The Ones We Love
Above Board: Not just another meeting
A few months ago, we here at The Young Clergy Women Project decided to search for a new tagline to express our mission. Our previous one included a reference to the institution that had given us the initial grant, so with the conclusion of the grant, we needed to update our materials. It was also a chance to reinvent ourselves a little bit, to encompass both how far we'd come and where we planned to go next.
The winner, far and away, was Sarah Kinney Gaventa's suggestion of: “The Young Clergy Women Project: Because you're not the only one.” (Although a close runner-up was “Pulpits: They're not just for boys anymore.”) Everything we do, both online and in person, is structured around this mission: to remind young clergy women all over the world and in every denomination that they are not alone.
After choosing this new tagline, the full board of The Young Clergy Women Project gathered in St. Louis earlier this month. Gathering, meeting, and working together side by side were powerful symbols to each one of us that, indeed, we are not alone.
For Deployment and For Stateside
This year, on Good Friday, when many of my colleagues were having noonday services remembering Jesus’ crucifixion, I was going through a different ordeal. While it wasn’t physical torture, the emotional and spiritual pain of dropping my husband off for a nine-month deployment to Iraq had its own nuances and added a different dimension to what I was casually calling “Lousy Friday.” On that day, I also reflected on Jesus’ seven last words from the cross, but within the context of my current experience.
My Double Life on Facebook
I was a relative latecomer to the Facebook phenomenon. Many of my friends joined in college or not long after, but right up until the middle of seminary, I remained vehemently opposed to the idea. I thought that it was a senseless waste of time, and that if I joined, I would never get any work done again. Then one day, my partner gave me her password so I could look at some photos a friend had posted, and before I knew it, I had caved. I have never become a true Facebook addict, but I do rely on it more than I ever thought I would to stay in touch with friends and family—especially those who live far from me (which is just about all of them).
So when it came time for me to graduate from seminary and move to a new city to start my first church job, I found myself facing an unexpected but very common question: how would I relate to parishioners on Facebook? I knew that many of my new parishioners were in their 20s and 30s, and I soon discovered that a Facebook group for these “young adults” already existed. It didn’t take much to see that Facebook was going to become a part of my ministry whether I liked it or not, and that I’d better figure out in advance how I was going to handle it.
The Economy of the Family
I’ve noticed something odd. When I’ve talked to older women colleagues, and I’ve said the words, “I had to think about my family” in relation to my career, I often get a little lecture. You know, something along the lines of how my family should not dictate my choices, and how I would never hear a man say something like that.
It has happened so many times that I realized the words “had to think about my family” must have been code for “I will now sacrifice my career and my soul to the gods of patriarchy.”
Sisters. No, not the kind that wear habits.
I am the baby of my family. My sister was sixteen years old when I was born. We never attended the same schools or shared the clothes in our closets. In fact, most of my memories of my sister growing up are around holidays, when she was home from college. As I grew older we were close, but the age difference meant it was a different relationship than my friends had with sisters closer in age. I went away to college and she had a baby. We talked on the phone, sent cards and saw each other at family events, but our busy lives sent us off on our own journeys.
I graduated from college, unsure of where God was calling me. My journey led me to serve two years as a missionary for the United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania. I then returned to California, to work in the non-profit world, I thought. Meanwhile my sister was a mother, a teacher, a wife and also seeking what was next in her life. The answer came as a call to ministry, beginning seminary part time. I journeyed on as a youth director, an active layperson and an executive assistant in the private sector. I too was seeking, and finally answered my call to ministry. I began seminary in the fall of 2002, five years after my sister did, at the same seminary as a full-time student. My sister was still in seminary, taking the long route, one or two classes a semester.
It is here that our story as sisters in ministry together begins.
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
I am a fairly new pastor, and I live in the same parsonage my bishop lived in when she was a new pastor. It's located in a small town, on a street where the same people have lived for decades.
This means that as I interviewed, the bishop wasn't just curious to see if I would be a good fit for this particular parish. She was also crossing her fingers that I would be a good fit for the neighbors.
An Advent of Hope
According to ancient Greek mythology, a curious woman named Pandora once opened a box. Inside that box, sealed tight until her curiosity cracked the seal, were confined all the evils of the world. As Pandora's prying fingers pulled back the lid, those evils came pouring out to visit their destruction on the Earth.
But something else came out of that box too. The only good among all the evil, hope was the last thing to emerge and it remains to this day humankind's sole comfort in misfortune. Hope, that singular blessing, was a tiny wraith among so many other forces and a fragile thing indeed. But hope also dies last, I'm told, enduring longer than the rest. After everything else has spent its energy and seeped away, hope is the one thing that remains for the living to hold on to. There is a photograph I have that proves it--proves to me, once and for all, that hope dies last.
How I Learned to Eat Tomato Sandwiches
I was standing in my dad’s—no, my parents’—kitchen on the day of my mom’s funeral. The service, the huge service in the huge church, was over. We were all utterly spent. My aunt, my dad’s sister, was handing something to my dad. “You have to eat this,” she told him. She had a tomato sandwich in her hand. It was early August, and the farmer’s market had been full of big, beefy heirloom tomatoes—reddy-purple ones, green stripy ones, yellow and orange ones. It’s a miracle that tomatoes grow at all in Oregon, with so much rain, but somehow they manage to, and they were at their peak when mom died.
“I love tomato sandwiches!” my dad told his sister. “Tomato sandwiches?” I asked. “You mean just tomatoes?” Well, almost. The tomato sandwich, I was told, is an exercise in simplicity. Bread. Thick-sliced, good tomatoes. Mayonnaise. Salt. I watched my dad eat the sandwich—really revel in its flavor—in his grief.
National Boss Day...the Fidelia's Way
I would wager that there are more than a few assistant and associate clergy out there who would not be eager to recognize October 16 as National Boss Day. Honestly, I can understand why, given some of the stories I hear: the head pastor who does all the weddings, baptisms, or funerals himself; the rector who agrees to the standard amount of vacation time for the assistant and then does not allow said assistant to take said time; the head of staff who just can’t help but micromanage her very able assistant.
Strangely, these very same ordained leaders are often beloved by their congregations, to the point where I sometimes find myself asking if the desired skills to be the ordained leader in a larger congregation are not compatible with the skills to be a good supervisor for a new pastor. These stories (all true, by the way) are made even more jarring by the commonly accepted fact that one’s first experience in parish ministry has a great impact as to whether or not one actually stays in parish ministry.
I can't claim any of the above as my stories. I happen to have a great supervisor. Meet Bob.
Living Between Words
Creating space to breathe deeply, filling ourselves with that feeling of calm. At this year’s Young Women Preachers Conference Embodying the Sermon, we spent time gathered in the library at Cathedral College doing just that. But for me, the space to breathe deeply opened when that heavy front door swung open for our arrival.
Just one year earlier, I had arrived at those doors with a carpool of strangers, excited but anxious and just a touch homesick. How would I fit in and make friends when I was so worried about preaching to strangers, about being in a strange new job, and about being away from home for a week?
