we can, but her daddy taught her the wrong words to the second verse of "This Little Light of Mine" and its been a struggle trying to break her of the habit. I wonder if he taught all the kids the wrong words and I should just leave it alone. *Scratches head.* Well, they'll sort it out at dress rehearsal on Saturday morning.

I should progress towards writing. I've got some teenagers in Texas waiting for a play I haven't written yet. I just have today to do it. I just wish I could pin down one idea that didn't have to do with Christmas. (Too much narrative interference!)

OK, long post with no major storyline. Have a blessed last Sunday before Christmas everyone, and hopefully I'll have more good news on Monday.

Happy Turkey Day

2005-11-24T13:30:00.000-06:00

My husband's family is having a odd Thanksgiving, but a great one.

They've all been apart since July, and we get to meet someone who has been influential in his brother's life. It's all very exciting. We didn't know if they were going to come (his brother and friend), and then this morning they decided that they couldn't come. However, we just came up with a new plan that will make it so that they can come tomorrow.

I can hear my husband and his dad bickering in the kitchen about something that probably happened ten years ago. It's funny. they aren't really mad at each other, but this is just about the only way they know how to talk. Holidays...

This is the thankful side of families: even when they are on your nerves, at least you know you have one.

I'm off to eat turkey and sweet potatoes and stuffing and jell-o salad. The only Lutheran thing missing is the green bean casserole, but I wouldn't have room for it anyway with the homemade cranberry sauce and a pumpkin pie. Yum!

Praise God for the times that remind us of the way things were always meant to be. Time to be together, time to share, and time to make the impossible happen.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. And thanks for reading.

Emma's Aunt Kenzie

2005-11-22T12:37:00.000-06:00

This is a new blog for a new day, I guess. I was feeling like I was getting away from what I wanted to be in my old blog, and now I felt it was time to Cyber-Start over.

I was thinking these last few days about a lack of wisdom when it comes to waiting for grace to take over my life. I beginning to think that there are better focuses for life than fighting people over their ideas and beliefs. I think it's because I'm getting sick of all the fighting. Including the fight that just happened in my parents' home last night. Like the 13th disciple says in Dogma, good ideas get out of hand when they become beliefs. Beliefs need to be defended so that reality can continue to go on. Ideas try to work out the meaning of it all, without needing to be tied down.

Is there room for a Christian faith that consists of evolving ideas? Is there a place for trial and error and exploration? Is there a way for me to look and work for justice without being consumed by anger and even hatred through judgement?

Emma's Aunt Kenzie, one of my many roles on this planet, can become a horse or a snake or a spinning top just because Emma's imagination makes it so. Emma's Aunt Kenzie lives to love and guide and keep safe this beautiful little girl who has faith in her. Emma's Aunt Kenzie is able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, and sew back together busted seams of tiny teddy bears. Can Emma's Aunt Kenzie love Jesus and be the one who serves the world in His name without losing her soul to the fights that consume us?

So like President Jed Bartlett says, "What's next?" Moving on beyond maudlin disappointment and grudge-driven anger to be a better servant. We're not entitled to anything. We've got to make the world we want to live in, and killing each other's bodies and spirits to get there isn't going to cut it. There has to be a better way.

I guess that's what this blog will be about: trying to figure it out.