Friday Five:De/Re/CLutter?

Jan has left an amazing, timely Friday Five:

Since posting about decluttering, I am still muttering about the need for it in my house. How about you?




1. What things do you like to hang on to?

As the daughter of a saver—my parents were just newly married during the last Great Depression, I save almost everything of any value. J is also the child of savers and would recycle TP if she could figure out how. Even when things are not of value, I am loath to throw it away. I am also not a good organizer so I seldom know where things are. So I am likely to buy another do-jinger to replace the one I can’t find. A luta continua…



2. What is hard to let go of?
 EVERYTHING



3. What is easy to give away?

Clothing that I can no longer wear. But I do pass them on to J first because she can often wear my hand-me-downs and then SHE can’t give them away.



4. Is there any kind of stumbling block connected with cleaning out?


I have often laughed off the comments about my desk.  I always knew where things were:  They were on my desk and all I had to do was dig long enough and I would find it.  Files often defied me.  Once something was filed, I could never remember where or under what topic it was filed. 

As I have said, organization is the most difficult. My brain just cannot seem to figure out where things can go. In this most recent move, I have finally hired some women to come in and help me unpack. They have so far gotten the Living Room and the Kitchen in some sort of order. (One of them has a new apartment and does not have things to go into them. I have been giving her things that she needs if we have too much or too many.)



5. What do you like to collect, hoard, or admire?

I am not much of a collector except for books. J. collects "little things." (paper weights, little figurines, etc. Now that I have a Kindle, that is beginning to help with accumulation of novels and mysteries. Before we moved, we gave away tons of books to the libraries in our area, but we still moved 40 boxes of books. We haven’t even begun to unpack those yet. (Next week’s chore)  What do you with all that fine China that was left to you by great grandmothers but you NEVER use?



Bonus: Tell us about recycling or whatever you can think of that goes along with this muttering about cluttering

Recycling is the best way to go for us hoarders/collectors/conservators. By giving books to the library, I knew that they were going to be valued as I had valued them. By giving my kitchen extras to the new apartment owner, I knew that they would be used. By giving my clothes to a “nearly new shop” I know that someone who needs them will get them.

I HATE fill landfills! And I am having a hard time with the new recycling rules in my town. I grumble and fuss about having to wash out cans and plastic containers. I fret over the over-packaging of all products. And I REALLY don’t know what to do with all the wires and extensions cords that I have accumulated to things that I don’t know what they go to. AND WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THAT OLD COMPUTER STUFF THAT WE HAVE IN THOSE BOXES IN THE GARAGE???? Even the recycle guys won't take them.

Memories, memories Friday Five

Sally from Revgals gave us a memorial Friday five:

This year Tim and I have planted and nurtured a vegetable garden, and I have just spent the morning preparing vegetables and soups for the freezer, our veggie garden is producing like crazy and it is hard to keep up with, that said it'll be worth it for a little taste of summer in the middle of winter :-). That got me thinking of the things I treasure, memories are often more valuable than possessions. How about you, can you share:

1. A treasured memory from childhood?

In 1949 I was 4 and we moved from Illinois to TX. My father had asked for a transfer because the northern winters were getting too difficult for his lungs and the doctor had told him to move to the southwest, I don’t remember the move per se, but I remember the train trip that brought my mother and I here. My father and 16 year old brother had preceded us. My father, who had wanted to be an artist and not a draftsman, had made me a coloring book of the event. I have since lost that coloring book, but I can still remember the pictures.

2. A teenage memory?

When I was a junior in HS, I made the state band. It was a great experience for me. The sense of personal worth that came from that experience undid much of the put down I heard at home. It was also from that HS band experience that I got a scholarship to university.  And that introduced me to a whole different world.

3. A young adult memory?

I came to know Christ at 25 and not long afterward entered the convent. The two are not necessarily connected, but I am clear that it was the call of Christ to know him intimately that was the reason I entered religious life. I am very thankful for both of these events in my young adulthood because I learned to pray—various methods and they have all served me well though my ministry and my life.



4. A memory from this summer?

I retired and have moved back to my family home in TX after being away for 38 years. Lots of memories have been coming up since I moved back here. But honestly, I don’t want to remember the agony of moving or do it again!



5. A memory you hope to have?

J and I have been visiting churches in the diocese. Finally last Sunday while sitting in a large parish, I suggested that we need to choose a parish in which we wanted to have our funeral! We have never gone to the same parish and will continue that practice so that we can both have a parish community where we both can be of assistance to the local rector. We also thrive in different kinds of parishes. For years we did that so that people would not think of us as a lesbian couple. So on my part, it was done partly out of fear. A memory I would like to have is for people to respect the relationship that J and I have, honor it and support us the same way that they support others who have made commitments to each other. We celebrated 32 years of living together this year. Married couples don’t generally do so well. Just sayin’….

Bonus- a song that sums up one of those memories

Home Sweet Home

Friday Five: Love the One You're With

Katherinezj has posted today’s Friday questions:

This Friday Five will post while I'm at the beach which for me is more than a vacation destination, it is a trip home. I have found it quite easy to wax nostalgic about the places I used to live (well, except for one) and have begun to wonder what it is I like about the place I'm living now? For instance I sure do love the beach.


And so I ask you to please name five things you like about where you are living now... and as your bonus - 1 thing you don't like.

1. I have just moved back to my family home after being gone for almost 40 years. My parents are dead but my brother and his family live in the area. I feel connected to family once again even though we are not emotionally close. I am just sorry I couldn’t have gotten back here before mom died. But her memories abound.

2. Even though we have not gotten really unpacked (we cannot even get a small car into the 2 car garage, I love our house. It is all on one floor. It is light and fairly easy to clean.

3. When I attended the clergy periscope study last week, a couple of the older priests began to use phrases like “He’s all hat and no cattle” and “it’s dryer than a Sunday afternoon in Abilene”. Such phrases are ‘Texasisms’. Molly Ivins made them famous and Dubyah made them infamous. But they are wonderfully cornpone sets of word pictures that convey so much. I think when I left the state in ’72, I wanted to get away from that kind of speech judging it ignorant and backwards. But over the years I have found such ways of describing things ready on my lips, falling back into rather homespun ways of describing that which cannot be described except in rather artful phrases and humor.

4. Ft. Worth is much larger than Binghamton, NY where we were living. It is nice to be able to go to many different restaurants and not have to duplicate or have a choice of which doctor we can go to or hospital system. Yes, the traffic is a bit heavier, but the road system is easy and so far we have not had to sit in too much traffic.

5. The Church here is one in major transition. The diocese is the remnant of a diocese that chose to leave the Episcopal Church rather than welcome women and LGBT people in the ministry. I was never able to celebrate here when I was active. When I would visit my family, I gave up on going to church. It just wasn’t welcoming. Now, the change is remarkable. The lay folk of the diocese have found their spines and have thrown off a culture of repression by the bishops and clergy of the schismatics. It is fun to be around recently liberated people who are just learning to be Church. It is wonderful to be around joyful Christians.

Bonus: THE HEAT. I am not fond of heat and I knew that I would find it difficult. Getting into one’s car after coming out of A/C is like walking into an oven. But J. swears by the sun. She loves sitting under the pecan tree or even baking out the permafrost of upstate NY winters. But I love the idea of wearing shorts (even tho I don’t look good in them) and sandals everyday and most of all not having a clock that regiments my day.

Friday Five: Decisions

Songbird wrote:

Since I've been in the midst of a discernment process, I've done a lot of reflecting on how we make decisions. But don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to reveal a dark story about a poor decision, or a self-flagellating story about an embarrassing one. Let's keep it simple and go with five word pairs. Tell us which word in the pair appeals to you most, and after you've done all five, give us the reason why for one of them.






Here they are:


1) Cake or Pie


2) Train or Airplane


3) Mac or PC


4) Univocal or Equivocal


5) Peter or Paul


Try not to pull on the big cat's tail when you answer. :-)

1. Pie as long as it has a good crust.


2. Train: my father worked for the Santa Fe so trains are in my blood. But I would rather travel by air.


3. PC . I wouldn’t know what to do with a Mac, however with Vista I might try.


4. Univocal, I guess. But I think I would rather be equivocal. Therein lies the problem.


5. Paul because I don’t believe he said all that stuff about women! (read Borg and Crossens on this) Paul was a preacher and a passionate advocate for what it means to be a Christian. Peter was the gospel writers’ straight man always using him as a foil for the message.

Friday Five: Memory

I was wondering where the Friday Five was. I got up early to do it. I have been a blogging mood the past few days and wanted to get a head start on it. But by lunch time it wasn’t up. Finally Songbird posted this:

No, it wasn't my turn to do the Friday Five, but it was my job to confirm the new person whose job it is, so herewith, the Forgetful Jones Friday Five, complete with Sesame Street video for those who like such things.

 a)What's the last thing you forgot?

Where I put the %^$&^ mouse.

e) How do you keep track of appointments?

Since we have moved here we have had to use paper and pencil because we couldn’t get our electronics up and running very quickly. So we now have a wall “At a Glance” calendar that is printed in the same town that I used to work in. J’s stuff and my stuff is written on it so we can remind one another what we are doing.
i)Do you keep a running grocery list?

At the moment ,yes. I like to work from a list when I go to the grocery but I hate trying to keep one because I lose them.

o) When forced to improvise by circumstances, do you enjoy it or panic?

At my age, there are few things that make me panic. As an ENFP, my whole life has been one great riff—improvisation is my middle name. It is why I was never a good Lutheran!

u) What's a memory you hope you will never forget?

My mother contracted a kind of dementia that robbed her of her vocabulary and finally her ability to communicate. Now at 65, I am forgetting words. I have always loved words. I grew up on “Increase your vocabulary” in the Reader’s Digest. I sometimes get criticism of my sermons that I use too large a vocabulary. The greatest fear that I have of old age is that I will forget how to express myself.

Ask the Matriarchs

After bidding this blogsite adieu, I have found I need it to discusss things that don't belong on Stone of Witness. This is just one of those occasions-- Muthah+



Ask the Matriarch - When the Senior Pastor Phones it In
Our question this week comes from a lay leader with a sadly common problem: a senior pastor who seems to be biding time till retirement. Our matriarchs have some great wisdom to share. Read on:

I’m a lay person on the governing board of my church, where I’ve been a member about 5 years.
Our pastor is on track to retire within 3-5 years. I’ve had the impression for a long time that he was sort of “phoning it in” and recent conversations with more than one of the church staff indicate this is definitely true with regard to his leadership of the staff…there doesn’t appear to be any. So what ends up happening is that one of the staff who has a very extroverted personality (and who has been a member of the church for many years) is essentially running things…the pastor sits back and does whatever this person suggests. Lots of resentment ensues.

The church has good leadership from an associate and two retired pastors who help out, as well as from dedicated lay leaders. But finances are suffering, numbers are dropping, and the staff and church need more.

What should I/we do? If you were this pastor, what would you hope your board would do?




As one who has just retired, I know that often we get tired or burned out before the date when our pensions begin. It is hard on the congregation and it is hard on the pastor. There are several things that need to be addressed:
1. The sr. pastor’s needs and hopes.
2. The staff’s needs and hopes
3. The congregation’s needs and hopes.
Sr. Pastor’s needs: Often those of us in ministry—and I am guessing that your pastor is close to my age were not trained to take care of ourselves. We were schooled in the tradition of selflessness and sacrifice in ministry and often ignored vacations, self-improvement, continuing ed. and even the support network of colleagues and friends outside of the church. We have also been cosseted and rewarded with esteem and recognition for doing so. So although the thought of retirement seems wonderful and refreshing, it also means such a loss of status and community that it is hard for us to retire. It is a loss that makes us wonder what we have done with our lives. Some of us run from that or we work ourselves to death. Retirement ain’t for sissies!
Another issue is that we are in an era that has shown a decline in church attendance in all the mainline churches. This has never been seen before and it has happened on our watch. There is sometimes an attempt to lay this at the Sr. pastor’s feet by the laity or even the staff but it is a phenomenon being seen in the whole of the Church, not just in that particular parish. It is also part of the conditioning or our particular mindset for us clergy to take this decline upon ourselves. I have seen more depression among the clergy of my age group in the past 15 years than I have seen at any other time in my career. And feelings of failure or an ability to grasp what is happening to the Church faces those of us who are tired and ready to retire. I can understand that Sr. Pastor who is trying to ‘phone it in’. It is hard to keep doing what you have always done only to see it failing or not getting the results you once got. It is hard to face the fact that “maybe you don’t “have it” anymore. But in reality, that is really not what is happening. We need to read Diana Butler Bass or Phyllis Tickle to see that it isn’t our “fault” so that Sr. Pastors can be at the next stage of Church history to give wisdom to the newness that we are being faced with.
But the younger staff needs to know and the laity needs to know that: a.) this downturn in attendance is endemic and not the result of poor leadership b.) this era is unique in Church history in the US and needs both the wisdom of the elder pastor as well as the visions of the younger ordained and lay members to address c.) we have been in an era of anxiety and argumentativeness for the past 20 years and it will take a willingness to listen carefully and with real Christian concern for one another to meet the needs of the parish for the future and d.) there is no quick fix for this situation because it involves the entirety of what it means to be Christ’s to face this issue.
Staff needs and hopes: When on the staff of a larger church it is easy for clergy to get into one’s “own ministry” and fail to see the bigger picture. Also staff members often have a tendency feed on a type of paternalism that sees the Sr. Pastor responsible for all the administration and communication of the staff. Perhaps the staff can collectively work more organically by meeting regularly and charting out what the Sr. Pastor is not being able to do. Staffs need to be more of a family and pick up when one member isn’t doing his/her job so that all can know that the ministry of that parish will continue no matter who is ‘phoning it in’. This allows all the staff the security of knowing that they can be tired, or sick or distracted and that the ministry will be picked up. It is a way that we show we love one another. And it is the way that we can renew ourselves to do that which we were called to. This reminds the Sr. Pastor that all are in the ministry together and allow him/her to reconnect with the congregation and staff.
One particular statement was revealing. The emergence of a single person stepping into the vacuum. This will always happen if the rest of the staff is not willing to work together to provide the leadership. Of course the whole staff, including the Sr. pastor, needs to address the fact that there is a vacuum. This is best done with a consultant and the lay leadership as well as the staff.
The laity’s hopes and dreams: There needs to be an on-going multigenerational team doing visioning for the congregation lead by a member of the staff. It needs to be heavily weighted with the younger members of the congregation yet constantly in contact with the senior members of the parish. The team needs to be reading the pundits of the Emerging Church or other future related observations of Church. They need to write articles for the Church newsletter keeping the entire congregation aware that there ARE new visions in the offing. The retirement of a beloved pastor need not create havoc for our parishes, especially when retirement is 3 and 4 years away. We do not ignore grandmother just because she is old. We let her tell us the stories of how the family developed their love for one another so that it can support us as we address the challenges of your youth.
Even large churches can understand itself more organically than with the organizational models we have demanded of them. They can know themselves as a large family that can love one another just as surely as large extended families can. I believe that we have used the corporate model for churches to our peril. The church must be the family of God and must be willing to love one another when we are doing our jobs and when we aren’t. We need to be willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt and support one another when there are changes in the way we once proclaimed the Gospel. All too often we use the business model in our larger churches so that we can be indifferent or insular or more cut and dry. These are just words for expediency—the curse of the Gospel. The Christian message is lived out in the time ‘wasted’ loving each other, bearing one another’s burdens, helping each other.
Help your Sr. Pastor to re-engage for the sake of his/her soul. Help your staff get honest about the ministry of the whole of the congregation. Help your laity understand that ministry is not the passive reception of the Sr. Pastor’s ministry or the fault of the pastor that the attendance is dwindling. It is the work of you all to live out the call of Christ.

Change of Season

I have been wondering how I was going to communicate in retirement. For some years now I have tried to keep up with two blogs: For A Season and Stone of Witness both at Blogspot. I wish to continue to blog. As an extrovert in a relatively introverted profession and who lives with an introvert, I need some way to express thoughts so that I can come to decisions. It is one of the ways that I formulate and continue to grow and change my opinions, my convictions, come to grips with what is going on in the world, my relationships and ultimately my faith.

For a Season began as a response to The Episcopal Church (TEC) and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Shori’s moratorium on the election and consecration of LGBT persons to the episcopate. It was a mild but important protest against the loading on the back of LGBT persons the real and now outward and readily apparent power plays of some in the Anglican Communion to make the Anglican Communion into something of their own imagination. But that blog morphed into a commentary on the vagaries of serving across denominational lines when I accepted a call to a small ELCA congregation. Those vagaries were both difficult and delightful. They were frustrating and freeing. And on this blog I found some joy and healing that TEC could not provide. I am thankful that For A Season became what it was even though in the past months I have not posted here.

For A Season, as its name suggests was intended to be temporary. The moratorium on LGBT consecrations has been lifted by TEC and I am no longer serving an ELCA church. But I know I have a readership on this blog that I appreciate and do not wish to lose. I need you because you give me a reason to express myself, grow and stay in contact.

Stone of Witness was a blog that I began when I started to work in the ELCA to address issues in TEC and the diocese I was living in at the time. It became a place where I could speak to the changes that were happening in the Church but it was unequivocally an Episcopal site. I knew my other denominational followers did not follow it as closely as they did For A Season.

I have decided to end For A Season and expand the focus of Stone of Witness. A stone of witness is an ancient custom found in Hebrew literature as early as the Jacob stories of Genesis. When one passed by a place of remembrance, a tomb or grave, a battle site, or a place of spiritual significance, people would place a stone to indicate not only that they had been there, but that they had remembered the original event. Cairns marked holy places all over the Middle East much as churches dot our land, or historical markers grab our attention. The simple act of placing a stone not only said that I was there, but that I valued the event or spiritual experience that had happened in that place. The stone tied the placer of the stone to the event, kept alive the event yet said that I would not forget.
Blog writing for me is a form of remembrance for me. It is a way of describing what is important but it is also a place where I return to find sustenance for my faith journey. It is a place where others find themselves addressing the same issues, wonderments, Scripture, events and sharing their thoughts, feelings and taking away something that may have been left. It is a way of communicating in a faceless world, a way in which God is present and visible in our lives and creation.

So I am inviting all my For A Season readers to join me by attending www.stoneofwitness.blogspot.com and perhaps bring a stone of remembrance yourselves. It will not be a singularly Episcopal site. It will be a site at which I will share the thoughts that come and raise their heads at odd moments in the journey of faith and life. I plan to continue to comment on the state of the Church but not only that. And because I am in that life that says is supposed to be retired, I will comment on what that means to someone who probably won’t retire as long as I can think.