Thank you Holy Spirit

Today was an excellant day at Smalltown Congregation.  During the summer our attendance goes down considerably and the organist and I joke around about the Sunday where it will only be the two of us.  Todays crowd was small but what was amazing was that the people who needed to hear my sermon were there.  Can't go into details but suffuse it to say the Holy Spirit was hard at work this morning.

God is good all the time!  All the time God is good!

One Year Ago Today...

Anniversaries are such odd days.  I'm just bumping along doing my thing when I look at the calender and realize that one year ago this day I was in a much different place.

One year ago today I had ended my ministry as Associate Pastor at First Church.  I remember being devastated as my position ended due to church budget cuts.  It was a painful process to leave this church, especially around issues of severance pay (they didn't want to give me any) and tying up the loose ends to the particular ministries I lead.  The last three months felt like one long drawn out fight, a fight to be dealt with justly, a continuous fight with the senior pastor who was trying to diminish the impact I made in the time I served there, and most especially a fight to not drown in the sadness of the grief being expressed by the congregation.

It was like I preached last Sunday:

John 16:20 Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. 21When a woman is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.

Grief is hard because the process is very much like a woman in labor.  It felt like my emotions were out of control however what I learned is that on the other side of grief is transformation.  Thanks be to God, I am in a much better place.

BTW, here are some garden pictures for your enjoyment!

My neighbor dog friend who likes to stop by and say hi on his walks.

The tomatoes seem to be doing well.

A little basil to go with the tomatoes.

A fine looking pepper plant

Beans beans the musical fruit, the more you eat....oops wrong kind of beans.  ;)

525,600 minutes

My computer hard drive died. I called the tech support for HP and a really nice man in India talked me through trying to revive the hard drive but alas, it flat lined. He told me that he will send me a new hard drive but the data of the old hard drive is gone, data irretrievable. I took the hard drive to geek squad and they concurred, they called the old hard drive a "brick".

The last time I backed up my data was exactly one year ago. It is as if one year of my life disappeared in the blink of an eye. One year of sermons, outlook calender appts, outlook contacts, downloaded songs, documents, check book entries etc.

I panicked, thinking of all that I had lost. I especially mourned the loss of the pictures. Music can be re-purchased, I can scan the hard copies of my sermons, but pictures cannot be replaced. There were the pictures of me and my kitty on the day I gave her over to God. There was a year of holidays, vacations and get togethers with friends, a year of gardening and most of all a year of transition.

Yesterday I asked a techie friend of mine where I could get data recovery services dirt cheap so I could get the pictures. He suggested I download a program called cardrecovery and see if I could retrieve my deleted pictures directly from my camera. It worked!! Over 400 pictures retrieved!

Then I was looking through my thumb drives I found that I had copied the "my documents" folder into one of my drives because I was going out of town and needed to refer back to some old sermons to write a sermon for a neutral pulpit.

Also on the thumb drive was a back up of my financial records that I did two months ago. Why did I do it on the thumb drive, don't know. But boy am I glad I did back it up.

My appointments and contacts were already on my PDA. Just a matter of syncing to make everything all right again.

Retrieving my data turned into a reflective process as I discerened what data I want to recover and what I am willing to let go of. There are pieces of data that I wanted to delete permanently but knew I needed to keep, such as my letter of resignation when my position was eliminated at my last church, or the sermon I wrote for the candidating sermon that went terribly wrong. These documents, pictures, appts, etc reflected the moments of great joy and devasting pain of the last year. I wanted to erase the painful things from my memory banks however I realized that these events have shaped me and made me realize that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was.

In this past year, my life has suffered a few crashes however I was able to find recovery from many different and unexpected sources. Throughout this year I was able to reconstruct pieces of myself into a new whole knowing that through it all, the love of my friends and family was solid. I felt the grace of God through those dearest to me and for that I am thankful.

I re-wrote the song seasons of love as part of my reflection. Enjoy.

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes...how do you measure a year in the life.
In sermons, in meetings, in friends with coffee.
In pictures, in music, in worship, in trips far away.

In 525,600 minutes...how do you measure a year in the life.
How about love? How about love? Measure in love? Seasons of love.

525,600 minutes!
525,000 journeys to plan.
525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man?

In truths that she learned,
or in times that we cried.
In bridges he burned,
or the way that he died.

It’s time now to sing out,
tho the story never ends
let's celebrate remember a year in the life of friends.
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Measure in love. Seasons of love! Seasons of love.

A RevGal meet up

A fun time was had by all at the Portland Maine RevGal meetup. Mary Beth was visiting Songbird in Maine over the weekend and Songbird invited me to come visit them at her house. Originally she invited me for Monday lunch, however being a pastor in between churches, I did not have a Sunday commitment and I've always wanted to hear Songbird preach. Well I got a twofor on Sunday because not only did I get to hear Songbird preach a wonderful sermon at her new church where she is serving as an interim, I also got to hear MaineCelt preach another lovely sermon at Songbird's other church. Usually when I attend two worship services on one Sunday I get tired, however both these sermons captivated me. As MaineCelt would put it, they definityly have the gifts and graces for ministry.

After worship we went to SongBird's for a yummy brunch and then sat in her living for hours talking about life, ministry and music. It was good to be in the company of friends old and new!

I've decided to change my attitude about my being in-between ministry jobs. I realized through prayer and discernment that God is giving me a much needed break from ministry so that I'll be fresh and optimistic for my new church whatever it will be. I've asked God to help me let go of the pain of my previous pastorate so that I would not let it effect my future ministries. This time of not serving a church is God's way of letting me heal. And now I'm enjoying some of the benefits of not working for a church such as being able to hear my colleagues preach and two day weekends for the first time since I got ordained!

Melancholy Sunday Morning

Sunday mornings before church used to be a time of excitement and anticipation. I'd be crafting a pastoral prayer or doing the final touches on my sermon if I was preaching. I'd wonder at what I was going to wear. I'd thank God for the privilige of leading yet another service.

This morning being an out of work pastor I woke up melancholy. I love being a pastor so much that the though of endless Sundays not leading worship depresses me. I'm contemplating going to a worship service today, but I am having a hard time just being in the pews rather than being up front.

No hot prospects on a call...settled or interim at this time. Where God do you want me to preach your word and preside over your Eucherist. Why aren't you throwing me a friggin' bone for your sake.

It doesn't get much better than this!

Today I taught Sunday school. We played a game that taught children about the things that people who are homeless have to deal with everyday. It was so much fun and after class we all got candy prayer beads!

During service today I couldn't help smiling from ear to ear. I love my job as a pastor and most days I can't believe I actually get paid to do what I do. Blessed be for the ability to live out my call.

Well gotta go use those beads now.

Hail Mary full of grace...crunch crunch.

Ahoy maties

I am back from the RevGalBlogPal big event. Grace was abound throughout the trip and I basked in the glory of God's love throughout the trip.

I am blogging on the fly but I will write more later. The one thing that this trip has given me was God's love through the care and love of these beautiful women that I met on this cruise. The care and hospitality and genuine unconditional love has transformed me.

I was nervous going to this event because I was going on a cruise ship with people that I only met online. Group events scare the bejesus out of me because I've always felt like the odd person out, on the edge of the group hungering to be in the inner circle. When I get anxious about belonging, I become obnoxiousness, trying to do what I can to steal the center of attention because it is where I feel safe. With this group of women I didn't feel a need to do that. I knew in my heart that I was acceptable just for being me. I didn't need to be "on" or to perform for them to get them to like me. What a blessing!

Thank you wonderful women for showing me your grace and your love. You are all in my heart.