The Emporer Has No Clothes

Awake at 5:58 in the morning with my head buzzing and the adrenaline flowing.
Must be time to go back to school!

Here I am back on my blog, knocking down the cobwebs and dusting off the "Open for Business" sign. It's been ages since I've posted anything here that wasn't a sermon. I'm still blaming facebook for it's ability to entice me with short status updates and the lack of the need to go deep with each posting. It's all about quantity, not quality. On FB I can post my daily witticisms and be off and running in a flash. It's hit and run writing. Never mind that I waste hours checking everyone else's status updates and playing Frontierville. FB takes less thought then blogging.

I also blame paper writing and sermon writing. They both sap the creative bug right out of me. If I'm reflecting as a requirement in my daily doings why come here to reflect more?

But I fear the real reason why this blog has been silent is because it's lost its anonymity. Too many people know about it. My family. My friends. People at school. People at church. People in my denomination who are geared to decide my fate in the ordination process in the not too distant future.

It began to get freaky to walk into a family gathering or into church and have people reference something I wrote on my blog. I felt exposed. As if they knew my deepest wonderings and fears while I knew nothing about theirs. I felt as if they had an unfair advantage. I was standing naked before them while they remained fully clothed.
I also feared saying something, or complaining about something, that I didn't want certain people to hear. My online diary suddenly became a very visible act of confession.

It was fine when my daily readers were all fellow bloggers. People who did not know me and who were not apt to know the people or situations that I was writing about. We commiserated in our commonalities because we had the protection of distance and anonymity.
But I'm not sure I want the people I share a pew or a classroom with knowing the deepest longings of my heart.

Which is why this blog has been silent.
Sermons are different. Sermons are crafted for others to hear, and the focus is rarely on me.
But how do I reveal my insecurities about entering the ministry when I know pastor colleagues, some who will decide my fate, are reading my blog?
How do I explore (or rant about) a seminary experience when I know my fellow students are visitors here?
How do I express dissatisfaction with a church, or a pastor, when I never know who will be listening?

Perhaps I just need to forge ahead uncensored and lay it all out there for others to see. To be true to myself and my experience.
Or perhaps I need to change the nature of this blog and prepare for the day when as a church pastor I can no longer hide behind the protection of anonymity.

Why did I tell people I know about this blog if I wanted to keep it as a safe haven?
Because I didn't realize at the time that I needed it to be that.
It came up in conversations, links were sent out in dribs and drabs. I shared it with a chosen few and soon I had no control over who had access to it.
I wanted to share. I wanted people to live vicariously through my experiences. I wanted people to read my sermons and offer their feedback, both complimentary and via constructive suggestions for improvement.
I wanted to bare my soul in a way that my introverted tendencies kept me from doing in real life.
And in doing so I have become closer to my family and my friends who took the opportunity to say "I loved what you wrote, I feel the same way!"

But then people I barely know, or who have power over me, began finding there way here.
And I went silent.

In reality this is probably much to do about nothing.
I've been posting my sermons for a year and a half but with no comments left in that time so I doubt if anyone I know still visits here.
Which may mean it's safe to come back.

I welcome family members and those I felt close enough to share this link with.
And with distant acquaintances and denominational bigwigs alike being subjected to my inane Facebook postings, I'm slowly losing my fear of letting it all hang out.
Since my fundamentalist Christian and Republican facebook friends have graciously put up with my lefty liberal status updates without any dire consequences, I should have no reason to fear doing the same here.
I am who I am.

So, excuse me while I run about with my Swiffer duster, pulling up the shades and opening the windows to let some fresh air in here.
I have one more year as the 40-(something)-year-old Seminarian, and looking back at my initial posts from 3 years ago I realize now how valuable this venue has been for my growth.
I have to write about my journey....so I will never forget how far it is I've come.
Put out the welcome mat.
Things are about to get real busy around here.

Counting Dimes

I hate dimes.
More to the point, I hate counting dimes.
Part of my responsibilities as a keyholder at the bookstore involves counting the money in the cash registers whenever I open or close the store. It’s a tedious job and it’s a particular pain at closing when I have to balance what is in the drawers with what the daily total says we’re supposed to have. It’s usually the dimes that trip me up. They’re small and don’t take up much space which usually leads to our cashiers thinking they have fewer in the drawer than they actually do, which in turn causes them to open and dump more rolls of dimes into the register. They don’t care. I’m the one who has to count them all at the end of the day. And in my haste to get it done I inevitably end up flinging them into the drawer at too fast a rate and thus miscounting them. Unfortunately I never realize this until my numbers are out of balance and I have to go back and count the drawers all over again.
I hate dimes.

As I was mindlessly counting the change in the register drawers last night I realized that I have been doing this particular task since I was 18-years-old. Apart from a two-year period where I had a corporate job, and the year and a half I took off to finish school, I have been counting cash drawers in one retail establishment or another for almost 24 years. That’s a lot of dimes.

There are things that I like about retail – organizing the inventory, creating displays, meeting different people every day – and there are things that I hate about retail – working weekends and holidays, the low pay, dealing with irrational customers – but I’ve been doing it for so long I know that as bad it can get sometimes, I can handle it - I know the good outweighs the bad. For every bad day I have where I’m the only employee in the store with the phone ringing off the hook, deliveries coming in the back door, the registers breaking down, and a line of impatient customers stretching to the back of the store, I know I’ll have good days when I get to spend hours in the back room by myself opening new shipments and sorting books onto the shelves (yes, that it is a GOOD day in my view…I’m a freak, what can I say).

Retail can be hell at times but it’s a known hell.
I can’t say the same about the career I keep telling myself I’ve been ‘called’ to go into.
The ministry right now is a few knowns and a whole bunch of unknowns, and thinking about those unknowns is what causes me to wonder if I’m making the right move.

When I’m stocking shelves and organizing books I realize how much I love these orderly, solitary tasks and I fear that the ministry may be too messy and people oriented for my introverted self.
But then I start counting dimes.
And I feel stuck in a rut, doing the same thing over and over again because it’s easy and ‘comfortable’…..allowing fear to keep me from stretching beyond my current capabilities, denying the God-given talent that everyone keeps telling me I have and holding onto the things that keep me small.

There’s a constant struggle going on in my head between who I am and who I think I’m supposed to be. A battle between my desire for comfort and my desire for change.

In change I find challenge. The desire to challenge myself led me into bike racing, back to church, through college, into the pulpit.
But the ‘challenges’ I take on usually involve setting a goal, designing a plan to reach that goal and taking the necessary steps to accomplish it.
I had a training plan, a racing schedule, a curriculum to follow, a GPA to maintain, an order of service to design, a sermon to craft.
The challenges I seek out rarely require seat-of-the-pants decision making or unpredictable circumstances. What they do require is a huge amount of self-discipline and adherence to a rigid routine.
Some people jump out of airplanes or hitch-hike around the world because they enjoy the spontaneity of these challenges, they like to leave order behind and revel in chaos for awhile. I am the opposite.
I like to take chaos and put it into order.
Which is probably why I love doing puzzles – word jumbles, number puzzles, logic problems, and good old-fashioned jigsaw. Give me a box of pieces and I’ll happily spend hours trying to assemble it into something that makes sense, something that can be identified and labeled.

Even at work I seek out challenges as a means of implementing order.
I’m happiest when I’m squirreled away in a back room somewhere putting piles of random items into organized categories, taking a cluttered and chaotic environment and putting everything in its place.

But what does this say about how I can expect to perform as a minister?
As a minister I will encounter messes that I can’t put into order.
I will encounter situations and problems that are much more complex then fixing a broken cash register or appeasing an unhappy customer.
I will encounter people who will demand much more of my time than the five-minute interactions I have working retail.

Am I going against my personality type and forcing myself into a career for which I am ill-suited just because everyone else believes that I can do it?
Or am I holding onto what I am, who I am, because I lack the confidence and the vision to see that I can be so much more if I let go of the attitude that keeps me small and comfortable, and instead heed the persistent sense of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment that makes me long for change.
I’ve spent my life trying to reconcile these conflicting inner desires.
My need for comfort and routine constantly butts up against my craving for new challenges, new routines, and change.

Change is growth inspiring.
Change is inevitable.
Change is God’s way of showing us that despite our feeble attempts to create order out of chaos the pieces don’t always fit where we expect them to.

Change is good.


Except for dimes...
I hate dimes.

introvert > extrovert

I haven't had a personality test fix in a while so when I stumbled across this one I decided to give it a go (and waste 10 minutes that could have been spent working on my seminary entrance essay).
Surprise, surprise! It says I am an INFJ.
It's that damn "Which do you prefer: going out or staying home?" question...it gets me every time.

Sickie wickie

Well it has finally happened.
After 3 years of being the picture of health I have managed to come down with a cold. A nasty sore-throat,runny-nose,plugged-ears, chills, feels-like-my-head-is-going-to-explode cold.

This cold conveniently descended upon me last night, on the eve of my scheduled day off which I had foolishly agreed to give up so my boss could take the day off instead (*cough...brown nose....cough*).
I also had a dentist appointment this morning to replace a cracked filling, and I have my period, both of which added to the misery of having to yank myself out of bed this morning.

While the dentist put in a temporary filling and gave me the bad news that the tooth needs a crown and possibly a root canal (ka-ching$), in my sick-induced-fog I managed to make another appointment for next week and head off to work, completely forgetting that I was supposed to stay at the dentist for an 11 a.m. cleaning.
While I was so looking forward to having my gums scraped with sharp pointy instruments, I can't say that I'm sorry I didn't add to my ears-nose-and-throat misery by throwing my sensitive teeth and bleeding gums into the pain pile.

I re-scheduled the cleaning for next week right after the crown fitting/root canal.
By then I hope to be over my cold, over my period, and lucid enough to say "no" to all attempts to relieve me of my day off.

Let's put it this way, I felt so crappy today I didn't even feel like opening boxes and shelving books.
I must be running a fever.

You load 16 Tons and whatta ya get?...

….another day older and deeper in debt.

I’m baaaaaaaaaaack!
Actually, I never went away. I’ve been swamped with work/church distractions and my blogging unintentionally got thrown onto the back burner…..the back-back-back burner, the one crusted over with egg bits that no one ever cleans…
Thanks to all my readers who have inquired about my whereabouts….and who have kept my site hits up despite the fact that nothing has changed here since August 23rd.

This working for a living stuff has done made me bone tired!
To quote Bill the Cat: ack!
Being a student-slash-housewife for the past two years was a piece of cake compared to this bringing home the bacon gig. I’m not used to being on my feet for 8.5 hours a day, I’m constantly on the move in the store and shelving books gives me a better workout than any Thigh-Master out there. I’ve mastered the art of crouching in an extended deep-knee bend as I alphabetize lower shelves, and contorting myself into Cirque du Soleil positions to clean the window displays. You can bounce a quarter off my hamstrings they’re so tight.

Of course between working-for-the-man and getting the new Sunday School year off the ground, my blogging life has seriously suffered.
All my physical and mental energy has gone into learning the new job and all of my creative energy has gone into organizing Rally Day, recruiting teachers, and setting up the teaching/curriculum schedule.

Now I finally have a morning off and so far I’ve used the time in a very productive manner….laying on the couch in my Sponge Bob pajamas, eating Cheerios and watching House Hunters, Dirty Jobs and DVR’d episodes of the Ellen show.
Life doesn’t get much better than this.

The new job has cut into my blogging time but it feels good to be back in the working world. I like the job….I’m actually getting paid to organize book shelves, something I’d do for fun, for free, in a heartbeat…..yes, I am a freak, as my SO keeps reminding me.

Of course the first two days on the job included the usual panic moments where one feels like an incompetent know-nothing boob who was obviously deluding herself when she agreed to take such a high-pressure complicated job…….in a bookstore.
There was so much to learn; the corporate policies, the store layout, the ever changing list of items we’re required to push during every transaction: (“would you like any candy, bookmarks or gift cards?”), and the 35 different buttons on the cash register, each of which must be pressed in a particular order depending on the type of sale, the discounts being applied, the phase of the moon, etc.

Then there’s the company’s Rewards club card that we have to get every customer to sign up for (and God forbid we dip below a 70% compliance level), an antiquated computer inventory system that never seems to bring up the book that a customer is looking for and/or give the correct section where it can be found in the store, and a complicated ordering process that we have to foist on the customer if the book they want is not in stock.

Add on top of this a manager who is…ahem….very “particular” about the way things should be done in regards to procedure and paperwork, and who has the patience and tact of a cranky 5-year-old trapped in a supermarket check-out line.

At least we’ve finally opened up the new store in the local mall. After a month of training at a store 40 minutes away it feels good to have a commute that is all of 3 minutes. We spent a week setting up the store and it was a book-lovers dream.
Boxes and boxes and boxes of books all of which had to be sorted and shelved in the correct location. It was like Christmas morning in every box! (yes…..I am a freak).

Now that we’re in the new store I’ve been promoted to “Senior Bookseller/Keyholder” which means in one day I went from bottom-rung-of-the-ladder-newbie to being in charge. I also get the added responsibility of opening and closing the store and settling up the registers at the end of the day…….all for .50 cents an hour more! Whoo-hoo!

Of course my first official act as ‘Keyholder’ was to watch my precious key get shorn in half when I left it in the back door lock while the FedEx guy was shoving a pallet of books through the door. Having to tell my manager that I not only broke my key but the other half of it was stuck in the lock and we’d have to call a locksmith to get it out was not my most shining moment as a newly minted Senior Bookseller. The FedEx guy summed up my situation beautifully when he said: “Geesh, I so do not want to be you right now.”

Always the optimist, I know there’s nowhere for me to go but up!
That and my manager goes on vacation at the end of the week, which means I’ll have time to rectify the inevitable mistakes made by me and all our newbie employees before she returns.

I’ll do my best to keep up with my blogging as the fun ensues!

Time Enough At Last

One of my favorite classes that I've taken as a Religious Studies major was a class on Mysticism. We read the works of mystics in all three of the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity). I kept the books I bought for the class because I enjoyed reading them so much and we nowhere near covered all the material in them in the 3 months we had for the class. So, have I read them in the two years since taking the class? Barely.

Like most book junkies I have a "to read" list that is a mile long. I have an entire bookcase devoted to books that I've bought and haven't yet read. That's in addition to the 2 bookcases that I have full of books that I have read, and the assorted piles of books that are scattered all over the house.
My SO is also a book junkie. She has 3 bookcases overflowing with mixed read and unread and her bedside nightstand is crammed full of books as well. Her books are mostly fiction - fantasy, mysteries, sci-fi, suspense - with a sprinkling of non-fiction: mathematics, physics, language tutorials, and a nice collection of theological books from when she studied religion in Grad school. She's on a vampire mystery kick right now so we have a lot of books around the house with "blood" in the title.
My books are mostly non-fiction - religion, sociology, psychology, science, metaphysical new-age, and travel/adventure memoirs; my fiction collection consists primarily of Star Trek novels, CSI crime dramas, and the Harry Potter books.
Between the two of us we could open a bookstore and have most of the sections covered.

I love books. I'm like Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode where he was locked in a bank vault and ended up being the sole survivor of a nuclear explosion, yet he was ecstatic because now he had all the time in the world to read and there was no one around to bother him. Of course he ended up stepping on his eye glasses and could no longer see his precious books, which prompted Rod Serling to pop up and prattle on about irony and what a miserable man our Burgess was for valuing books over people blah blah blah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…the hell with morals, we're talking about BOOKS here Rod, BOOKS!
Poor Burgess….he was living my worst nightmare.

I tend to read three books at a time. I'll read something inspirational during my morning prayer time, like a sermon collection or theological text - something that is best read and digested in small chunks. Then I'll have a main book which I can pick up at any point during the day (right now it's a Star Trek novel) and finally, I read a few pages from something else theological in nature before I go to bed (but I do it after I read more of my Star Trek book and before I do my nightly Sudoku).

I'm a 'sampler' when it comes to books - a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
I'll go to the bookstore and come home with books from multiple genres and read them simultaneously in little chunks at a time over the course of a month.
My SO is a 'devourer' - she'll find a mystery or fantasy series that she likes and she'll buy the author's entire catalogue at once and read them all over the course of a week.

I tend to read a lot less of my own backlog of books when I'm taking a class that is reading intensive. Since I'm only taking 'clase de espanol' this semester I have a lot more time for fun reading. Which brings me back to the mystics. A few weeks back one of the RevGalBlogPals (I can't remember which one, sorry!) blogged about how despite her best intentions she could never find time to read the works of the great Christian thinkers. As a full-time pastor her day quickly filled up with must-do-now stuff leaving her with little time for contemplative reading. As a solution she set about scheduling her reading time in her daily planner. What was inventive about this is that she'd schedule it as a lunch date with a particular writer, for example: "1 pm - Lunch with Julian of Norwich" or "11:00 am - Brunch with John of The Cross."
So I have stolen her idea and have been scheduling a noon-time rendezvous with the writers I want to spend more time with. Today I lunched with Thomas Merton. On Friday I have a date with Teresa of Avila.
Yea, it's corny (and a bit weird in a theological nerd sort of way) but it works for me!
Thanks blogger-who-I-can't-remember! (and if anyone knows who came up with this idea please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due).

In the meantime, I'm going to go build a bomb shelter for me and my SO and stock it with lots and lots of books…AND an extra pair of eye glasses.

I Think I Love You, So What Am I So Afraid Of...

Eileen the Episcopali-fem my new fave blog friend,
has one of those neat bloggy type personality tests on her site so I took the bait and took it as well. The results I received look oddly similar to the side of the Partridge Family Bus:

Faithful Idealist

I have a mild obsession with taking these online personality tests. I don’t know why… they all tell me the exact same thing: I'm a sensitive empathetic introvert who likes to plan ahead and never leaves the cap off of the toothpaste. I suspect that I like taking these tests because they give validation to traits that I feel are less valued in our society than their counterparts. It's the spontaneity-loving-extroverts who get all the kudos in this world.
When I was in high school the "sensitive introverts" were the nerds, the fringe dwellers, the ones with the targets on their backs that read "cool kids aim here."
When we sensitive types grow up we tend to gravitate towards the lesser valued, and thus lesser paid helping professions - teachers, nurses, social workers, pastors - while our extroverted cousins become CEO's, world leaders, and contestants on Survivor.

I like taking these tests because they tell me "you are normal, you are a valid personality type, you are not a socially stunted weirdo." I may still be a socially stunted weirdo but according to the internets (which means it has to be true) there are enough people out there who share these personality traits to justify making it a "type" complete with neat little color charts, acronyms, and - for the low price of $39.95 - a complete workup of your star chart and a picture of the person you are meant to marry.

My favorite part of the free online tests is the career suggestions section. My type is always matched up with "writer, counselor, clergy." YES! More validation. Why is it when I hear and feel God calling me into the ministry in a thousand subtle and not-so-subtle ways I continually ask for further verification that I'm on the right path, yet when a 20-question quiz on a website that hasn't been updated since June 1997 tells me that I was meant to be a member of the clergy I place a check in the "empirical proof" column?

I hate that I sometimes place a higher value on outside sources of validation than on my own inner sense of knowing - my internal God-o-meter. My God scanner has pegged at the 'YES' end of the ministry dial more times than I can count yet I continue to question its accuracy.
But I find comfort in the notion that this uncertainty is quite normal for those of us who are on this path. At times we stumble, at times we stride, and at times we get distracted by the shiny baubles we pass along the way and we wander off the path entirely. But we keep coming back. I keep coming back. Because God keeps calling. Through the people I meet, through the big and small events of my life, and though the pretty color charts of internet personality tests. Can I get an AMEN?!

...and now here it is, your moment of Zen:

An INFJ minority - Are there scholarships available?

I've taken the Myers-Briggs personality test several times over the years and each time I've come up as an INFJ (Introvert iNtuitive Feeling Judging). According to the test statistics INFJ's make up only 1.5% of the population - the lowest count of the 16 personality types - which is why I've taken the test several times, I keep assuming that I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I went the wrong way on some of the toss-up questions. Maybe I'm not answering as honestly as I should. Nope. The results don't lie. An INFJ I am.

The I and J aside, it was nice to see that the NF result I got after taking the nearly 100 question Myers-Briggs test proved to be accurate after taking a 3-question Blogthings quiz:

Your Personality Is

Idealist (NF) You are a passionate, caring, and unique person. You are good at expressing yourself and sharing your ideals. You are the most compassionate of all types and connect with others easily. Your heart tends to rule you. You can't make decisions without considering feelings. You seek out other empathetic people to befriend. Truth and authenticity matters in your friendships. In love, you give everything you have to relationships. You fall in love easily. At work, you crave personal expression and meaning in your career. With others, you communicate well. You can spend all night talking with someone. As far as your looks go, you've likely taken the time to develop your own personal style. On weekends, you like to be with others. Charity work is also a favorite pastime of yours.

The Three Question Personality Test

Yep, sounds about right.

In fact, in lieu of writing an essay for my seminary entrance application I think I'll just forward the results of all the Blogthings quizes I've taken.
I'll start with this one:

You Are the Very Gay Peppermint Patty!

Softball is the huge tipoff here... As well as a "best friend" who loves to call her "sir"

What Gay Childhood Icon Are You?

Can you hear me now?

I've inherited quite a few quirks from my father (God rest his soul):
I like to leave early when I'm due to be somewhere because you never know what may delay you along the way; I need to consult a multitude of maps before traveling anywhere and I rarely divert from the planned route; I get touchy and defensive when someone points out that I've said/done something wrong; and I hate talking on the telephone.

The first two quirks simply make me punctual and organized which is not a bad thing, and I'm working on overcoming the third (and making progress), but that blasted telephone phobia has hung me up more times than I care to admit (pun intended). I've tried analyzing this fear: I prefer to see people's faces and read their body language when I talk to them so I can better interpret what they're saying and gauge their reactions to what I'm saying; I don't like making calls because I may interrupt my callee while they're doing something important, and they'll either be too polite to say so and secretly loathe me, or they'll be short and abrupt and I'll limp away feeling dismissed and rejected [the line for grad students wanting to do their psyche dissertation on me forms here].
I don't mind receiving phone calls (especially since I got a DVR) and I don't even mind picking up a call and being put on the spot by a fellow church member soliciting volunteers - I've learned how to resist my people-pleasing urge to say "yes" to everyone and to instead say "Let me check my schedule and get back to you."
It's when the shoe is on the other foot that I begin to panic.

I hate asking for help over the phone. I would make the worst telemarketer in the world. I would sit there with my call list and try to analyze the likelihood of my interrupting my callee based on the time of day, their work schedule, the ages of their kids (don't call during bath time or wake sleeping babies), their current physical and/or mental condition (how much of a struggle is it for them to get to the phone), and the day's weather forecast (sunny=they're not home, snowy=they've struggled to get home and don't want to be bothered by phone calls, stormy=stay off the phone when you see lightning). I would then make two calls out of twenty, congratulate myself on my bravado, and call it a day.

I used to careen down mountainsides at 60 mph on my bicycle with less than an inch of rubber keeping me from becoming a permanent part of the pavement….yet it's talking on the phone that scares me. Go figure.

Case in point: yesterday I spoke in front of roughly 200 strangers at the DES induction ceremony, and what did I fret about for the entire day before? Having to make a hand-full of phone calls to find a replacement child-care worker for today's Worship service. Two hundred people in a theatre? No problem….One-on-one on the phone? Fugetaboutit!

Thanks Dad……couldn't I have inherited your love of flannel instead?


….and now here it is, your moment of Zen: