How Holy the Conversation

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        I started working at a food pantry at the start of January to fulfill the requirements of my supervised ministry class. I was unsure of it as this is something I have never ever considered as a site for ministry, for me. But I love it already. I do intake interviews, shop with clients as we are a client choice pantry(items are out on shelves and clients get to chose the variety of the item. I.e. tomato soup not clam chowder), and find and refer resources to clients. Today I finished the first incarnation of the big bad book of referrals and resources. Its about 2 inches thick of paper, I also got to give my first referrals from it! I would post a picture but I forgot to take one today!

            As someone who often looks to the very ordinary as evidence of the Divine, I was reminded of this again. I had a very holy moment with a client today as we both shared a lot in common, I was able to use my knowable to help steer her to some resources. Then we went shopping; I encouraged her to keep up with her hard work and acknowledged her strength in asking for help. We talked about what could be done with the food items, like beans and rice, blueberry cobbler and so on. As we where checking out she asked how long I had been there and I told her three weeks, She was amazed and asked me what bought me to the pantry. I told her it was my internship for my M.Div and then we had a conversation about faith. I had already felt a kinship with her the moment she walked into the office for the interview but then she affirmed she felt it too.

            It was a warm reminder of just how holy the work I’m doing is. I was struggling a bit to see the connection between food pantry and ministry other then ‘they are hungry feed them, Jesus told us to’. But it is more then that it is the conversations, the affirmation of a persons strengths, the reaffirm that they are the beloved of Gods. Yes that is the ministry of the pantry

Geting Brave

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*warning I drop an Fbomb in here*      

   This January term I am taking a class called “Ministry with Persons with Disability’s”, so far I am loving it. Today we talked about my area of passion Mental Illness/ Behavioral Health. We had a speaker in the morning who is an educator and pastor in the field of cognitive disability’s and mental health he also known the pain of depression. In the afternoon our instructor gave us a PowerPoint presentation and a women asked the question “why don’t people just tell”. I felt that pesky Holy Spirit rising in my stomach and told it to quiet down. But she went on and another classmate gave her answer and then the Holy Spirit burst forth and called me to tell my story.

            Telling your story of MI, is something painful, courageous, daring, stupid and a host of many other things.  I told they good the bad and the ugly. I discussed how I lost my job, got discriminated against in the seminary by people who I thought would care because they are Pastors by profession. And just how wrong I was. How I was wounded deeply by the church cut to my core, and how I felt that I could not go to church again because I was afraid to get hurt again the way I got hurt in the past. As a seminarian I know that one church does not reflect the entirety of the UMC or the whole Christian church, but it got me thinking about those not as ‘hearty’ with the stupidity of the church saying ‘fuck this shit’ and walking away forever. This hurts me even more then my personal wounding.

            But with the assistance of that dam pesky Holy Spirit, I got brave and preached it. I was not intending to preach it. My classmates thanked me for speaking out and offered encouragement. But also knew the grim reality’s that I and others like me might face in the shadow of the church.

            My favorite Gospel is Mark. I like how its quick and dirty and Jesus just does what needs to get done, its not flowery or sweet with a nativity story its dirty! Its messy, its crazy. Its also the gospel of the dimwitted disciples(another post to be made). But most importantly it’s the gospel of courage to me.

            Mark 16: 1-8, the original ending of Mark, recounts how the women came to do the final tending of the grave of Jesus. But then a young man dressed in white tells them

 “⁶But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”

They end up running away in amazement and terror. But something happened, Marks not the only book that makes up the New Testament. We have acts, we have Paul’s letters and the other pastorals, so they must have told someone.  That or we have an elaborate fairy tales on our hands.  But I think that it is more that they took the courage of the faith they had in Jesus who was a great prophet to them, maybe they knew he was God.  They where likely still afraid and I would be, but they decided that faith was greater then fear. That the courage to share that faith was more important then the fear. 

       I am still afraid of a lot of things regarding my MI, how will I manage it as someone who will be losing there parents insurance in two years, might I have to go inpatient, how will I afford this, will the church let me ‘in’, can I get ordained, can I get a job in ministry, can I get a job period? Lots of fears will my potential future children have MI like me. Could I willfully and knowingly bring that upon a child?           

  But it takes all of my courage to walk on, to know that I will manage. I will make it work; I will find a church that will ordain me, a job in ministry. It will happen. It might not happen in the way I expect it to or plan it at all, but I have to have the courage to know that it will somehow work out.