burp!

Posted on August 19, 2011 by emacaulay

It is said that in some cultures the best compliment given a chef is a healthy burp after a luscious meal.

These days, I am stuffed full of the meal that is life and it is burping season.

My birthday was yesterday. I began it with my beloved crafting strawberry pancakes. There were no other creatures stirring in my house (of the two legged variety, anyway) so we were able to begin the day quietly and sweetly. The ground of a fine love is a very fine thing upon which to build happiness. This I know.

I spent the morning doing my Wednesday things: calling my mom, sharing bible study with my men’s bible study group, doing the sorts of things that an impending worship bulletin asks of me, and savoring the great good of the best staff in Christendom.

Lunch was shared with a dear friend with whom my heart has spoken honest and true for many years. And then, my 21 year old son and I scooted around town on the pink scooter of happiness and found ourselves with our feet in the water at the end of the dock on Lake Calhoun. Time with him is precious. It was great gift.

The day was brought to a close with a great feast with kin. Interspersed throughout were birthday wishes ala Facebook and cards and I went to bed stuffed with happiness.

Today was equally fine. I gathered with an interfaith group seeking to mobilize people of faith to defeat the upcoming marriage amendment that seeks to squelch the rights of same-gender-loving persons to join in marriage. I met at table with a wild and passionate children’s ministry team. Earlier in the day I prayed and strategized with a fine crew of United Methodists who are seeking to build new faith communities.

Really, how does a person burp gratitude for so much?

finitude

Posted on August 9, 2011 by emacaulay

I have read much about it and I live it through my work, but no second-hand living can articulate what my being is grappling with in these days: finitude.

I have a birthday this month. I will be 54. That number in itself is not all that noteworthy, but the awareness of limits on a body heretofore game for anything is sobering. Sleeping on the ground in the BWCA was more remarkable to me in the morning than it has been in the past; remarkable meaning painful! I carried canoes and toted packs and savored living in my body and in the savoring I was aware of creakiness new to me. I will bear no more babies. My laugh lines will bear ever more powerful witness. And gravity…well, real it is.

There is a flailing around within me of late. What is it I am called to do with the sweet miracle of the years I have? I am in the life-cycle breath between launching children and welcoming grandchildren. I am in the sweet place of gained confidence and earned life lessons. I am seeking to listen listen listen for what it is the Holy calls to me to explore. So far, the only answer I am given is “what is”; I am called to be present to what is.

My tendency is to launch myself into much. I have dashed down roads to school and career and child-bearing and rearing of same and I have inhaled life and its fullness with great gusto.

I find myself in the familiar mode of scanning the universe for the “what next” of life. I have written for catalogues for Doctoral programs (compatible with my pastoral schedule – I’m not leaving ministry!). I am reading professional publications seeking the next fascination or adventure. I am seeking seeking seeking.

But. But perhaps this roily itchy time is the time to digest and savor the much of what has been. Perhaps this is the time in my life when I will “afford” the Yoga classes I have longed for and the friendships I have tended shallowly. Perhaps, after eight years in a church that has demanded constant juggling to lead I can take deeper breaths and trust that the Spirit breathes and frolics with greater freedom with and through a congregation pastored by a less harried woman.

I will admit to a bit of anxiety.

It takes greater spiritual discipline for me to “be” than to do. It has always been so.

Perhaps this is the season for being present to the now; the precious irreplaceable now.

Perhaps, if you find yourself facing finitude and its provocations, you might join me in being present to what is.

No work for cowards, that. I will welcome your company.

It is deep soul-mulchy work for this soul at this time: aware of time, honoring time, savoring time, loving time, trying-not-to-clutch-at-time, time.

rhythm change

Posted on July 28, 2011 by emacaulay

On Sunday eighteen of us leave for a Boundary Waters Canoe Area adventure. There will be thirteen youth and five adults. We will base camp outside of the BWCA the first and last nights in order to be together. For two nights, we will be groups of nine apiece in the BWCA.

I have been part of bringing youth to the BWCA for thirteen years of my fifteen years of ministry. It never fails to move me. Watching youth unplug and open to water and stars is a holy gift.

For the last seven years, my partner in crime has held camp together. He is great with kids, handles me well (ask anyone, it is a necessary skill involving coffee provision and humor), and sets a powerful tone for our communal life together.

This year Alex isn’t going with us. He is ill with some confounded thing so he needs to remain home. I’m missing him already.

We settle into rhythm in our lives. We find partners who make us better leaders and better people. Often we take them for granted, these co-journeyers. In their company, we take up our parts and know the good of our companions and adventures are embraced with a sense of confidence and gratitude. When the rhythm changes, we notice.

This year, I am partnered with other great adults who have participated with me in these camps for years. We’ll do fine.

But we will miss the sarcastic and steady presence of he who needs healing.

elemental wonder

Posted on July 23, 2011 by emacaulay

“The hearing ear and the seeing eye, The Lord has made both of them” (Proverbs 20:12).

Sometimes it feels like the advertising industry and our culture conspire to keep us distanced from our bodies: we perfume them and pill them and manipulate them (and why the use of the word “them” when our bodies are our very selves?) to remain compliant and (yeah, right) controlled.

And then we step away from all that and become students of our flesh. For me, becoming reacquainted with wonder is one of the huge gifts of embarking on a Boundary Waters trip.

Suddenly, with the first water-dipped paddle, awareness grows that this “thing” we walk our brains around in is an essential and elemental miracle. And, it is fragile and capable of amazing feats and aches, both.

I have just returned from a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota. I went with eleven other women from our church (two groups) for four nights.

Looking at maps and planning routes is part of the fun – sort of like looking at travel brochures, only better, because imagination is the only visual available. Tales shared by others about great routes or lakes are guidance.

And then, after months of imaginings, the route unfolds before you. The remembered weight of a canoe balanced on your shoulders is reality, and the real work of carrying your house and provisions in a pack is commenced.

This trip featured some awful portages (a portage, for the uninitiated, is a trail connecting one lake with another). They were rocky, steep, muddy and many, and we did them with a goodly chorus of laughter and muttering.

Our destination was a lake six portages in. We set up camp in a gorgeous spot and savored our efforts through the torrential thunderstorms (five plus inches of water during one of them!) and hot days. Our return trip was full of white-capped winds. It was not pretty.

We worked. We lived. We laughed. We were so blessed to be creatures aware of the wonder of bodies able to lift and move and we were able to relish days during which we let go of agenda and life swirl.

Sitting around camp fires, sharing meals under a minuscule tarp with rain sheeting from the sky, enjoying conversation circles while bobbing in a crystal lake, waking through the night to the movement of the moon, and marking the wonder of ankles that support, knees that bend, arms that propel and bellies that laugh is elemental wonder.

Savoring the uniqueness of the Holy as it lives in each person in the group is reminder that we carry within us essential grace fired by the imagination of our Creator.

I return from BWCA trips so full of gratitude. Immersion in elemental wonder revives and reminds.

The swirl of life is real. So too is the amazing wisdom and strength of the flesh.

humanity vow

Posted on July 9, 2011 by emacaulay

Sometimes reading the morning paper is a remarkable dunk into the absurd.

Today was.

It was reported that presidential candidate and US House of Representatives member (from MN) Michelle Bachman has signed an Iowa Christian group’s “Marriage Vow”. Part of the rhetoric to which she joined her name includes a statement that has me head waggling yet. Offensive is an understatement:

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.”

The document also calls for banning same-sex marriage and pornography, as well as maintaining that women and children’s safety hinges on (and only on? my question) heterosexual marriage.

Hmmmm, where to begin?

We are to know, according to the document and according to the rhetoric washing over us relentlessly is that the answers to our considerable social problems are best handled sans government. Which is befuddling, given that considerable time and effort was taken by our government (with an impending and eventual shut-down of our state government hugely real) to maneuver an amendment calling for marriage as available to only a man and a woman.

What the document signed in Iowa seems to imply is the reason for the crumblings of the American dream is the erosion of a one man one woman family.

The quote above seems to imply that if only we were back in the days of slavery, well then children would have two parents (never mind that they were owned as property and could be sold at the whim of the “property” owner).

If only one man and one woman were married women and children would be safe! Never mind that women continue to make nearly 1/4 the salary of men. Never mind that the realities of physical violence against women are real both within and without the bonds of marriage. Never mind that nearly 1/5 of the children in our state live in poverty and that the guidelines for what makes for poverty is $22,000 for a family of four. 1/5!

I don’t know if the 1/5 have a man and a woman present in their home. What I know is that we are an increasingly broken people. What I know is that while our children go without food and early childhood education and live with the stress that is the daily reality of poverty, the issue, it seems to me, is not mandating what gender their care givers are.

The “Marriage Vow” is a dodge. My opinion.

The issue, it seems to me, is who are we as followers of the Way? Who are we?

I’m reading a great book: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. In it, he speaks of how it was St Patrick was able to share the good news of the gospel by way of how he lived, how he spoke to others, how he stressed the inclusive and expansive grandeur of God evidenced in the good of earth and humanity and when oh when have we heard that voicing of what it means to be a follower of Jesus from our political “Christians”?

We live in a time when a barrage of rhetoric is meant to shut down the asking of questions, the naming of pain, the noting of increasing disparity, the mining of the teachings of our faith that would have us to know that the kingdom of God is not created based upon the one sure foundation of one man and one woman joined in holy matrimony.

The kingdom of God is created when we each; each of us different, each of us passionate about the vision preached by Jesus, each of us willing to claim a common desire to cease this nutsy-making rhetorical mud fight (gee, am I mud fighting here???), each of us willing to look around us at the faces and lives of the neighbors who are children of God and see what is real and respond in the ways taught by Jesus. Those teachings are pretty clear.

Marriage is based upon living partnership in such a way that the fragile is tended.

Our “Marriage Vow” ought consider the fragile family of God’s beloveds.

What is needed, it seems, is a “Humanity Vow”. It is the vow we claim as our own when we claim kinship with the Christ.

God grant us the courage and the heart for the living of these days.

impasse

Posted on June 17, 2011 by emacaulay

It’s getting tense here in Minnesota. We aren’t alone.

The ideology war with its thuds of rhetorical chest thumping is starting to scare us but good. Democrats and their seeming love of throwing money out the window and Republicans with their seeming love of order sans compassion are in a stare-down that could mean chaos here in weeks. The state government threatens to grind to a halt if compromise cannot be reached.

We have no idea what ripples will turn into tsunami pain for many if this shut down occurs.

Both “sides” cheer their standard bearers on but oh, there are lives in the mix held together by the strands of services offered by programs in danger of being slashed. So too are lives held together by a functioning state government.

I have no answers. What I know is that in this, as in so many things, the answers are found not through lobbing imprecations across tables and airwaves, but through sustained and respectful honoring of the boundless truth that is breathed through creation by the heart of the Holy.

What we are taught by Jesus is that we are to love our God with all we have and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. That means my neighbor’s children who need food, care, and excellent schools. That means my neighbors who are elderly and my neighbors who are Republican and my neighbors who are Democrats and my neighbors who reflect the shine of the Holy. Their well-being is mine to claim as my own. That’s God’s truth.

I seek to believe that people of both parties run for office because they care about liberty and justice for all. They are asked to do painfully hard work. So I’m praying. I’m praying for them and for us all that we might become a people with un-stuck hearts, open ears, willing spirits, and humble wonder.

We have been given so much. How will we live?

A day in the life

Posted on June 14, 2011 by emacaulay

What do pastors do? Well, on this Tuesday I:

Met with the Nominations Committee to staff all committees.

Wrote worship for two services.

Spoke with a parishioner about a pastoral care concern.

Interviewed an incoming intern and discerned with him how to match his gifts with the needs of the church.

Dropped in on a birthday party for one of our small group leaders.

Fine-tuned a job description for a full-time Spiritual Formation Director. Planned for how and where to post said position.

Answered tons of emails and questions.

Recruited some children’s sermon providers.

Ran a staff meeting; more birthday cake for a staff birthday (hard work, someone has to do it!).

Had a meeting with a parent about baptism.

Wrote articles for the newsletter.

Prepped for a Bible study class on Isaiah.

Made hospital calls.

I think that is it.

Part of what makes the vocation of ministry so fulfilling for me is the jumble of gifts that get tapped and adventures that get entered into.

A day in the life is never dull.

bittersweet gratitude

Posted on June 11, 2011 by emacaulay

Three years ago our church welcomed a new pastor. The new pastor was new to the church. He was not new to me.

Max and I became friends during seminary. We gravitated toward each other because of a shared love of good coffee, deep laughs and the zing that is life in community. Max visited my family in Duluth, and when I heard about my move to Richfield, it was Max who hosted me and my family as we looked for a new home.

So when it became real that he was going to be appointed here at Richfield, I was excited for the church to partake of his goodness and light.

It has been three years of enjoying his voice in song and leadership, his great ability to connect with people and the ring of his laugh.

And, he is moving to pastor a church excited to receive him.

Tomorrow, on Pentecost Sunday, we will bless him on his way. We will worship and hear him preach and share a meal together in fine UM pot-luck style (only one English-speaking service tomorrow at 9:00; the Vietnamese service will be at its usual 11:15 time in the sanctuary).

Poet Anne Sexton wrote that “The joy that isn’t shared dies young”. The joy we have shared whilst in the company of Max will bless this church into its future. It has a life that will sparkle the air for always.

So we pray traveling mercies and gratitude for joy shared; taken into heart and unloosed through our own willingness to live light and love and our intention to share the communion of joy so often as ever we can.

Blessings, Max.

play

Posted on June 5, 2011 by emacaulay

This weekend we celebrated evangelism through bounce house and band.

On Saturday our church parking lot was swarming with a rainbow of neighbors who came to pet animals, eat popcorn and soak in funky music. We hosted a community carnival as a way to welcome folks into the flat-out fun that is community in Christ. There were local celebrities in the dunk tank, church-made egg rolls and grins all around. Four hours and a sunburn later, I went home via the air. My heart was lofted.

This morning we led worship at the Lake Harriet band shell. On the stage were an amazing assortment of musicians and two oh-so-giddy Pastors. In the benches were church folk and neighbors who were there to take in the opportunity to praise God with a sailboat regatta backdrop. The swallows in the rafters of the band shell joined in the song of thanks and together we celebrated life in the wonder of creation and community. The potluck that followed was shared with all who had hunger. We met new people. We broke bread in an elemental meal of abundant thanksgiving.

Again, the road back to home was flown.

It is so good to peel back the walls of the church and share the heart that beats through our ministry. It is so good to share who we are and what it is that grounds us.

We reached out not through some grim sense of ought but because we are so blessed we can’t sing or taste it enough.

Holy play makes for good. It was a romping weekend.

It was church.

Living Waters

Celebrating the Sacred

Category Archives: women in ministry