Transitions

I'm going exploring this coming week. It's one of my big events this sabbatical month.  I'm exploring the topic of transitions.  I think it's a pretty appropriate topic for me both in the small picture and in the big picture.

I'm attending a conference in Chicago called "The Fundamentals of Transitional Ministry."  If you are familiar with what intentional interim ministry is, this is the first seminar in getting certified.  I'm exploring the possibility.  Whether or not I continue toward certification as an intentional interim minister or not, I think every pastor and every church in this day and age is in some kind of transition, like it or not.   So, the question to explore is not whether I want to be a "transitional minister,"   the question is "how will I best minister in the midst of transition?" 

I learned when I was younger that when I travel to new places, I'm not big on the travel style of "if it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium."    If possible, I much prefer finding a "home base" - a bed and breakfast, or a retreat center, or a generous friend or family member with a spare bedroom or couch, and plant myself for my time away.  I then let the Spirit move me, going different places if I want to, or staying in, sleeping or reading if I want to...but just immersing myself in the alternate world of my homebase and letting my exploring or activity (or inactivity) orbit around that one place.

I think that's also my preferred method of dealing with transition. Rather than charting out a linear strategic plan to follow (which has NEVER worked for me), I'd rather enter into a new experience and plant myself, find a home base, and then watch and wait for how the Spirit will move me to explore, to try new things, to learn and grow.  It's kind of a "Spirograph" model of managing transitions!

Are you old enough to remember "Spirographs?"  It was a kids' geometric design toy in the '60s that employed assorted cogged wheels and with holes that you'd put the tips of blue, green or red pens in and spiral them around to create beautiful designs. The combination of wheels, cogs and pen hole positions created the parameters of the design.  But it was your energy that moved the pen and wheels around the parameters. At first it felt like chaos until you got the hang of it, and then you began to see the amazing design emerge. 

What kind of art could we create in our lives if we allowed ourselves to experience transitions from a Spirograph approach?  

(Thanks to whoever created this Spirograph art that I found on Google Images! There's lots more there if you want a little inspiration!)

Healing Presence

On this "personal sabbatical" (as I'm calling my current transitional experience), I wake up in the morning and ask, what shall I do today?   That's a question that has to do more with presence  than with activity.  I'm asking myself how shall I be present today?  To what shall I be present?  What will present itself to me today?

In the past week, I've been present to my father's packing up his home to prepare to move.   I discovered that I enjoyed being present to the needs of the day...the tasks, the memories, the listening, the feelings.  I'm home now and am discerning how to be present to what is emerging in my own life.

Presence is about nothing more than just showing up, being open and aware.  Maybe it's about taking a step out even if I'd rather stay hidden. It's about stepping off the beaten path, or away from the usual current flow of flurried activities we engage in without thought or intention.  Presence is  about opening up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, there indeed is a power greater than myself that will meet me.  I won't just show up and no one else comes, or that I'll fall off a cliff into oblivion.  Presence is about discovering with some assurance that I'm not alone, that there is some deeper purpose and meaning I can't necessarily see.

That's a healing place.  In fact, perhaps the place of Presence is the MOST healing place there is.  Just showing up to what is. I need that! I'm usually too busy focusing on what will be in the future, or what was in the past. We as a society are so use to thinking that our healing requires us to DO something...to act in some way, to fix, to solve, to medicate, to operate, to discipline, to repent.  But, really...the healing comes when we can just be.  In being present to simply this present moment, we can let go of expectations and anxieties and fears that tighten us, that close us off, that make us cling and strain, and get stuck, and drain us of life's energy.   Instead, our Presence, allows us to be a creative partner in responding to what this grand universe and its Creator might present to us on any given day...at any given moment....without critique or prejudice.

Hmm, easier said than done? Maybe. Maybe it takes a personal sabbatical to allow the freedom, time and permission needed to just be present, to experience it's healing treasures. I hope I'll be able to carry some of this back into the flurry of activities and responsibilities when I step back into that flow.  But, there is always Sabbath, the day of Presence.  If nothing else, perhaps one day in every seven I'll be able to manage!

 

Living Symbols

The power of symbols can leave us breathless.  Yesterday, I spent a relatively quiet 4th of July with my father who is soon to move into a retirement center apartment.   If you’ve been through that yourself or with someone, you are well aware of the excruciating process of culling and winnowing through a lifetime of STUFF to figure out what deserves to “be kept” and moved into an 500 sq ft apartment.  The rest gets doled out to various and sundry places and persons, or released into only memory.

In that process, you come across a lot of symbols. Buttons and pins and fragments of notes, hand-knit sweaters from a lost loved one, pictures and shoes of a deceased spouse…or two, sheets that were well-used from long-ago nights, collections of suitcases and bags that have traveled to far-off places and continue to hold the memories in zippered compartments.

In between sorting sessions, Dad and I watched a PBS program on the construction of the Statue of Liberty.  It recounted the history of the earliest dreaming of a few industrious Frenchmen in the 1800s that wanted to symbolize in a colossal way their high value of liberty. They conceived of making it a gift to what they viewed as the ideal national representation of liberty: The United States of America. They hoped that by gifting and affirming Americans in their expression of liberty, it would inspire and keep invigorated the value and vision of liberty in France…a kind of boomerang effect.  I was struck that the enormity of the Statue’s physical size was matched by an enormity of resistance and challenges in its construction and even its gifting to the Americans. It was amazing that it survived, and that the visionary artists persevered long enough to give us one of our most deeply significant living symbols as a nation, which we were not at all sure at the timewe wanted. 

I listened to immigrants and their families reflect on the power of seeing Lady Liberty as their ships pulled into the harbor of their new world.  It also made me wonder what ramifications there are today for those immigrants whose first living symbol of the United States is a great barbed wire and heavily monitored wall, rather than a golden lamp issuing the welcome to all “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Dad shed a few tears when he unboxed his old army uniform and recounted for me the meanings of all the bars and ribbons and emblems he had earned that still were pinned in their places.  I could tell that memories of his two tours of duty – one to the Canal Zone in Panama, when he was just 19, and the other to post-war Germany where he met my mother – came flooding back to him.  What should we do with this living symbol?  Give it an honorable burial.  I took a photo, then gently removed the emblems and pins, tucking them into a ziplock bag (which could find some corner of a 500 sq ft apartment), and put the rest of moth-eaten uniform to rest among the other remnants of a life being let go into memory. 

These were the symbols that lived  for me this 4^th of July, 2013.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

I don't mean to be melodramatic or cliche.  But, the phrase that gained popularity when I was in my teens...about, wow...40 years ago..."Today is the first day of the rest of your life,"  has suddenly taken on new and immediate meaning for me.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.  Today, July 1, 2013, I am officially unemployed.  The Church in my life, my vocation, my paycheck, are all now on an indefinate hiatus. So my biggest question this morning I put to God...Who the heck am I without those things? And then the next that immediately followed,  Who do I WANT to be?  The answer to both came quickly: I'm not sure I have a clue, but I'm going to take some time to find out.

How much has my vocation, being pastor of a church, shaped who I am.  How much has the paycheck that it always afforded me, shaped the decisions I made, the actions I took, what I said and didn't say, did or didn't do...even believed or didn't believe??

Monday is normally my Sabbath day.  My day off.  Today I woke up and thought, what does my Sabbath mean now that I don't have my normal "work" on the other days of the week? Well, it means that my new role as primary homemaker and all the tasks and chores that go along with that, will wait for tomorrow.  (Note: this is has NEVER been a role given nor expected from me before, but as my husband's and my usual ethic of equally balanced work to support the family has long been in place, now my side of the balance seems to be, by default, in immediate orbit around our house!)

In all my previous understandings and practices of Sabbath-keeping, I know that it is a temple built of Holy Time.  It is sacred space, when I cease doing the usual (check!), I rest in God's care, I embrace the values and practices that I really, intentionally, want for myself and what God calls me to, and I feast on all the goodness that God offers me. 

Hmm, that sounds like a pretty good start for the first day of the rest of my life!  In fact that might be pretty good practice for everyday for the rest of my life.  And, so my journey into the rest of my life begins with this Sabbath day.