Posting from the road

The hours are counting down until my sabbatical is actually here. I feel like I've been going crazy just trying to deal with all the details for both the parish and for myself. One of my own details has been trying to figure out the easiest way for me to post stuff to this blog while out on the road or on the trail.

I got myself a "smart phone", but discovered that I'm just not very much a part of the "thumb generation" (those who seem so adept at typing with their two thumbs on teeny tiny keyboards). I'm a touch typer, and couldn't quite get the hang of getting my thumbs to come anywhere close to keeping up with my thoughts! So I've added a second piece of equipment to the technological end of this journey- a little folding wireless keyboard that gives me full ten finger typing, but still onto my phone. It's still not a full size keyboard, but I'll pick up more speed and comfort on this much easier than on the thumb keyboard! So, as a result, my blog will more likely have close to daily entries once I take off. (In fact, I'm practicing with keyboard and phone right now!)

There are certain barriers that I guess I, for one reason or another, am not willing or able to break through. I know it will take discipline to spend time writing each day, but I'm willing to do that. I know I'll face challenges with battery life and connectivity, but I'll figure out a way to handle those. But make me try to type with just my thumbs. . . and you just might not ever hear from me again!

I wonder what barriers to being a part of a faith community I'll find that people are willing to break through, and which are the barriers that, in the end, simply keep them away?

Attention: Madison Friends

Christian and Jane: please contact me (send me an email at faithafoot@gmail.com) so I know how to get hold of you. Because yes, I'd love to take you up on the offer of hospitality. Madison is about a day's walk out of North Conway!

And everyone else: I've opened a new email account to handle contact during my sabbatical. You can write me with questions or comments or anything else at faithafoot@gmail.com

I've got a couple of email "lists" coming into my other account, and don't intend to try to wade through all of that to find the personal emails while I'm on the road or on the trail.

breaking out of the walls

I spent 13 years in the restaurant business - in the kitchen, behind the bar, a little time in management, but mostly on the floor as a waitress. I know that my own life as a priest continues to be strongly influenced by those years.

I had moved from a Monday-Friday 9-5 job after my son was born. Working the dinner/night shift meant that I could be home with my kids during the day, and still provide an income. It was tiring, but I was bringing home 'the bacon.' And then it all changed, when I heard that reading. I had heard it so many times before, but this time it reached out and changed me. I had a night off during Holy Week, and was able to get to the Maundy Thursday service. "Who is the greater?" Jesus asked his disciples, as he gathered them around him for that last dinner together. "The one who sits at table, or the one who serves? I came . . . as a waiter." Yep. That's the way I, the waitress, heard it that night. Jesus came to do what I was doing. Except, that wasn't quite what I was doing. And that night, I went from being 'the one who makes tips' to being 'the one who serves.' I guess I still made good tips, but that was no longer the point. My work as a waitress truly became ministry. I served. That understanding continues to shape who I am and what my calling is all about. The calling to be 'the one who serves' has remained constant, even as God led me into ordained ministry. And that understanding continues to shape how I view what 'lay ministry' should be about.

So I spent quite a few years being 'the one who served' in the restaurant world. And it became not just about those that I had sitting at my tables, but also about those that I worked with. At the restaurant I worked at, we were allowed to sit at the bar following our shift and have a drink and spend some 'down' time with the crew we had just worked so hard with. People learned that I was willing to talk about God. I'm not sure how that came about. I wasn't trying to preach to them. I wasn't trying to 'convert' anyone. There was no specific event or moment that I can point to. But it happened. And night after night . . . 'after-shift' after 'after-shift' . . . we talked about God. And faith. And our struggles. And the questions we had and the answers we thought we might have found. And they grilled me. I believed. And they wanted to know what I believed, and how I believed, and why I believed. I had a faith that they wanted to know about. I knew a Jesus that they wanted to know more about. It was relentless. I remember wishing to at some point call a time-out and ask, "Can tonight we talk about something other than God???"

When I began discerning my call to ordained ministry, they became really excited about it: "If YOU were the priest, we'd come to that church!" Of course, they'd never step through the doors of a church to find out if they could connect with the priest, or the congregation. And as I left and went on to seminary, the community I was called to serve changed. I lost that 'bar stool' ministry.

Doing some reading this past year, I found one description of Emerging Church that resonated deeply with me. It described Emerging Church as not so much a movement as an attitude. It was the change from church as 'you come to us' to "we'll come to you." I have become so unsatisfied with just continuing to hang that "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You" sign out on the street, and then staying inside our walls. We'd truly welcome anyone who came in, but they don't come. What I found myself thinking 15 years ago as I left that bar stool ministry continues to be true - the world needs the church to come to them, because they simply won't come to the church. I think much of my sabbatical learning is seeking to hear those I haven't heard for so many years, as I've mostly been focused on those who are already in the church. I want to hear how the church can come to them. The hunger is there. The spiritual journeys are happening. So how do we become 'the ones who serve' to those outside our walls? What does church look like when our walls no longer hold us in?

On Seeing

A number of years ago I bought a pair of those drug-store reading glasses. It had become harder and harder to do the reading I so loved to do. The small print on food labels was becoming more and more impossible to read. So I lived with reading glasses always in reach - pushed up on top of my head. They became a regular part of my hair-do, holding my curls out of my face while awaiting being called upon to open up the print of this world to my eyesight.

But then, I also began to notice that things far away were beginning to get less and less clear. I could no longer tell one bird from another out on the bird feeder. The fall leaves became more impressionistic - swathes of color rather than individual leaves. I ignored it. I hoped it would just 'go away'. I continued to use the reading glasses, and let the rest of the world slowly blur before me.

Finally, for my 50th birthday, I broke down and got glasses. The kind I wear all the time. The kind that let me read the license plate number on the car right in front of me. The kind that allow me to once again enjoy the stars twinkling in the night sky. I can see the faces of people in the pews (yep - I can now tell if you've fallen asleep during my sermon - - although I'll never tell who I actually caught doing that two weeks ago!)

I got progressive lenses - trying to get the far distance, the mid-range (computer as well as Altar Book), and the reading distances all into one lens. When I got the glasses, I was warned that I should be careful on stairs . . . the floor is really at the 'far distance' range, but you see it through the bottom reading section of the glasses so it's distorted. I heard the warning - - and fell down my stairs not 5 minutes after getting home. Sometimes I guess I'm a slow learner.

It's been over 6 months, and I still think I'm getting used to the glasses. After one month, I found myself thinking they should be like a cast for a broken foot - - you wear it for a while, and then . . . you're better! But the reality that these will be part of my life forever slowly dawned on me. So today, I picked up a second pair - - a pair for my backpacking section of the sabbatical (the August Long Trail trip), with single vision distance lenses. I don't need to be falling down mountains, like I fell down those stairs, because I can't see where my feet are supposed to land. I'll be able to see the trees, and the birds, and the world opening out below me from the top of a mountain. But I'll need to carry those reading glasses again so that I can also read the map!

So . . . picking up my hiking glasses today got me thinking about the importance of seeing. I did so want to always just see, all on my own. Unaided. And for so long I tried to . . . even in the face of the facts right before my eyes (I guess they were just too blurred for me to read them??) And I got to thinking about the other way we use the idea of "seeing". We think of our understanding as "seeing." Something finally gets across our thick brains, and we exclaim, "Oh! Now I see!" And I thought about know how deeply I want to see God clearly. I want to see God in this world clearly. I want to see my own faith clearly. I want to see Jesus. In all things.

And sometimes I find myself thinking that I can do it all on my own. But the reality is that I need help. Sometimes to see the world, I need my glasses. Or a telescope. Or microscope. Or binoculars. And sometimes one pair of glasses will work better than another. And to see God, or my faith, or Truth . . . I need - the community of Faith (all those others who are on this journey too - both in the past and in the present, those known to me personally and those journeying in places I don't know about). The Scriptures. Prayer. Liturgy. I need to look through or with these things, in order to help clear my vision. To see the details clearly. So, I need vision help. And I realize it's not just something to take on for a little time, and then leave behind. It's part of my lifelong journey. Sometimes I am a slow learner. But I keep working on it. And pray that when I fall down the stairs, God will have someone waiting to help pick me up and get my faith glasses back on.