I'm feeling kind of lonely today. (Everybody say, "Awww...")
I'm not sure if it's self-pity or what. It may just be the result of my brain playing connect-the-dots, combined with boredom leading to excessive introspection.
For your consideration:
Dot #1 - While we were setting up for Breakfast on Sunday, E. came in carrying a pan of hashbrowns she'd made. It's funny, because when I first caught sight of her, I thought she looked happy. She seemed glad to be there.
There was a lot of fun noise and activity going on and I lost track of E. Danny was doing a sound check, B. was cooking scrambled eggs, two people were manning the toasters, coffee flowed like milk and honey. You know, that vibe that happens when something good is just about ready to start.
But a few minutes later, E. came over and said, "I want to show you something." She took a piece of paper out of her pocket: single-folded card stock with a photo on the front of a woman smiling out through E.'s eyes, and on the back, the name of a funeral home. Inside there was a name and a date and a poem.
I said, "Is this your sister?" Yes.
The date on the paper was 3 weeks previous. E. had only been told and given the card yesterday. Nobody had told her that her sister died. She took both very hard.
She was upset and I saw her show the card to a few people around the room and get roundly and soundly hugged.
At Dinner on Wednesday, she showed us a paper on which she'd sketched out a memorial service she wants us to have at church on Sunday. She's chosen songs and a prayer and written a short eulogy. We're going to get some flowers and I've found a good poem. I also need to learn a country song called, "Too Old To Die Young".
Dot #2 - Later during breakfast, a woman came to ask me whether I was the "counsellor for the church" because she'd been at church the week before and thought that I might be. I told her not really, but we could go for coffee sometime if she needed to talk.
She said that would be great because she's depressed. She said she'd become "very spiritual" since her son died. He was 7. We talked a little longer until she started listening to Danny introduce a song and mumbling responses to what he said. Then she drifted away.
She has a reputation for being very intense and hadn't been getting along with her neighbours very well.
So I confess having mixed emotions when I found out at Dinner that she'd been "taken away to the hospital".
Dot #3 - I was doing something in the basement of a church here in town. We had tables set up and the guy who does some of the maintenance there told us to leave them that way because they'd use them Saturday.
It turns out that Saturday is the 'ordination' service for a friend of mine. (If I'd been there on Sundays, I'd have known.) Friends and family and congregants will get together to witness the ceremony and there'll be a bit of a party afterwards, I guess. It's the final step in a process that he started several years ago and I'm happy for him.
Dot #4 - While we were working in the church basement, somebody mentioned that the other day there'd been a lunch for some of the Ministers in the area. They get together every now and then to talk and pray. That's all I know for sure, because I've never been. But they keep doing it, so it must be good.
That was the final dot that brought me back to the first one. A circle, of sorts.
Like I said, maybe it's self-pity, but all of a sudden I felt very lonely.
My first passion for the Motel is, and always has been, to build a healthy, organic, growing, grace-filled church. I can see it in my head and feel it between my shoulder blades. A group of people who love Jesus and know they're loved by him doing what they do together. Part of that would be worshiping using whatever native creativity we've pooled. Part of it would be doing good and making the world better. Mixed in with both would be having fun. Sounds an awful lot like what we have, actually.
But two years ago when I met someone who had resources and know-how that I thought would help in that building process, he actually said, "There's no such thing as a woman church planter." Um, OK. Never mind.
I've never thought of myself as a 'pastor' type and would never use that title. (All my team members just sighed with relief. If you've visited, you may know why.) My official title is "Figurehead". Which is fun and we joke about it, but somewhat problematic. If you look at a figurehead on a ship, doesn't she look awfully alone?
I've always been a person who looks for new horizons, who is comfortable opening doors and taking chances and going first. But at the same time, there's something in me that wishes terribly to have a club to belong to. A bunch of people who, maybe, are the pioneering type like me. Who've done all this before, who I could learn from. Who could say, "Oh, yeah, I remember something like that. Here's what we did..."
I've never helped lead a memorial service before. I don't want to screw it up. I've never been mistaken for a counsellor before. Where do I draw the line? It's one thing to be in over your head, quite another to be beyond sight of shore.
And yes, I know I have a team of people to work with who are wise and compassionate, but they do come at this from a different direction than I, and than each other.
So I find myself doffing my Davey Crockett coon-skin hat and wishing ever so much that someone would invite me to the pastors' lunch so I can pray with others walking a similar, if different, path. Knowing full well that they wouldn't really understand my path, since they've all had the training and mentoring that I wish I had. That they've all had the 'laying on of hands' followed by light refreshments, and that they all see me as just a woman who feeds people and our church as something that's not quite a church.
So why do I care? Not sure. But I do.
But I don't. I know that when we get together on Sunday morning to remember the life of a woman we've never met out of love for a woman we care about, that it's church. And even if I do screw it up, I'll try again. Because I can't not.
r
I'm not sure if it's self-pity or what. It may just be the result of my brain playing connect-the-dots, combined with boredom leading to excessive introspection.
For your consideration:
Dot #1 - While we were setting up for Breakfast on Sunday, E. came in carrying a pan of hashbrowns she'd made. It's funny, because when I first caught sight of her, I thought she looked happy. She seemed glad to be there.
There was a lot of fun noise and activity going on and I lost track of E. Danny was doing a sound check, B. was cooking scrambled eggs, two people were manning the toasters, coffee flowed like milk and honey. You know, that vibe that happens when something good is just about ready to start.
But a few minutes later, E. came over and said, "I want to show you something." She took a piece of paper out of her pocket: single-folded card stock with a photo on the front of a woman smiling out through E.'s eyes, and on the back, the name of a funeral home. Inside there was a name and a date and a poem.
I said, "Is this your sister?" Yes.
The date on the paper was 3 weeks previous. E. had only been told and given the card yesterday. Nobody had told her that her sister died. She took both very hard.
She was upset and I saw her show the card to a few people around the room and get roundly and soundly hugged.
At Dinner on Wednesday, she showed us a paper on which she'd sketched out a memorial service she wants us to have at church on Sunday. She's chosen songs and a prayer and written a short eulogy. We're going to get some flowers and I've found a good poem. I also need to learn a country song called, "Too Old To Die Young".
Dot #2 - Later during breakfast, a woman came to ask me whether I was the "counsellor for the church" because she'd been at church the week before and thought that I might be. I told her not really, but we could go for coffee sometime if she needed to talk.
She said that would be great because she's depressed. She said she'd become "very spiritual" since her son died. He was 7. We talked a little longer until she started listening to Danny introduce a song and mumbling responses to what he said. Then she drifted away.
She has a reputation for being very intense and hadn't been getting along with her neighbours very well.
So I confess having mixed emotions when I found out at Dinner that she'd been "taken away to the hospital".
Dot #3 - I was doing something in the basement of a church here in town. We had tables set up and the guy who does some of the maintenance there told us to leave them that way because they'd use them Saturday.
It turns out that Saturday is the 'ordination' service for a friend of mine. (If I'd been there on Sundays, I'd have known.) Friends and family and congregants will get together to witness the ceremony and there'll be a bit of a party afterwards, I guess. It's the final step in a process that he started several years ago and I'm happy for him.
Dot #4 - While we were working in the church basement, somebody mentioned that the other day there'd been a lunch for some of the Ministers in the area. They get together every now and then to talk and pray. That's all I know for sure, because I've never been. But they keep doing it, so it must be good.
That was the final dot that brought me back to the first one. A circle, of sorts.
Like I said, maybe it's self-pity, but all of a sudden I felt very lonely.
My first passion for the Motel is, and always has been, to build a healthy, organic, growing, grace-filled church. I can see it in my head and feel it between my shoulder blades. A group of people who love Jesus and know they're loved by him doing what they do together. Part of that would be worshiping using whatever native creativity we've pooled. Part of it would be doing good and making the world better. Mixed in with both would be having fun. Sounds an awful lot like what we have, actually.
But two years ago when I met someone who had resources and know-how that I thought would help in that building process, he actually said, "There's no such thing as a woman church planter." Um, OK. Never mind.
I've never thought of myself as a 'pastor' type and would never use that title. (All my team members just sighed with relief. If you've visited, you may know why.) My official title is "Figurehead". Which is fun and we joke about it, but somewhat problematic. If you look at a figurehead on a ship, doesn't she look awfully alone?
I've always been a person who looks for new horizons, who is comfortable opening doors and taking chances and going first. But at the same time, there's something in me that wishes terribly to have a club to belong to. A bunch of people who, maybe, are the pioneering type like me. Who've done all this before, who I could learn from. Who could say, "Oh, yeah, I remember something like that. Here's what we did..."
I've never helped lead a memorial service before. I don't want to screw it up. I've never been mistaken for a counsellor before. Where do I draw the line? It's one thing to be in over your head, quite another to be beyond sight of shore.
And yes, I know I have a team of people to work with who are wise and compassionate, but they do come at this from a different direction than I, and than each other.
So I find myself doffing my Davey Crockett coon-skin hat and wishing ever so much that someone would invite me to the pastors' lunch so I can pray with others walking a similar, if different, path. Knowing full well that they wouldn't really understand my path, since they've all had the training and mentoring that I wish I had. That they've all had the 'laying on of hands' followed by light refreshments, and that they all see me as just a woman who feeds people and our church as something that's not quite a church.
So why do I care? Not sure. But I do.
But I don't. I know that when we get together on Sunday morning to remember the life of a woman we've never met out of love for a woman we care about, that it's church. And even if I do screw it up, I'll try again. Because I can't not.
r
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