The Feast Day of Saint James

Today we celebrate the life of James, one of the 12 disciples, the first to be martyred (Acts 12:1 tells us by Herod's sword). He's known as James the Greater (to distinguish him from James the Lesser, James the son of Alphaeus). He's the brother of John. He was one of the first to join Jesus, and Jesus chose him to go up the mountain to witness the Transfiguration. He is the patron saint of veterinarians and pharmacists, among others.

Lately, I've heard more about St. James, as more people become aware of the pilgrimage that involves walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points. Walkers who cover 100 km or cyclists who cover 200 km get a compostela, a certificate, and a blessing.

St. James is associated with scallops, and if you look at a map, you'll see that the pilgrims arriving from a variety of beginning points to the same end point does look like a scallop shell. There are now travel agencies that will help pilgrims, but I've been told that it's not hard to set up one's own journey. There are all sorts of lodgings along the way, all sorts of support.

In 2023, I finally saw the Martin Sheen/Emilio Estevez movie, The Way, which features this pilgrim's path. I'd love to actually walk part of it, but it seems increasingly unlikely. But life has taught me never to say never. If I could go on the Santiago or Iona, I'd probably choose Iona, but who says I would have to choose.

I'm not the only one who finds the idea intriguing. In 1985, only 690 pilgrims made it to the end point, the Cathedral of Santiago de Campostela; recently, 179,919 pilgrims completed the journey. The most hardcore pilgrims walk barefoot. I would not be one of those pilgrims.

A few years ago, one of my good church friends figured out how to walk part of the Santiago de Campostela, how to make sure her pets and children were taken care of for 2 weeks, and off she went with her husband. I found her journey so inspiring. She kept a blog while walking and has continued to keep writing posts in her "regular" life.

Let us remember that we're all on a variety of pilgrimages, even if we're not leaving the house. Let us remember that God is with us.

End of Music Week

A week ago, I'd be doing the last tasks to get ready for Music Week:  the cleaning, the final shopping, he laundry, some cooking.  I was grateful to have so much in place--food in the fridge, clean clothes--because the pace of Music Week feels more jam-packed every year.

Yesterday was a day of final rehearsals and then concerts and worship.  I went to the kid's concert--I am amazed at how the director is able to take a group of very young children, all under the age of 8, and get them focused and making good music.

I was able to record the Adult Choir during worship--they had 4 pieces for the prelude part of the service and 1 piece for the response to the Confession, 1 piece as a response to the Bible reading, and 1 piece for the Offertory.  If you'd like to hear them, I posted each one separately on my YouTube channel.

I was the Communion assistant, which went well for the most part.  Closing worship was held at the Chapel, which has no HVAC system, so we were all sweaty.  I was briefly worried about the chalices slipping out of my sweaty hands, but happily, that didn't happen.  As I walked back to the altar, some of the grape juice in the very full chalice sloshed and dripped on the floor.

The other team communed the choir, while the chaplain and I communed everyone else--including the bishop of the NC Synod.  I always find it profoundly moving to commune my mom and dad.  I'll get another chance to do that tomorrow--they're coming to Bristol on their way home.

We spent the afternoon helping our friends staying with us get on the road and then straightening a bit.  Mom and Dad came back in the late afternoon for dinner--delicious hamburgers, which we got cooked on the grill just before a thunderstorm came through.

After a week of late-ish nights, it was good to have an early bedtime.  Today we will head a different direction on I 26.  We're going down to Spartanburg to see our fixer-upper house and to see the campus of Spartanburg Methodist College.  We'll have some lunch at some point, and then we'll head back.

It's wonderful to have a slower ending to Music Week, otherwise yesterday afternoon could have been a crashing come down.

Thursday Night Hymn Festival

Last night we all headed over to St. James Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, about 15 miles away.  We trooped over there for the Music Week Hymn Festival.

Why did we need to change location?  In part, because the organ is better.  In part, because more people could come.  In part, because we've always done it this way, at least for the past decade or two or three.

Last night, at times, the organ took center stage.  Even if you think your church has a magnificent organ, it's likely 2-5 times smaller than the organ at St. James.  I know this because my mom is an organist, and at her last church, she was the organist who helped do a capital campaign for a new organ.  I thought it might be the same size as last night's organ, but she said it's about a quarter of the size.

David Cherwien was the organist and director of the Hymn Choir last night.  He showed us all the ways the organ could perform, and I was happy with the way the music illuminated the hymn itself.  At times, I wanted less organ and more singing, but I am aware that my preferences don't reflect the whole of the attendees.

Many of the hymns were familiar, but some were not.  Almost all of them came from the ELCA hymnal, the ELW (which stands for Evangelical Lutheran Worship).  As always, I am struck by what a wonderful resource that hymnal is.  Like my brain, like a computer, I don't use nearly as much as is there.

Last night, with every hymn, the audience had verses to sing; some years, the hymnfest is more like a concert, but not this year.  I thought about how unusual it is for me to sing in a group where I cannot hear myself singing--what a delight!  I took the picture above before the pews filled, and because it's Music Week, everyone was singing.

It's been a week full of delights, and I'm sad to see it come to an end today.  Happily, we are likely to be able to come to Music Week again next year.  I feel very fortunate.

Thursday Weariness

I am weary this morning, but in a good way--in several good ways:

--I've gotten to hear a lot of good singing/music and even done some singing myself.

--I've seen a lot of folks:  old friends, family members, people I recognize from past years.  I've had lots of conversation.

--The work still needs to be done:  grading, sermon writing, thinking about papers due in a few weeks.

--I've done more sketching than usual.

--We've started every morning with a vigorous walk.

--Each day since Sunday has contained one worship service, and usually 2.  And they are so well done.

--There's been Bible study:  villains in the Bible (the serpent, the Pharoah, David, and today, the Crowd).

--We've had good food.  Much of it was pre-prepped, but it still needs to come out of the refrigerator and go back in.

--I am thankful for the dishwasher, which we've used twice a day most days.

I am thankful for this time out of time, this time that reminds me that there's more to life than maintenance of body and of structures.

Music Week Day 1: The Contrasts and the Contradictions

The last 24 hours have been full of contrasts.  On the one hand, it was the first full day of  Music Week at Lutheridge:

--Monday began with a long walk with the S. Florida church friend who is staying with us for the week.  Up and down hills, but I didn't really notice them because the conversation was deep and meaningful.

--Morning worship was also deep and meaningful.  I LOVED this prayer of the day:  "On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, not revenge.  He offered bread to feed and to forgive.  On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took a basin of water to sooth [sic], liberate, and heal.  Help us, so washed and fed, to do the same."

--My inner English major was intrigued by the above spelling error, which made me think of soothsaying, which I continued to think about all day.

--My inner English major also was there for Bible study, which will take us to some villains in the Bible.  We began with one of the biggest, the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  One participant talked about the devil possessing the serpent, which sent me to the text, which reminded me that it's not in the text.  Ah, Milton, how your version has taken over everything we think we know about the story--which is what I said, in more non-English-major accessible form.

--One of our last questions for Bible study was "What does the serpent get out of this?"  I keep misspelling serpent, and this morning, I thought about serpent and repent, and now I want to write a poem, "The serpent repents."

--I was there for general choir rehearsal.  From the very beginning, this group can sing.  They sounded amazing, like they had been practicing for weeks, instead of just beginning together.

--The director has interesting ways of describing what he wants:  "You just sang the color dusty rose.  But it was the dusty rose of a piece of tuille or a curtain so faded you can see through it.  Now try it as a deeper rose color."  I immediately thought of a creative writing class idea, having students write a description and me bringing in different fabrics and colors and saying, "Now write it this way." 

--We had good meals together at our house.  The prep work was easy because I did most of it in advance.  It's becoming clear that I have prepared too much food--happily, much of it is freezable.

All of yesterday happened against a back drop of World Cup drama, both the games themselves, and the rumors of a phone call pressuring the officials to change a decision about red cards.  And then, this morning, the U.S. team lost anyway.

I got up this morning to news not only of that sports/political development/scandal, but also of the one in Maine.  If I left that sentence standing by itself, would future me remember which scandal I'm referring to?  In the interest of history, let me note that there are new rape charges against the Democratic candidate for Senate.  The charges that were already known (inappropriate sexting, inappropriate use of force against girlfriends) by the time of the primary would have been more than enough to disqualify him in the not-so-distant past.  Sigh.

I don't have a pithy way to end this post.  After all, if we're lucky, every given day is full of these contrasts if we just know to look:  deep friendship and deep spirituality and the farcical elements of modern life particularly the political bits and pieces, along with song and sustenance of all sorts.

Midway Points: Inspirations and Revelations

I am grateful to have been blogging for so long, grateful for many reasons.  I often go back to re-read old blog posts--by often, I mean at least two or three times a week.  I go back to see what I was thinking/doing, to find recipes, to find rough draft ideas and inspirations, to spark my brain when I feel I have nothing new to blog about.  This morning I found this blog post about a poem idea I forgot I had for a poem called "The Holy Spirit Takes a Holiday"; I haven't finished the poem, now, a year later, but I still have the rough draft.

This meandering made me think about a summer project, making a rough draft into a finished draft each week.  And yes, that's one of my new year's aspirations that has fallen apart as the year progressed (this January blog post has details about my specific intentions for 2026).  But that's the joy of early July--there's still time to adjust my trajectory.

Speaking of inspirations, during my driving to the grocery store yesterday, on NPR's Fresh Air, I heard an interview with romance writer Kennedy Ryan.  She's the first African American to win the RITA, the highest romance writing award.  I started thinking about romance novels and wish fulfillment and the voices and faces that aren't characters in romance novels.  I thought about older women characters who might get one last shot at their dreams coming true.  Romance novels need an obstacle, and the inability to see oneself as romance worthy could be that obstacle.  Another potent one would be that one dream is coming true, and the inability to believe that multiple dreams could come true at once.

If I wrote romance novels with older female protagonists, I'd approach it as alternate life Kristin explorations.  But I was also attracted to this idea, from yesterday's interview, about creating an imaginary town, a place that becomes an escape, like all those clergy novels of the 90's.

Before I head out on my morning walk to beat the coming heat, let me also record this snippet from last year's blog post on this day:  "I wonder where we will be at the halfway point of next summer. Hopefully I will be meeting with my candidacy committee to proceed to endorsement, which is usually a halfway point to ordination, but in my case, I'm doing things a bit out of order. At Lutheran seminaries, students would do CPE much earlier, often in the summer after the first year, and then they'd get to endorsement sometime in the following year, before internship (year 3 of seminary) and the last year of seminary."

Last year Kristin had no idea how much would have changed and for the better.  My candidacy has now transferred to a different synod, which means I can progress towards ordination more quickly.  A year ago, I was expecting to have to do a part-time internship which would last two years, in addition to needing additional seminary classes, which would mean that summer of 2028 would be the earliest I could be ordained.  Now I am on track to be ordained in the first half of 2027.

Last year Kristin had hopes that she might get a tenure track job at Spartanburg Methodist College, but she would have assumed that it probably couldn't happen soon.  And now I am an Associate professor on the tenure track.

This morning, I'm feeling a bit fretful about the electrical work happening at our S'burg house--we bought all sorts of fixtures thinking that the installation was included in the expensive cost to rewire the house, only to be told we'd get an update on Monday.  Does this mean a proposal/invoice, as it sounded on the phone with the scheduler?  Or just an update on timelines?  It's tiring.

Tiring, but fixable--let me remember the saying that I first heard in one of Anne Lamotte early books, when one of her friends said that a problem solved by an infusion of cash is not really an interesting problem. It's especially not a problem when one has the money.

The sun is up to begin the day's roasting--let me go for my walk.

Life/Spiritual Lessons at the Dermatologist's Office

Yesterday, I went to the dermatologist.  I came home and made this Facebook post:  "The intense heat and sun of today takes me back to a high school time, similar weather, when high school Kristin said, "Hey, if I start now, maybe I'll have a good tan by the time we go back to school" -- which is why later life Kristin had to have another spot biopsied today. Happily, it's on my shoulder, not my face, so even if it needs more cutting, it's bearable."

I am supposed to go to the dermatologist every 3 months because of my melanoma diagnosis in December.  Because of that diagnosis, because we missed the significance of that spot for 18 months when we thought it was a weird bug bite, my dermatologist PA now biopsies more than she might otherwise, a mindset that I encourage.

She's a very kind PA.  I apologized for being sweaty.  She told me about the people who ride their bikes to the dermatologist and thus, are more sweaty than I will ever be.  I apologized for being fat, and she said, "You're in great shape," while the MA nodded enthusiastically.  I do realize that plenty of people are fatter than I am, but it still feels strange to have enough flesh in places that the very professional PA needs to move aside to inspect.

Well, that's likely too much information for the multitudes  one or two people still reading this blog.

But I also want to add that she also said I have great skin.  In some ways, she's correct--for a woman who is about to be 61, I do have great skin.  For a woman who has spent a lot of time in the sun with no protection of any kind, I do have great skin.

I am working on feeling the same thing about my extra weight--some days are easier than others.  When I'm out every day, walking and eating berries and appreciating the world in other ways, I feel fine about my body.  When I don't compare my current body to past years, I'm better than when I think about how many miles I could once run/jog.

As a wise yoga teacher once said to me:  "Quit comparing yourself to everyone else.  It won't help."  It's not solely yoga teachers who know this, of course.  Most world religions contain this wisdom somewhere.

It's a life lesson I'll continue to say to myself, probably on a daily basis.

Fixer-Upper Report

My brain has been ping-ponging all over the place.  I wish I could say that I have seized summer, that I have put together a new book length volume of poetry--or even that I've written lots of new poems.  I wish I could say that I've written some short memoir-ish/short story pieces.  I have not done any of these things.  

In the next month, I will need to write a paper for my Paul class, and finish a huge writing project for the next phase of candidacy in the process to becoming ordained.  My hope has shifted to having time for Creative Writing in the fall.

In the meantime . . . 

We are trying to get ready for guests next week for Music Week at Lutheridge, while at the same time, doing some stuff that the fixer-upper house in Spartanburg requires.  My spouse is on his way there so that the inspection of the electrical rough-in can happen (I have to stay here because I have a dermatologist appointment in my every 3 months after a melanoma schedule).  We went down there yesterday and came back with a shopping list.

We stopped at our local Lowe's in Arden, which is always fairly deserted, compared to similar stores in South Florida.  We chose ceiling fans, a light for the kitchen with a track with 4 lights, lights for over 2 bathroom vanities, and a small light for the fall.  We also chose a hood for over the range, which costs far more than I wanted it to cost.

When we bought the house, I was not thinking we would replace the ceiling fans.  On the contrary, I was happy that the house had so many ceiling fans.  But they're very old, working to varying degrees.  The electricians will install them if we bought new ones, so we went ahead and replaced most of them.

When we looked at the house, back before we bought it, I thought that we could paint the walls, refinish the hardwood floors, and move in.  And we could have done that.  But even though the house has solar panels, the wiring inside the house hasn't been updated:  most of the wall plugs are 2 prong.  We could have used adjuster plugs in every spot, but it would mean that the house wasn't grounded--not the safest for humans or for fire risk.

When it's time to sell the house, these improvements may pay off.  We're not living in a part of the country where old houses are bulldozed for new building to happen, so future buyers are likely to be happy about the house having been rewired with a new HVAC system put in.

And in the meantime, these improvements will make the house better for us to live in too, during the 4-5 days a week that we're there during the school year.

A Week Ago, Getting Ready for TEEM

A week ago, I was thinking about how I might be feeling in one week, when I was back from travel, back from my first time at a TEEM intensive.  I am feeling the way I hoped I would be feeling.  I am feeling relieved and hopeful--and not too exhausted.

A week ago, I was getting ready to pack.  One of the benefits of driving is that I can overpack.  I ended up with three extra tops and sweaters/overshirts, which was fine with me.  I decided not to bring long pants or skirts; I assumed we'd be in a casual mode, and happily, I was right.  The tops I brought were dressier, so if I had gambled wrong in either direction, I wouldn't have felt too out of place.  Including me, we had 6 females, and none of us wore dresses or skirts; only 3 of us wore shorts, and I was the only one who wore long shorts each day.

Why do these sartorial choices still seem so important?  Because they are, in so many ways.  Why did I spend so much time planning?  Because I was going to be far away from home, and I have the type of body where I can't just go to Target and find clothes that will fit me.

I felt comfortable in my own skin, and that doesn't always happen for me, even at this relatively late age of almost 61 years old.  We were a wide variety of people from a wide variety of backgrounds--that also helped.  It was so different from some of my seminary classes, especially the in person classes that happened during the day, where I was the oldest student and often the only one who had already had a career.

I was the only one with a PhD, but I'm O.K. with that--it's always been my situation in many different phases and parts of my life.  I did try to be conscious of how much I was talking--I wanted to give everyone a chance.  I think I was successful.  Late in the day, one of my fellow students said, "I'm really glad you were part of this week.  You've added a lot to the class discussion."

I was especially grateful for that comment, because earlier in the day, after a discussion of procreative sex (the only kind of male-female sex valued by the ancient world) and the texts that have been read as anti-gay, I said, "Paul thought that we'd all be better off celibate.  I'm not taking relationship advice from any of these people."

It was a good week, and I'm glad I went.  It puts me that much closer to ordination.  But it also gave me new experiences and new friends and some new information about Paul (see this blog post).  As I age, I want to keep doing things that move me out of my comfort zone--nothing crazy, like sky diving, but experiences that keep my brain working in new ways.

Kristin in Indianapolis, Paul in Spain

In another hour or so, I'll put the last of my stuff in the car and head back to the mountains of North Carolina.  I've been in Indianapolis, taking a class on Paul, another task done on the path to ordination in the Lutheran church (ELCA, the more progressive expression of Lutheranism in North America).  

It has been a great class, full of deep dives into Greek words and church history and Paul's theology, which can be summarized as Proclaim Christ Crucified.  We even had a fun digression into what we would proclaim--I find it problematic to proclaim Christ Crucified.  Christ incarnate, yes.  Christ risen from the dead, yes.  But crucified?  That's the most important thing?

The cross means something very different for Paul than it does for me.  The cross as a symbol/shortcut does something very different for Paul.  I get that. 

We talked about not knowing how Paul died, not for sure.  Church custom/tradition posits that it's likely that he died in Rome, executed by Emperor Nero.  But it's also possible that he left Rome and continued onward to Spain.

A random thought floated through my brain on Thursday:  that would make a good poem, Paul in Spain, late in life.  By yesterday morning, I decided to jot down some lines, and voila!  A poem emerged, mostly formed.

Here's how it begins:

Paul slices citrus for sangria, 

oranges and lemons plucked

from trees in the lingering light

of a late October evening.

Who would have dreamed or demanded

such a soft landing?

This morning I thought, oh dead, when does citrus ripen in Spain?  I chose "late October evening" because Paul is in the late autumn of his life.  Happily, a quick search this morning shows the detail can work--and even had I discovered that it didn't, I'd have probably kept it.

The poem ends this way:

Safe for now, he pours the sangria

and waits for the sun to set.

I do worry that the poem is cliched, and I also worry that it won't be interesting to non-Christian readers.  But we all age, and this poem looks at aging.  By using Paul as the vehicle, maybe it does say something new.

I'll put it away and look at it again later this week.  But I am happy to have created a poem the way I once did:  an idea comes and within 24 hours, I'm attempting a poem and seeing it to completion.  Hurrah!

Rethinking Paul

Yesterday was our first TEEM class on Paul.  It was riveting.  I'm still not much interested in preaching using Paul's letters, but because Paul has been so influential and so misused, it's good to find out what's really there.

The most interesting way of thinking about Paul that was new to me is to see him as a Jew framed by apocalyptic thinking, the apocalypse being when God comes to earth to judge the living and the dead, an event which will begin with the dead rising up from their graves as they come back to life to be judged.

So when Paul meets Jesus on the Damascus Road, a man who has been dead brought back to life and speaking to him, he assumes that judgment day is under way.  Being a good Pharisee, he would assume that Jews will be O.K. on Judgment Day--as people of the Covenant, God has chosen them.  But Gentiles are in danger.  Thus, off he goes to tell them how to be saved.

I asked the question that some of you might be asking.  Did Paul see a human Jesus on the Damascus Road?  I have always thought of that event as the heavens splitting open and the voice of Jesus speaking to him, not as an encounter with Jesus in his human body.  My professor talked about the different depictions of that event, including recountings of that event that we find in Acts and the letters of Paul.  In some of them, the encounter does sound disembodied, the voice from the heavens.  In others, we could interpret it as an encounter between Paul and a human-appearing Jesus. 

I still maintain my long-standing approach to Paul.  He wrote letters to specific churches/communities with specific problems.  Taking those letters and applying them to twenty-first century life makes very little sense--unless we're experiencing similar problems.  We had an interesting session looking at 1 Corinthians, the passage where Paul excoriates the Church for eating the good food before the whole community arrives and connecting this behavior with Communion.  How do our own Communion practices exclude or include in similar ways?

I still can't see myself preaching on Paul or even having the kind of Bible study that would interest most people.  But I'm very glad to have had this educational opportunity.

A Short TEEM Report

This morning has less blogging time, but I have finished my movie review, the first assignment for my TEEM class on Pauline letters.  I have done the practice quizzes one more time--I've been doing them over and over in the hopes that I'll do well on the quiz that will begin today's class.  

We have another quiz tomorrow, and I haven't done any practice for that one.  So tomorrow may be a light blogging day too, as I practice and practice.  I have not taken a quiz for course credit since undergraduate school.  Of course, I've taken quiz after quiz as part of HR training--those quizzes that you can take over and over again so that you can continue to be employed.

Each quiz counts for 10% of the course grade.  My inner good girl wants to make an A.  My pragmatic older self knows that whatever grade I make will be fine.  I'm not even sure if TEEM classes show up on a transcript.

And then, part of me wonders why I care about my official record.  Am I going to do more graduate work?  Maybe--and that's why I care.

Yesterday's TEEM training was a workshop on stewardship.  When I first heard about the workshop, I felt a bit of despair.  I've already had so much stewardship training.  But it was a great workshop.  We talked about a much broader vision of stewardship:  what do we value?  How do we protect what we value?  It's far more than money, budgets, and a finance team. 

I've been part of small churches, with attendance below 50 members, so these are not concepts that are new to me.  In a very small church, one can't assume that others will pick up the slack, unlike in a church that has over 100 members in the pews on Sunday.

Our workshop leader, Tim Brown, was both compelling and entertaining.  We had worship in the middle of the day, followed by Indian food.  It was good to have that long break.

Let me bring this writing to a close so that I can get some breakfast before the day begins.  Onward!

TEEM Work in Indianapolis

For a woman with a reduced summer schedule, my blogging gets off schedule more than I would have expected--I did not plan not to write for the past 2 days.  On Monday, I did some intense grading and got grades turned in for the online class that ended this week.  Yesterday, I wrote the rough draft of a paper for the class on Paul's letters that I'm taking this week.

Then I hit the road, heading out to Indianapolis.  I am doing part of a week-long intensive as part of the TEEM program that meets there 3 times a year, staying in the Drury hotel and doing classes at the office of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod.  It's part of my ongoing journey to be ordained in the ELCA.  So far, the pre-intensive materials are inspiring, and I have hopes as I shift to a different approach towards ordination.  A side benefit will be learning more about how the TEEM program works.

The trip to Indianapolis takes longer than it did before Hurricane Helene:  part of I 40 is still 2 lanes, one in each direction, for about 20 miles.  There's also a long stretch of I 74 which is under construction and 2 lanes.  Happily traffic kept moving.

Most of the roads I traveled yesterday were surprisingly empty, and in the morning, that made the construction zone across the mountain into Tennessee easier.  I've never liked that stretch of I 40, even before part of it slid down the mountain in the storm.  Shortly after that passage, my phone directed me to take an older highway up to Kentucky, a route which took me through the Cumberland Gap.  The mountains were gorgeous and the roads not too winding or steep.  Even the Cumberland Gap tunnel wasn't as claustrophobic as I feared it might be.

The weather was overcast when I started, and happily, the worst of the rain had moved east.  I still drove through a bit of rain here and there.  I had a front seat with food, baby carrots and 2 kinds of homemade bread, so I didn't need to stop for food.  It does feel weird to be so close to family and old friends who moved and not feel like I have time to stop.

I left my phone on for the whole trip so that it could dictate directions to me; I didn't plug it into my phone's USB port until halfway through the trip.  My car's USB port doesn't charge very well, but it kept the phone from losing charge quite as quickly.  Still, by the end of the trip, I was worried that my phone would die before I got to the hotel, and unlike other trips, I had no idea where I was going, in terms of what exits to take and which roads I needed to find.  Happily I was able to find my way before the phone died.

I got checked into the hotel with no problems, and unloaded the car easily.  I mention the ease of it all because I don't travel light, so I'm always grateful for available luggage carts, especially in a hotel with 9 floors.  My 7th floor room is spacious, bright, and clean, and so far, it's been quiet--all qualities which make me profoundly grateful.

I've met some of my TEEM cohort last night.  The hotel offers a 5:30 Kickback each night, with 3 drinks per adult and a light dinner buffet.  Last night, the buffet included hot dogs, nacho chips and fixings, flour tortillas and fixings (including "fajita chicken"), and a small salad bar, with lettuce, grated cheese, and cherry tomatoes.  The soup was roasted red pepper tomato--delicious.  To think, I had been expecting some cheese and crackers and some Chex mix.

I brought my book on Paul with me to dinner.  I figured if I didn't find the TEEM group, I'd have something to read.  But I did find the director, whom I had met on a Zoom call last week, so I knew what he looked like.  I had dinner with the cohort members who were there, and as I expected, we have a lot in common:  we're serving churches in a variety of contexts, but there's so much more to us than that.  

They've had 2 days together, but they were warm and welcoming, and we lingered over dinner.  Delightful!  I was not awake much later, since it had been a long day.

We have some long days ahead, so let me bring this writing to a close.  Today we have a workshop on stewardship, which is great because I can use another day to catch up on my reading.  I joined the class late, just last week, so I am a bit behind.

Father's Day and the Summer Solstice

Today we have a variety of holidays to celebrate. People who have good relationships with their fathers, or people who have children, may be celebrating Father's Day. Others may be observing the Summer Solstice, in any variety of ways. Some of us will go to church, as we normally do.

I will be preaching, but at this moment, my sermon doesn't mention Father's Day.  The Gospel for today is  Matthew 10: 24-39, the text about Jesus coming to bring not peace, but a sword, to divide families.  So I'm taking a long view of all the summer liberation holidays:  from June 6 to Juneteenth to July 4.  Once I've finished the revisions, I'll give a link to the sermon which I always post on my theology blog.

Because it's Father's Day, my social media feeds will be full of people talking about their fathers.  I do feel lucky to have gotten the father that I did.  The older I get, the more impressed I am with how well he did as a father.  My dad was born in 1937, so again, I'm lucky that my father learned to adapt to the world his daughters were born into, a world with more opportunity for women, while at the same time, not fully liberated.

I think about my own generation, so full of absent fathers and abusive fathers. So many of us experienced divorce done badly, oh so badly, in the 1970's. I was lucky that my own father was different.

In fact, my father seemed more like the fathers we see these days. He could pack our lunches and brush our hair into acceptable ponytails and teach us how to be long-distance runners. He helped us with science fair projects and took the family on camping trips and in general, he was very involved in our lives. I haven't met many other people of my generation who were as lucky.

I'm glad that we've become a society of people, at least some of us have, who can be our best parents to children, whether we're fathers, mothers, or part of the village raising the children. We still have a long way to go before our culture is where I'd like us to be in terms of work/family balance. But that's a topic for a different blog post.

Today is also the summer solstice, the official start of summer.  Many of us live in places where summer weather comes early and never leaves.  But even in those places, like South Florida, the light does change.  In the northern hemisphere, we have the most amount of daylight today.  We won't really notice a difference tomorrow.  But by late August, we'll have darkness earlier.  Last night I got up briefly at 9:30 p.m. (after falling asleep at 8 p.m. with the sun yet to fully set) and noticed that we still had that not-dark, bluish twilight.  We won't have that for much longer.

We're at the midpoint of the year and in many ways, the midpoint of summer.  This might be a day when we want to think about our trajectory--are we on track for the year?  Or maybe we want to celebrate nurturing of all sorts.  Maybe it's a good day for self-care.

For me, it's time to turn my attention back to sermon revising.  One of the treats of summer is that I can also get a walk in before it's time to head across the mountain to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.

TEEM Work and Other Anxieties

It has been a strange week in terms of home renovations.  We're at a point where it makes sense to wait until the work of next week is done.  Hopefully by this time next week, we'll have an HVAC system installed and the house rewired.  Then we'll do the painting and the hardwood floor restoration.

It feels weird knowing how much work needs to be done, but not doing it.  Of course, I have plenty of other work to be doing, primarily grading and encouraging students.

In a way, it has been a good week to be pulling back on fixer-upper tasks.  I've gotten information about the next part of my path to ordination.  I will take three classes through the TEEM program, and the first class is next week.

The TEEM program has 3 onground intensives a year where participants gather in Indianapolis and take 2 classes, one on Monday-Tuesday and one on Thursday-Friday, along with a workshop on Wednesday.  I will be taking the Thursday-Friday class on Paul's letters next week.  I'm happy to be able to patch up some holes in my knowledge; I had wanted to take a seminary class on Paul, but it never worked out.

I needed this week to order books and get started on the reading.  I had missed the deadline to get the discounted hotel price, but happily, when I called, I was able to get that price. 

It's been an up and down week in terms of anxiety.  When I'm at the house in Spartanburg, I feel that we made a good decision.  When I'm not there, there's a bit more self-doubt rattling in my brain.  I've never driven to Indianapolis from here, so I feel a bit of anxiety in terms of a car trip, while reminding myself that I have relatives along the way who could help me if need be.  I'm headed there by myself, because my spouse needs to be here to oversee the HVAC installation and rewiring.  I'm looking forward to being away, but also a bit anxious at the thought of all the new people I'll meet.  I feel a bit of anxiety at the thought of all the money we're spending on home repair--if it goes well, I'll be glad we spent the money. 

I have some course work to do besides showing up for class next week.  There's reading to do, and a movie about Paul to watch, which I've done, and a review of the movie to write, which I haven't, but will soon.

But it's nice to feel I have time to do that work.  The last time I was getting ready to go to an onground intensive, it was October of 2024, and we were still dealing with Hurricane Helene aftermaths.  I'm sure there's some residual anxiety that my body is dredging up.

Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be able to look back on this anxiety and smile because all the moving parts came together so well.

The Rethinking of Mary Magdalene Gets Wider Acceptance

I have been listening to a fascinating interview between Diana Butler Bass and Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer.  Several years ago, Bass preached a sermon using Schrader-Polczer's work, which Bass points out is one of 3 of the most watched sermons of all time; the other two were Bishop Budde's sermon at the interfaith worship service after the second inauguration of Donald Trump and the sermon preached at the wedding of Prince Harry and Mary Markle.

In that sermon, Bass presented the work of Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer, who was then a PhD student at Duke.  She did research on the Lazarus text and noticed that the word Mary had been changed to Martha.  Why would someone do this?  And how can we be sure?  

Bass published her sermon here.  It's worth the read, and it's got a link to hear the sermon.  Bass makes the case that it was likely a 4th century change, a change to disempower Mary Magdalene.

In the interview I'm listening to today, Bass and Schrader-Polzer review those ideas.  It's an interesting window into how research on ancient texts is done, and how this work was done.  It's got great information about issues of gender, along with church history.

Here are some highlights:

--At minute 28, they talk about the canon--which books made it into the Bible, which did not, and why.  Schrader-Polzer posits that the approach to Mary Magdalene, the changes made in the Gospel of John, might have happened in the 2nd century so that the book would be seen as more acceptable, so that it would survive. 

--In the oldest artwork, whenever there's a Lazarus, there's only one sister.

--Throughout the interview, there's lots of great information about translations of the Bible and how we come to have the Bible that we do.

--It is fascinating to me that there are changes to Bible commentaries and forthcoming changes to translations, including the master text, the "Novum Testamentum Graece (Nestle-Aland). The 'Nestle-Aland,' or 'NA,' is the source from which almost all versions of the New Testament are translated into every language around the world" (quoted material from Bass' newsletter).  These changes happened because of Schrader-Polzer's work and Bass' promotion of this work.  I'm inspired that academic work can have this effect.

--Bass points out that this kind of revision to Bible scholarship, a major revision like Schrader-Polzer's, doesn't happen often and usually about once a generation.

--In the first century, the town of Magdala didn't exist (roughly minute 1:08).  So using Mary of Magdala would be a wrong translation.

--"Reframing ancient questions" vs. "opening new questions"--Bass uses this language about the way that the Catholic church might approach these developments.  She posits that this research is the reframing of ancient questions kind of development.

--Just after 1:18, Bass and Schrader-Polzer talk about the Gospel as a piece of story telling, a cohesive narrative, that is not the way that most people think about a Gospel:  approaching it the way a creative writer/teacher would see it.

Sermon Revisions, Poem Revisions

It's been a good week-end, with our attention shifting from home repairs to church work.  I usually have a rough draft of my sermon written by Friday, but not last week.  So my main writing task on Saturday was sermon writing.  Happily, by the time I sat down to write, I had already plotted it out in my head.

You can read my sermon in yesterday's blog post at my theology blog.

It's always interesting to see how the sermon changes from rough draft to preaching manuscript to actual delivery.  For example, I will occasionally reference the youth sermon, but since I don't write it in advance, it won't be in the written versions.

We're a small church, and occasionally in the summer, when families are on vacation, we have no youth, so there's no youth sermon.  When I announced that there would be no youth sermon, I asked the congregation to think about what had brought them joy in their own youth.  I referenced a popsicle in the park event that one of the members had made the subject of a Facebook post.  The recording of the sermon referenced that popsicle event; the manuscript does not.

You can view yesterday's sermon here, on my YouTube channel.

I've been trying to read my sermon less, which in some ways is good, primarily in the more lively energy.  But I don't like that I get tongue-tied, and I worry about my sermons getting longer.  I try to limit my discursive comments so that they don't become a wandering tangent where I can't easily get back.  I want a sermon to be 9-12 minutes, so if I'm going to continue this experiment in not looking at the manuscript as much, maybe the manuscript needs to be shorter.  

Now it's time to shift my attention back to poetry writing.  My various writing projects do feed each other, while at the same time demanding time, which requires constant balancing.  Last week, I returned to a May rough draft of a poem, "A Song Both Familiar and Strange."  In the poem, I connect my visit to my friend who had a catastrophic stroke which means she now lives in the skilled nursing unit to Julian of Norwich.  I did some serious revising, moving stanzas, taking out material.  I think it's done, but before I started last week's revisions, I thought it was done.  

Last week's earlier draft ended with this stanza, which I worried ended the poem on too melancholy a note:

By your bedside, as you sip
tea through a straw, I think
of Julian of Norwich
who insisted that all manner
of things shall be well.
I wish that I could share
the convictions of Julian,
but in the presence
of your shrinking
body and mangled speech,
my doubts blossom
into an orchard of hazelnut trees.

Now that stanza is in the middle of the poem.  Here's the last stanza:

Like a medieval priest
chanting words in a strange
language, I read scraps
of Julian’s work, her odd
metaphors for the Divine
filling the space between us.
You listen and sing
a song both familiar and strange.

Last week I even made some poetry submissions.  In some ways, it's easier in the summer when many journals aren't taking submissions.  In September, when most journals are "open," and most for a very short time, I find it overwhelming.

Annual Dinner with Camp Counselors

Last night, we had dinner with the Lutheridge and Lutherock camp counselors.  We've done it before, and I always come away impressed.  The neighborhood community who lives in the residential section of Lutheridge brings a variety of desserts, and the camp provides burgers and hot dogs, chips and beverages.

We sat with a guy who's finishing the fall semester and then headed to Duke Divinity school and another senior staffer who hopes to come back for another summer or two before he said he probably should find a regular job.  I said, "Or you could continue working in outdoor ministries year round."

Happily, no one was there to point out the shrinking job opportunities in that field.  I will never understand why the larger church doesn't do more to help/commit to campus and outdoor ministries.  The counselors I spoke to last night are full of hope for all the ways their futures might unfold.  I've found that my SMC students are similarly optimistic.  It's refreshing.

Before the dinner, I spent the day trying to fix my course shell for my online class at Spartanburg Methodist College.  The book has changed editions (again--sigh), so the references to the book page numbers that students find in the assignments and discussion posts are wrong.  Ugh.  I'm teaching someone else's course, and so it's not intuitive to me, the way I would have if I had created it all--it takes more time to diagnose problems and fix them.

I also did some baking--I decided to bring a gluten free, dairy free dessert.  It worked beautifully.  It's an almond-coconut concoction, and I want to record it here:

1 C. sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 C. almond flour (or grind up a lot of almonds into as fine a powder as possible)

1 1/2 C. coconut (I used sweetened and unsweetened in 2 different experiments--no difference)

Whip the sugar and eggs until tripled in volume or until tired of the noise of the mixer.  Fold in the almond flour and the coconut.  Pour in a 9 inch cake pan lined with parchment paper and greased or in cupcake pan.  Bake at 350 for 25ish minutes.  You can only tell if it's done by color--a golden, light brown color.  It will be sticky and delicious.  It keeps at room temperature for days, although the crispiness of the crust declines.

The Feast Day of the Visitation and the Reminder that So Much More Is Possible

Today is the Feast Day of the Visitation, the feast day that celebrates Mary, pregnant with Jesus, going to be with Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist.  We could celebrate this feast day in any number of ways:  we could celebrate intergenerational support for each other, the ways that God doesn't abandon women who are on the margins of society, the ways that improbable situations can be harnessed for hope, and the hospitality that is evident on so many levels (the wombs of the women, Elizabeth welcoming Mary).

The story in Luke leaves questions, of course.  Did Mary travel alone?  How did she stay safe?  What did Mary and Elizabeth talk about in the month (months?) that she was there?  Why did she leave before Elizabeth gave birth?  What did Joseph think about all of this?  Was Joseph even part of this narrative?

We get more of Joseph's perspective in the gospel of Matthew.  What I love about this feast day, however, is that it's focused on the women.  We don't have much celebration of women in the Christian tradition.  We should hold on to what's here, in addition to looking for ways to add more women to our celebrations.

I love this story because it reminds us that God doesn't choose those who are already ready and waiting for the call.  Imagine how many lives could have been changed if the earliest Church had emphasized this aspect of a call, this being worthy in God’s eyes even if one is not worthy in the world’s eyes. Imagine if we had centuries of the message that God loves us before we’ve done anything special at all, and even if we never live into our full potential in the eye’s of our society, God will see our value. 

Imagine if the church had given emphasis to Elizabeth, along with Mary.  I love the message that we're not too old, that our hopes and dreams might be answered after all.  We're not cast away if we're not a young woman, like Mary, with years ahead of her to be of service to God.  The definition of fertility enlarges.  

On Sunday, we heard that God doesn't call the equipped, but God equips those that God calls.  There's a bit of troubling theology here.  I believe we're all called, over and over again, a wide variety of calls.  God offers us invitations, and even if we say no, God will return with more invitations.  And when we say yes, God has resources, even if we don't.  We might even discover that we have all that we need.  God may not need to equip us at all.  Our weaknesses might turn out to be strengths.

It's a great day to celebrate those possibilities.  And even if we've been feeling like our time is passed, that it's too late for us, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way.  If we feel like we're too inexperienced, that we don't know what we're doing, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way.

It's great to remember Elizabeth's blessing:  "Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill the Lord's promises to her!” (Luke 1:  45, NIV, gendered language corrected).  Elizabeth gave Mary this blessing, but I believe it extends to us all, if we're open to the idea that with God and community, so much more can be possible than if we rely on our solitary selves.

Memorial Day 2026

Today is Memorial Day, and through the years, I've come to realize how many different things this holiday can mean to people.  I've met people who won't celebrate it because of its roots in memorializing the Civil War Union dead.  My dad was an Air Force officer in the Reserves until he retired, so Memorial Day was personal for him.  I don't think I know anyone who was killed while on active duty, but I do want to honor those who died.  Some people I've known seem to have no inkling that the holiday has anything to do with soldiers at all--for them, it's about getting a good deal on a holiday sale or opening up the vacation home or having a cook out.

I remember feeling desperate for Memorial Day, for a day off, but during my days of working as an administrator, I was always desperate for a day off, a day off that didn't require me to use up any of my paltry allotment of vacation time.  For the past several years, Memorial Day as a three day week-end was not top of my mind, since I've already had a few weeks of schedule easing in May.

I also know that many people don't get to have time off.  All of our grocery stores are open today, for example.  When I taught in community colleges in South Carolina, we didn't have Memorial Day off.  Our nursing students needed every scrap of time in the summer, so that holiday had to be sacrificed so that we stayed in compliance.  Or maybe it was because of the Civil War; I got different explanations. In past years, I've used the day off to catch up on grading for my online classes, and this year, I'll do some grading too.  Most days of the year, I have grading to do.

This year, I'm thinking about past years, when war seemed far away.  And now, here we are, with war in Europe (Ukraine) and war with Iran, and lots of smaller scale wars across the globe.

But let me circle back to the intent of this holiday.  On this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

Let us remember how often the world zooms into war. Let us pray to be preserved from those horrors.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Memorial Day:

God of comfort, on this Memorial Day, we remember those souls whom we have lost to war. We pray for those who mourn. We pray for military members who have died and been forgotten. We pray for all those sites where human blood has soaked the soil. God of Peace, on this Memorial Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this Memorial Day, we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

(Pictures in this post are memorials around D.C. from the Honor Flight experience that I was part of in October of 2022)