My Mixed Relationship with Halloween

I love costumes, but hate disguises. I want to wear something fun, something I wouldn't normally wear, but I don't want to be someone else, and I get creeped out when people approach me and I can't tell who they are.

I love seeing the kids having fun in their costumes, and I really, really like dressing up. It's my inner drama queen coming out - not that I hide her away much the rest of the year. I'm troubled that all the costumes for girls and women seem to involve really short skirts, too much cleavage, and weird sexual connotations. This weekend I saw a "nun" in a short, shiny pleather habit. Shudder. My own nun costume looks like, well, a nun. I actually have two costumes this year; the other one is a flapper. I'm still debating which to wear tonight for the festivities at church. Some of the kids were a little scared of me in my nun garb at a party on Sunday, and one of them asked what a nun is, which led to a rather confusing exchange involving lots of explanations of how my work in a church is different than a nun's work in a church, and why nuns wear funny clothes to show that they've given their lives to God, but I only wear those clothes as a costume.

I don't like being scared, either by movies or by things jumping out at me. I've always thought pranks were mean, not funny.

I find all the skeletons and blood and tombstones a little bizarre, especially given that our society is quite uncomfortable with death.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. I've baked 8 gazillion cupcakes for the church stuff, so I'm going to go put on one of my costumes and take them over now. Happy Halloween, all!

Have you ever felt like you should be excited about something, but you just weren't? That is how I feel about this Advent planning retreat thing that I'll be leaving for after youth group in a little while. Retreat should be good, right? But I find myself with a certain measure of dread. Also, I need to figure out another place to put my day off this week, because tomorrow certainly won't be it.

Frivolity

I currently have a monstrous zit on the side of my nose, which I think must be combined with some sort of bug bite or something because it is TAKING OVER MY WHOLE FACE. When I woke up this morning, my left eye was basically swollen shut, and I refuse to believe that is a result of one stupid zit - although, I've made a thorough examination of the area and can find no other source.

I have terrible skin. I just do. It's oily and prone to breakouts and scarred from breakouts past. I can generally keep it down to only one or two breakouts at any given time with a steady regimen of Proactiv. Sadly, this week the one zit has decided to implant itself in my eye area, and all the other skin around my eye has decided to swell accordingly. After several hours of hot and cold compresses, I can almost see normally.

However, there is a ray of light, and it is the best foundation ever. Seriously. It's way too expensive and I shouldn't even own it, but I do and it's amazing. It made me look not hideously disfigured for church this morning. Yippee!

Speaking of hideously disfigured, I'm about to get into a Halloween costume in which only my face and hands show. Good thing nuns aren't supposed to be concerned with the appearance of their faces.

Just a Brief Rant

*This is a ranting and somewhat hyperbolic post, and is not to be taken as the whole of my opinion or understanding on the subject. That is true of nearly all my posts, but I feel the need to emphasize it here.*

What is up with my generation? I'm just not sure what I think about this whole wandering, no-job thing. I don't know how it even works for people, logistically speaking. Where do you get money for rent? If you're living with your parents, first of all, EEEK, but also, don't you still need money for food, student loan payments, gas, insurance, etc.? I simply cannot believe that so many parents are subsidizing the lives of their 20- and even 30-something year old offspring. If they are, maybe they should stop.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all about life being a journey, and I understand that it takes time to figure out what you want to do and be, and I appreciate the non-traditional approach to careers. I've worked my share of just-getting-by jobs while I figured out the next step. But I don't understand not working at all. And I also don't understand waiting around and doing basically nothing until The Perfect Thing comes along. What if there is no Perfect Thing? What if you need to do some Okay Things in order to figure out what the Perfect Thing really is? And by the way, do you all realize that it might be helpful to have some work experience at some point? And that maybe the world might even need you and your gifts and energy now?

As I Prepare This Week's Bulletin...

I will simply note that hymn books are sometimes a big pain in the derriere. Last week was Peace and Justice Sunday. Do you think there are any songs in our hymnal that talk about justice, or peace that goes beyond being like a river in my little individual soul? No. This week I'm preaching about something along the lines of being genuine in our thanksgiving to God, rather than just using praise as yet another way to favorably compare ourselves with others and try to claim ownership of God. I wish for hymns about these things, but I'm not sure they exist, and they certainly do not exist in our hymnal. Instead I have things like "Blessed assurance, Jesus is MINE," and "MY Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art MINE." Don't get me wrong, I actually like both of those hymns, but they are so very unrelated to most of the things I preach about, and most of the things I see as important in the Gospel. I guess I should write some hymns, but that is a time-consuming endeavor, and hymns aren't really my strength in song-writing. In the meantime, I wish for a new hymnal, and for more hymn-writers to get a sense that there is more to the Gospel that this Jesus-in-my-heart business.

Sleep? Ha.

This was the weekend of The Wedding To End All Weddings. The bride is one of my best friends, the groom has become a good friend since they started dating. I was there when they met, I encouraged her, "Yes, you should give him your phone number," so it was particularly poignant to be the one to prompt them to repeat their vows.

I know from experience that friends' weddings, while great fun, can be particularly taxing. This is not the first time I've played the minister/quasi-bridesmaid role. Because we're talking about really good friends, I usually know their families and other friends, too. So, the wedding activities generally begin about Thursday, if not before. Airport runs, family dinner, nights out with the friends to usher out the last days of singleness without endangering the actual wedding. Friday there is the rehearsal, dinner, and post-rehearsal. Somewhere in there, there's the finishing of the service and sermon. Saturday is the actual wedding, and if you're just the minister, you have to be there maybe an hour before the service, max, and you generally leave afterward. If you're also the friend, chances are you're there from moment one, and if you're me, you're not going home until the last hurrah...even if you're preaching the next morning.

I know these things about friends' weddings and about myself, and I knew this weekend would involve long hours and late nights. I knew that by Sunday morning, I would be pretty much exhausted. So, I did everything in my power to lessen my load at church on Sunday, but it didn't work. It did the opposite of work, actually, since it was not supposed to be my Sunday to preach at the early service, but no one else would sign up. Which is fine. It's my job, so whatever; we do what we must. I suppose I could also have chosen to leave the wedding-related gatherings somewhat earlier, but then that would have been so antithetical to my whole being that I can't even conceive of it. Who needs sleep, anyway?

On less than 3 hours and a lot of coffee, I think I managed to make it more or less competently through both services. Did I mention I also have an ear infection? That did not help. Then I went to the post-wedding brunch. And then I went home, thinking I'd probably collapse into a near-dead pile on the couch.

I COULD NOT FALL ASLEEP.

That was nuts. I attempted to nap for two hours. Then I gave up and treated myself to sushi before going to the concert to which I had won free tickets.

Sushi: YUM. Nearly as good as sleep.

Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers: If you get a chance to see them live, GO. Their recordings do not do them justice. I already knew this, though, and that's why I went despite feeling like death. It was totally worth it.

I did finally get to sleep last night. Good thing today is my day off, because I stayed in bed for approximately 13 hours. Sometimes sleep is really a good thing.

A Break for My Brain

I have two sermons and a newsletter article to write today, but my brain is not cooperating at present, and I'm eking out about a sentence every ten minutes. Not good. So, just to pick up the word count, here I am, with a couple of random thoughts for the day.

First, an interview with J.K. Rowling, in which she discusses the Christian references in her Harry Potter series. I'm glad to see this, after defending her work to those who thought it was leading children into satanism or something, and also after just wondering while reading whether all the spiritual themes and connections were intentional. Apparently they are. I'm also impressed that she waited this long and allowed people to form their own interpretations of the books before discussing this, rather than jumping up to defend herself against all the fuss.

Second, there's a new Moses movie coming out, and a couple of things about it puzzle me. 1) Why must the voice of God always be a deep, booming, uber-masculine voice? 2) Why are the characters in a movie supposedly set in Egypt, most of whom are played by American actors, speaking with vaguely British accents?

That's all. Now, back to the real writing.

Pests

I mentioned before that I am a member of a denominational commission, but I haven't talked much about it. That's because I serve on the Commission for Women, which is frankly a no-win situation. We are not seen as heavy-hitters as far as commissions are concerned. In terms of how the commission has sometimes functioned, there are some good reasons for this. Regardless of what quality of work we do, when we speak, much eye-rolling commences. There are plentiful excuses for not having women proportionally represented in assemblies or on staff, and for not using inclusive language in liturgies, prayers, and music. I tend to get irritated at the seeming futility of our work, but I also see how much worse it might be if we weren't there to pester the powers that be. We are treated like pests when we do the work we were commissioned to do. I don't enjoy being a pest. I'd often prefer to be on a commission that was perceived as doing more important work. I'd like to be able to write papers and make recommendations that weren't met with great sighs of, "Oh, those women again."

The fact is that the membership of our denomination is 63% women. Approximately 20% of General Synod delegates are women. One of twelve staff in the top two tiers is a woman. This is not right, and if we don't call attention to this, then who will? I feel like a pest doing so. But it seems that I've been commissioned to be a pest.

Missional?

Well, I'm back from the commission meetings. I'm even early, and that NEVER happens; we finished up ahead of schedule and I managed to catch an earlier flight. I'm still exhausted, and very glad that I'm not still on an airplane with an hour and a half to go and an hour's drive following that.

So, these meetings. Some good work was done, and I'll try to get to that later. Then there were some other things that kind of bugged me. We talk all the time these days about being missional. We don't so much define what "missional" means, however. I had a whole class in seminary about "the missional church," and although I didn't much care for the word even then, I could get on board with what we meant when we said it: participating in the mission of God, living out the Gospel in the world, being outwardly focused rather than striving for self-preservation...great stuff. Gospel stuff.

The sense I get when we talk about being missional at denominational meetings, however, is that we mean planting more churches and obtaining more members. Do we want more people following Christ? Of course. But I don't necessarily equate that with opening more churches, or even with putting more butts in the seats of said churches. It seems to me that we have enough churches. What we don't have is enough people proclaiming the Gospel in relevant ways or living it out visibly in the world so that more people are drawn to follow Christ. Maybe investing so much time and energy in planting new churches will get us there, but I'm not convinced. If we're proclaiming the Gospel and living it out, it's pretty likely that the Church will grow, but "multiplying" churches so that we'll grow seems a bit like an "if you build it, they will come" philosophy of ministry. Newsflash: we've already built it. There are church buildings everywhere. And yet, in many places, they just aren't coming anymore.

I'm not actually opposed to starting new congregations. I've thought seriously about doing so myself. But I wonder about the implications of writing off existing congregations in favor of new ones whose sole goals seem to be rapid growth. I'm troubled by this endless focus on numbers, and the constant creation of structures as though they're the answer to all problems. I'm concerned that we pay lip service to issues of justice and peace, acting on them only when they increase our numbers. Call me cynical, but I just don't see much good news in all of this, and I also don't see much that's missional when we're so busy thinking all about ourselves.

A Rambling Post on My Aridity

While flipping channels today in search of something that would make good background noise for working on the bulletin, I came across an episode of "Seventh Heaven." I stopped flipping for a moment because Lucy was in the pulpit, and I have a compulsion to stop and take note whenever female ministers are presented in the media. Let's just say she was not having a stellar pulpit moment. She was completely and totally losing it, ranting about something fairly inappropriate to the preaching situation. I have some thoughts about women ministers being represented by that highly emotional and erratic character, but they'll have to wait.

I've been thinking a bit lately about what we bring into the pulpit with us. Lucy was perhaps bringing too much into the pulpit with her; recently I've been feeling like I'm not bringing enough. I've been feeling dry. I've been feeling like I'm saying the same things over and over, and not as well as I've said them before. I have no idea whether people have noticed this. Yesterday, several people said very positive things about my sermon, which I thought was a little on the vacant side. Go, Holy Spirit! Anyway, I have these weeks when I feel drained, and I think, "I just need a break," but then, I had a break from preaching last week, and then this week I was right back in the same situation. I'm not really sure what to do about this.

I'm trying to remember the last time I was not in my church on a Sunday. I think it was May. I've had a few breaks from preaching, because we've had candidates for neighboring churches preaching three or four times this year, but I've been there. Maybe that has something to do with it. But I always feel terrible when I take Sundays off. It means a lot of work for other people who are already overworked, and pulpit supply funds from our already stretched accounts. So, I do everything in my power to schedule my vacation and study leave so that I don't have to be away on a Sunday. That's probably not entirely good. I might need to get away - really get away, in a way that doesn't involve still preparing a service or a sermon while I'm away, or in the times squished in before or after I leave. But I'm saving the bulk of my vacation time for January, when I'm going to Scotland. I don't know. Blah.

Commissions

I suspect that I have fairly high expectations of myself in terms of denominational involvement. When I was ordained, I just sort of assumed that at any given time, I'd probably have at least one classis responsibility, one regional synod responsibility, and one denominational responsibility. Maybe my duties would be distributed differently, but they wouldn't be less than that. I might be totally warped in thinking this, and I have no idea where the idea came from, but there it is. And so I serve in my classis as the supervisor of a vacant church, and I sit on commissions at the regional and general synod levels. I do some other stuff, too. Sometimes I meet ministers who only seem to have their own churches and their personal lives to mind, and I'm torn between wondering if I'm insane and being irritated at them for leaving everything to those of us with overdeveloped senses of responsibility.

Anyway, I'm going to Minnesota this week for the joint meetings of the RCA commissions. I'm excited about it. I get to take an extra day and a half to see family. Also, I kind of like meetings, in a strange way. Mostly I like what happens around the meetings, at meals and breaks - networking, catching up with old friends, meeting new people, hearing what's going on behind the scenes...I kind of love it. It's almost worth getting up at the crack of dawn to sit in meetings all day.

And yet, this is not a vacation. I will still be working, not only for the denomination, but for my church. I still have to be back on Sunday - not preaching, thanks be to really generous parishioners - and I still have to do pretty much the whole week's worth of work (minus the sermon). Most of it has to get done tomorrow, because there will be no time for it in Minnesota. The list for tomorrow is really long. Because today's list was equally long, my brain will not shut down now...hence I am blogging.

I'm not complaining. I choose these responsibilities, and they are part of my calling. I'm just saying, it's not as easy to go away as it seems. Also, my dog is going to be really annoyed.

And yet, some things that make me happy...

A new e-zine for, by, and about young clergy women is launching today. As I'm a member of the board and a contributing writer, I guess this is a shameless plug. You can find Fidelia's Sisters here. Please, go, check it out, and then feel free to submit articles for future editions!

I am going to Scotland and Ireland. Separately. I had booked the ticket to Scotland a while ago, and then this opportunity to tour Ireland in a rather unique way arose, and I couldn't resist. So, I shall be broke for quite a while, but 2008 shall be the Year of Stacey in Europe. Both trips are months away, but I've been looking at itineraries, and I'm just really excited.