Can it be? A Friday Five

The Positive Potpourri edition, courtesy of will smama:

Greetings friends! It's been awhile since I've contributed to the posts here at the revgalblogpals website, but I agreed to step into the Fifth Friday of the Month Friday Five slot.

So here I be.

As I zip around the webring it is quite clear that we are getting BUSY. "Tis the season" when clergy and laypeople alike walk the highwire from Fall programming to Christmas carrying their balancing pole with family/rest on the one side and turkey shelters/advent wreaths on the other.

And so I offer this Friday Five with 5 quick hit questions... and a bonus:

1) Your work day is done and the brain is fried, what do you do?

Collapse into the recliner and read. Wait, that's what I do every time my work day is done. My brain's always fried.

2) Your work week is done and the brain is fried (for some Friday, others Sunday afternoon), what do you do?

Go out to supper and watch a DVD with Ben. Pet the dog. Collapse into the recliner and read, or nap...

3) Like most of us, I often keep myself busy even while programs are on the tv. I stop to watch The Office and 30 Rock on Thursday nights. Do you have 'stop everything' tv programming or books or events or projects that are totally 'for you' moments?

Did I mention reading? I also do some crafty things, and kayak a little. I'm pretty much over tv and crave quiet a lot of the time.

4) When was the last time you laughed, really laughed? What was so funny?

Catching fish with Ben on the trout farm while on vacation--he calls them "troots" and kept saying, "we hold these troots to be self-evident" as he held up his catch.

5) What is a fairly common item that some people are willing to go cheap on, but you are not.

I don't know...here lately I cheap out on almost everything, but we do take care of our cars and our health...eyes in particular. Although it's actually cheaper to keep me in contact lenses than buy new glasses, except for my reading glasses. They come from the Dollar Tree. I totally cheap out there.

Bonus: It's become trite but is also true that we often benefit the most when we give. Go ahead, toot your own horn. When was the last time you gave until it felt good?

Hmmm...we give of our time all the time, and sometimes it feels really good, and sometimes it's just exhausting. I do have a story I'm fond of, though. The summer after we got married, we traveled to AL to see Ben's mom and go to a reception (no gifts, we said) for folks who hadn't been able to come to the wedding. The next morning, we went to the Waffle House for breakfast. While there we noticed a younger guy in a tie, obviously coming off of a night shift somewhere. When his bill came, he carefully counted his cash, several times. Although I was trying not to notice, it was clear he didn't have enough to cover both meal and tip. Ben and I asked if we could buy his breakfast as a way of atoning for skipping church. It wasn't a big amount of money at all, but he was so grateful and gracious about it. Who knew you could have a God-moment in the Waffle House?

I like this....

While prospecting for lectionary gold online, I found this, on the Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church website:
All Saints
All Saints 2

Vacation Photos

Banner Elk Trip

Thoughts on All Saints

“I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping to be one too.”

All Saints’ Day is coming up this weekend. On this day we remember those who have shaped our faith, made us who we are, and who have gone on before us to heaven. This year I’ll be remembering my paternal grandmother, who died in March. She loved God and loved the church with all her heart and through all her struggles in life. Before the dementia made her forget she could, she played the piano for the Saturday night dances and Sunday morning worship at the independent living facility she lived at with my grandfather. She took such joy in the music itself, and even more that she could produce something that others could enjoy. And it was no easy gift; she had played since she was a child, and when she had to have a finger amputated late in her life, she thought she’d never play again. I don’t which I felt more strongly: the joy when she taught herself to play nine-fingered, or the grief when she forgot that she’d done it and thought she couldn’t play anymore.
There are saints all over who shape our lives, from Sunday School teachers and family to friends who treat us with kindness. Who are the saints in your life? Who are you remembering? And who will remember you as a saint of God, a role model, a teacher, someone who shaped their faith and made them who they are?

“They lived not only in ages past; there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can see them in school, on the street, in the store, in church, on the sea, in the house next door;
they are saints of God, whether rich or poor, and I mean to be one too.”

--“I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” by L. Scott, #712 in our hymnal

I'm back!

Vacation was everything I needed it to be, except perhaps longer.
Here are a few highlights:
Banner Elk's Woolly Worm Festival



Trout Fishing with Ben



View from the Blue Ridge Parkway


The Linn Falls (Ben and I hiked up the Falls trail)


Scenery-type stuff


Post Office boxes in the old Mast General Store in Valle Crucis

Vacation

I'm leaving in the morning for vacation, if Ben and I don't kill each other first. It's always so hard to get ready. My standards for how to leave the house are different, too...I think it should be neat-ish. Not sparkling clean, necessarily, although that's always the primary goal. Ben just thinks we should get out, and we can deal with the disaster when we get back. So there's a little tension.
But still, it's vacation. I'm misremembering Go-Go's lyrics:
Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, have to get away

So I'm gone, and will likely be absent from the blogosphere for a while. And I'll be rested and we'll have had a good time!

Thin places

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all."
— Stanley Horowitz

As I look out my office window, most of the leaves I see are still green and shiny. The weekend’s rain has reinvigorated my yard, and everything looks vibrant and alive, but I know fall is coming (the weather last week notwithstanding!).

Tomorrow, I'm leaving for vacation in Banner Elk, NC, and this is supposed to be one of the best weeks for fall color—the golds and reds and oranges that mark the changing of the season. I’m already looking forward to the drive, and to seeing the dogwoods like shooting flames among the pines (and kudzu) along I-40. This weekend is the Woolly Worm Caterpillar Festival in the mountains, and so perhaps I’ll even come back with a prediction about the severity of this winter…apparently caterpillars are more sophisticated than groundhogs, and their stripes predict how cold it will be each week of winter. Who knew?

Fall brings more with it than cooler temperatures, falling leaves, and (finally) the chance to wear sweaters again. It’s a reminder to us that life has a cycle, a rhythm, that our moods and our habits and our lifestyles are more connected to creation—and through it, to God—than perhaps we realize. I think that’s why we are sometimes drawn to particular places, like the ocean for me and the mountains for Ben, where we feel closer to God. The Celtic mystics call them “thin places” where the boundary between us and heaven is narrower, where we feel that God somehow reaches through.

Hoping you’ll sense and enjoy the “thin places” in your life.

My hero

My brother-in-law ran the Chicago Marathon yesterday in just over 4 hours.
He's my hero.

Home, at least for a little while

What a busy week this will be!
I came back from NJ last night. Great week, but I started having migraine symptoms on the last leg of my flight home. As usual, I didn't recognize that I was seeing auras (the visual defect that accompanies some migraines and all of mine) but just wrote them off to being tired. Then when I was talking to my father while driving back to Beaufort, I noticed numbness in my hand, but I wrote that off to talking on the phone while driving the truch on a drizzly night. That is, until the aphasia started: I lose the ability to say the words I'm thinking. This was a mild case; I made myself understood, but I was frustrated. Still, it was mild, and I was tired. When my face began to tingle, though, there had been too many signs to ignore. Of course, I still had a fairly long drive to get back home.
Fortunately, I guess, I tend to have a lot of percursor symptoms prior to a migraine, and I don't get them very often. So I got myself home before the pain was too bad, took my medicine (which of course I hadn't packed) and went to bed. I've been groggy and had a headache hangover all day. My biggest fear is that they will come in clusters, as they did when I first started having them--it can be difficult to break the cycle. Thus far, I think I'm in the clear, which is good, given that I'm flying solo tomorrow while Eric preached Homecoming at a former parish.
I'm anxious to get back into the office, to catch up on some things, and to clear my desk (figuratively, rarely literally) for our vacation: seven days in the mountains! Hopefully there will be pictures. In the meantime, I'm taking another pill and going to get my beauty rest for tomorrow.

Friday Five: Business Trip Edition

I spent a good bit of time today registering and making travel arrangements for the American Academy of Religion meeting in Chicago at the beginning of November. (Anyone up for a meetup? Shout out, okay?) I'm not presenting this year, so I'm busy sending out resumes and cover letters, but at least I'm not stressing about getting a paper written.

I'll see friends and teachers from grad school, try to resist temptation in the book hall, attend some presentations if time permits, and, God willing, have some preliminary interviews in the everlasting college-teaching-job-search process--prayers welcome, as always. And, thanks to my dear Mom who agreed to babysit and donated some frequent flyer miles, it will also be a busy-but-happy getaway with my sweetheart.

So for today's Friday Five, you're invited to share your experiences with the exciting, challenging world of business travel....

1. Does your job ever call for travel? Is this a joy or a burden?

I'm traveling now, actually! I'm in NJ for classes, but heading home today. Also, we travel for judicatory meetings. I usually do a 4 day trip for Annual Conference, and often (when I'm not in school), another 4-5 day trip for continuing ed. Other than that, there are a few day trips from time to time.

2. How about that of your spouse or partner?

Ben is also a pastor, so it's about the same, less the school travel.

3. What was the best business trip you ever took?

We went to Myrtle Beach for the UM Congress on Evangelism several years ago. It was a good event, and we spent time with many friends, so I loved it.

4. ...and the worst, of course?

Annual Conference several years ago. The dormitory rooms assigned to us were not handicap-accessible, and the building we were in was not marked, so we had a terrible time finding it. Ben was recovering from surgery and not able to handle much time in the sessions, and so I was torn between going back and forth.

5. What would make your next business trip perfect?

Lots of free time, Ben to go with me, and ease of travel within whatever city we go to. And great content, of course. Going somewhere fun with my DMin group would be ideal.

Catching Up Again

The place I'm staying this week while I'm in class has no internet access, so here's what I rambled last night:

So I’m in New Jersey for class, staying in a convent/retreat center, watching the debate and trying not to laugh or heckle too much so we don’t disturb the nuns. And here’s the delightful irony of this little trip: my computer so far will not charge at Drew. I tried 4 different outlets, and none of them would work. I came back to the center and tried the charger in my room, and lo and behold it worked. I have nun power, apparently.
We’re up to our usual tricks in class…today, even though I was trying to preserve my battery for “real” work, I was toying with the format of this blog, removing widgets and thinking about new ones. I played games and checked email and sent pieces of flair on Facebook…and paid attention the whole time. And it’s good to be with the “pod” again. We’ve created our own language and our own way of thinking, and this is a relationship that we don’t have with anyone else. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them.
So back to the blog changes: I’ve removed a widget or two. I’m thinking about adding advertising, but I have to refine a bit…Google AdSense is too general, and there’s a lot of wacky Christian stuff I don’t want them to have on my site. I’ve removed the Etsy link; I sold exactly nothing there, although I’m pleased that all six of the photos and most of the books I had in the UMW Bazaar sold…amazing how much this pleases me, but I have to admit, they were pretty great photos. Sometime soon I’ll scan them…when I’m back in the state where the (church’s) scanner lives. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy taking pictures.

So far class is going well for me, at least. I think I agonized so much this summer that I am actually a little farther ahead of the game than I thought. I also think that I need to get around to reading the books I say I'm going to be founding my studies on...but I'm doing fine.
Leaves are turning here and I regret not having a camera, but oh, am I ever glad to be with these people again!

Yesterday, I 'yakked

Kayakked, that is!
Ben finally decided I could go out by myself, as long as I call in from time to time, so yesterday I loaded up the truck and went over to Carrot Island. Mere words cannot convey how much fun I had!

My kayak in my truck:

 

My gear (including two cameras, both film...I'll scan some in later):

 

Inside view:

 

My ruby slippers (what passes for water shoes):

 

My kayak, after a freshwater bath:


Guard mutt in the tall grass; I'd rather kayak than mow!:

St. Francis Friday Five

Sally offers this Friday Five, dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi:
1. Saint Francis experienced a life changing call, has anything in your journey so far challenged you to alter your lifestyle?

Not in the dramatic way Francis did.

2. Francis experienced mocking and persecution, quite often in the comfortable west this is far from our experience. If you have experienced something like this how do you deal with it, if not how does it challenge you to pray for those whose experience is daily persecution?

Stories like those of Francis and the martyrs remind us not to take for granted the security and freedom that we have, and challenge us to work for justice for all those suffering persecution.

3 .St Francis had female counterpart in St Clare, she was influenced by St Francis' sermon and went on to found the Poor Clares, like the Franciscans they depended on alms this was unheard of for women in that time, but she persisted and gained permission to found the order. How important are role models like St Clare to you? Do you have a particular female role model whose courage and dedication inspires you? If so share their story....

Hmmm...as my Tuesday morning Bible study goes on, I tend to highlight stories like Tabitha (or Dorcas) and other female leaders of the early church. I didn't know any female clergypeople until I was a candidate for ministry, so I can't say that one inspired me then. But I've come to know many amazing clergywomen since then.

4. Francis loved nature and animals, how important is an expressed love of the created world to the Christian message today?
Very important, I think, in terms of stewardship and respect for the resources God has given us. But also, I think sometimes we underplay the spiritual connections people make to places (I'm thinking more of landscapes than football stadiums, of course) and how that is a part of our connecting to God.
5. On a lighter note; have you ever led a service of blessing for animals, or a pet service, was it a success, did you enjoy it, and would you do it again?

I never have, but I'd like to. The WonderMutt probably couldn't behave himself, though. When I had a farming church, we would sort of bless the livestock and the harvest from a distance.

I don't believe in these things

But this was in my lunchtime fortune cookie yesterday:



I read it and kept it, thinking, "I'll scan this and send it to Tonya. I wish she could "grace my life" for a few days."
Two minutes later, my cell phone rings. I didn't recognize the number, because it had WAY too many digits...because it was a call from Germany.
Yep, Tonya. Wanting to come for a couple of days after New Year's.
Maybe there's something to this stuff after all.
Nah.
But thanks, God. :)