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.

Connections

So, is it really "in there" or am I simply reading it that way because that's how I've been thinking lately?

I think that's a perennial question preachers have to ask themselves as they approach the readings each week and try to prepare a sermon. The weekly conversation between Scripture and preacher and congregation and God has to include the preacher, but it can't be about the preacher. So I worried a little this last week when all three lessons seemed to be about where I was at - and seemed to reassure me as I struggled with fears about my sabbatical (fears such as: what kind of a crazy idea have I gotten myself into anyway???)

I had been seeing my sabbatical time as a time of reconnection for me. A time to pay close attention to the connections that are vital for myself, and for my ministry. It is so easy to get caught up in the tyranny of the urgent, in the midst of a job that is never "done". And over the years, I have tended to let slip important time for connection - with God, with myself, with my family and friends, and with the wider community.

So I heard, in the Gospel of John, Jesus' assurance to his disciples of a connection with God. Created, not out of their own doing, but out of God's gift. "I am in my father, and I in you, and you in me." A connection created through the gift of the Spirit. Not being left orphaned (unconnected!) when Jesus wasn't there anymore, but instead being brought into the midst of the very mystery of the relationality of God's being. And a call to live fully into that connection. To live in love, responding in love, loving the world - which looks like following the Way of Jesus. Connection with God.

And I heard, in the 1 letter of Peter, the call to be connected to the hope within myself. A hope placed there, no matter the circumstances of the world around me, by my connection with God. A hope that should be spoken of.

And then in Acts, I was pleasantly surprised to be hit with the realization that Paul did a 'walkabout' in Athens. (Another 'Richard of Chichester' moment.) He got connected with that community. Listening to the seeking of their hearts. The questions of their souls. Being willing to engage them using their language and their patterns of thought.

So I preached about the richness of the layers of connections that God calls us to. And the gift that those connections are to be for the world around us (after all, being followers of the Way of Jesus is never about what's in it for us!).

And I am once again feeling deeply blessed to have the opportunity to focus on those connections. To spend June on my own community walkabout - getting reconnected with community in ways that I don't spend much time doing while immersed in the life of a particular congregation. To spend July focused on listening to family and friends, and to reconnect with that part of my own personal community. And then to spend that time alone in August, trying to listen to God help me put it all together in new layers of rich connection that I can bring back to my ministry in September.

Godspell comes for a Visit

I was actually not as disappointed as I thought I would be when my sabbatical grant application wasn't approved. Yes, I did think it would be wonderful to follow Augustine's trip from Rome to Canterbury, and to explore the other side of the history of the Church of England by spending substantial time at Iona as well (as well as tracing some of my own family history by spending some time in the Buchanan lands in the highlands of Scotland). But, my actual biggest disappointment was not getting the part of the grant that would have funded some wonderful things for my parish while I was gone.

So I didn't get the grant (I know more people who didn't get this particular grant, than I know people who actually got the grant, so I really went into it without any grand expectations). I wasn't surprised that I didn't. What did surprise me was realizing that, even without such expectations, I didn't have a back-up plan.

Instead, I had to spend time simply trying to listen to God. Money was now an issue, both for myself and for my parish.

And God said, "Since when was money ever really a part of any of my plans?"

So I waited, and I listened.

And that's when God started talking to me about this walk from town to town in New Hampshire (see my first blog entry). (And I'll blog sometime soon about "God talks to me" - hopefully before anyone truly begins to wonder about my sanity.)

So, I became convinced that somehow, someway, I was going to do some kind of a walk through New Hampshire (oh, how I wish God was sometimes a little more concrete about what plans might look like!)

But I still struggled with what it was all about. I knew in some ways it had to do with my deep desire for the church to move back away from institution to community. It had to do with what the 'emerging church' movement was yearning for. And was also answering! But I needed more details. I wanted to know what I was supposed to be 'doing'.

So, when I was woken up at 3 am about a month ago, I figured it was one of those 'God talk' times again. But I found it wasn't that still small voice of God-promptings that I had come to expect in the wee hours of the morning.

Instead, the entire cast of Godspell seemed to be right there in my bedroom. And they were singing: "Day by Day, day by day . . . oh, dear Lord, three things I pray." I couldn't ignore it, shut it out, or find any way of silencing the singing. They just kept going. Including all those wonderfully annoying background echo pieces ("Day by Day" and the echo rings out "Day by Day" as the tones move up the scale).

My husband snored contentedly next to me.

It wasn't fair. I couldn't get them to stop singing (nothing like a lot of full-part ear worm going on at 3 am). They sang for 2 1/2 hours, without any other 'word from God.' Just all those voices . . . singing and singing and singing. Finally, I fell asleep again for a little bit.

I awoke . . . the song still ringing in my ears (did the Godspell cast ever get tired of singing that repetitive piece?? Maybe THEY need the sabbatical?)

But the result was unavoidable: I had found my sabbatical prayer! Three things: See thee more clearly. Love thee more dearly. Follow thee more nearly. Day by day.

So I lived with that prayer for about a month. And then there was the special parish meeting. A couple of items on the agenda. We needed to approve new parish bylaws (ended up being much more enjoyable of a task than I had anticipated), and I wanted to talk with them about my sabbatical plans. A few hours before that meeting, I decided to do a little research into my sabbatical prayer.

I knew it was much older than Godspell. And I thought it was even in our Hymnal. So I looked it up there, and found the words attributed to Richard of Chichester. I googled him.

Early 1200's. Chosen and consecrated as a bishop, but locked out of the bishop's residency (keeping the bishop out meant the King of England still got all the proceeds that would normally have gone to support the bishop). So, instead of living in his 'ivory tower' . . . he walked his diocese! The prayer God had laid on my heart as my prayer as I walked my diocese, was the prayer of someone who walked his diocese 800 years ago. I was stunned . . . and overcome with a sense of awe that I still don't know how to talk about. This is so much NOT about me anymore.

I had to have one last little comment to God on this one, though. It is reported that Richard of Chichester walked his diocese BAREFOOT for two years. Even though I only plan on walking mine for a month . . . I refused to even consider that barefoot bit. (In fact, I just bought myself a pair of great Keen walking sandals).

On the need for a Sabbatical

'Sabbatical' comes from the same root as Sabbath. A sabbatical is about time set aside - time for resting, renewing, and being re-formed or re-created.

I feel blessed to be able to take a sabbatical. Most people never get one. And I think probably most would really benefit from one . . . in many of the same ways that I hope to benefit from mine.

But sabbaticals seem to be standard only in the worlds of academics and religious vocations. It should show up in everyone's life, somewhere, somehow. But it usually doesn't. And that's why I feel so blessed . . . and maybe a little guilty? Why should I be one of the few? But I've heard it explained that it is normal for clergy to get sabbaticals because of the 'always on' nature of our lives. And in some ways, that rings true for me. So I'm going to take my sabbatical, try not to feel guilty, and hope that I can bring something back with me that is beneficial for all.

What has surprised me was realizing how much I NEED a sabbatical! I have been doing this 'priest' stuff now for 14 years. I'm beginning to know what 'being burnt out' means. Not in serious ways, but in ways that dampen my enthusiasm (even in its root meaning from en-theos, or being 'in God'). Part of me blames it on 'getting older', but I also realize that there is more than that going on. I sometimes lose contact with that part of me that knows, in deep, very real ways, the joy of being God's beloved. I'm just too tired sometimes to care. Not a good place to be! How can I help others discover that joy, if I can't connect with it myself? I need to be renewed.

I have had too much of institution. Somewhere in the past 12 months I even became panicked at the thought of spending the rest of my life in this church institution business. And then I began to realize that it was mostly of my own making - my allowing the running of the institution to slowly become what my life as a priest was about. I had begun to get it backwards - - God has called us to be community, to follow The Way. And instead we become an institution. And my life as a priest becomes about the institution. Wow - does that ever need to be re-formed!

I still love that institution, because of what it could be - - but it, and I, need to once again get things back into the right connections. I don't know how it will look. I don't know what it will mean for the way I live as priest, and the way my parish lives as community. But if we are about being a community that is The Body of Christ - a community that is an incarnate expression of God's love and care for the whole world around us . . . then I believe we all need to be re-created.

So, I'm going on sabbatical - - to give God space to renew, re-form, and re-create me. And hopefully, my parish will also give God space and attention to be renewed, re-formed, and re-created as well.

Who knows what God could do, if we all just gave God a little space, a little time, a little attention.

Take a Walk

And God said, "Take a walk!"

I had been wanting to hear that for a long time. So I asked God, "Can it be a long walk?"

God answered, "Of course."

So, of course, I assumed God meant the Long Trail. It's a long walk, the length of Vermont, and one I've wanted to do for quite some time. So I put that backpacking trip into my sabbatical plans, and added some other fun, educational kind of stuff . . . and sent the plans off to be considered for a grant to help fund all that other fun, educational kind of stuff.

I didn't get the grant.

And God said, "Take a walk anyway!"
And I said, "Can it be a long walk?"
And God replied, "Of course. In fact, take two long walks."

Now, this puzzled me quite a bit. Spending one month walking 272 miles seemed like a long enough walk to me. But God wasn't going to let me off with just that.

And God explained, "You want to walk Vermont? Sure . . . go right ahead. But first, walk New Hampshire."

And I knew, almost immediately, that this walk wasn't about trails and trees and mountaintops and my own physical challenges. This walk would be about faith, and communities, and people. It would be about getting outside of the walls of institution, and listening to both the faith, and the hunger for faith, of those who won't or can't come through the doors of our churches.

And God then assured me that there would be plenty for us to talk to each other about when I took to the Long Trail. I suspect I'll need every one of those long miles to listen.