"take the yoke"

       In the ordinations that I have attended a district superintendent says to the newly ordained person ‘take the yoke of Christ’. Then places the stole with all of its weight of history, tradition, and responsibility yoked with it. Being not yet ordained I can not where the traditional stole, I don’t have vestments, or a collar none of what one might think are the traditional trappings of the outward appearance for ministry. But in the past few months I have been yoked with a stole of sorts.

            In working at the hospital I was issued a badge on a lanyard that I wear around my neck that gets me into the places that I need to get to be present for my patients.  Often especially at the start I felt like this responsibility was all to much and not for me. But I started to gradually feel that maybe somehow I sort of was figuring out what I was doing. And  I was building relationships with patients, and important relationships too. Then I got hit.

I was devastated and deflated and traumatized. But my more prevailing feeling was anger that getting hit had given me reason to not see the patients who asked to see me.  Over that weekend with the consul of a good friend I realized that that lanyard issued to me was a sign of something else demanded of you at ordination ‘take thou authority’. My authority as a representative of God was more important then my fear. Because fear is easy but courage is more of a statement of the character of the God I know.  It might seem silly to see this badge and lanyard as a sacred object, the first of many vestments to come. But with it I come with the knowledge, wisdom, tradition and faith that has sustained people for millennia. That God is with us and loves all.

Surprising Theologians

           So this morning I went to the hospital, and happened upon a remembrance for September 11th and all the chaos in the world. At a time of sharing for the patients they where asked to tell what caused them stress. The stories put a knives in my heart, but in spite of all of the pain and suffering and trauma that I heard there where so many gems of hope.
        One patient expressed how she understood that life and death where both gifts from God and that we needed to see them that way. She continued on to explain that God will take care of us and upon death all of our questions about religion will be answered when we meet God. Another patient proclaimed that we needed to be thankful for every moment and to dream. The director of chaplaincy services reminded us all that the world outside of the hospital was chaotic everyone could help each other.
        It was pleasantly surprising to me to hear people who are not trained at a seminary level to be theologians know more, and have the assurance of what they said in there hearts. Maybe once you obtain certain knowledge you start to lose the ability to dream that answers do not need to be in books, or contained in the answers of those with PhD’s or M.Div’. Assurance is the knowledge that Grace is yours and Grace is like oxygen. You don’t always remember how much you need it, but its always there for you when you want it (all the time).

Photo From Shane Rounce

The Yo-Yo effect

With seminary hopefully starting back up this week, pending Irene and her path. I do have an announcement though that I am no longer fully itinerant as I was last year as I have moved full time to school. Figures my first weekend is a hurricane. Also a display of Gods sense of humor, I was supposed to preach at my new church tomorrow. Yeah about that…

Anyways doing hurricane prep reminded me of a discussion we had in bible study two springs ago. The discussion was when we give something to God but then we take it back or the yo-yo effect. A lot of people when natural disasters strike say its God trying to tell us something, that we are naughty, or not listening to God or not acting with God’s intent. I don’t buy it, never have and likely never will. I do however think that the disrespect we are showing the earth has an effect upon the wacky weather lately. But back to the point.
On Thursday I moved in and went to dinner with a peer and it was great. She needed to stop at the grocery store here in town. Going in it was already pandemonium. Something in my mind told me to get water then, and it was a darn good thing I did. Yesterday I went to go out to prepare and to get food to um eat next week after the storm, and a few other odds and ends. Holy cow people, let the mass panic ensue. People pushing shoving, practically dive bombing items.
Now I’m all for being prepared as my roommate and I have stowed water all over the place in the apartment. But this gets me to thinking God created and is creating and the animals are taken care of, so surely we are also going to be taken care of. Maybe we should collective panic less and plan more. Listen if you’re in an evacuation zone and get the hell out*. But be nice to one another and try to love the stupid people who do stupid things in a storm. But above all try to learn to trust and to not yo-yo.




*to quote Gov. Christy

Change Comes

I have been thinking a lot about transition both with the ending of my first year of seminary, moving to NJ and oh yea taking my first job at a church. This means that I am leaving my home church, and well this has left me conflicted. Both joyful and excited but then also sad and scared (thankfully not as terrified as I was for seminary), sometimes just one at a time and other times all together. I have been singing the first few lines from “She comes sailing on the wind” lately as it has been both an earworm to me and I think a way as to put some words to the way I have been feeling.


“She comes sailing on the wind,
her wings flashing in the sun;
on a journey just begun, she flies on.
And in the passage of her flight,
her song rings throughout the night,
full of laughter, full of light, she flies on.”

Now I know that this is about Sophia, AKA the Holy Spirit but I think that it also fits for me at this moment. I aspire to unfurl my wings and to light the world, full of joy and laughter. My song (I’m not much of a singer) well maybe not musical will hopefully proclaim the good news to the world and remind people that it is a story of love, not hate, not separation. But love.
Stepping out to give yourself the space to unfurl the wings takes a lot from many different areas of skill, and it takes courage. I hope that I allow myself to claim the space to do just that, to show, to tell, and to be love.
The other thing that I like about this song is that it gives us something tangible to link the Holy Spirit to, the wind. Being itinerant means that sometimes you are like the wind, moving this moment, but not the next. One does not always get to know where the wind blows but sometimes we get to know it is.

(my additional refrain to the lovely song)
Change comes sailing on the wind,
Not always knowing what’s to come,
On a journey, continuing on
With the passage of time,
A song of love fills the air
Full of joy, full of the unknown, change comes

Seeing the Wind

With to day being Pentecost and all and being done with my first year of seminary a month I have had a lot of time to think. This week I was at the New York Annual Conference of the UMC. Being a general conference year we voted on a lot of things. However for the first time I knew that I was able to provide answers to questions, I was the knowledgeable one. I'm not completely sure what happened between 2010 conference and 2011 that I became one with wisdom.


Yet this still makes me think about what someone said to me at the Drew lunch, 'don't rush seminary, because you will miss it when your gone'. Many people have said something along those lines to me but like the former dean said at the retirement of the academic dean 'don't be afraid of the next stage of life'. So maybe I have come to realize that I am a next stage of this adventure and have grown into what this stage entails.

You do not see the wind, but you know that its there. This is how it is with the Holy Spirit. You see the effects that it has on the world how it sweeps into places and pepple and clears the cobwebs away. Although the spirit can run amok sometimes its all for reasons we can't see but we know the effects. Maybe this is the reason why.

todays thought

Joan: Let's... let's say you're God.
Cute Boy God: Joan, I am God.
Joan: Okay, well, let's see a miracle.
Cute Boy God: Okay. How 'bout that?

Camera pans to a large tree nearby. Cute Boy God stops beneath it.

Joan: That's a tree.
Cute Boy God: Let's see you make one.

Last week I had to go to the Dr's and I ended up getting x-rays of my foot and they reveled that something is quite wrong with my foot. But I had to contain my excitement of my continued wonderment of X-rays. I've had at least a dozen in my life they should not be that amazing to me. But yet still I view them as miracles that have all kinds of good linked to them

Tell Me a Story #TMAS

"Tellmeastory"final.docx - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwruEzNWcs1EV05HY01IcTZnYUU/edit?usp=sharing

Why history of the church matters

A few weeks ago I was discussing with a peer about what we where taking for the fall semester. And I asked her if she was in a crazy class that went from 6pm until 9m that happens to be church history. She told me no and ‘church history does not matter much because it does not inform my faith’. I was a little put off; history informs everything that we do. As of late in my church history class we have been discussing the missionary movement and how it moved to international and away from domestic mission.
This was due to the viewed failure of the mission to Native Americans and the lost sense of hope. But this hope and optimism was found in international mission and the mission to the American Indians fell to the wayside. But what does this matter to me you ask me dear readers. It matters because as Americans we have let a unfair practice of putting Native Americans on to reservations where mental illness, alcoholism, sub par schools and communities are permitted to exist with out remedy. What has this to do with the church, well we let it continue we don’t stand for change.
From a social work perspective the great depression gave way for the founding of most of our social programs like food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, social security and many others. Under Johnson who himself came from nothing we got the modern inception until 1996. At this point it was changed by Clinton and benefits and programs where vastly reduced and changed making it almost impossible to get from A to Z because all of the other points along the way to self determination and independence where gone if the existed at all. And where do our churches step in often, in feeding, and community outreach.
Why does history matter? Because history is always informing what we do, what we don’t do and the reasons for both. In my studies of history a question that comes to my mind frequently is “does history make people or do people make history”. This is why church history matters, because we can learn how not to fight wars, and how to create the basilica of God right here.

Purple

When I came home on Friday I cam home to the first flowers of spring bursting forth. I find it interesting that each spring at least in my yard the color of the flowers are purple. Purple is historically the color of royalty but also for Christians the color of lent.

Purple was the color of royalty because it was a hard dye to make and cost a lot of money due to the time it took to create it. I tend to look at how long it took for the bulbs and seeds to generate there energy to create the blooms that bring me such joy and think how they came from the seemingly dead earth but yet are alive. We place purple on our worship spaces on ash Wednesday. Well I am not sure of the ‘official answer’ to why we do this I think it is because we are awaiting. We know the end to the story, that God was seemingly dead but came to prove that everything that we had assumed was wrong. That a royal had come not to keep there kin-dom to themselves but rather to share, so we all could be clothed in the purple of royalty.

I am also drawn to think about one of my favorite movies(I confess I have not read the book, woe to me I know) The Color Purple. Purple is a huge theme that runs through this book along with God. Purple for the main character has associated purple with negative things. A mistress/lover of her husband through their time together shows her that life rather needs to be celebrated. When they discuss this they are in a purple field of lowers and says "You must look at all the good and acknowledge them because God placed them all on earth". After this she comes to learn to love herself and to love God.

Purple for me is a sign of life, just as much as red is a sign of the spirit. Maybe if we think differently we can seek to see the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

Considering Other Voices

For my New Testement class, I am writing a midterm where I dare to consider the other voices that are related to the authentic Pauline letters.  Well it is fun to imagine what the women of Corinth might have said to Paul (Paul, take a hike we are done having bake sales for missions) or what Philemon might say to Paul (I’m troubled that you think that I would mistreat a salve).  It is important to think what our writings today also say and who’s voices we do not hear.

            I also just finished Sara and the author Marek Halter, dares to think in the first installment of a series what was Sara doing when she was still Sari. Why did she do the things she does in the Bible.  Well I was not pleased with how he handled some of the fillers for the parts of the story we do know (the Binding of Isaac, her death). I valued that he yes a he dared to take a listen to the text between the texts. He also writes about Zipporah, Wife of Moses Lilith and Mary mother of God.  I cannot wait to read the other ones in the series!

            He describes himself in the author interview as a storyteller and the Jewish faith has a long standing tradition of expanding the stories in the Hebrew Bible in a Midrash( Living with contradiction). They fills in many gaps left in the biblical narrative regarding events and personalities that are only hinted at  Do we dare to write the stories of those outside the written and accepted text? Do we even think about them, consider them and the impact they have on our understanding? 

           

      If we dare to think about the ‘other’ does this now mean that we must act differently towards the other. To think that these stories and letters are not just fables but rather discuss issues that our ancestors had then and we still have now. But maybe if we think about them we can find ways to solve some of the problems from the ways that it did not work out for our ancestors.

Without each other we are nothing

Hi all!  So insted ot posting the homily I gave this morning I thought you might enjoy the video of it. I used the clip Harry Potter Wizards Chess,  so you might want to watch that to get the full experince. <3Betty your Itinerant Camper

Watch Below or at Febuary 13,2011

No sneakers on the alter!

When I was younger and of the age in my church to be an acolyte my mother would always hound me ‘don’t wear your sneakers on the alter’!  I was somewhat faithful to her demand of me but one day during the summer there was no one else to acolyte and I was wearing my sneakers. Oh man what do I do what do I do!  Looking back on this moment it should have been clear to me that I should have not had this conundrum and just gone up and light the candles because it was an act of worship to God.  But there was part of me that asked, can I defy my mother? Will God get mad at me if I break one of the Ten Commandments and disobey my parents?  Well the long of the short of it was that I decided to do it just to defy my mothers ‘no sneakers on the alter’ rule. The roof did not cave in; there was no bolt of lightening that struck me down. It was all good.

            Reflecting on this as someone who is now older and who is also interested in the human reactions to God, this got me to thinking how do we meet God. My mothers no sneakers on the alter came from her childhood religious upbringing where she and her family did not go to church often because they had to be dressed just so. Often there was not money for the gloves that needed to be worn in church.   I am quite sure that there are people who only meet God on Sunday mornings in circumstances like this. But what about those who meet God in the dirt, or the fields, or in books, or in art or the creation of something, they are certainly not dress ‘just so’ in accordance to this standard.

            I happen now to wear what I consider ‘low’ shoes as in not my dress shoes to church most of the time, even when I am leading or preaching.  Why you ask dear readers, well for several reasons. Firstly I don’t really like my current dress shoes*, they are not comfortable and give off an attitude of ‘dress shoes, special shoes, and once in a while shoes’. Second I often am not sure where my dress shoes have landed in my shuffling of stuff between NY and NJ. Third they are not comfortable. I must have comfortable shoes because I have balance and walking issues so my shoes literally ground me and must help me keep my balance. Fourth why should I dress up to meet God, when I know that God loves me in my jeans and t-shirts.

            Granted that when I lead I do like to dress with some authority giving the appearance that I know what I’m doing (because so many times I feel like I have NO clue).  But I like to keep my shoes the way they are, the ones that guide me each day and are not relegated to live in there box until the best moment to where them arrives.  Because what if that best moment passes by and they are not on my feet?

            If you can’t tell by now I do happen to love shoes and have a very great relationship with mine. I can remember the shoes that I did many important things in, my college acceptance shoes-payless brown boots that really needed to be resoled, seminary acceptance-target black ballet flats, I also wore these for when I signed the book at Drew**. First time addressing my annual conference my beat up keen hiking sneakers.  All moments that where and are important to me on my journey. I feel like we all have items like my shoes that we place high value on.   So aside from defying my mother and her stilly rule, I make the conscious decision to continue to meet God in my normal shoes, all over the place and try not to leave my meetings to Sunday alone.

*I had a pair of dress shoes that I LOVED, maybe a little to much that I scratched the leather on and now are not presentable to wear as dress shoes. They where awesome, and I miss them.  

**Signing the book is part of Drew Theo. tradition. All new students sign a book from when the school was first established, and except for a few years when the book was lost contains every student who has matriculated into the school. This tradition now also takes place in the college of liberal arts at Drew as well.

In the snow

This past week I took a Jan Term intensive, more on that at a latter date. However our five-day class got cut short due to one of the trifecta snow storms that have hit the east coast the past few weeks. It was entertaining to me to see everyone upset about nine inches of snow. I’m not sure if its me and my potential cockiness or my New York attitude or just my years of snow related driving that made me feel like this was nothing. Regardless of this I used it as a day to camp out and then to help someone move. Yes move across campus in the snow.

            Now this person had a lot of stuff and was not well packed for a move in any kind of weather, let alone snow and poorly managed snow as well. I digress, so I start gathering possessions that I do not know the value of and placing them into vessels prepared for transport.  Soon we start trudging it the 900 feet from building T to building W where the new residence was. 900 feet really is not that far but in the snow everything is more, longer, colder. Thankfully we found people on campus who we begged into helping and only one slight fall, and minor twist of the ankle by yours truly, we moved a futon a kitchen, clothing from two closets and a dresser and books(not a lot thankfully, seminary students do tend to have  lot of these…).

            It seems funny to me that we did something that we all do rather frequently, and that is move in a time when it seems that you should be sitting still. Creation sits still in the snow, as evidenced by the birds that flock to my front yard at home in NY but stay nested in the height of the storm. But yet once again I was going against the current and well not frocking in the snow doing something somewhat absurd.

            As of late I have come to realize that my life is somewhat absurd, and does not always make sense to me all the time. But I had the unique opportunity to see that we are never quite prepared all the time for what will be asked of us.  I could have said ‘nope its cold and I’m not going to go trudging through the snow’ to the person in need of moving. But what would I be doing if I did that? I would be sitting and taking a passive role, in what turned out to be an entertaining afternoon with good conversation and only a few aspirin latter it was done.

            So often we are caught unprepared, doing activities in quite the wrong season.  But we must stand and deliver with the best that we know we can do. Even if we are quite confidant that we have no clue what it will be. In this case my hands and virgo need to organize where the best gifts that I could offer. Maybe next time it will be my mean crockpot skills, or my box of tissues, or something more.