Beloved:

            Interviewer:  “What do you know about family systems?”
            Me:      “Quite a bit.  It was part of my training and I use it in ministry.”
            Interviewer:    “So you have some experience with families in crisis?”
            Me:      “Sadly, yes.  But also experience with families overcoming crisis.”
            Interviewer:    “Have you had much experience with writing and deadlines?”
            Me:      “I currently have two writing deadlines a week.”

             Lots more questions later, I finished my first job interview in more than twenty years.  I’ve applied to be a CASA, a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate for kids whose futures are being decided by the county court.  Some are still with their parents and some in foster care until the system decides if their home is safe, if their parents want to and are able to care for them.  If I’m approved, my job will be to advocate for the kid by interviewing everyone involved and writing up a recommendation report to the court.  Each case takes a year or more to process through the system.  It begins with thirty hours of training, with homework and exams. 

             I got a peek at the training curriculum and thought, “Wow, pastors should be great at this.” 

             But not just pastors – any adult with a tender heart, thick skin and 12 business-day hours a month would be great at this.  Family systems and report writing can be learned from a book.  Compassion and a desire to serve cannot.  While I’m not sure that reserve has tapped out in our community, I know it’s hasn’t tapped out in me. 

            My kids are married and in college.  I’m running out of excuses not to exercise.  I’m too old to have another baby.  It’s too soon for me to be a grandma.  But I still have all this kid energy in me.  CASA sounded perfect.  I’m pretty sure I’ll pass the criminal background check.  The interviewer seemed to like me.  I’m on pins and needles waiting to find out, hopefully tomorrow.  I’ll let you know how it goes. 

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette

Beloved:

                                        the words don’t always come
                                        for the story needing told
                                       So feelings hang in mid-air
                                       and I flail for something, anything
                                       solid
                                         ~ march, 2016

       That was back in March after sudden loss and bad news.  Both still ache, but it’s spring now and spring changes everything.  Spring forces the fact that life is stronger than death, that something good rises from every heartache. 

       Joy is no more speakable than grief nor any less substantial.  Joy suspends what grief would otherwise submerge.  The falling and rising of baptism, I suppose.  That which dies but does not stay dead.  Cannot stay dead in light of spring wherein all things are born again and again and again, however much we imagine we shall never heal. 

I pray this beautiful, beautiful day find you full of joy, spilling kindness all about. 

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

Beloved:
 
    “As I pass through every day, my respect and receptivity to others help determine the caliber of world which we share. There is no moment in which I cannot make a positive contribution.” ~ Julia Cameron, Blessings
 
    Caliber of world is what caught me ~ the idea that our quality of life in any given time is no more or less than the degree of human respect being given and received.  And while I’m as dismayed as everyone else at the indecency of contemporary American politics, it also occurs to me that never in my lifetime has there been greater opportunity to make a positive contribution.  The decency bar has rarely been lower.
 
    WCOWWJLM doesn’t fit easily onto a bracelet or roll gently off the tongue but is yet worth considering.   That is, What Caliber Of World Would Jesus Like Most? I doodled on it awhile and came up with a whole list.  A world shot through with gentleness, I think, along with kindness, integrity, abundance, respect, calm, security, generosity, health, patience, attentiveness, helpfulness, acceptance, beauty, laughter, good food, friendship, animals and peace.
 
    Hardly exhaustive but enough to go into any given day on days like these.  We live in whatever world we create.  I feel happy and brave knowing we have everything we need to create the world we want.  Go be amazing today. 
​
~peace & prayers,
pastor annette

​“At a certain level housekeeping is a regime of small kindnesses, which taken together make the world salubrious, savory and warm.  I think of the acts of comfort offered and received within a household as precisely sacramental.  It is the sad tendency of domesticity, as of pity, to contract and of grace to decay into rigor and peace into tedium.  Still, it should be clear why I find the HomeStead Act the most poetic piece of legislation since Deuteronomy, which it resembles.” ~ Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books
 
Full disclosure ~ I had to look up the word “salubrious.”  It means favorable to the health of mind or body….  All the same I read this page on a day full of the easy, happy tasks of housekeeping.  I put away lots of winter clothes and carted off the rest.  I mailed a care package to one kid and picked up contact lenses for another.  I rearranged houseplants and cut some tulips.  I sold some eggs and took some shoes to be repaired. 
 
When I sat down to rest and read there was Robinson, reminding me to take none of it for granted.  But rather, savor every salubrious moment, treat every tiny task as a sacred kindness, in its giving as well as its reception. 
 
I find it profoundly comforting to imagine how many people, at any given time the whole world over, are making tea, folding sheets or rocking a baby.  Or of all the cups and saucers and toys and tools being handled and washed and repaired, taken out and put away.  Day after day after day.  That these small acts, repeated mostly without thought are the very things that bind us together as human beings.  Because in their exchange we are honoring each other’s most humble needs, most humble selves. 
 
I pray the day finds your hands at fine work and your hearts at good grace. 
 
~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette