Lizard Eater's Hat Goes to the Big Easy

Auspicious Jots left her home and went to Mississippi to do good work. After that, she drove to New Orleans. Lizard Eater finished up with LW's scans and a big ugly Old Testament midterm, farmed out her kids to accommodating fools, I mean, wonderful people, and also drove to New Orleans. Accompanying those two were Bad Bad Man and The Husband.

Jots recognized me right away, even though I was traveling incognito.

blogcognito? inblognito?

Bad Bad Man is practically an honorary citizen of New Orleans, so we put ourselves in his capable hands. The Husband mentioned that he is a fan of hole-in-the-walls, so BBM took us to nothing but hole-in-the-walls. Dives. Dark and funky. Fabulous, delicious food. Jots wouldn't use the ladies' room in any of them.

She has issues.

Actually, the first was not dark. But it was funky in that you should be thankful you get to eat there, and shaddup about the service. Mother's. We stuffed ourselves with cafe au lait, eggs, biscuits, homemade sausage and grits. Ahhh. Jots had fresh fruit. There's a reason she's built like Barbie.

After Mother's, we went back out into the drizzly rain well fortified. Walked around a bit, then headed into a hole-in-the wall bar/laundry/game room.

My clothes would have been much cleaner in college had we one of those.

Hung out, chatted, talked about our most interesting jobs. I could tell ya, but you know, then I'd have to kill you.

After that, we took a streetcar for a bit of a journey. Tip: don't let Jots ride sideways.

After she recovered, we headed to Cooter Brown's. It's a sports bar with really killer food. Jots, BBM and The Husband scarfed down some oysters before we dove into plump, perfectly cooked fried shrimp and muffalettas.

Mmmm.

Later on that day, in amongst our wanderings, we found a pretty special forest. This was right after I spotted a white-bearded fella in a red shirt. "Look!" I squealed, pulling on BBM's sleeve. "It's Santa Claus!"

"Huh. Looks like the same guy who asked me for a dollar yesterday," he said.

Well, duh! How do you think he buys all the toys for all the girls and boys???

Anyway, after that, we found the magic forest. Now I know where white flocked trees are born.

That evening, before we headed out for dinner, The Husband made them one of his famous margaritas. They marveled at them. "This really is the perfect margarita," they said. Yep. No argument here.

For dinner, we met friends of BBM at Mulate's. Zydeco music, great food, yum.

Ostensibly, Jots has retired from ministry. After being around her for 48 hours and watching her minister to everyone including the kindly white-haired gentleman whom she danced with, I say, "Um, tell me when you actually retire." You can take the girl outta the church, but you can't take the church out of the supposedly retired minister.

BBM's friend brought Jots something she'd left at a funeral convention. This is the sort of thing that makes her squeal with delight. Dead Marilyn.

Jots and I danced, thus liberating the floor for other same-sex couples, including an apparent threesome of suburban looking moms. Jots' observation: two women on a dancefloor will dance. Three will stand there and talk.

The Husband and I danced, Jots and BBM danced, Jots and the kindly white-haired gentleman danced.

We ate till we thought we'd pop. Shrimp and corn bisque, frog legs, crawfish, catfish, jambalaya, etouffee ... Laissez les bon temps roulez!

Sunday morning, we got up and headed down to the French market. Touristy, but I wanted a little Cafe du Monde. Cafe au lait et beignets, oui? Ah, non non non. Line going about 2 blocks long. We skipped that and hit a cafe for more grits etc. And coffee!

"Jots, if I take a picture in here, it'll be back lit."
"That's just the way I like 'em, Baby."
She is wise, my friend Jots.

Then, it was time for a mule-drawn carriage ride! On Jeeves! To the cemetery!

"Um, Liz?" said The Husband.
"Yeah?"
"Jots is positively beaming."

Death becomes her. Really.

We wandered around, marveling at the generations of families all buried in the same crypt. Frankly, I'm envious.

Bad Bad Man found Marie Laveau's grave. He should be careful. I'm sure there's a few women who bought voodoo dolls of him in his youth.

Have I mentioned all the truly horrible dirty jokes he told during this trip? And the fact that my sweet Husband was egging him on?

He's a bad influence.

I'm not saying which one.

It was some time after this, once we'd be returned to the Market, that Jot's knee went out. I mean, OUT. Rheumatoid Arthritis ain't for sissies, folks. We propped her up against a streetpole and continued our souvenir shopping.

Oh, please, it's not like we didn't bring her back a tshirt.

Through a combination of piggy back rides on BBM's back and using The Husband and me as crutches, we managed to cripple down to Coop's, another great divey hole-in-the-wall bar with great food. No, great doesn't do it justice. Incredible.

But first, a Sazerac for me, Bloody Marys for them.

Lunch: four bowls of dark seafood gumbo, followed by plates of shrimp etouffe, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and the most incredible fried chicken I have ever tasted. Ever. And I'm a southerner, y'all. We were moaning with joy. Wisely, we split two plates, so we weren't quite groaning with pain.

Bad Bad Man and The Husband went back to the hotel to get the cars. Gimpie's knee was doing a little better, so we slowly strolled around. There's so many great signs under which to take a person's picture!


Trashy Diva. I mean, really, what can top that?

Well, for Death Becomes Her ...

He's a Bad, Bad Man. But he's a heck of a tour guide. Priceless.

Go to New Orleans. Drink a Sazerac. Dance to Zydeco. Eat some crab claws. And know that you're helping a great place return to life. In return, it'll give you a little extra life in your life.

Even if death becomes you.

Radically Inclusive

I want the radically inclusive church. I mean, really radically inclusive.

A few years ago, the big buzz you heard at all the UU things was "Radical Hospitality." I went home from GA or Fall Conference or wherever it was, and looked on half.com for a book about radical hospitality. Found one. Bought it.

Boy, was this NOT the book all the UU's were talking about.

Puhleease, we talk about radical hospitality and often what we mean is "don't ignore people when they come into your church." That's not radical anything.

This book I picked up was written by some missionary-type Christians. They talked about picking up homeless folks and taking them home with them. And that, my friends, is radical hospitality. Not that I'm recommending you (or I) do the same. Just don't pat yourself on the back because you engaged someone in conversation and think that you're radically hospitable.

So, forgetting missionaries for the moment, what do I think RADICAL inclusivity within a UU church would look like?

Well, I can thank The Husband for this. As I mentioned earlier, I recently preached a sermon on Isaiah 6:8 at my seminary. I said "God" - a lot. I talked about being convicted by the Holy Spirit.

I am not a Christian. My definition of "God" is most probably quite different from that of my classmates. But I tell you and mean it: I did not say a single thing I don't believe.

The Husband heard my sermon, a few hundred times. (Well, I practiced it a lot, I knew I wasn't using a script.) It's a great sermon, he said. You should give it at church.

Uh, yeah, with a whole lot of editing.

See, I don't understand that, he said. (He is often about UU things as I am about communion -- if you didn't grow up with them, they're odd.) "UUs talk about being so pluralist, so inclusive. We have banners on the wall from different religions. So, you should be able to stand up and do that sermon."

Rabbi Shaman and I were talking about this recently. About having a UU message from the pulpit, but utilizing religious language that is Jewish, Christian, Pagan, Muslim, all those cool symbols and flags we post around the church ...

I think that would be radically inclusive. I don't think radically inclusive means that you exclude anything that might push someone out of their comfort zone.

Of course, you could have a church where the vast majority love the sort of language used by Christopher Hitchens.

Maybe the next "radical" that we're going to embrace is "radical congregational polity."

Huh. Now that might be interesting.

Some of our best friends are straight ...

One of the things I love about LIFE if that if well-lived, you just keep learning stuff till the day you die. New experiences. New understandings.

Let me tell you about my father.

He came from a small town, and when he was college age, he went to visit a friend he’d grown up with. Well, the friend had two male roommates, one of whom was extremely flamboyant. That’s how he found out his friend was gay. This was in the late 1940s. My father was so shaken by this, he beat a hasty retreat. For years – no, decades – he was convinced that gays “recruit” young men. No arguments would sway him.

Round about his 60’s, three things happened: he got to know my brother’s law partner, whom he highly respected, and who is gay. He began reading those articles that said you’re born gay. And then, after retirement, he and my Mom were adopted by their new next-door neighbors, “The Boys,” a middle-aged gay couple.

He’s 80 years old, and if his knees could handle it, my dad would now be marching for gay rights, especially gay marriage.

This Thanksgiving, my parents will be going to dinner at The Boys’ house. There will be a total of 8 people – my parents, The Boys, another gay couple whom my parents are fond of, and a transgender lesbian couple.

My mother has raised an eyebrow over the years at her “Let Your Freak Flag Fly” kids and our friends, so it was with great pleasure that I asked her, with as serious a tone as I could muster, “Do you have any straight friends?”

She thought about it for a moment. Last Sunday, they hosted another couple for brunch. The nice lesbian couple from down the street.

“Well, not really,” she said. “We really should get ourselves to that little UU church congregation in town so we can meet some people like us.”

Yeah. No chance they’d meet anyone LGBT in a UU church.

What do we prove?

After taking my OT midterm, I headed to the mall to exchange out my Mac power cord that died on me while studying for said midterms. After that, I did a little wandering, and was snared by one of those kiosk guys -- this one, selling some sort of a nail care kit.

He was good -- I'm usually adept at the polite smile and moving on, but I found myself in his clutches, literally, as he polished up one of my fingernails.

Now, don't tell Peacebang, but my hands are just not a point of beauty focus for me. Between cooking, playing guitar, helping kids build volcanoes, my fingertips are all about the functional, baby. If I manage to not have dirt under the nails or jagged edges, I am pretty fancy indeed.

But I had to admit, his little buffing, lotioning, was pretty dramatic. Looked like my fingernail had been polished. I wasn't even looking to buy, but he proved it to me.

So, since I'd been thinking about what we're selling in our churches, this made me think about us -- what do we prove? Especially to the people who aren't even looking to buy?

The price for this nail kit was too rich for my blood, so I moved on. But the next time I'm in a Walgreens, I'm probably going to pick up a little buffer set.

They work. Someone proved it to me.

Oh, SNAP! Small Church Marketing ...

from: http://smallchurchcoach.com/images/church-marketing-cartoon.gif

REAL EGGS!

A couple of weeks ago, I passed a small restaurant, and on the marquee, their words were:

REAL EGGS!

I drove past it, and about a mile down the road asked The Husband, "Is that really their big selling point?"

I mean, I could understand it this were wartime, or the Depression. They would be differentiating between themselves and those places selling powdered eggs. But now? Can you even buy powdered eggs anymore?

That got me to thinking about our churches, though. Are we still selling ourselves based on the circumstances from decades ago?

I mean, saying, "You have freedom of belief here!" is kind of like "Real Eggs!" isn't it? In a world of Bishop Spongs and Christopher Dawkins and heck, the New York Times, what are we really trying to sell? Our competition isn't the Assemblies of God Church down the road. Our competition is the Sunday news shows and soccer games and sleeping late. Guess what? The people watching Meet the Press and reading The New Yorker already have Freedom of Belief.

I don't want to try a new restaurant for REAL EGGS. You're going to have to find something else to sell me.

Never saw the sun shining so bright

Nothing but blue skies, from now on ...

CLEAR SCANS.

Arrrgh

No phone call from the doctor yet.

So, no news.

It could be something real simple, like the doctor is out of town, or too busy, or anything.

Or.

Or there's something he's unsure of. And he needs to wait for the radiologist to make an official report.

You know, I remember being in college, studying for a Shakespeare exam. It was a hard one, too. And some students down the hall were being loud. I thought it was impossible to study.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Studying, A Haiku by Lizard Eater

Noise outside is loud
But just a whisper, next to
Noise inside my head

Can't Study Clowns Will Eat Me

Can't Study Clowns Will Eat Me Can't Study Clowns Will Eat Me Can't Study Clowns Will Eat Me

Things have been crazy ... yet great. Preached 5 times within 13 days. (Got double points today -- 2 services.) Assessment. An interfaith dinner. A baby shower. Stuff. Good stuff. It feels like things are moving. After five years, I'm seeing progress. Maybe I really will be a minister when I grow up.

My Big Fat Old Testament Midterm is Wednesday. Technically, a 3/4 term, but Wednesday it is. Studying, studying. Well, trying to. "Be able to place all of the latter prophets (Isaiah-Malachi) in their historical context, which might include date, circumstances, and contemporaries (both biblical and non-biblical). Also know the basic purpose or theme of each latter prophet" was one of the study hints.

If I take in my Assessment Tests that show that I am highly an abstract thinker, think I can get a pass?

Yeah, I don't think so, either.

Of course, the real issue isn't study style or thinking style or any of it.

Tomorrow, scans.

Specifically, tomorrow is 1 year scans. And an echocardiogram to see if the Doxorubicin gave any ill effects to her heart.

Meanwhile, Little Warrior is bouncing up and down, "Again, again! The Black-Eyed Peas!" We are watching their clip from SNL, singing "I Gotta Feeling." She shakes her booty. She shouts, "Let's kick it!" She sings, "Mazel Tov," turning around to inform me, "We say that!"

Will I know by tomorrow night? Will I be dancing, singing, shaking my booty tomorrow night?

Or.

You'll have to excuse me, just for tonight. I try to avoid the self-pity. Everybody's got something, as they say. It's just really hard to study for a test on Wednesday, knowing that tomorrow, my life could stop and begin spinning backward. Again.

This could be a really good week. Scans tomorrow. Get that mid-term out of the way Wednesday. My beloved Deep Listening group Wed night. Follow up with the doc on Thursday, which is highly enjoyable when, you know, it's good news. Friday, we toss our children into different households and meet Auspicious Jots and her entourage in the Big Easy.

It could be a fabulous week.

please.

A-HA! on that Freedom From Religion Ad

Well, I got my UU World today. It recounts some of the letters for and against the infamous Freedom From Religion ad. Old news, now. And then, at the end of the wrap, on page 13, comes a reply from Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

"Our ad was not an attack on the UUA, it was an espousal of the views of most Unitarians! Perhaps the infiltration of the UUA by new members who are not freethinking, who do not really understand its creedless position, accounts for this mind-boggling reaction."

And suddenly, I get it. If you believe that those who have a problem with that ad are exclusively:

• new UUs
• not freethinking
• not understanding the creedlessness of Unitarian Universalism

then you truly do not understand this religion yourself. Ms. Gaylor, I am a life-long Unitarian Universalist and a seminary student. My parents, both fairly atheist, have been Unitarian Universalists since the 1950s.

They, and I, were mind-boggled by YOUR ad. Respect has always been a part of Unitarian Universalism. Mocking and belittling others is NOT a part of my religion -- it is a part of yours? Oh, I forgot. You want freedom from religion.

Yeah. I get that.

Assess This!

Got up at 3:45 am Monday morning and flew to the town of my candidate career assessment. Intensive and intimate, but since my personality is the open and ready to share type (you've never noticed that, right?), nothing bad. And I now have the test results to prove that I'm the open and ready to share type. And an extravert. And a big picture person. And "Joyful."

Very nice assessor, willing to go deep with me. No surprises in the assessment. Before we went over the test results, my assessor asked me to pick five words about myself. All five were represented in my test results, often in capital letters. So, I got confirmation that I know myself. Hmm. Is there a teensiest bit of disappointment, that perhaps there was some secret deep inside that even I didn't know about? Alas, I am no woman of mystery. Like Popeye, I yam what I yam.

And part of that, very comforting, is that I am, boringly so, of a personality type that is a good fit with ministry. There was some concern about my preternatural appreciation for ABBA, but with some trepidation, the assessor agreed that it's not technically a psychosis.

Now for those not in the candidating loop, the assessment centers where you are sent are specifically for those entering ministry, and we UUs (at least at the one I went to), are a tiny percent of the patrons, most of them being Methodist, Lutheran, and so on. I say that to give some background to the following exchange:

I was telling my assessor about a numinous experience I had this summer. I said something about "of course, it wasn't like a literal voice from the heavens, and it certainly could be my imagination, and I'm okay with that; imagination and God are certainly not ...

"Why do you do that?" she interrupted me.

I knew what she was referring to. "Because I'm a Unitarian!!!" I said. And we both laughed.

And then we talked further about that. And I spoke plainly, without all of the extraneous protestations -- "God said to me ..."

We talked about why I feel the need to do all the explanations, clarifications, justifications, about how I am often speaking to people who have a wide range of understandings of the divine.

"Do you feel that is burdensome, or a challenge you relish?"

And I had never thought of it before, but the question made me smile. And light up. And say, "A challenge I relish." Because it's not about proving my vision of a divine. Or trying to convince others. It's about finding the common grounds in all of our understandings. This was a bit revelatory because I have had the experience of mentally rolling my eyes as we split into subparticles yet another word or concept. Really, Bill Clinton must be a Unitarian -- "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." -- classic UU! But it's a challenge I relish. For the past few weeks, I've been cogitating on a definition of God, fit for those who do not believe in anything transcendent. But that's a post for another day ...

A world where people just nodded in agreement if I said, "God said to me ..."? How flat! How boring! How spiritually lazy I could become!

(That doesn't mean I don't want it sometimes and want to keep my tight group of intimates whom they know what I mean, and I know what they mean, and we can skip all that.)

Now, this did bring up another issue -- that of being authentic. Which I've taken to refer to being upfront and honest about your doubts and uncertainties, but she made the point that if you believe in the transcendent, but don't own it, ya ain't being authentic.

So, I haven't seen the official report yet, but my assessment of my assessment is:

* I know myself
* I want to be a minister
* I'm a Unitarian Universalist

We ended early, and I had given myself a good cushion of time before my flight "just in case," so I wound up at the airport with 4 hours to waste. I asked about switching my flight, and learned that my time isn't worth very much, as I was unwilling to pay $87 to change it. Called The Husband, told him about the assessment and that I was just going to use the extra time to study for my Big Fat Old Testament Midterm.

And proceeded to instead eat a cinnabon and cruise Facebook.

My assessor probably would have predicted that.

"I Am Jesus."

Mother-in-love came up and stayed with the family today so that I could fly away and get my assessment. Conversation she had with Little Warrior -- they were listening to Christmas music in the car (MIL is in a church choir and learning some new songs):

LW: They said 'Jesus!'
MIL: Um-hm. What do you know about Jesus?
LW: I am Jesus.
MIL: Uh ... what do you mean by that?
LW: Well, like, when I take cupcakes to the hospital.

Sure beats the Apostles Creed for me.

Skydiving with an Outline

Ogre said, "I want to hear more about the first steps on that path to no manuscript."

First, you have to really want it. It is definitely skydiving without a parachute. Well, not entirely -- that would be preaching without any notes. I still had my one page outline, even if it was on the lectern behind me.

Is it worth it? Oh yeah! Warning: it just may ruin ya for using a manuscript. Today, I guest-preached at one of my favorite little churches. I was doing a sermon I've given at other churches; it is heavy with the quotes, so I wasn't even going to attempt to not use my manuscript.

Meh.

I mean, they liked it, it seemed to go well. But for me, it was like the difference between giving pastoral care over the phone versus sitting next to the person. There is an intimacy that comes from eye contact, and when you have less time looking down at notes and more time with the eye contact ... and even better, when you can roam down next to people ... it's addictive, I tell ya.

So, how to do it?

1) You do have a manuscript as a part of the process. In Power in the Pulpit: How America's Most Effective Black Preachers Prepare Their Sermons edited by Cleophus James LaRue, most of the preachers talk about manuscript as an important part of their process. By writing out a manuscript -- not just an outline -- you find the rhythm of the sermon, and you find particular turns of phrase that you want to be sure to remember.

2) After that, create your "pulpit outline." I learned to do it on one page, horizontal layout, two columns, like a book. (Because I'm at a Christian seminary, and many of the preachers here will put their outline in their bible.) This includes a little information about your introduction, the proposition/big idea of your sermon, the main points, and any examples/illustrations. And info on your conclusion.

3) Memorize your introduction. Whereas the rest of the sermon, you can work from your bullet points, you want your introduction to be smooth and well-memorized. This will give you the comfort and confidence to relax and enjoy preaching the rest of your sermon.

For me, the above book was liberating, because one point that was made (by several of the preachers, as I recall) was "Look -- by not using a manuscript, you probably will drop something here or there. But it's okay. This gives you the freedom to include in things that just hit you there as you're preaching."

I am, first and foremost, a writer. Doing a sermon this way taught me the important lesson of "Get OVER yourself. Your words are not so precious that you can't lose a phrase here or there. It's about the lesson, it's about the stories, it's about the application. Using just the exact 'perfect' word is overrated."

My next step: to try using index cards or a very small notebook, so I can carry my main points (and any quotations) with me as I walk away from the pulpit. I felt like there was a bungee cord attaching me to the lectern, as I had to get back to it if I wanted to glance at my outline.

So ... have just preached 3 times in 6 days. Whoo-hoo! Early tomorrow am, I'm leaving on a jet plane to go get my career assessment.

Wonder what they'll tell me I should be when I grow up ...

The Uni-costal Preacher

Wednesday was a really good day.

My preaching professor had invited me to be the preacher at this week's Wednesday chapel at my seminary.

Fine enough, right? I mean, I preach all the time. Of course, I'd be preaching in Christian, which is my second language. No, actually, it's probably about 5th, after Ubbi Dubbi, Pagan, and French. Hubbi, mon magick ami!

But to make it more of a challenge, I've been pushing myself to preach sans manuscript. I had a one page outline on a lectern, but I mostly did the roaming preaching, walking down closer to the congregation.

And I preached fairly charismatic, as that's the most-spoken language of my classmates.

Sitting in the front row before going forward, it was a surprise when I got up and faced the audience to find that every professor and the school president were there. Manuscript! Manuscript!

No manuscript.

What a blast. Now this is the kind of roller coaster I could get into.

I received some really nice comments afterward, including one from my favorite professor, a soft-spoken man of few words, none of them hyperbole. "You were good," he said in that way that some people have that just has a particularly satisfying ring for all its simplicity.

So, a powerful affirmation of what I want to do.

(Next week I'll see the video and will come plummeting back to earth, but let me glide for now.)

What made it 100% good? I did not preach anything I did not believe wholeheartedly. I used some language not often heard in a UU church -- convicted, Holy Spirit, God, humility -- but it was all me, baby.

Me. The Uni-costal.

Scan-xiety scheduled

Okay, so, I have my super intensive Career Assessment/Head Shrinking on Nov. 9. One of the forms I had to fill in laid out several "issues" and asked what my current status was with them. Anxiety, fear, worry, stress, and some others.

To which, for each, I basically put, "Not a problem right now, but one week before scans, HOOOBOY!"

I phrased it a little different.

So, we just found out when scans are. Exactly one week after the career assessment.

Well. They can't say I didn't warn 'em.

Life Goes On

A year ago today, Little Warrior got her face painted, and played carnival games, and wore a costume, and trick or treated.

And then we left the hospital.

One year ago, she was completely bald, with no eyelashes or eyebrows, and so very skinny.

This year:


How is it possible that it was only one year ago? Surely it was at least 5.

My dad called tonight. My godfather died today from the flu. We are sad, but truth is, mentally he died a few years ago. A brilliant book man, talented musician, brought down by Parkinson's.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Sunrises, Interviews, and

So, lotsa stuff happening, everything braided, woven together. There are some people who can live more compartmentalized lives, but for me, it's all smooshed together in some way. So, like the book of Jeremiah (absolutely no order or rhythm):

* I finally had the long-awaited ministerial interview last week. This is normally one of your first steps toward ministry, but because Saturn was in the seventh house, and my minister was leaving the church right as I was beginning seminary and then of course we had cancer, and then I made an appointment, and then there was the recurrence, and then some other complications, and well, finally, I had the interview. And my interviewing minister was just a joy to talk to, even I wanted to turn the interview around and ask her a million questions. And she was far too nice in her assessment of me, but then, she doesn't know of my unnatural fondness of the word asshat. Shh. That'll be our little secret.

* Continuing to love my seminary classes. Have been asked to preach in chapel next week. A little skeered. But preaching on Isaiah 6:8. What's not to love? Bring me a burning coal, I need some lip gloss!

* The Halloween Party returned! Great time. Good food. Good friends. We had a duty to do 2 years worth of partying, and we did so admirably.

Okay, so there's the catching up. Interwoven in all of this is last year. I can't take a step without last year walking along with me. Halloween 08 was Little Warrior's last day of treatment for the recurrence. We had a big day in the hospital, then made it home in time for trick or treating.

She pulls on her pumpkin costume, the same one she wore last year. Now, she has a full head of hair, eyebrows, eyelashes. I see both of her.

I drove to school this morning. The sun was just coming up. Last year, so many mornings I watched the sun come up from our hospital room.

Same sun. Same Little Warrior. Same me. And yet, as the saying goes, you never step into the same river twice.

And it's all woven together.

Not better, but different

I have written about this before: the proposition that having lived in the world of childhood cancer with my daughter, that I will be a better minister.

Almost as soon as she was diagnosed, some person made that point. "Gee," this person said, "I know this is absolutely awful, but ... (the significant pause of one who feels they are saying something profound) ... this will make you a better minister."

Well, piss on that, I thought at the time.

It's been a difficult thing for me to work my way through, as I had to get past my maternal emotions -- I don't want to benefit, or the world to benefit, in any way from my baby daughter getting cancer! -- and my confusion as I tried to reason it all out:

a) There was something deficient in you before that only childhood cancer could fix
b) A person who has experienced childhood cancer is inherently a better ministerial prospect than someone who hasn't

Both of which I reject.

And yet ... life gives us experiences. I don't believe they happen for a reason, but I do believe we should pay attention to all the accompanying lessons they bring.

Have I learned anything from my child having cancer twice? Um, 1097 lessons at last count.

You know how someone can say, or write, something very simple that puts it all in place? Well, of course you do. That's one of the beauties of our religion and a reason why I loved our old "Church of Myrtle" ads. (Wasn't it Myrtle? I can't remember her name.)

Anyway, the New York Times has an article today about M.D. Anderson cancer hospital. One of the patients they talk to is a doctor who had cancer. He debated this same concept, was he a better doctor for having had cancer?

“Then I realized I am not better, but I am a different doctor,”

he said.

And I thought, Yup.

Survivor

Or "Kids Understand More than You Think They Do."

Little Warrior is getting her memories back from when she was on treatment. She seemingly repressed them for about 6 months.

A week ago, she got in bed and cuddled with me. We talked about things we remembered from last Halloween, including a driveway party at our neighbor's. "And there were 2 ladies there who were cancer survivors," I reminded her. "A survivor is someone who survives cancer. Do you know what 'survive' means?" I didn't think she did, and planned on making some kind of "It's when you go through something difficult but you're okay later and ..." euphemistic statement.

No need. She looked me in the eye and said, "It means you don't die."

Four years old. And yet, a lot older.

Leaving and Returning

I went to Colorado last week, leaving behind The Husband, the munchkins, and my mother-in-love, who came up to watch all of them and do mountains of laundry, because that's just something she likes to do, and we are happy to oblige her by providing a Himalayas of laundry.

No, you can't have her.

The occasion was my father's 80th birthday. My family of origin all converged at my Successful, Elegant, Never Had Kids brother's house, with its sweeping views of Colorado Springs and distinct lack of clutter, fingerprints, or -- let's face it -- dirt.

It was a wonderful four days, filled with tall tales, family lore, and laughter. My dad's twin brothers came up for a day, adding another dimension to the experience, as the three of them told stories from their childhood.

And after childhood. They all went to the same college. Here's one from my Uncle Intellectual: "I remember going over to your Dad and Mom's apartment after school. We'd drink cognac and listen to Bolero and talk about art and literature." My Dad and his brothers were country boys from Shelby County in East Texas where such things were unheard of. How sophisticated they must have felt, just kids themselves, round about 1951, standing around a record player, sipping their cognac. Can't you just see it?

Every morning, I'd wake up to silence. No Thunder Cats with their elephantine feet pounding over the stairs. No children with their abnormally loud voices debating the merits of cereal vs. oatmeal. I'd slip out of my iron bed with the crisp sheets, tiptoe across the hand-scraped oak floor, and sit on a luxurious sofa, sipping my coffee, looking out at the quiet, peaceful morning.

Yesterday, my sister and I hopped a plane, sharing the first leg of her journey. For two hours, we barely drew a breath, as we dissected the visit, teared up at various points as we remembered certain tendernesses exchanged by my parents with us, and with each other, and caught up on each other's life.

I kissed her goodbye as I headed to baggage claim, and she to her flight home. Grabbed my bag, waited for The Husband, kissed him quickly under the watchful eye of the TSA agent directing traffic, and headed for home.

No one was in bed yet. Hugs and kisses all around. "Out of my whole trip, the best part was coming home to you," I said to each of them. And meant it.

"Mom! Mom! Mom!" a voice whispered urgently this morning at 6 am. I opened one eye. "Sookie (the cat) pooped on the couch in your office!" said the Princess. I gave her instructions for its disposal (the poop, not the cat, though that was tempting) and curled back into the Lizard Eater sized hollow in our mattress.

TAP TAP TAP. Someone is tapping on my forehead. It is Little Warrior. "I want to cuddle with you."

No, you can't have her.

She climbs next to me, wraps her arms around my neck, and falls fast asleep. Sleep is long gone for me, and I lie there, listening to her breath in my ear, and the thunder of cats without little fog feet and Bo Peep and the Boy discussing the superiority of cinnamon waffles to plain waffles and The Husband reminding The Princess to put away her violin and I know that I am home.

And I am glad.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am a cook."*

And as such, it affects how I think of things. Things like diversity.

I read that at this past General Assembly, "(Rev. Mark) Morrison-Reed believes we need to recapture what we had as children, before we had been taught racism, classism, and conformity all sorts, when we had a natural attraction to what seemed different or new."

I didn't hear the talk, as it wasn't posted online, but just that idea, of our natural attraction to what seems different or new, resonated with me and has stayed with me.

Chefs get this. A chef, looking for new ideas, will travel to another country. She is excited when she gets to taste something she's never had before. An explosion of inspiration.

Today, Rev. Sean is sharing an excerpt from Audre Lorde’s essay Sister Outsider. In it, she writes about viewing differences "as forces for change."

I am attracted to differences. If you have something in your life that makes you different than me, I want to know all about it. What was it like, growing up Dutch in a Houston suburb? What did your Jamaican mommy put in your lunch? Do you ever regret being mainstreamed with non-deaf students?

(That last is a question to my husband. And his answer is no. A story for another time.)

"People of a like mind." Sigh. I understand it. I've probably used it. Especially when you live in a larger community where the majority are your opposite in politics, in tolerance, and often, in values. In an area like that, a Unitarian Universalist church is a haven, a sanctuary.

The problem is when we want "people of a like mind" to be exactly like us. When we only want people with no children -- or only married-with-children. When we only want college-educated. When we only want atheists, or only want theists. Only vegetarians. Only non-smokers. Only Democrats. Only want those who will worship quietly, hands neatly folded. Only want those comfortable with linking hands and chanting.

Different is good. Different expands the choices. Different is richer, more complex.

If we have "different" in our congregations, we get to see that different isn't really that different. We get to see it as a benefit. New flavors. New experiences. And then we get to take that into the greater world, attracted to the differences. Not just tolerant. Not just accepting. Welcoming. Radically inclusive.

Now, there will always be those who view the new, the different, with mistrust. Going back to my earlier metaphor, the French chef, looking down his nose at anyone who ventures outside of Escoffier. They do not want their cuisine watered down by outside influences, their liturgy, their culture. Are there those French chefs among us, unwilling to make room amongst the NPR bumper-stickered Priuses for a pickup with a gun rack or a lowrider?

It's okay to want to be around people of a like mind. But on Sunday morning, let's limit that to religion. Ours. People who embrace continuous revelation, personal spiritual responsibility, and individual moral authority. Be they in their gimme cap, gypsy skirt, three piece suit, Star Trek tshirt. Carrying a drum, a tambourine, a Bible, or a bag of runes. Planning on lunch afterward at the sushi bar, the taqueria, or Mama's Sunday dinner.

And hey, if you go somewhere new, invite me, 'kay?


*C.B. Stubblefield, of Stubb's BBQ, where The Husband often filled his belly. back in college.

A quick note of appreciation

I must get back to blogging, as I'm having a backup of ideas that are making my head tight and my hat small. But not this week, as in addition to school, I'm having to rush through testing and the tons and tons of autobiographical writing you must do before your ministerial candidate career assessment. (Just between you and me, I have to confess that I am just sick of myself and ready to discuss something more interesting.)

But I did get to discuss you guys! I'm writing about my spiritual and faith development, and I just couldn't let that go by without talking about being a member of the UU blog community. I know I've written before about how appreciative I am for all youse guys, but I don't know that I've written about how you have added to my development of each. Reading y'all's blogs, thinking of your ideas, arguing back and forth and over there and over here as things pinged around the UU-blogosphere ... it has had a big influence on me. There is a tremendous honesty in our blogs -- we open ourselves up, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

Thank you for sharing your ideas.

Thank you for sharing your feelings.

Thank you for sharing your beliefs.

Thank you for sharing your lives, your dreams, your beliefs.

Thank you for sharing you.

Flashback to Summer, and being a Texan

My friend the Hysteric Cleric posted on Facebook an article Molly Ivins wrote about Texas. That made me remember that this summer, on the road to New Mexico, I'd scribbled some stuff. So here it is.

Saturday, June 27, 2009 3:02 pm

We are in the panhandle of Texas. We left our house at 6:15 am. Planned on stopping at an interesting café in Fort Worth, but we made such good time, we weren’t yet in the mood for lunch. Went a little further, til we go to Decatur and saw a Chicken Express. Loaded up on their marinated chicken strips and fried okra and ate it on the road.

Every person I’ve met who was a kid in south or coastal Texas has memories of road trips that always began with the first day of travel being get out of Texas. You drive and drive and drive, and you’re still in Texas.

My parents were – and are – frugal. When we took a vacation, we’d get up early in the morning and hit the road. I can see Mom, once we got out on the highway, carefully holding mugs over the floor in front of her feet, leaning over to pour hot coffee for her and Daddy. At lunch time, we’d stop at a rest area, and Mama would pull out a red and white flannel-backed vinyl tablecloth and we’d sit at a table eating pimento cheese sandwiches from the cooler and maybe some potato chips.

This morning, The Husband and I stopped at Starbucks first thing, then picked up the fried chicken. We need to take a page from my parents’ book.

It’s funny, the things that you remember as a kid. Comic books and chocolate pop-tarts. Those are two of the things I remember. Junk food for the brain and tummy, and the only time they were allowed was on vacation. They’d let me get a couple of comic books to take in the car – I usually chose Archie or Richie Rich. And we always stayed at a kitchenette, so we didn’t have to eat out. The kitchenettes would usually have a toaster (we didn’t have one at home), and Mom would let me have a box of pop-tarts.

We passed through a little town here a ways back, and in the parking lot of a used car dealership, there was a big tarp set up, with people sitting in folding chairs underneath. A big banner identified it: “Holy Ghost Revival.” I begged The Husband to turn around and go back, but he wouldn’t.

Texas Culture is written deeply in my soul. And I mean real Texas culture.

George W. Bush. Not a real Texan.

On my mother’s side, generation after generation were Texans, on back to the Texas Republic. Real Texas culture is very egalitarian because living out in the west, you didn’t have the clear cut definitions between what was women’s work and what was men’s work. Ranching and farming required the whole family. More recently, during the Depression, it took everyone’s help just to survive. My great-grandmother took in boarders, during WWII, my grandfather helped build the POW camps.

I don’t mean to romanticize. There was some ugly stuff about the early Texans, especially the Texas Rangers, and what they’d do in Mexico. Or the origin of Juneteenth.

I don’t say that I’m “proud” to be a Texan, anymore than I’m ashamed to be a Texan. It simply is a big part of who I am. It’s in the stories I heard, growing up. It’s in the food that I eat. It’s in my heroes, like Molly Ivins, Liz Carpenter, Ann Richards. It’s in the fact that for me, the plural of “you” is “y’all.” And paying for AAA, which I do, is really kind of silly, because everyone knows that if you get a flat, there’ll be a big pickup coming along in just a few minutes filled with three good ole boys who’ll get your tire changed r’at away. And with an “it was our pleasure, ma’am,” they’ll be gone.

Don’t be fooled by the Rick Perrys of my state. Sure, there’s provincial knuckle-heads in my state. I have yet to find a state that is knuckle-head free.

We are further in the panhandle now. Every here and there, you see a house out on the prairie, ringed with trees to protect it from the constant dust storms.

I haven’t seen the camels yet.

Many a traveler through here has done double and triple takes, as they’ve spotted, amongst the cattle ranches, a herd of camels grazing. They’re wild camels. No, really. Several decades ago, some one got the bright idea of bringing camels over. Similar climate and all, thought they might work better than horses or burros.

Well, it turns out that though camels are real good at carrying their own water, they just stink at herding cows. The cowboys probably found them less comfortable than their ponies, too. So they were left to fend for themselves, and did okay at it, mating and continuing on just fine. So every now and then, you’ll see them wandering around.

One of the things that’s kinda interesting about Texas is the West-East difference. See, if you’re in East Texas, you’re in the South. Accents are more akin to Mississippi – the food and attitudes, too. Nothing spicy here, but you’ll have collard greens and black-eyed peas, cornbread, and hominy grits. Boiled peanuts. Cotillions and southern belles.

West Texas, well, now, you’re in the West. Cowboys and cowgirls, honky-tonks and Mexican food. Tex-Mex.

My dad sums it up well. He said that you could always tell if someone was from East Texas or West Texas by asking what they did with the hog’s head. East Texas, they made souse, also called hog’s-head cheese. West Texas, they made tamales.

Seems to me, West Texas was always a lot more “live and let live.” In the piney woods of East Texas, you had more racism – racism against anyone not white. Black, Mexican, “other.”

West Texas, people were more spread out and there was more of a need for everyone’s help. My second-cousin, a grizzled, crusty and shy old fellow, was a cowboy, and it was from working ranches with other cowboys that he learned how to cook cabrito, mountain oysters, and sugar pickled onions. The other ranch hands were Mexican, black, white. And I am not oversimplifying when I tell you that when you see a bunch of 60 year old cowboys, who have worked out in the hot sun their whole lives, they all pretty much look to be the same race.

We’re in Amarillo now. Been seeing the billboards for the last three hours advertising the big ole tourist trap steakhouse. Literally three hours plus. The signs will tell you, “Three Hours to the Big Texan! Tour buses welcome!”

We’ll pass. We ain’t tourists.

Check In

There will be nothing poetic or even vaguely inspirational about this post. It's a simple check-in for our home viewers. (And if you haven't checked in lately, drop me a line down in comments, willya, and let me know what's going on in your life?)

* I finally rescheduled that ministerial interview. Oct. 23.
* Which is the day before the Big Mondo Halloween Party. And we've got to party like we missed a year. Because, you know, we did.
* And I have my Career Assessment set up for November. 2 days before my Big Fat Old Testament Midterm.
* Also in November: scans.

Loving my classes. Family doing great. Little Warrior doing great. A little crazy, what with preaching, school, trying to become a candidate stuff and hey, did I mention the 4 kids?

(And did I mention that I truly am married to the most amazing partner?)

But all good stuff.

Classify THESE as good times.

The Listening Bead

I have been doing a prayer bead practice, based on the one outlined by Erik Walker Wikstrom in Simply Pray. I enjoy it; it's a good way for a monkey-mind like me to keep my thoughts organized, or at least to have a way to bring me back to what I was concentrating on.

Today, I was at the third topical bead, that of "Listening." I sat in silence, relaxing, receptive, listening ...

Mahnamanah
Do-do-do-do-do!

This was not a flight of fancy from my fluttering focus. This was my four year old. Mahnamanah, she trilled, downstairs.

Focus. Relax. Listen above and below.

Thump thump thump. Little Warrior is coming up the stairs.

Can I pray with you? she asks.

Yes. I settle her on my lap. We take breaths together.

"When I breathe in, I breathe in peace ..."

Mama, I'm going to hold the beads for you, okay?

"Yes. When I breathe out, I breathe out--"

Mama, is it this bead?

"Yes. Now take a deep breath with me," I instruct her. She obeys, puffing out her cheeks.

"When I breathe in--"

Mama, is it 4 more times?

"Um, I think so. Yes."

"When I breathe in--"

Mama, can I have a sip of your coffee?

"Let's skip listening and go to who we want to pray for."


There are sages alone on a mountain top meditating in silence. There are seminarians who are full scale in divinity school, living, eating, and sleeping at their school. Sometimes I envy them, no need for balance, the opportunity to be completely immersed in this challenging, exciting world of religious philosophy.

Well, my path is a little different. It merges with the paths of others for whom I am responsible. More than a braid, this path is macrame, like that owl decoration your aunt had in her living room in the 70's.

You know. The one with the beads.

What will turning out The Light mean to Broadway?

I'll admit it. I was a soap watcher. My grandmother watched Guiding Light, my mother watched Guiding Light, and after getting hooked on it the summer I was 16 and down with mono, I watched it.

Oh, how I groaned at the absurd stories. How I would take breaks from it, vowing never to watch again, only to take a glimpse one day and be hooked anew. During college, I missed it during the year, but would catch it in the summer, watching it before going in to my restaurant job. After college, I would tape it on the VCR, watching it at night. Even The Husband got a little hooked, though he won't admit it.

But soaps are expensive to produce and it didn't have enough viewers, a refrain I predict will continue until "then there were none."

But today, as the curtain drops on Guiding Light, I wonder what this will mean for Broadway. GL was one of three New York based soaps. They drew in professional stage actors who wanted a steady paycheck, and fed them back to the stage, as the actors took leaves of absence from the soap in order to star in a play. For young actors, they were the ultimate summer stock, grooming them for the stage.

Soaps have been this quietly subversive force in our culture. Amidst all the multiple divorces, far-out story lines, people coming back from the dead, there were story lines about AIDS, abortion, homosexuality. This wasn't HBO. These were shows playing to middle-American housewives.

Goodbye Otalia, the Four Musketeers, Nick, Dolly. Goodbye to the marvelous scenery-chewing Buzz. Goodbye Cedars. And the Bauer barbecue.

Goodbye Old Friend.

Fave UU preachers (with podcasts)?

Okay, friends. I have my handful of podcasts by my favorite preachers* that I listen to religiously (yuk yuk). They go with me on my commute to and from seminary and take long walks with me at the gym.

But I need more. Feed me, Seymour!

Who are your favorites? Who should I add to my podcast subscription list?

*my favorite preachers who provide podcasts. Ahem, yes, I'm looking at YOU, you know who you are, now start putting podcasts of your sermons up, please.

Evil

Reverend Erik Walker Wikstrom addresses some of the things I am struggling with on the subject of evil. Go read it; it's good.

The topic of evil was already rumbling around in my head, but now, today, September 11th, of course it is front and center.

I don't believe in Original Sin, I do not believe we are born evil. Boy, those who compiled our high school reading list certainly did ... A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies ... bah.

And yet.

What is this antagonism in so many of us? And I include myself in that 'us.'

Rev. Tamara Lebak, Associate Minister, All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, gave a great sermon August 30, titled Conversation That Matters. Another good one to go check out. She talks about our instincts about others, about how rarely we assume good intentions on the part of someone else.

There is a big difference between thinking and acting. Yes, I agree.

The Husband and I were talking about this last week. Do you think Pure Evil exists? he asked. In the person of another? I clarified. Yes, he said.

I don't think that I do. There always seems to be some tiny fraction of a person's soul that still houses something besides evil.

Whenever I think of evil, I think of Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green. Ruth, the maid and mother figure to Patty, says something along the lines of yes, Hitler was evil, but would he beat his own daughter? And yes, your father (who beats you) is evil, but would he cause the extermination of millions of Jews?

There is a big difference between thinking and acting. Yes, yes, I agree.

And yet.

"Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions." -- author unverified

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said yeah, you know that you're not supposed to murder. But guess what? If you are angry at someone, you will also be judged.

Searching for the roots of evil.

In that context, it is difficult for me to let myself off the hook for my knee-jerk jealousies, antagonism, suspicions, and all around lack of assuming good intentions.

This eye looks with love
This eye looks with judgment
Free me take the sight out of this eye.
-- This Eye, Edie Brickell and New Bohemians

Two Old Men and a Seminarian

What do an agnostic, a conservative Jew, and a UU seminarian have in common? Well ... a class.

The first two are two old men who are attending Old Testament class with me. You can't see them, they travel along with me in spirit, and at home, they await my emailed class notes.

One is my father, who is getting both textbooks as an early 80th birthday present from The Husband and me.

He and his old college pal have made up, and his pal, of the conservative Judaism persuasion, is also along as a stowaway on my Old Testament trip.

Considering the back-and-forth exegesis my father and I did last year of the book of Job (it involved me referring to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar as "ass hats" and him arguing that they were just trying to help Job figure out things) ... this should be good.

I Want a Bigger Tent

I want a bigger tent.

I want a tent where I can point out, as Rev. Christine did, that we are all at a spot on the agnostic spectrum without a God-Person (G-P) hollering, “Don’t call me an agnostic!”

I want a tent where I can talk about the Holy Spirit without a Non-God-Person (N-G-P) hollering, “Stop talking about God!”

I want a tent where we can discuss different theories about what happened after Jesus died without a G-P complaining that I’m being intolerant to Christians.

I want a tent where I can attend a workshop on “How to Pray” without an N-G-P complaining that we’re trying to turn into a Christian church.

I want a tent where we can talk about the contributions humanism has made, and continues to make, to our religion without a G-P rolling their eyes.

I want a tent where someone can stand up and say “I love this church and I love God!” without an N-G-P rolling their eyes.

I want a tent where, when an N-G-P explains that she doesn’t believe in any sort of outside spirit, she isn’t patted condescendingly by a G-P and told, “Yet.”

I want a tent where, when a G-P talks about a moment when he felt God was sending him a message, he isn’t patronizingly told that it’s fine to anthropomorphize a God as a way to make sense out of life.

I want a tent where I can include a performance of XTC’s “Dear God” and not be told I’m insulting the G-Ps.

I want a tent where I can include “Amazing Grace” and not be accused of trying to exclude the N-G-Ps.

I want a tent where a G-P will genuinely listen to the answer after asking, “Why would an atheist go to church?"

I want a tent where an N-G-P will genuinely listen to the answer after asking, “How can you be a Christian and a UU?”

I want a bigger tent.

I think I'm gonna like it here*

Last week, I walked into the classroom for the first day of my Old Testament class. Professor wasn't there, but two older, male students were. One was complaining bitterly about one of our textbooks, by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch.

"It's written by a flaming liberal woman," he said.

No, no, that's not exactly it. Accent and vernacular are necessary elements here.

"It's writtn by uh flamin' libruhl WOEman."

I'm not making fun of his accent. I have a matching one. But there's a particular way a Texas man pronounces "woman" when he is speaking negatively. It's like it's a different word from regular "woman." WOE-man is close, but not exactly it. If she's a good little wife, you've got a good "woman." If she done run off with yore pickup and yore dog, she is a WOE-man.

In any case, WOEman or woman, his statement caused a great big smile to come to my face. And I sang out:

Get me now, holy cow
Could someone pinch me please

Okay, so that was in my head. I actually just grinned down at my shoes, sat down quietly, and set up my laptop.

But in my head, there was a full chorus line with top hats and canes.

My professor, who is also my advisor, is a self-proclaimed conservative evangelical Christian. And he LOVES Brueggemann. Thinks he's brilliant. Asked us if we'd ever read anything more brilliant than the first two chapters of A Pathway of Interpretation.

It was at this point that, holding onto the back of my chair, I carefully stepped onto my desk and began doing the can-can. Bemused, but appreciative of my enthusiasm, my professor gave me his hand to help me back down to my seat.

Okay, not really. Dang, you're really attached to this whole reality thing, aren't ya?

I have been going to this school, intermittently, for five years. This is the first time ever that I've had a professor who said, quoting Brueggemann, "Any thought that we may present 'biblical truth' without interpretation is an illusion and indicates an unfortunate deficit of self-knowledge on the part of the interpreter."

And his preferred version of the Bible? Nope, not the NIV.

The JPS Hebrew English Tanakh.


*10 points to the first person who identifies the Broadway musical that's from. No cheating.

The path of love is not easy to walk
Littered with noise, cluttered objects, peevishness, annoyances
To walk along a forest path,
hushed boughs above you
soft grass below you,
It is easy then to feel peaceful,
calm waves of agape floating away
into the universe
So much more difficult when
stepping over piles of dirty laundry
ringing phones, bickering children,
cross co-workers, honking horns

No need then, to send it out

Realize

Love is still
all around you

Breathe it in
And set your feet straight
Back on the path again.

Setting and Spiking and Evangelism

I have been both a setter and a spiker.

These are volleyball terms, but I'm talking UU evangelism here. In volleyball, a setter "preps" the ball for another player, keeping the ball in play and lightly hitting it straight up so that the spiker can drive it home on the other side.

I knew that I'd been the spiker before. The BFF-DRE and I were playgroup friends, and I told her about my church. She'd heard of Unitarian Universalism, in fact, she had several friends who were UU. She'd never gone to a UU church, because, she says now, no one ever invited her.

I invited her. She came. Spike!

I moved to where I live now about four years ago. Over those years, I've casually told my next door neighbor about Unitarian Universalism and my church. When I saw her husband at the Democratic primary in the Obama line and she mentioned that he was an atheist, I broke every rule and blurted out, "He's a Unitarian Universalist!" (Oh, don't fuss at me.)

My neighbor is friends with another UU in our neighborhood who goes to a different UU church. My neighbor's son was spending the night with the other UU, and the other UU said, "I'll just take him to church with us, if that's okay with you." My neighbor surprised her by saying, "Actually, I'll meet you there. I've been interested in going." She now goes all the time, even going for adult education evening classes. Spike!

I was the setter.

Sometimes, we feel bad, because we aren't always comfortable being the spiker, inviting others to our church. But casually putting the information out there ... it might be more important than you think. The BFF-DRE had several setters before I came along and issued an invitation. And I was the setter when another UU came along and spiked the ball.

Just keep that ball in play ...

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away ...

This morning, I was supposed to be visiting my friend Smiley. But on Sunday, she slipped into a coma and died.

She was an older lady and had been fighting cancer with an indomitable spirit for a few years. But she recently got the "nothing more we can do" and made her plans for finishing out her life with the remaining time she was given.

Like so many, I have to say with regret, "I thought there'd be more time."

And yesterday, we got the news that Little Warrior's scans were clear. We live in three month increments. Three months is a long time, man. Three months means that I can begin school tomorrow, and begin planning The Halloween party we've thrown every 14 years (except for last year, when LW was in the hospital). Three months means LW can continue Montessori and the children can go to birthday parties and The Husband can go on his fishing trip and I can continue guest preaching. Three months. It's a gift.

In all the funeral readings my friends sent me last week, there was one that I found in almost all of them:

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

Joy and woe are woven tightly together this week. Good news for my child, while a friend gracefully and gently, but too soon, leaves us. How fitting that I am scheduled to write a sermon this week about love.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

I don't believe in a God who causes people to die or survive. But when you loosen your grip on that verse, and see it more as a statement about our existence, it becomes one I can stand behind. Life works in such a way that we lose and we gain -- blessed be this gift of life.

Nutcrackers and News

About a month ago, I received a postcard in the mail. Our city ballet is pre-selling tickets for The Nutcracker.

The older two have seen it, the third has only seen a poor local version and Little Warrior hasn't seen it at all.

Shall we splurge on tickets? I asked The Husband. He thought it was a great idea. I thought about it and said, I think we should wait until after scans. He sighed and agreed.

Scans were this morning. Just got the call.

Time to order tickets.

Quote for the day

“Jesus and I agreed to see other people, but that don’t mean we don’t still talk from time to time.” – Lafayette, True Blood

Lutherans To Allow Sexually Active Gays As Clergy

Leaders of the nation's largest Lutheran church voted Friday to allow sexually active gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy.

Plans Plans Plans, but first ...

Kids 1, 2, and 3 go back to school Monday. If all goes well, then kid 4 goes back to her two-day school on Tuesday. And Wednesday, I go to my school. Daytime classes! How exciting!

But, I do have to put the caveat of "if all goes well," in there. Because what is also happening, what I carefully put away in a little box on the top shelf because I had a memorial service to officiate, is that on Monday, whilst The Husband is getting the first three all set up in their classes, Little Warrior and I will be down at the hospital. It's scan time.

You know how sometimes, everything just seems to be flowing? Like your boat is on a river with no rocks, no sandbars. Like you're headed in the right way. You use your muscles to paddle, and the effort is rewarded.

I'm there. I'm in the river. I'm impatient, sure. I began seminary 5 years ago. I've reached the point of C'MON ALREADY, LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD.

I still haven't had my first ministerial interview. First, because my church didn't have a minister, then ... well, Cancer Part I. Much later, I had an appointment set up for the ministerial interview. I also had an appointment set up for the field rep interview. And then ... the phone call. That there was a little dark spot on the scan. Cancer Part II.

Rabbi Shaman has recommended that I be interviewed by a local minister. There's one whom I've been dying to meet. I plan on calling her to see if she can fit me in.

But I wait until after Monday.

I'm all set up for classes. Paid the tuition, bought the books, read much of them already. But my cautionary mind says, well, the timing is good. If there's Something, you should find out before Wednesday, so you should be able to get a tuition refund.

No sandbars, please. No rocks. Because right now, I can only think of it in terms of another slowing of the journey.

I avoid thinking of what it would mean in the larger picture. I've cried too many tears and suffered too much heartbreak, allowing my mind to wander into horrible scenarios. I've lived enough horror. There is no need to manufacture more nightmares. And I've learned that there is no way to prepare for the worst.

I can see the path unfolding before me. Step, step, step. Phone call, an interview, print the forms, set up the assessment, schedule the RSCC.

Hopefully, achieve candidate status.

Monday, 8 am.

--

A Conversation in a Guns 'N Roses song. (What, you think God only talks through Handel?)

God:
Shed a tear 'cause I'm missing you
I'm still alright to smile
Girl, I think about you every day now

LE:
Was a time when I wasn't sure
But you set my mind at ease
There is no doubt you're in my heart now

God:
Sad woman take it slow
It'll work itself out fine
All we need is just a little patience
Said sugar make it slow
And we'll come together fine
All we need is just a little patience

LE:
Patience...

Sit here on the stairs
'Cause I'd rather be alone

God:
If I can't have you right now, I'll wait dear

LE:
Sometimes, I get so tense
But I can't speed up the time

God:
But you know, love, there's one more thing to consider
Sad woman take it slow
Things will be just fine
You and I'll just use a little patience
Said sugar take the time
'Cause the lights are shining bright
You and I've got what it takes to make it

LE:
Need a little patience, yeah
Just a little patience, yeah

I've been walking these streets at night
Just trying to get it right
It's hard to see with so many around
You know I don't like being stuck in a crowd
And the streets don't change but maybe the name
I ain't got time for the game
'Cause I need you

God: (Just a little patience)

LE: Yeah, yeah well I need you
Oh, I need you

God: (Take some patience)

LE: Whoa, I need you

God: (Just a little patience is all we need)

LE: All this time....

Collegiality, Candles, and Funerals

Well, I just completed my first not-someone-I-knew memorial service.

Thanks to the generous sharing of materials, emails, phone calls and metaphorical handholding from some special UU ministers and other seminarians, I was prepared. I really got to experience clerical collegiality -- not that I'm a colleague yet, but they treated me as an incipient colleague. I felt nurtured.

When you are pregnant for the first time, a common concern is about who is going to see you give birth. But when it's actually time for that baby to be born, I've explained to many about-to-be new moms, you won't care if the janitor is in there. There's just other things you'll be concentrating on.

In a similar way, when I expressed concern that I would cry out of empathy, most everyone I talked to said, "Well, maybe. But probably not. There's just other things you'll be concentrating on."

And so it was.

I was at another church in town, not my own, and I'd forgotten that they have no clocks anywhere. Not in the sanctuary, not in the fellowship area. Note to self: get a new battery in one of the million of watches you've sucked dry.

You know how in cop movies, there'll be a scene where the officer yanks some innocent schmoe out of their car, hollering, "Official Police Business, I have to commandeer your car!"? Well, I did that, ripping the watch off the church administrator's arm. I hope her stitches heal soon.

The deceased was a beloved person, the kind of man who makes you envious of the people who knew him. He was beloved. Way more people showed up than anticipated. We added chairs behind the pews. We added chairs outside the sanctuary. Finally I went forward, spoke some nice words about how beloved he was, then raised my arms like Charlton Heston parting the red sea and asked everyone to slide to the ends of the pews to make more room.

Note to self: when you hear that the deceased was a popular member of a retirement community, add 50% to the number of anticipated attendees.

The family wanted to do the thing where people are invited to come forward, light a candle and share a memory. The first person, an old man with trembling hands, pulled some paper notes from his pocket.

Paper notes. Candles.

I am happy to say that no one caught fire.

Note to self: position the microphone and the sandbox of candles in such a way that the speaker will light a candle, then walk over to the microphone. Far, far away from the candles.

(I was prepared, as I watched carefully the drooping pages, to yank any burning pages away, stomp them out, and say a little sumpin' about how the deceased had a great sense of humor and he would have loved that.)

But it all went swimmingly. It is such a privilege, to be able to step in at a fragile time, and help a family celebrate the life of the person they loved, and start their own path towards healing.

I just feel so honored . It wasn't about me, I was merely the coordinator for letting in the Holy. But what a honor that is.

Wedding

I have been thinking about weddings, since The Husband and I are about to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary.

I believe in marriage. I believe in weddings. Warts and all.

Whenever I talk to someone who is about to get married, I give them the following advice: The week before the wedding, no matter what happens, say, "You know, in some cultures, this is considered good luck!"

They usually give me a confused, bewildered look and say something like, "Uh, okay."

After the wedding, they thank me. Always.

Because things happen. That's just how it works. In our case:

* my car had a blowout as I drove home with my altered wedding dress
* our rings BROKE during the sizing
* I got in a big fight with my brother the morning before my wedding, inadvertently insulting his girlfriend in an effort to deliver a crude, withering comment about him
* a giant cockroach crawled across the front of the sanctuary during the ceremony

"In some cultures, this is considered good luck."

Our wedding was chockful of things significant to the two of us. His stepmother lit the chalice. His stepfather, a Methodist minister, officiated. His father and mother walked him down the aisle, my parents walked me down the aisle. "Who gives these two in marriage?" asked Rev. Stepfather. "We do," said all of our parents. If we were two 40 year olds, that might be strange, but we were 21 and 22, going from our parents' houses to our own. It was appropriate. They were giving us to each other.

We took communion, important to The Husband at that time. My father read Walt Whitman. The Husband stomped on the wine glass.

We turned to our family and friends. The Husband pulled two pairs of matching "Just Married" sunglasses from his suit and we recessed to "Here Comes the Sun."

We could not have known what life would have in store for us, these 19 years, as we cannot know the future 19 years. That's as it should be, and part of the reason I teared up watching the below video. You can't know what's in store. Celebrate your innocence, your joy.

Above all, celebrate.

Happy Sabbath!

Apropos of nothing, a dear, albeit cantankerous, friend demanded to know why I say “Happy Sabbath” on my facebook page.

I was a little startled, so I turned it around and asked why it bothered her. And we talked about her concern that I’m using churchy words. Argued, I guess, would be closer to the truth. But in all of that, I never did get around to answering her.

Here is why I say Happy Sabbath.

Sabbath, from the Latin sabbatum, from Greek sabbaton, from Hebrew shavat. Sabbath refers to a day of rest from one’s normal activities.

I am entranced by the idea of Sabbath from two perspectives that dovetail together – it is a holiday that comes around every week, and it is a day where the normal hustle/bustle is set aside so that we can focus on what is important to us.

For some, perhaps, there is a no need for a Sabbath. They spend each day focused on what truly matters, and every day, they pause to give thanks for the day.

Not me. 4 kids, a husband, his career, my school, their school, feed the cats, do the laundry, What’s for dinner?, “I have band practice,” homework, “Where’s my keys?”

I need a day. We need a day. Focus. On. What’s. Important. Life moves so fast … slow down, for a second please. Open my eyes. See it, as it’s happening. Turn off the tv, the busy work. Stop. Breathe. Make time for what is important.

To me, what is important is my family, my friends, and my church.

I have celebrated the sabbats with Wiccans and Shabbat with Jews. I’m big on celebrating. A holiday that comes once a week – Sláinte!

Because I am a Unitarian Universalist, I celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday, as that is when we hold our services. I try to make it a day set aside from the rest of the week, where we deliberately make time in our busy schedules to play together as a family, visit friends, and attend church. A day where we pause to celebrate the gift of living.

On Sunday, I celebrate the Sabbath.

And I wish for you, a Good Sabbath, too.

Friends, Ministers, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Memorial Services!

I'm doing a memorial service next week, not anyone I know. Humbly requesting your services, readings, helpful hints* and the like.

Please send to lizardeater at gmail dot com.

Muchly appreciated. At GA, I'll buy you a beer. Or a coffee. Or another drink of your choosing.

With sadness

Goodbye, Rev. Tim. Your comments, your posts, your insight, will be greatly missed here at The Journey.

Peace to your family.

Power of Prayer ... Three Years Later

A little over three years ago, I wrote on my thoughts about prayer.

I can't say that my beliefs have changed exactly. I still have a hard time believing that God could be so capricious that prayer would change the outcome of any scenario.

And yet ... I also believe that there is a power in prayer that transcends the good feelings enjoyed by the person doing the praying and the person informed that s/he was prayed for.

This week, I am doing some super-intensive praying for three friends. One waiting on her results. One waiting on her child's results. One going through something just awful.

I write special prayers. I am first a writer, then a speaker. So I write out prayers, the better to order my thoughts. The better to make my offering.

I light candles. Close my eyes. Say the words. Pray. No, harder. PRAY. PRAY!!!

I tell ya ever since he was an itty bitty boy, sometimes he talks to the lord and sometimes he yells at the lord, tonight he just happens to be yellin at him.

-- The Apostle

I pray because they are far away and I cannot hold them in my arms.

I pray because I have no power to make it better.

I pray because it is all I can do.

I pray because ... well, not because. I pray for the same reason I breathe. I don't think about breathing. Most of the time. I just do it, because I must.

I lift them up in prayer.

I send love -- the feeling for them that wells up and overflows me, I think of them and send it zinging through the air toward them.

Do they feel it? I don't know.

Does it make a difference? I don't know.

Written or not, conscious or not, with my will or against it ...

I pray.

Softly and Tenderly

Masasa started a conversation about call on Ms. Kitty's blog.

I can't say when my first call happened -- there were quiet urges, people saying, "You really should ..." when I did lay speaking, thoughts of "If I were a minister, I'd ..." and the like. I ignored the urges, blew off the comments as people just being kind, and as a parent, I knew the danger of thinking, "I'm not a ____, but if I were, I'd ..." (All parents say something similar about parenting before we become parents, and incur the wrath of the karma fairy when we discover it's not actually that simple.)

I was a mom of three, planning on a fourth. Not really something that lends itself to ministry, I explained to myself.

And then I went to Long Beach. And received what was to me, a hit-you-over-the-head, burning bush, road to Damascus call. I started this blog. Writing about the call was my first post. (I was more succinct then.) I entered seminary.

Confirmation of the call continued. Turn on the radio, it was a song about call. Open a book, it had a character being called. Seeing what I wanted to see, coincidence, divine intervention -- shrug. What others think is not important. To me, they were little gifts, tossed by the universe onto my path, breadcrumbs to keep me walking the trail.

I had a baby.

I made plans to return to seminary.

My baby had cancer.

It wouldn't be accurate to say that I lost my call. I lost the belief in any call, for any person. I did not believe in Call. I was in the desert, stripped of any belief in any force, any spirit, any concept of God. There was no mystery, transcending or no.

And then, after I had a period of healing, Spirit came back. And said, it's not just about what you want. It's both parts of the equation. You want Ministry. And Ministry wants you.

Flaming power of egotism, to feel I was called, and then called back, to ministry? I am always concerned about that. Who the heck am I to think that God/the Universe/Life Itself has called me to serve its cause, as a minister?

I still don't have an answer for that. But I feel called. If I could be satisfied with doing anything else in life, I'd do it. But this is beyond wanting.

It's call.

We were all Samantha and Ferris

There's a generation of grown-up teens feeling sad today.

They call us Gen X now, but for a while, we were the ignored generation, in terms of media. We were not the boomers, and we were before the current wave that heeded Nirvana's call, "Here we are now, entertain us." Beverly Hills, 90210 hit while we were in college. "Kids today, getting a tv show all about them," we sniffed. We could not have imagined the smorgasbord of tv shows, movies, music acts and entire television channels devoted to youth that you see now.

But someone didn't ignore us. He paid attention to us, he understood us. He made movies that empathized with our little teenage anxieties. We were all Samantha, from Sixteen Candles, and could only dream of being Ferris Bueller.

We knew the characters because we saw them every day. Everyone knew a Duckie, a Geek and every girl had been in love with a Jake Ryan.

Hat tip to Cuumbaya for finding this remembrance from a teen who actually became John Hughes' pen pal. Sounds like he was just the person we thought he was.

I know I'm not the only one who was hoping John Hughes would return for a second act, to address in his inimitable style what was happening in our lives, as he had done earlier.

Alas.

Edited -- I'm watching Better Off Dead with my kids and realized -- oops -- it wasn't a John Hughes movie. Though lots of people think it was, if you google the movie. The mark of greatness, when people attribute things to you that you didn't even do.

One is silver and the other gold ...

Through a strange planetary alignment (or maybe just coincidence), two separate old friends of mine came to town and I got to see one last night, and one today.

Trix is the one I saw last night. She was a gift from my sister, by which I mean, she was my sister's best friend first, then she and I became friends. She has had an amazing life, weaving in and out of the lives of many interesting people -- interviewing Warren Buffett, going to a meeting with Andre Agassi and having Brooke Shields answer the door.

She's had great tragedy in her life. And great joy. And along with being gifted with an amazing intellect, creativity, and tenacity, she was given an incredible singing voice and in her 20's, was a professional singer.

I'm madly jealous, can you tell?

From several states away, during Hurricane Ike, she kept in constant contact with me, via cell phone and text messaging, letting me know what was going on in my own city, when I had no electricity.

And get this ... it's been 23 years since we last saw each other. 23 YEARS! But through email and phone calls, our casual friendship deepened over the years. She's family. Though the circumstances of our lives are different -- she's a single, child-free, professional, I'm a married, mom/seminary student -- we are very alike in terms of our spirituality, our politics, our beliefs about how you should be in the world.

23 years. I picked her up at her hotel last night and drove us to a Mexican restaurant, kind of a dive. The best places (and the best people) often are, right?

Our tongues hinged in the middle, we jumped from topic to topic and back again, catching up, connecting. We held the conversations of 8 people. We are talented that way.

We hugged. And said I love you.

Today, she found out that one of those women murdered in Pittsburgh was the best friend of one of her friends. "Please make an effort to tell those you love that you love them, and do it today!!" she wrote on Facebook.

This morning, my best friend from high school, maid-of-honor from my wedding came in town. She came out to my house with her 3 big kids. How could my crazy friend be a mom of 3? It boggles the mind.

Though it's been several years since we saw each other, ours was not the frenetic conversating from the night before. It was being in the presence of someone who knows who you used to be as well as the person you are now.

In some ways, she and I are very alike. We are mothers of what are now considered "large" families -- 3 and 4 kids. We're fairly strict. Our religions are important to us.

And, over the years, we have become very different. She is LDS, very conservative politically.

So we don't talk religion or politics. We've known each other since we were 14 and 15. We know each other. And we know that any minor differences such as religious or political don't take away from that.

We talked about our families, since I know hers and she, mine -- our siblings, our parents. We talked about our art -- hers, visual, mine, written. We admitted we don't give enough time to it.

And then it was time for them to go.

We hugged. We said I love you.

Old friends.

An urgent matter of poetry

My father is a great lover of poetry. The wording of that is specific. I cannot say he is only a lover of great poetry, though he does love that, too. But great or silly, Shakespeare or limericks, he loves poetry.

As did his mother before him. My grandmother lived to be 90, and until the very end, she could still recite poetry that she had memorized as a girl.

And as does his daughter after him. I went to college partially on a scholarship for poetry interpretation, I graduated with an English degree, with a focus on poetry writing. After a surgery, when I found myself still paralyzed from the anesthesia but with my mind completely awake (thankfully in the recovery room, not on the operating table), I calmed myself by mentally reciting "Prisoner of Chillon."

Last night I received a phone call from my father at 10 pm. This caused my heart to skip a beat as a) my father rarely calls me, b) never late at night and c) the last time he called, it was to tell me my mother was in the hospital with a heart attack.

No, no, this was a different emergency. A poetry emergency.

"I can remember this poem, but I can't find it doing an internet search, and I don't remember the title or the author."

Okay.

"It's something about 'I think I shall join with the cows, they don't complain, or worry about heaven,'" he told me.

No idea of the poet?

"It was one of the modern American poets. Frost? Whitman? One of those."

We talked about why he wanted to find this poem -- short version, an old friend of his pissed him off. Again. (From what I am witnessing, old men friends fight and make up, over and over, much like little girls. They are opinionated and can't resist mouthing off to each other. But they've gotten sensitive in their old age, and get their feelings hurt. But life is short, so they reach out to each other again. Lather, rinse, and repeat.)

So as you can see, a judicious application of poetry was in order.

I searched and searched, but turned up nothing. Cows ... dream ... join with cows ... stand with cows ... cows ... complain ...

He called me in a few minutes, triumphant. Forget the internet, he went to his old books and found it. Of course, there's no mention of "cows" in it. Whatever.

The poem doesn't reflect my usual attitude. But there are days ...

Walt Whitman:

"I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long....
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth."