In Praise of Pastors’ Spouses

September 21, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 3 Comments

Tonight I am going to a rehearsal dinner in the role of pastor’s spouse. I’m not in that role very often, since my spousal unit and I are co-pastors. But once in a while someone outside the congregation asks just one of us to do something, and the other tags along in the spouse role. When I go to this sort of thing, I always imagine myself as Elizabeth Bennet, a tactful and witty observer of the human condition. I look forward to tonight, plus I get to get dressed up a little.

The first time I was in the role of pastor’s spouse was pretty horrifying for me. We’d not yet been married for a year, and for various reasons too complicated to explain here, I wasn’t working. My husband was serving as an interim synod co-executive (I kid you not.) We drove five hours for him to be the Honored Guest at the tenth anniversary of a new congregation formed when three congregations merged. (As a side note, it’s pretty good for a merger of three churches to have lasted ten years.) Anyway, when we arrived, we were greeted warmly and I was given a nametag that read “Beth Neel, Visiting Pastor’s Wife.”

I almost cried.

I had been a pastor – a real bona fide pastor of a congregation – for ten years. My husband had never served a congregation, and there I was, thrust into the role of Sunday-school-teaching, jello-recipe-exchanging, cookie-baking wife. We laughed about it – later. Much later.

Here’s the thing about pastors’ spouses that I know: they put up with a whole lot of stuff. They have more expectations put on them than pastors do. Like pastors, they are punished if they really speak their mind at church and so are relegated to commenting on whether the bark mulch needs some freshening up or if the punch was too fizzy last week. If they choose to have firm boundaries about what they will or won’t do at church, they’re criticized. On top of all that, they get to listen to their spouse complain, and rant, and cry, and wonder if it’s time to go sell insurance.

I think – or maybe it’s just a hope – that it’s gotten better for pastors’ spouses with an increase in the number of clergywomen. There are different role expectations for men than for women. And most pastor families I know need for both spouses to work, so there simply isn’t time to be Number One Volunteer at the church. As our society moves more toward gender equality, it’s understood that anyone can bake cookies, spread mulch, teach Sunday School, or direct the children’s choir. They don’t even have to be married to someone on the staff.

Still, it must be hard at times for those husbands and wives. So this week, if you’re at church, don’t just shake the pastor’s hand. If your pastor is married, find her or his spouse and tell that person how glad you are that she or he is here. You really don’t have to say anything else. And if the pastor’s spouse isn’t there, for heaven’s sake don’t ask why he or she is playing hooky.

So, to the pastor’s spouses I’ve known, especially those whose spouses I’ve worked with – Betty, Kay, Kerri, Tracey, John, Anna, Sue, Missy, Julie, Dave, Sarah, Fi, Carol, Barb, Nancy – my hat is off to you. Thanks for being you.

A Perfect Moment

September 15, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 6 Comments

This morning I was sitting in the sanctuary about half an hour before the service started. I came down from the office because the choir was rehearsing one of my favorite anthems – John Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth – and hearing just once in the service wasn’t going to cut if for me. I sat down in one of the transept pews, next to a dear, long-time member of the church who comes early, I think, so she can hear the choir rehearse.

As the choir was making their way through the song, one of my other pastor colleagues came in with a family whose infant son was to be baptized. The parents joined the church at Easter, when the dad was baptized, so there was something lovely about he and his wife bringing their baby to be baptized. The child was as bald as a peeled peach, with a sweet sweet round face. Just enough drool to make him adorable hung on his chin, and he smiled at me while I made silly faces at him.

My colleague was showing the parents the baptism choreography, and as he took the baby, so tenderly, and kissed his little forehead, the choir was singing, “For the joy of human love/Brother, sister, parent child,” I thought: that’s perfect. Everyone is up there practicing for the real thing, and the community isn’t gathered yet to witness it, but I was able to witness this moment when song and delight and love came together just right.

That would have been enough for me, that experience of the holy, twenty minutes before the service started. But the choir finished and need to trot downstairs to put their robes on, and the family need to do one last diaper change before the service. I had gone to the trouble to write a sermon, so I figured I might as well preach.

Those perfect moments are rare, especially when you’re in the business of church and you have a fair amount of responsibility for all the details that go into that one hour a week. Rarely do we conduct perfect worship, nor does God want perfection. I think God would much rather have something flawed and authentic than perfect and over-rehearsed. But those rare perfect moments are like little asterisks at the end of the sentence of a hard week, a reminder that the crap gets meliorated by a gracious, patient God who isn’t too high and mighty to show up for rehearsals.

It was good worship today – not perfect, but good – and as one parishioner noted, it thundered during the baptism, which was cool of the Holy Spirit. It’s so good in the fall to have everyone back together, the fullness of worship and hymns and prayers and rambunctious kids in the children’s moment and all that.

But truth be told, when the service started, I had already done my worship for the day.

Hard Work Does Not a Good Suit of Armor Make

September 12, 2013September 13, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 5 Comments

Often I am surprised that at the ripe old age of 49, I am still learning things about myself. As a younger version of myself might have said, “No duh.”

This week’s insight: I work hard so as to avoid criticism. Sometimes I enjoy working hard because I love whatever project I’m doing. Back in my single days, when I had more free time, I painted furniture. I could spend an entire Saturday painting squiggles and checkerboards on chairs and love every minute of it. Sometimes I enjoy working hard because of the intellectual challenge – writing a sermon or some liturgy, or preparing for a class I’ve never taught and have to create from scratch.

But the ugly truth is that much of the time I work hard so that others won’t criticize me. I look at my to-do list and sometimes prioritize based on how much flack I will get from a person or a committee if I don’t do that particular thing. I anticipate all the critiques that could come my way if I don’t do something, or don’t do something well, and I bust my proverbial butt to create something excellent – not because the thing deserves to be excellent, but because I don’t want people to complain if/when it isn’t excellent.

Here are the flaws in this plan:

1. Some people criticize no matter what.

2. Sometimes my best is not what someone else considers good.

3. If I keep this up, I will become cranky, feel put upon, and likely burn out.

I once worked with a pastor who was adamant about not being a people-pleaser, and let me tell you, he wasn’t. There was a big downside to that, because he wore his “I’m not a people pleaser” t-shirt with pride, to every worship service, to every session meeting, to every staff meeting. But there was an upside, too. He was not overwhelmed when he was criticized. He had really decent boundaries around work. And he made decisions and prioritized not to stave off the critics in the church, but because it was the right thing to do.

Of course I imagine more criticism than would actually come my way. I work in a place where people are rather kind, and thoughtful, and gentle with their criticism, which is usually valid. But my imagination has been working overtime lately, with a few big hard decisions that have been made, and with the start of the program year and a long to-do list. With my overactive imagination has come some edginess, and anxiousness, and definite thoughts of being put upon. And I have put them upon myself.

Last week, just before the benediction, I quoted a line from our closing hymn: “My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.” I really don’t believe God is in the criticism business, that God is in the grace business. So I’m working off taking off that suit of armor, and putting on my dance shoes, to work with grace.

“I know nothing, except what everyone knows –

if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”

W. H. Auden

My husband and I dancing (sorry the video won’t play) at a concert in a park

The Unknown Owl

September 9, 2013September 9, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

This past summer while on vacation, my husband and I took a walk in the woods with our dog. I’ve walked this particular path hundreds of times – the woods are on property my extended family has owned since the 1940’s.

Anway, it was dusk and we wanted to take the puppy out for his evening constitutional. The sun had mostly set; it had been a clear day and it promised to be a beautiful evening. As we entered the woods we heard an owl, and as we walked deeper into the darkness, we heard the owl (or what we presumed to be the owl) following us.

I love owls, and I give J. K. Rowling a good bit of credit for that. I also love them because I think they are beautiful, and they eat mice and insects and make a pretty sound. But for some reason, this owl spooked me a bit. I don’t find the woods scary, and I wasn’t alone, and I love owls, but something was amiss.

It was the puppy. At the time the dog weighed about six pounds. He’s a little thing and always will be. And this owl was following us, and I didn’t know if it was just being friendly or if the puppy appeared to be a tasty morsel.

Now I know most owls avoid puppies for dinner. Or I think I know that. Just writing that I worried that the owl would eat my dog makes me realize how ridiculous the thought was – a bit like that scene from the original movie The In-Laws, where Peter Falk as the maybe mentally imbalanced CIA agents tells Alan Arkin as the hyper normal dentist about the time the giant tsetse flies flew away with the babies from the village.

Still, my husband and I turned around, and I carried the puppy, and we left those woods.

What made it amiss was the realization that I was responsible for a vulnerable creature. Our dog was with us, and we needed to protect it from whatever real predators were out there. The problem is that I don’t know if the predator was real or imaginary.

Everyday people have to decide how to protect the vulnerable from predators imaginary or real. We’re doing it right now with Syria; we do it as we think about how to spend taxpayers’ money in aid programs; we do it as we clarify rights for the mentally and physically disabled. We do it with our kids and with our elderly and with those who look so normal and fine who a few of us know are really in anguish.

The threat of the owl seemed so real; the vulnerability of my puppy was so real. And there I was, at the end of dusk, trying to see what to do.

The Hate Part and the Love Part

August 29, 2013August 29, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

I wonder if we homo sapiens are genetically engineered to hate. Or to love, for that matter.

I suppose our ability to hate could be the monster offspring of the fight-or-flight impulse. In order to survive, we human beings learned to detect a threat, and to run away or defend our turf. Do that often enough and a pattern forms, an enemy becomes a familiar threat. We grow an emotion that is attached to the impulse. Hate is born.

What about love? Where does that come from? People like me who believe in God believe that love is an extra chromosome-like thing that God drops into the human heart. Of course, we believers struggle with God and the existence of hate, too. If God created us in the divine image, does the Divine One have a fight-or-flight impulse? Or is fear part of free will, and part of the development of the human psyche that God allows to unfurl as we march onward? We have free will, therefore, we have fear and hate – that’s the pat answer in my head when those sticky questions arise.

This morning’s glance at the news apps on my I-phone prompted the thinking. Today is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and this morning there are blog posts and headlines and editorials in abundance about the value of that speech and the state of race relations in our nation today. The president and his advisors are contemplating military action in Syria. I looked at a gorgeous and heartbreaking slide show of elephants in Africa being slaughtered for their ivory tusks. The controversy of gay and lesbian athletes at the Russian Olympics continues. Perpetrators of rape in the U.S. and India are being sought and persecuted, while some of those victims die or take their own lives. Miley Cyrus seems to be getting a fair bit of press, too.

Hate abounds, borne out of fear and control and ignorance and a desire for power (which comes from fear and control.) Does love abound more? Is there more love than hate, or are we fighting a losing battle? And should I even use military language to describe love? Is hate easier to see than love? Is it easier to hate than it is to love? Is hate more natural than love?

I want love to win. I really do. I want love to be stronger than hate, I want love to stand up to the racists, and the chemical weapons, and the poaching, and the homophobia, and the violence, and the judgment. I want love to win, but it’s not going to unless we let go of all the crap that is the by-product of that primordial fight-or-flight impulse.

I want love to win, and I want more love. Not everyone who wants love to win shares the same belief system that I do. That’s okay. I know some very loving atheists, and I’d be interested in knowing what they think is the source of love. Is there even a source of love, or is it someone we develop, work on, strengthen, build up?

We’ve been reading Robert Coles’ book about Ruby Bridges with our daughter. I cannot read it without tearing up, thinking about that brave little six-year-old going to school with an armed guard, praying for the people who were shouting such terrible things at her. There was love in that heart; there was courage too. Maybe that’s it: hate is borne out of fear, but love is borne out of courage.

“The Problem We All Live With” by Norman Rockwell

May we have brave hearts.

The God of Second Chances

August 24, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment

(This is a wedding homily for a couple at the church. When discussing the service, which is very simple, the bride commented that it would be great if the homily could be like one of my blog posts. It is posted here with their permission. So here you are, Libby and Randy: may love continue to lead your way.)

We stand here, at the beginning of a new thing today, because of the ending of some other things: the ending of solitude and loneliness, the end of the crush of grief, the end of the fear of loving again. We stand here, today, on this glorious afternoon in this glorious spot of creation, because of second chances, because of this God we have who gives second chances to us beloveds.

The fact that you two stand up here this day says something about your confidence in second chances. With this second chance you kind of know what you’re in for, or what you may be in for – the good and the bad and the heartbreaking of it. But this love, this relationship, this commitment to each other is compelling, and here you are.

But maybe all of this isn’t really about second chances. Maybe it’s not about that at all. Maybe it really is about that stuff Paul described: faith and hope and love.

Faith in each other: the faith that this is a person I can trust; that this is a person who’s been through as much hell as I have and like me has come through to the land of the living; that this is a person I want to waltz with early and often.

Hope that something good was learned the first time around; hope that some of the things that happened before won’t happen this time; hope not that I will change this person, but that I will be changed for the better because I am committed to this person.

And love, that four-letter word we toss about like a frisbee on a spring day. You two know what love is, what real love is. You know how love gets you through the grief and the loss and the disappointment. You know how loves makes a tarnished old piece of life look shiny and new. You’ve watched each other love your parents; you’ve watched each other love your brothers and sisters; you’ve watched each other love and raise your sons. And you admire how each other loves, and you’re inspired by that, and you want to be in the midst of all of that adorable radiance.

We may well be here because of second chances, but really, I don’t think there’s any chance to this at all. You’ve worked too hard to suggest that your marriage is the offspring of whimsy or serendipity or luck. You’ve been loved by people who didn’t want to see you alone; you’ve been encouraged by your family and your friends and some professionals; you’ve been held up by each other. You’ve been wise and patient. And now you get the joy, and the rest of your life, together, and the waltz. A future in 3/4 time: now that’s a second chance.

Prayer of blessing for the marriage

Loving God, we thank you for the gift of this day, and for the gift of love, and for the gift that Libby and Randy are to so many of us. In our gratitude and joy, we ask for your blessing on these two people as they make official their commitment to each other, to life together.

Bless them as parents, as they raise boys into men, and give them patience and wisdom and discerning hearts when the Legos have taken over the living room and when curfews are broken. Bless their sons in this new version of family, and give them patience with their parents, and wisdom, and discerning hearts.

Bless Randy and Libby as professionals in their careers, with a sense of accomplishment and challenge, with gratitude for the talents they have, and with work that is meaningful and rewarding.

Bless Libby and Randy as daughter and son, as they care for their parents and demonstrate all that they have learned from them.

Bless them as brother and sister, as they discover again and again the camaraderie and friendship of their siblings.

And mostly this day, O God, we ask that you bless them as husband and wife, in their care for each other; on the days when everything is sunshine and a good IPA, and on the days when it’s gray gray Portland and the toast burned and washer backed up and tempers are short and relief feels an eternity away. Bless them with joy, at least a drop every day, and sometimes buckets. Bless them with joy, knowing that their joy is infectious, and becomes ours as well. Thank you, O God; thank you. Amen.

The Great Pickle Fiasco, or How I Learned the Hard Way that I’m Not a Domestic Goddess

August 19, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

last year’s pickles

Every year in the late summer I make pickles with my aunt. She’s been making these pickles for years, and everyone in the family loves them, and as she is 82 and probably will die in about twenty years, I decided that I would like to learn how to make them to carry on this tradition.

My aunt is amazing. At 82 she takes care of the old ladies at her church. She goes non-stop, and is gracious all the while. Very little bothers her, and she is generous. For the last three years she has bought the cucumbers as my birthday present, and I drive out to her farm in the country and we sit and visit and scrub and cut cucumbers. Then we mix water with lime and put the cucumbers in the plastic bucket (this keeps them crisp.) Usually at this point I take my bucket home, let the cucumbers soak in the lime solution for a day, then rinse them and soak them in cold water for a day, then make the brine and cook them and jar them and voila, pickles.

But this year because of our two schedules, after we put the cucumbers in the lime solution I left them with her and went off to the beach for our annual church retreat. She soaked them and she rinsed them and she brined them, and on my way back from the retreat, I picked up my bucket of brined cucumbers to take home, cook, and can. Easy peasy, as my daughter would say.

What was the first sign that I should not have pickled today? Obviously the universe was trying to tell me something, but I would not listen. Things had been going so well. I ran into one of my favorite church members in the grocery store. The hardware store stayed open an extra five minutes and I was able to buy my jars before they closed.

Perhaps the first sign was that I couldn’t find the pickle recipe. Or that it took over two hours to get the brine and cucumbers to boil. Or that if you set the dishwasher to the sanitizer cycle it takes about four hours. But really, when the first quart jar of hot brine and pickles broke, I should’ve stopped. But no. I persevered. I had been in a bad mood all day, and I wasn’t going to let some broken freakin’ glass or sticky, sticky counter and floor stop me.

My husband had the good sense to round up the child and the dog and watch tv. I pickled. I only came up with one good line in the whole process: “I like my men like my pickle brine: hot and sweet.” Really, that should have been all that the universe needed to tell me.

The pickles are done. Mostly. I still have about a gallon left but I ran out of jars and trust me, I was not going to go hunt some down tonight. The un-jarred pickles are waiting patiently in tupperware in the fridge till tomorrow when I might buy some more jars. If I do, I will personally test those jars before I give them away. With two quarts of vinegar and nine cups of sugar in the brine, I can’t imagine anything malign would survive, but you never know.

In the first church I served there is a beautiful Tiffany woman of the Ideal Woman described in Proverbs 31. I hated that window. As a piece of art, it is gorgeous. As an exemplar for womankind, it stinks. It reminds me of this imaginary rival I have created in my mind, an amalgam of clergywomen I know and envy. This woman I’ve created, we’ll call her Sophia, is like the 21st century version of Proverbs 31. She is talented. She runs 10ks for charity all the time. She isn’t beautiful but she is striking, which is way better than being beautiful. She is published. Her husband has a fantastic job in the for-profit world so they can go on really lovely vacations and tithe the full 10%. She not only pickles cucumbers, but she makes homemade bread for her kids’ sandwiches and whips up fresh mayonnaise to go on it (except she calls is aioli.) She weaves. She never, ever, ever wears clogs with jumpers and tights, or sweaters with birdhouses on them. Her congregation adores her, as do her children and nieces and nephews. She’s been through therapy so she’s very centered. I desperately want to be her friend but I hate her so I can’t.

All I could think today, while trying not to get any broken glass in the pickles jars, was that I am so not Sophie and I should really give up trying to be. I have no desire to run a 10k, or a 5k, or a block. I cannot make pickles. My dinner tonight consisted of almonds and red wine, with a few bites of the homemade granola I thought I should make while waiting for the brine to boil. I begged off putting our daughter to bed so that I could clean the kitchen, but really, so that I could write this post.

One of my mentors used to ask after a fiasco, “What have we learned from this?” She always elongated the verb – “what have we l – e – a – r – n – e – d ?” Well, Margaret, this is what I have learned:

That red wine and almonds do not a good dinner make, nor are they sufficient nutrition for enduring pickling fiascos.

That sometimes the best course of action is to leave the kitchen and go watch tv.

That no one really cares if I make pickles or not, so this is all on me.

That this will make a great story starting about tomorrow, and that next year, my aunt I and will make pickles again.

And sometimes, that stained glass window you see is really just a stained glass window.

this is the window

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

August 15, 2013August 16, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 5 Comments

I was talking with a church member yesterday, who told me the following story. Over the weekend she and her family had gone down to the waterfront, where they encountered a person wearing a Darth Vader mask riding a unicycle while playing the bagpipes. Let me repeat: a person wearing a Darth Vader mask riding a unicycle playing the bagpipes. Only in Portland.

All of which got me to thinking: we really are fearfully and wonderfully made, and then we add to that. Some add tattoos and piercings; some add pounds, stretch marks, cellulite. Some add hair color, some shave their heads. We add contact lenses and titanium hip joints and pig valves in the heart. Our hearts add other stuff too: grief and joy, regret, disappointment that washes everything to a dull grey, hope for something better the next time around.

As a pastor, I think a lot about the community of fearfully and wonderfully made people, and the “I” and “we” of that, and the tension of individual desires and needs and the common good of the community. Even after twenty years in ordained ministry, I struggle with pastoring well to everyone, knowing that that is an impossible yet necessary (but maybe not necessary) goal. Several years ago, Duke Divinity School professor Stanley Hauerwas observed that in the modern day, ministry had reduced to a pastor being “a quivering mass of availability.” While that is the shortcut to burn out, there is something about the pastor being available, or present, or caring for, our fearfully and wonderfully made folk.

And we aren’t always. Every time I drop the pastoral care ball, I lose sleep, and the Tums rest on the bedside table for a while. I hate letting people down, and I do it, and so there’s some therapy in my future, I think. And I wonder what role grace plays in all of that.

Do I have enough grace to rejoice that someone delights in riding the Darth Vader/Bagpiper unicycle?

Do I have enough grace with myself not to wallow in my regret and self-judgment?

Am I holding out grace as the tie that binds the fearfully and wonderfully made community together? Do I teach that, and do I practice that?

It takes grace to ride a unicycle, and to play the bagpipe. I’m not sure I would say that grace is needed to wear a Darth Vader mask in public – courage, maybe, or divine foolishness. I think there was some grace involved in our creation, too – fearfully and wonderfully and gracefully made. Amen to that.

Too Soon

August 7, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 11 Comments

There are certain things that are not supposed to happen while on vacation. It is not supposed to rain (which it did.) When visiting a quaint beach town, one is not supposed to encounter protesters at the local post office who want to impeach the president and make their point by drawing a Hitler mustache on the leader of the free world (which also happened.) And young adults whom you once knew as teenagers aren’t supposed to kill themselves.

As much as we might pretend to vacate the world or our own little realities from time to time, life presses on. Good things happen while we’re away, and tragic things too. I shouldn’t be surprised. I am not Queen of the Universe; the world doesn’t stop because I have set aside a little sabbath time. But some things are hard no matter when they happen, like the death of a person you still remember as a bright, crazy-talented, slightly pimply teenager in your church’s youth group.

I served that church ten years ago, and have since lost touch with so many of the folks there. I was a bit of a tertiary staff person to the youth program, but when the youth went on a retreat and they needed a pastor to celebrate communion, I was on deck, so I got to know these kids. “These kids” – they are now adults, holding down jobs, finishing grad school, getting married and starting families and starting careers. When I hear about them through the ecclesiastical grapevine, or one of them friends me on Facebook, I am so glad and so proud. I have no reason to be proud, but I am. They are on their way, and doing great, or at least doing as well as any of us might hope to, given our flaws and foibles and the general human condition.

But this kid. This kid. My heart aches for his parents and his sister. For his friends, too, because I know that particular class from the youth group was tight. Maybe they knew what I did not, that mental illness was a burden he carried, along with his talent and friendship and handsome gawkiness. I picture his parents – devout, faithful, loving, possessing a patience and concern I never realized. I picture his friends – the one who worked at Starbucks and made me a latte at 7:00 on a Sunday morning as I made my way to church. The woman who was smarter and more beautiful than she ever realized. The guy with the crazy hair who got ordained and now wears tabs on Sunday mornings. The one who went into the Peace Corps. The one who’s a doctor. All of them, tonight, grieving. Grieving the death of a peer, a friend, maybe someone they would even call beloved.

This is about all I know tonight: that he left the world a little more beautiful because of the talent he shared. That he left the world a little more fragile because of that cusp of anxiety and depression that he teetered on. That he woke us all up to the present, to the gift of right now, the gift of old friendships, and the gift of community.

My prayers are with that community tonight. Rest in peace, all.

Eleven Things, or There About

July 27, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 7 Comments

I’m readying myself and the household to be on vacation for two blissful, or differently stressful, weeks, and so I’m musing about the pastor/congregation relationship. Here are eleven things (or there about) that I would want my parishioners, past and present, to know.

1. I love you. Sometimes it might appear that I don’t like you for a moment or two, or that I am exasperated by you, but I love you. As my more evangelical friends would say, Jesus has put it on my heart to love you. A pastor loving her parishioners is a non-negotiable in Jesus’ book. So know that.

2. The hand-shaking line after worship is not the best time to catch up or receive pastoral care. I might try to gently move you along and say we can talk at coffee hour. But if you really need pastoral care right then and there, I will listen and ignore the growing line or have the deacon wave everyone else along, because of #1.

3. I have to have a “come to Jesus” conversation with Jesus every time one of you gets cancer, or loses a job, or loses a loved one suddenly, or gets a big ol’ pile of crap thrown into your particular fan. Jesus never says much back, but I feel slightly better afterwards, until I think about you and my heart breaks a little.

4. I really, really, really appreciate how you give my PK (preacher’s kid) room to be herself, and how you don’t have any expectations that she will be Good and Perfect and Completely Spiritually Formed because both of her parents happen to be pastors. Thank you, too, for delighting in her as much as we do. When she is a teenager, can she sometimes live with you when she hates me?

5. I am spectacularly uninterested in being the Best Church in Town, or having the Best Choir, or Sunday School, or Youth Program, or Service Opportunities, or whatever. Other churches are our partners in bringing God’s realm to earth, not our competitors for people or money or good Yelp scores.

6. It hurts my heart when you say, “I wanted to call you about xyz, but I know how busy you are.” I apologize if I appear too busy sometimes, or let my to-do list be a higher priority than you.

7. I do not know everything and I do not have all the answers and if I start acting as though I do, please call me on it. After all, God chose what is foolish in the world to confound the wise!

8. It is a privilege to be invited into the sacred moments of your life – your baptisms and your weddings and your hospital stays and your hospice time and your funerals and memorial services. I am honored to receive your trust, and I will do my best to channel a holy presence in that moment.

9. Pay attention to how often you comment on a clergywoman’s appearance and how often you comment on a clergyman’s appearance. There’s a reason we all wear robes on Sunday morning, and it’s not because black is slimming. (Well, maybe just a little bit because black is slimming.)

10. Some of you think that four weeks of paid vacation and two weeks of study leave is excessive. Please remember that clergy (like many others in the world) work weekends. And we treasure our Saturdays when our kid is not in school and we might not have to work and we get to have family time.

11. Thank you for four weeks of vacation and two weeks of study leave. I am grateful for time away to relax and play and reflect. I might swear a little more than usual, too. (I recently read that people who swear a lot tend to be honest and trustworthy, so you want me to do this, I know.)

That’s it for now. Really, it’s all about #1, so maybe I should have stopped there.

Hold Fast to What Is Good

A blog and some art and some liturgy