day three... and we are going out for dinner!

I was going to start my compost pile today, but it was cold and rainy. I have collected no more items to put in it than yesterday, so no picture to update there. But I do have pictures to share. :) You are welcome.

Today was easier because I barely left the house. I went to Starbuck's and got coffee. I brought my own cup. The over caffeinated hipster behind the counter loved that my cup was an NPR cup. Look at how productive I was and I saved $.10. Wow. Amazing, huh.
If you look closely you can see the first part of Sunday's sermon. Spoiler alert: God did it.

 The second image to share for the day is my "sin box". It contains things I used that are not recyclable or compostable. Right now there is a plastic wrap from the lasagna with a sticker on it and the foil that I put on top of the lasagna. Apparently, buying a lasagna from Whole Foods was a bad decision for my Lent sacrifice. :( There is a cost for ease.

Today, really was a little easier. I ate snacks of fresh fruit and had left over macaroni and cheese for lunch.

However, I could not go out of ice cream after dinner because it does not come in a container that I can deal with. I am thankful that wine does, though.

This is not related to my Lenten journey, but the kids'. Carter decided that giving up string cheese was too hard. This is after his first thing which was trying everything on his plate which apparently Jesus doesn't want him to do either. Both kids decided that they were going to pray more often. 

This goes completely against the Ash Wednesday passage that says pray in private (Matthew 6), but here is a picture of them praying for Scout. 

I found it sweet. 

Scout was just happy someone touched her. 

day two learning and the exceptions

Okay, so I learned something today (besides day two was much easier than day one)...

whole foods will not put chicken in your tupperware container because they don't want to ruin it with a sticker. They didn't even think that I was crazy when I asked. They will, however, put it in a recyclable container....now I just have to figure out what to do with the sticker...

which leads me to...I am thinking of creating a collection box for the things that I cannot figure how to dispose of.  I will call it my "yeah, this is too hard" box or this pile of crap is going in the trash on Easter morning. Jesus has risen! My trash can is full!

Because it was decided on Facebook that the powder wrapper was not recyclable I decided to make homemade mac and cheese tonight. Jeez, people. I must really love Jesus. We are also having wild mushroom lasagna and brussel sprouts.

But really what I wanted to talk about in day two are the exceptions to thsi no trash rule. Because this is what people keep asking about. So, here are the exceptions that I have come up so far.

** if something is violently expelled from the body, whether human or animal, it can be cleaned up
with paper towels. I am not THAT committed to this.

** Lent cannot solve Carter's bed wetting issues, so pull ups will have to be excluded

** Hannah and her medical stuff is excluded

Now here is your part people.
Tell me

what other exceptions that I should consider

how do I start a compost pile? Right now I have a bin in the back yard where I threw my burnt toast and a half eaten banana. :)

day one... I thought I was preapred

Today is the first day of Lent. I have been planning this day for months. 
Mostly not even dreading it. 

At least, I wasn't until last night when I realized that today was the day. 


Day One of no production of trash. Remember that scene in Say Anything when Lloyd meets her dad for the first time and pulls out this beauty: I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

I love him even more for that now.I am only 16 hours into this day and it has been hard. 

Partially hard because we have worship tonight and I had many last things to do to prepare for it that I wasn't planning on doing. When we are under stress we often cheat--we do things that we shouldn't and normally wouldn't (like sneak a cigarette or a glass of wine) and today it would have been so great to just drive through somewhere and get a fast meal as I took Hannah to her IEP meeting. But I didn't. waxed cups.paper napkins.greasy paper.

Today, I have wiped my hands on my shirt after washing them in the bathroom--thanks no paper towels
I have dried a dish on my scarf--once again no paper towels
I opened a candle and stood and stared it at for 3 minutes trying to decide what to do with the plastic that it was in. (I decided it was recyclable)
I went to store to buy some hand towels so that I could stop drying my hands on my clothes
While there, I looked at the packaging in the deli case trying to find something that packaged in a recyclable container (bc I couldn't plan ahead and pack a lunch this morning). 
I noticed that packaging is like a chastity belt.
I have pulled scrap paper out of the trash and walked it over to work room's recycling bin.

 I have been aware of my footprints today. 
and it makes me fear dinner. 
crap. 
I don't have time to cook a meal tonight. 

This day has been hard. Which I guess makes it a very successful first day of Lent.  

I still have 7.5 hours left in this day. I hope someone brings me a plate of food with just the right amount so that I don't have to start the compost pile tonight, a cloth napkin (which would be so much nicer if our dryer was working) and a glass of cold water. I don't think that will happen. So, I guess I will just have to be mindful of the way that consume all by myself.  

ministry is still better than mayonnaise

This week, I spent several days with clergy. in a good way. it’s not always a good thing. sometimes when clergy gather it feels more like a middle school lunch room than a gathering of children of God who are trying to share the Good News of God’s love.

as I drove up to camp glisson on monday, i was thinking about how hard the ministry is. now, as you read this, i want you to know that i cannot image myself doing anything other than ministry.

which is not a statement about my imagination.it is also not a statement about how i view my ability to be employable in other fields. there are very view jobs that i feel that without the right training i could not do.i could not do math for a living.i could not do mayonnaise for a living.i could not do crafts for a living.

there are however clergy who can’t imagine themselves doing other things because it is all they have ever done. some of these should find something else to do. they’d be happier. the church would be stronger. good people—just not where they should be be. 

while i love the ministry... i love being with people as they mourn, celebrate, remember; i love being a part of their most joyous and most desperate moments; i love helping them see God around them... and while i love all of these things and am marveled by the blessing that God has given me by calling me to this, i still believe in my deepest being that ministry is one of the hardest jobs ever. and i wouldn’t 
even if i could
change that for the world. 



but it’s not for everybody. 
i don't try to talk people into the ministry. i have on more than once occasion tried to talk someone out though. 

and I have made my fair share of mistakes in my ministry. i have hurt God’s kingdom. 

of course, not on purpose. but i have made mistakes. so, here are some of them.
i sure hope none of these are chargeable offenses...

I have not prayed for my congregation beyond myselfprayer changes things. not in the God is my favorite santa kind of way. but it changes how you view people. you cannot bring someone into your private time with God and not have it change the way that you view them. if i talked to God the same way that i talked to people in traffic then that wouldn’t be true. but even though i sometimes swear in my prayers i know that God hears, that God can handle those raw emotions and help me work through them so that i can handle them in public. 

i should pray specifically for my leaders every day. i should pray for the finances of the church everyday. instead my prayers are often give me wisdom, help me with this situation, and be with this family that is hurting.those are not bad prayers.
but i need to dedicate more specific time to praying for the church and her leaders in ways that would really make us the church. not in ways that make my job easier.  

I have been too comfortable i am me. i am casual. i am often offensive. sometimes, i get too comfortable with people who expect me to be some other way. i am no francis of assisi. hell, i am no francis bacon (which if i was going to be a francis i would pick one named after that awesome food); i am no francis asbury; i am no francis ford coppola. i am more of a frank. like being too frank. i have been known to be naked instead of transparent. and i realize that sometimes that has hurt. it has hurt others. it has hurt the kingdom. it’s hurt relationships. 

I have taken things personallyseriously, who hasn’t it. but when someone yells at you. when someone freaks out and goes after you, it is often not really about you. you can see it other people’s situations but it is hard to see it in your own. often times it is not about you. people treat you a certain way because of what is going on inside of them. this is hard to grasp when you are vulnerable and ministry is a place of vulnerability. 

I have struggled with how we treat the churchsometimes i just want to treat the church like a business: fire people who are lazy, manipulative, crazy, and haters. other times, i am reminded of my amazingly high ecclessiology. i want and expect the church to change the world and, damn it, the church seems like it cannot change a light bulb most days. as a matter of fact we can’t where i am not because they are too high end and no one can figure out how. so there. 

i want the best of both worlds most of the time. in essence, i forget about how special the church really is and i treat it like another business. i forget about the love, grace, sharing, compassion, and tender-heartedness that we are to embody. and that kills the church. 

we cannot forget. 
jesus says remember. 
because remembering is doing. 
and doing is changing. 
which leads to hope. 

it's okay to unfiend me on facebook...I understand

Apparently, there are 37 verses in the Bible about stumbling blocks.*
I find that impressive.
Maybe, impressive is not the right word there.

Surprised.

We have been tripping and falling over each other for a very long time.
We have been making each other lose sight of the important things for quite a while now.
We have been allowing others to make us feel ill or fail or to give up on ourselves.
Or even give in to ourselves.

I don't really want to write about that, anyway. I want to write about this general malaise that comes over me when I look at facebook lately. It goes back to that, though, I guess. More and more I find myself logging in (just kidding, I never log out) and being annoyed by the melodrama; angered by the political rants; jealous of others for many reasons (like they are vacation, like they are with ONLY adults, like they are drinking wine in a facebook photo and not fearing that someone will get all angry about it and email the DS, like they have girl scout cookies...); and overwhelmed by the desire to yell at people to be real for once.

And no, I don't think that facebook has gotten any more dramatic, fake or embellished. It has always been this way. It's called facebook. It's about appearances on many levels.

I just notice it more when I am not really in a good place in my own life. Like when I get stressed out about things or feel under attack or when I am trapped in house for days because of snow. I LIVE IN THE SOUTH FOR A REASON PEOPLE!!!!

I am not saying to dump facebook. But it's probably helpful at times to step back for periods.
You should step back from anything that takes you farther away from where you should be.
This is why I don't watch Fox News. It angers me.
This is why I hide some friends on facebook--their posts offend me.
This is why I don't eat mayonnaise--it makes me vomit.

Take care of yourself friends.
And if that means that you unfriend me on facebook, it's okay.
Really. I understand.  

Just take care of yourself. Look out for your own well-being.
You can't care and love others until you do it for yourself first.











http://www.openbible.info/topics/stumbling_block

starting anew

I have been become somewhat obsessed with the show The Biggest Loser. I used to make fun of people (like Adam Hilderbrandt) who watched it religiously. The idea of looking at overweight people cry, sweat and stand on a scale in something pretty close to underwear (frankly, I have some under garments that cover just as much if not more that what they are wearing) just is not my idea of a good hour or two. If they were "holy underwear" I would totally have watched. So shiny.

But this Advent I have spent a good bit of time catching pun on the Biggest Loser. Like I watched 3 episodes of Season 12 yesterday. We (I have sucked Jim and Hannah in, too) have also watched Season 13 during Advent as well. I have watched a lot of people prove that you get emotional when you are hungry. I have also watched a lot of people prove the point that if you want to make a change, you don't need to wait until a certain date to come…like January 1st…to make that change.

I can't tell you how many times I have this past week I have heard someone say, "…in the coming year, I am going to…" and most of the time the rest of the sentence has to do with eating better and eating less sugar. It's kind of like I am going to rehab tomorrow. That worked out well for Amy Winehouse by the way.

Here are my thoughts on that:

* it's nice to have a easy to remember start date to mark a change, but is it that much harder to remember December 30th than January 1st. come on, people.

* in Vedanta, they understand reincarnation to happen every moment. Every moment, you are born again. Every moment, you get a chance to start again. Every moment, you get to choose to be a new person. Every moment is the moment to become better. So, wait?

* remember that story of the man who was going to follow Jesus, but decided that he had a bunch of other stuff to do first and Jesus said you go right ahead and walked away (New Living Tara Paraphrase). we think that guy is all jacked up with the wrong priorities…there you go.

why I shave my legs for Jesus

Early in my ministry, I started a Saturday evening ritual called “shaving my legs for Jesus”.  The name pretty much describes it accurately. Every Saturday night, I would draw a bath and go through the painstaking process of shaving my legs. I know that people all over the world do this on a daily basis, some even awkwardly balancing themselves as they stand in a shower stall to do so, and they do this without thinking much about it and never realizing its theological significance. But stick with me, there is some. 

Now here’s the obvious question: does Jesus care if my legs are stubbly? I don’t think so. I have never heard the still quiet voice of God whisper to me on Sunday morning, “your legs are smooth—good and faithful servant”.

That’s not why I do it.

I hate shaving. I started doing it because I felt that was part of looking my best for church on Sunday.  As if somehow smooth legs represents a clean heart, a prepared message or a holy demeanor.

But shaved legs represent a cultural preference, not a Biblical mandate. There is no “blessed is she with the smooth legs, for she shall glide smoothly in the waters of Life”. It’s not there. I looked.

So, that is not why I keep this tradition alive. I do it because I hate it.

Yes, I do it because it is no fun. It is time consuming. It can be painful if you don’t pay attention or if you don’t use the right cream. It can burn when you are finished if you put the wrong things on too soon.

Sometimes ministry, whether it is ordained or lay, calls us to do things that we do not like: to go where we are sent, to stay when we want to leave, to talk to people unlike us, to show grace when we are angry, to be peaceful in situations of unrest. So every week, I do this thing that I don’t like because it reminds me that God calls each of us, including me, to do things that we don’t want to do. Obedience is often not convenient. It’s often not comfortable. So, every week, at least once, I remind myself that it is not about me. That’s it about a God who made himself more than uncomfortable for me.