A Week of Interviews and Contracts

It has been a whirlwind week, and I'm not talking about the "will he or won't he" tariff chaos.  It's been a week where I have multiple seminary assignments due--from here on out, they will be more spread out.  I do think that if I was smart, I would go ahead and get the final projects done, and maybe I will.

I had an interview this week.  On Tuesday, I interviewed to be part of the Summer 2025 cohort of the CPE program at the Asheville VA Hospital.  I wasn't sure what to expect--after all, it's not like a job interview, where people are trying to determine if they want me to be part of their lives for what could be a long time.  

My mom sent me this e-mail, which I thought was charming in so many ways:  "Hope all goes well. You are a dynamite young lady who can ace this interview. Keep us posted! Mom."  It's been a long time since anyone called me a dynamite young lady--I certainly don't feel young anymore.

The interview went well, I thought.  It was the kind of interview where I could tell that the three people on the interview team had read my extensive application materials and thought about them and come up with incisive questions.  I answered them honestly.  The interview lasted 45 minutes, so there could have been plenty of places where I stumbled.

For example, they asked me what I hoped to learn outside of skills, what kind of self development did I hope to experience, and I said that I wanted to learn more about how to be present to people with problems that aren't fixable. I felt like it was a good answer, but they might have found it problematic.

Happily, they must have found more about me to like than reject.  Yesterday, the day after the interview, I sent a thank you e-mail, and I got a reply offering me a spot.  I wrote back to say yes.  

You might be asking why I am doing CPE this summer--aren't I graduating?  Yes, I am on schedule to graduate with my MDiv degree, but I still have requirements to complete before I am eligible for ordination.  One of them is CPE, a kind of chaplaincy training.

I also got my teaching contract for next year, signed it, and made some inquiries about health insurance.  Happily, our health insurance continues through the summer, even though technically I'm between contracts for a few months.  It is so nice to be at a place where I'm treated well.

Here it is Thursday, and it feels like I should be done with my tasks for the week.  But I still have two papers due today to finish, and seminary class tonight,  along with teaching tasks--and it's time to start thinking about my sermon for Sunday.

Well, let me get to it.  The weather seems iffy, so I'll get a walk in.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 6, 2025:

First Reading: Isaiah 43:16-21

Psalm: Psalm 126

Second Reading: Philippians 3:4b-14

Gospel: John 12:1-8

I've always had some amount of trouble with this Gospel; I suspect it's because I would have been that disciple who said, "Just think what we could have done with the money that went to buy that expensive oil. Doesn't Jesus know the electric bill is due? We could have helped the poor. And she went and poured it all over his feet!"

I know that traditionally we use this Gospel lesson to make us think forward a few weeks to Good Friday, when Jesus' dead body will be anointed with funeral oils. But there's still something about this Gospel that makes me restless.

Perhaps it is Jesus saying, "The poor you will always have with you." I'm uneasy with the way so many people through the centuries have used this line to justify their unwillingness to work to eradicate poverty. A shrug of the shoulders, that verse out of context, and poof, we don't have to worry about our riches.

I've been trying to sit with this passage in a different context, in the context of the whole Gospel of John. Jesus says that the poor we'll always have with us, but we won't always have Jesus (at least not in human form). I'm trying to see it as Jesus telling us that we must treasure the moments in life that are sweet. Did Jesus know what was about to happen to him? Different theologians would give you different answers, but even if Jesus didn't know all the particulars of his upcoming execution, he must have known that he was stirring up all sorts of worldly trouble for himself. He must have known that he wouldn't have had many more of these occasions to sit and savor a meal.

I'm sure he's also speaking towards our impulse towards anger and self-righteousness. I can criticize the decisions of others in how they spend their money and what they should be spending their money on ("Imagine. She calls herself a Christian and look how much she spends on books. She could get them from the library and send the money she would have spent to Habitat for Humanity"). It's not always easy for me to know how to allocate my resources of time, treasure, and energy.

Truth be told, I find it easier to work on many a spiritual discipline than to sit and savor a meal with those whom I love, the ones, whom, like Jesus, I won't always have with me. I find it frighteningly easy to slide into the behavior of the disciples, that self-righteousness which precludes being able to enjoy a meal together.

In these days that feel increasingly hectic, let us remember to take time to focus on what's truly important. Let us put aside the anger and judgment that can make it so hard to live in community.

Five Years of Morning Watch

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of morning watch, the morning devotional time that I do for my Florida church and anyone else who wants to tune in.  I started doing it during the early days of the pandemic, when my church was looking for ways to stay connected.  I still went to church on Sunday mornings, where, for a few Sundays, a core group of us gathered to do parts of the service live and stream it to our members at home.

We also brainstormed other things we could do, like a Compline service. I volunteered to do something in the morning. One of the brainstorming group suggested that in addition to some sort of reading, that we have time for something creative.

At first I thought about choosing the readings, and then I thought, why do this? I have Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours; she's done this work for me. I did the readings for the day, took a five-seven minute pause to do meditation, writing, sketching, yoga, whatever gets us grounded for the day. And then we came back for closing prayer, also from The Divine Hours, and I gave some closing thoughts, a benediction of sorts.  I did the first one on March 31, 2020, and I'm still doing it every morning.

The video is short enough that I think I can add it to this blog post.  Here's the very first episode of Morning Watch to air live, on this day in 2020:

It hasn't changed much. I do show the sketch I'm working on; my dad made a comment that he wanted to see what I was working on, so I started holding the sketch close to the camera.

I've continued to do morning watch, and it's interesting to scroll back through a selection of posts that Facebook gave me when I did a search. Here I am with much longer hair. Here I am in a variety of rooms (the house near the beach, the downtown condo, our Lutheridge house, my seminary apartment, vacation/travel destinations). Here I am with Christmas lights in the back, and here I am almost always with construction happening in the background. I won't link to all those posts, as I'm almost sure it's only interesting to me.

This blog post tells a more complete story of the early days. It also contains this link to the first day when I used Phyllis Tickle's work--on March 30, I had technical difficulties, so I didn't post that broadcast. It's gotten 187 views. Later broadcasts get much fewer views. But I hear from people who find it meaningful, so I'll keep doing it.

To be honest, even if I didn't get encouragement, I'd probably still do it. It helps me to stay faithful to this method of formation.