When RevGalBlogPals Meet in Person

One of the joys of last week's intensive that I haven't written much about was the chance to meet a blogging friend in real life.  In a time that feels very long ago now, there was a group called RevGalsBlogPals, a group for clergywomen and people who support clergywomen.  We blogged about all sorts of things, some of them church related, some not.  There were all sorts of support groups and there were conferences and fun outings.  I was sad to see it end, and like so many things in my life that end, part of me understood and part of me was baffled.

I've continued to see various RevGals in the online realm, but last week, one of them came to the intensive.  I knew that Diane Roth had started the program, but I lost track of her progress; in retrospect, I should have sent her a message in advance so that it was less awkward on that first day.  I saw her nametag before she got there, but I wasn't sure how to say, "I know you online, but I'm not sure if you know me."  Sure, in retrospect, I should have just said that, but I was worried I might sound like a weird stalker.

Happily, Diane took the first step, and she did it during the pre-dinner meet and greet, which meant that we could spend the rest of the intensive as friends, not as people wondering how they knew each other.  On Friday at lunch, she asked what I was planning to do during our free time.  I talked about going to the library, and she wanted to go to an independent bookstore.  She tries to go to independent bookstores as she travels, and I'm happy to support bookstores too.  I had a car, which she didn't, and I'm familiar with Columbia.  It was a recipe for a successful outing to All Good Books in Five Points.

And we did have a successful outing.  The bookstore had a great selection of books, and we both found one to buy.  I was happy to find Susan Rich's latest book; I love supporting poets and independent books by buying books from bookstores.  

Alas, we didn't have time to buy a coffee or to explore Five Points.  We had to get back for more instructional sessions, which after all, was the reason we had come to the seminary campus.   I was happy to post this picture to Facebook, happy to be part of my favorite subgenre of FB posts, when online friends meet in real life and realize that they are just as delightful in person as online:

When the Well Runs Dry

I have been feeling a bit dry and withered as a blogger this past week.  Some weeks, I have more ideas than I can use.  Then I hit a dry spot.

I've been writing for decades, so dry spots don't freak me out as much as they once did.  I know that the trick is to just keep going, to show up at the desk, to trust that all of my dry spots have led me to an oasis in the distance that I didn't realize was there.

I've also been thinking theologically, thinking about all the passages in the Bible that promise that the dried out bones of our lives are not the only reality.  Once I assumed that we got the dry and dusty passages because of the part of the world where the Bible writers lived.  Now I recognize a universal metaphor when I see one.

I spent part of the week-end packing up books to get ready for the great flooring project.  As I packed up my theology books, I reflected on how much more time I used to have to read.  And that reading helped to feed my writing life.

I've heard this time of the writing life referred to as "the well going dry."  Let me look for ways to fill the well that fit with my current life.

Post-Irma Update

We finally got power restored on Thursday--we had to have an electrician come out to do some repair work to the conduit/tubing/riser that had come apart.  On Tuesday, the FPL woman told me that we didn't have to do that, that the crew would fix whatever damage they found.  On Wednesday, the crew said no.  I called several electricians--thank God for Facebook and my various communities there who could make recommendations. 

I feel fortunate to have found an electrician who could come the next day, instead of in October.  I feel fortunate to have power and even more fortunate not to have to do battle with Comcast.

During the rain yesterday, the first rain since Irma, we discovered a leak in the laundry room.  I'm trying not to feel overwhelmed by the ever-growing to-do list.

I hope that this week will see a restoration to some sense of normalcy, even with all the repairs we need to make.  I hope to be back to blogging more regularly this week.

What We Lost in the Reformation

Many of us have already celebrated Reformation Sunday--but October 31 is that actual day that Martin Luther nailed those theses to the Wittenberg door.  He knew that he would get maximum visibility since everyone would be going to church the following day for the Feast of All Saints.

I've spent years thinking and writing about what was gained with the Reformation (for example, this post), but this morning, a different post of mine is up at the Living Lutheran site.  It explores what we lost in the Reformation.  Go here to read it.

Here are some quotes to whet your appetite:

"I wonder: If our religious traditions had paid more attention through the centuries to the female saints and to Mary, could we have arrived at a place of more inclusivity sooner?"

"What did we lose by our Protestant rejection of these special feast days? Most obviously, we lost the opportunity to have more opportunities for festivity, both in our daily lives and our Sundays. But at a deeper level, we lost many opportunities for inspiration from those who have gone before us."

"My exploration of the Celtic saints has led me to an appreciation of a sacramental outlook and a wish that our Lutheran understanding of the idea of sacrament was broader. Ancient Celtic Christians believed not only in the incarnate Jesus of the past but in the incarnate sacredness of everyday life: that every task existed to point us to the creator."

In this morning's post on my creativity blog, I've written more about the Living Lutheran site and my 4 years of writing there.  I've written about feeling off track.

And of course, maybe the idea of a track is flawed.  The work will take the time that the work takes.  I'm loving this post by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, which reminds us that "Whatever gets in the way of the work, is the work."  Her post talks about the work of parenthood and the work of attentive living, but her thoughts also hold true for our creative work and other types of spiritual work.
Here's a quote about yearnings for your Thursday (I will leave the gendered language for God that the author uses):  "I will also never be a Trappist Monk, yet I am able to come to Mepkin on a regular basis and share in this life I find gratifying and rich.  Our deepest desires will be fulfilled, discernment promises, though not always in our time or in ways that we would choose or even imagine.  God hears our prayers, knows our yearning.  He is at work in the world.  We need faith and we need patience, but he will fill the hear that is open to him" (p. 121).

Moving Day

If all goes well today, tonight should be the first night we spend in the new house.  We have yet to sell the old house, or even place it on the market, so our exit isn't as final as some of the moves we've made.  Still, it seems like a good morning to look back and think about the spiritual developments that have happened while we've lived in this house.

--When we first moved here, in December 1998, we weren't regular church goers.  Then, in January of 2000, my mother-in-law moved down, and going to church was something we could do together.  We had been wanting to be more regular in our attendance, and she helped with that.

--I have since been deeply involved with the church Council for 2 different churches.  In a way, that's a frustrating development because I spend a lot of time on issues of the building and finances.  But my involvement with the Council also makes me more involved with the Church/church.

--Would I have gone through some of the other spiritual developments that I have if I hadn't been going to church?  Perhaps.

--It was from this house that I set forth on my pilgrimage to Mepkin Abbey.  I was reading Kathleen Norris, as was my friend, and we wanted a similar experience to the one she describes in her books.  She knew that Mepkin Abbey was nearby, and we arranged a visit.  And from that, I fell deeply in love with the place and have returned almost yearly.

--Because of my Mepkin Abbey experiences, I've tried to have more fixed hour prayer in my life.  That's been easier in earlier years when I was a faculty member and was home more.  I could leave my prayer book out so that it would remind me to pray.

--I've set up spiritual reminders of other sorts in the house--not quite altars, but places that remind me to look for God, to say thank you, to pray in other ways, and to try to inject the sacred into the daily.

--It was from this house that I went to my first Create in Me retreat at Lutheridge, and I've returned yearly.  I've also been part of the planning team.  It's another event that has enriched me.  More than that, it's a community. 

--I've done a lot of spiritual writing in this house, most notably this blog.  And this blog writing has led to other opportunities, like being a blogger for the Living Lutheran site and writing articles for The Lutheran magazine.  I've also been asked to write prayers for a variety of Augsburg Fortress projects, which came about because of my writing a weekly Gospel meditation that I sent out by e-mail before I was a blogger.  I wrote a proposal to the publisher that I transform these meditations into a book of devotions.  That proposal wasn't accepted, but it was in an editor's files when she was looking for someone to write prayers.

--In many ways, my spiritual development while living here has not been about the house.  It might have happened anywhere.  But the house has been a constant through the last 15 years, while many of the other factors have changed (my church, my job duties, even some of my friends who have moved away or changed jobs).

--What kind of spiritual developments will the new house foster?  Stay tuned!

On Not Loving the Narrative Lectionary

Careful readers of this blog may have realized that last week, I didn't write a post for the Narrative Lectionary reading.  I think I'm done with that.  The main reason:  the cycle ends in a few weeks anyway, and my pastor has chosen different readings for the coming weeks.  I had mainly been writing the posts to have a post for our church's blog.  If we're not using those readings anymore, well, a major motivation is gone.

Of course, if I was finding it rewarding, I'd still be doing it.  But I haven't found it as rewarding as I thought.

I expected to find more of a narrative as I worked my way through the readings since September.  I know that the creators of the Narrative Lectionary had a vision of a selection of readings that gave a sense of the overall plot of God's ways of working in the world.  As a person with a Ph.D. in English, I expected the narrative readings to be bound together more thoroughly, to echo each other.  So far, I haven't found as much of that as I thought I would.

To be frank, the readings in the Narrative Lectionary feel as random as the ones in the Revised Common Lectionary.  As a reader, I'm still the one struggling to make the connections.  I'm trained in literary theory, so it's easier for me.  But the readings from the Old Testament prophets don't seem to have connections to the earlier stories chosen from the Old Testament, and the links to the New Testament stories of Jesus don't seem to be there either.

My inner good student doesn't want me to admit these things.  She worries that I'm overlooking something big and obvious.  She has anxiety that my Ph.D. will be revoked.  She imagines that I will never be accepted to a seminary, if I keep admitting these things in public spaces like a blog.  She says, "Trained theologians created this Lectionary.  Who the heck are you to question it?"

I am old-fashioned.  I want to have all the readings (Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament epistle, and Gospel) in one day that connect and link in interesting ways.  If I miss a Sunday, I have a chance to pick up the threads the following Sunday with another set of connected readings.  Maybe my brain or the pastor's brain connects all the readings for the day and keeps up with the threads across time.  Maybe I end up with a sense of the narrative.  Or maybe I just get set after set of matched readings.  Either way, it works.

With the Narrative Lectionary, I just didn't feel that sense of satisfaction each week.  Some readings left me shaking my head and saying, "What am I supposed to do with this?"  And there weren't additional readings leaping into the fray each week.

I remember my childhood and adolescent years in church, and how at least one reading always seemed to speak to me.  Even when the dense prose of Paul made me shake my head or the Old Testament story pointed to an unnecessarily harsh God, there was the Gospel.  If the Gospel was strange, there was usually solace in a Psalm or a letter written by those early Church evangelists.

Even as I celebrate new ways of doing church, the abundance of Bible readings is an old way that I miss.

Blog Post Leads to an Article in "The Lutheran"

Are you one of the 280,000 Lutherans who get The Lutheran, the official magazine of the ELCA? You may be like me--I get magazines, I place them in the magazines-to-be-read pile, and 6-12 months later, I put them in the recycling bin. Because of this tendency, I've let most of my subscriptions expire.

But if/when you get your February 2011 issue, be sure to look for my article. Those of you who don't get the magazine can go here to read the first several paragraphs. I'll likely repost the whole thing in a few months, but if you don't want to wait, feel free to e-mail me (or leave me your e-mail address in a comment), and I can send you the document in a Word file.

Those of you who are careful readers of this blog with a long memory may say, "Hey, this article feels familiar." Indeed, it began life as this blog post. And that blog post wouldn't have happened, had I not read an article in The Washington Post (referenced in the blog post) and been casting about for a topic. I'm always aware of my tendency to castigate myself for all the ways I imagine that I fail. If I manage to mail out 5 manuscripts in the course of a busy week, I don't say, "Good job, Kris." No, I ask, "Why not 10 manuscripts?" If I pray once a day, I ask myself why not 3 or 5? I'm always trying to remind myself that spiritual practice doesn't have to be so hard. I'm always trying not to yoke the word "discipline" with the word "punish," as so many Westerners do (and did even before Foucault!).

And thus, the blog post, and then later, an editor from The Lutheran contacted me and asked if I could write something along the same lines, but different, for the magazine. Of course, I said yes. If you want more thoughts on blogging and the route to publication, I wrote about it in today's blog post at my creativity blog.

I'm grateful that the editor saw my work and contacted me. I'm grateful for the doors that this blog has opened to me. I'm grateful to all of you who read my postings. And if I get some new readers in the coming weeks, I'd like to offer a big huge welcome. May this blog be a welcome table, of sorts, where we feast on words and keep each other nourished.

In Which I Awaken to FInd Myself an Official ELCA Blogger

No one is more surprised than I am when I ponder becoming an official ELCA blogger. In fact, when I realized that links to my blog postings regularly appeared on the now defunct website Pretty Good Lutherans, I had some moments of discombobulation. I thought back to the summers when my uncle would get so annoyed with me and accuse me of turning his children (my cousins) against the Lutheran church. I probably did. In retrospect, I wish I had kept my know-it-all mouth shut more often. As a 19 year old, what did I know about spiritual yearnings and needs that might be filled by organized religion?

My grandfather was a Lutheran minister, and I've always said my mom would have been one too, if they had been ordaining women in the early 1960's, when she finished her undergraduate degree. She's spent much of her life working for the Lutheran church as a musician and lay leader. My family spent much of my childhood in church. We were that family who went to church even when we went on vacation. I hated the sameness of the liturgy week after week. Now, of course, I see the value of repetition. I hated the hypocrisy that I thought I saw. Now I'm old enough to know that what I see as hypocrisy may not be the complete picture.

I remember my grandmother asked me once if she and my grandfather did something to turn me off of church. I hate that I caused her that pain, but I did stop having much to do with church during the decade of my 20's. It wasn't her fault. I just wanted a break.

People often ask me if I think that people can lead a moral life with no spiritual grounding. Well, sure, I reply, but I think it's harder. We don't live in a culture that encourages and rewards morality. For me, one of the values of church is the weekly reminder that I'm called to a different mission/life/outlook than the world would have me believe.

But I digress.

I had been reading blogs for years before I started blogging. I especially loved spiritual blogs, but I hesitated to start writing one myself. I worried about all the wide variety of people who might stumble across it and be offended. I worried that I might damage my chance at possible future jobs. I worried about the fact that I didn't have a seminary degree (although in some ways, my literature Ph.D. has given me firm spiritual roots of a different sort). I worried about having enough to say.

Finally, I took the plunge because I just couldn't NOT do it anymore. And to my surprise, people have showed up to read what I've written. And some days, I get links!

Still, it was a complete surprise to me when Jan Rizzo of the ELCA asked me to be an official blogger for a site that the ELCA was creating. I first said to myself, "This must be a mistake. I haven't been to seminary. I'm not worthy."

Once I worked through all my weird emotions, I wrote back to accept the offer. I wrote one blog entry, but the site wasn't up, so I didn't announce the fact that I'd been chosen as an ELCA blogger. I wrote the second blog post, but the site still wasn't up. I began to wonder if it would happen. I didn't regret writing the blog postings; after all, if the Church didn't use them, I'd just post them on my own blogs.

Yesterday, I got the news that the blog part of the site is up and running at http://www.livinglutheran.com/. If you go to the site it looks like we've all been posting since August.

I've written two posts. My first assignment was to write about Lutheran spirituality and what it means to be Lutheran. It's posted here. I decided to focus on the Lutheran concept of grace, which I think sets us apart throughout Protestantism--and in some ways, gives us more with which to wrestle. Why be good if God will forgive/love us anyway? You can read the whole text wherein I talk about the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard: "But what if we changed the metaphor? What if instead of laboring in a vineyard, we talked about people at a party? The people who get there early get the freshest food and their choice of drinks. They get to enjoy the party for more hours than the people who stagger in late."

My second assignment was to write about vocation, so in this post, I focused on my childhood love of heroes like Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman and with feeling like I'm not living up to my full potential: "Many of us feel that some jobs are more spiritual than others. I used to think that monks and pastors enjoy more spiritually important jobs. But now I realize that we all have the same task. For many people who will never darken the door of a church, the only face of Christ they will see will be the face of Christians out in the world."

My next assignment is to write about the daily spiritual practices of Martin Luther and what they might mean for modern people. When that's posted, of course, I'll link here.

My life has taken me to many places which would surprise my younger self. Imagine my sneering adolescent self, sunk deep in her Nietzsche phase, imagine how shocked she would be to discover that decades later, she would be an official ELCA blogger. It makes me wonder what to expect for the next 20 years--what surprises are in store?