The Enemy of Good

After the 2015 Episcopal Church's General Convention I wrote about how "perfect" can be the enemy of "good" and how the desire to cover everything in one project, build, or legislative action can kill a good idea.

Over the past month, I have had a different experience with the same idea. I've been sick with bronchitis.  Not just feeling a bit rundown, but the stuck on the couch, moving a little as possible to keep from coughing, sleeping whenever I can, blues. 

October is usually my favorite month of the year. It marks the return of my favorite season, fall, and my all time favorite holiday: Halloween. October is my birth month and, while I have very ambivalent feelings about my birthday, I love dressing up for Halloween. My mother made me endless tin-foil crowns and even though sewing wasn't her thing, made me an awesome pink bunny costume when I was around 6 (I kept the hood-with-ears until my costuming loving nieces came along). Now I make my own costumes and go to our local science fiction convention just to have a place to wear them at and show them off.

When I was in my twenties, a friend brought a piñata he made to my impromptu birthday. It looked like an avocado and was still damp with green paint when he arrived. We ran a line from our second floor balcony to an evergreen tree and had a grand time taking whacks at it. That piñata was the start of a household tradition that we have kept nearly every year since. The household Halloween costume party & potluck has survived a move to Texas, several years in a rental house, and now 18 years in our current house. It became even more fun when our son arrived and by his second year was participating by designing his own costumes. 

Our parties* always have a theme and we design invitations, decorate the house, and make games that reflect that theme. All of which (in addition to the costumes) takes time. As the stay-at-home mom, I usually have the most time (though I am the least skilled of the three adults) so a lot of the underlying work is my responsibility. I always look forward to doing it-- the process of making things can be frustrating by it is also fun.

Being sick for the past month has put a serious crimp in my plans to Get Party Projects Done. My housemate got the the invitations designed and copied before she had to leave on a business trip-- but to do any good they would need to be mailed.

This is a long way to get to my point, but on Sunday, still hacking and coughing (but starting to feel better thanks to antibiotics), I worked my way slowly through the process of creating the address labels, folding & sealing the invitations, and affixing the stamps. Normally, I love finding the most efficient way of doing things. I will batch process and time test myself just for the fun of it. I like putting labels on straight and am not above sorting mail by zip code in advance of it going out (a left over-habit from doing church and non-profit mailings). This time, just sitting up and doing one invitation at a time was work.

This time it wasn't "perfect is the enemy of good" it was "doing anything was better than nothing". I realized that, with my health the way it was, there was no way I could do things the way I usually did. Even though I could see the prospect of being well on the horizon, I wasn't well yet. My choice this time was between done slowly and somewhat sloppily or not done at all. I not only let go of perfect (which honestly I've never been that into) but I let go of my expectation of being able to do the job a certain way within a certain time frame.

I'm not sure where this leaves me. Since getting the invitations in the mail, I've managed to hem my husband's costume and figure out what needs to be done on mine. I haven't started the piñata or on decorating the inside of the house and I'm still lying on the couch most of the day.

I think it all comes back to that first, imperfect piñata that my friend made on a whim for my birthday. It was slightly soggy from not having quite enough time to dry. It was a strange green color because that was what he had in the house when he realized a piñata could use a coat of paint to liven it up a bit. It squished when we hit it with the stick, but we still had a grand time getting at the candy inside. We enjoyed the process of the piñata and the idea of the piñata. It was delightful because of it's imperfections rather than in-spite of them. It was a symbol of thoughtfulness and caring, of creativity and spontaneity and, above all, of the impulse to make art that is at the heart of many of our friendships.

So this year, I'm giving myself permission to find a way forward that lets me have fun with the energy I have. I really am feeling a lot better, but I am going to hold on to the fact that I got the invitations out; that my friends have the amazing ability to create fun out of tissue paper, paint and imagination; and that the joy comes as much from the process as from the final product. 

There is little that is less permanent than a purpose-built piñata and it gives joy (and a little cussin') in both its creation and destruction.

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Our basement T.A.R.D.I.S

* We learned the hard way not to skip our party if we can help it. Two years ago we canceled our Halloween party because our stove caught fire. We decided that meant it was time to finally remodel our 40 year old kitchen. So we built a storage cabinet in our laundry room so our it could be our temporary kitchen. We were constitutionally unable to just paint it white. Our son looked at it and said that the new cabinet looked like a T.A.R.D.I.S. Two weeks later we had a bright blue police call box, complete with flashing light (but so far no sound effects), in our laundry room. Apparently, trompe-l'œil manifests spontaneously at our house if we don't channel it into a party.


This essay was originally published at the Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul on 28 October 2015.

Who Are Your Angels?

February before last we were in the midst of a major down-to-the-studs remodel of our kitchen when an two angels appeared to me.

It had been a busy few months. We had striped the kitchen to the studs and had various contractors in to do the framing, electrical and plumbing. We'd been using our laundry room as the kitchen and cooking on a hot plate since the beginning of January.

My husband left on a business trip while the plumbing was being finalized. My son came down with a mysterious pain in his abdomen the day the pluming was finally done and turned back on for good. We ended up going

An Angel at Work

into urgent care and finding out that it was something that would pass on its own, but it was still scary and exhausting.

The next afternoon the sewer backed up into the downstairs bathroom. Luckily we noticed it before it flooded the house and were able to turn off the water. Unluckily that meant we had no running water.

The plumber came out and did the usual things with snakes and chemicals. After several hours of work he determined he couldn't reach the clog from inside the house. We would need get the plans from the water department for where the sewer line ran in order to install a clean-out that would allow him to reach the clog.

At 1:00 am he finished cleaning up and left promising to return with plan.

The next day we got the plans and he started the process of jackhammering our back patio and digging a 4 foot deep pit so he could cut the sewer line and get to the clog.

My husband returned from his business trip tired and worn out. We had no running water and no prospect of it for at least the next 24 hours. A few hours after he got home he started to feel ill and was concerned he might be having the symptoms of a heart attack. I don't remember if we ended up calling 911 or just taking him to urgent care. I do remember freaking out on the inside while trying to hold it together.

It turned out that my husband had a combination of the flu and dehydration and needed rest and to drink a lot of water. He suggested that he should go stay in a hotel, but I didn't like the idea of him being alone with no one to check on him should he take a turn for the worse. 

It was then that my first angel appeared in the form of a good friend to who let my husband come and stay with her while he was recovering. This allowed him to drink (and pee!) as much as he wanted without it being a huge chore. She set him on her sofa with a giant pitcher of water and he was able to rest and recuperate.

I was able to focus my attention on the remodeling work and on making sure the plumber had everything he needed to fix our plumbing. He worked steadily for several days. He dug a pit, excavated the pipe, used a nifty camera to find the source of the clog, removed it and hooked everything back up better than it had been before.

He did all this cheerfully and with certainty that everything would come out right in the end. It was bitterly cold for our part of the world and he worked away without complaint. Best of all, he cleaned up after himself.

It wasn't until he packed up and headed out that I realized that he was my second angel. Even though he was a stranger to me, he had been a clam and reassuring presence in my time of need. He was a physical manifestation of 'fear not' and he brought me the joy of functioning pluming.

Above all my two angels gave me hope in a time when I felt overwhelmed and completely out of my depth. They brought me through crisis and into calm and out of fear into joy. 

My husband, son, and plumbing all recovered and our kitchen was finally done in June.

The memory of my ordinary angels has stayed with me. I suspect that neither of them know they were my angels, but they couldn't have been more heaven sent if they had had wings and a halo.

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This essay was originally published at the Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul on 20 October 2015.

Facing Mortality: Final Expenses

If you watch enough late night TV you see ads for insurance to cover your 'final expenses' of outstanding credit card bills and funeral expenses. I'm not sold on the idea of paying an insurance company to help cover such expenses. However those commercials help point out something that I wasn't really conscious of until my housemate's mother passed away:  that no matter how small an estate you leave behind there will be expenses in dealing with your bodily remains and announcing your passing to your friends and family.

At a bare minimum your body will need to be buried or cremated and an announcement of some sort should go out to friends and family (and creditors) to let them know that you've shuffled off this mortal coil. Much like a wedding, funeral prices start low if you opt for the basics (cremation, a short obituary, and a potluck at local hall may run less than $2000.00) and go up from there into the stratosphere if desired. A fancy funeral with casket, viewing, procession to the cemetery, your own plot and headstone can easily start at $10,000 and go up from there. 

The Federal Trade Commission has a handy Funeral Costs and Pricing Checklist that gives an overview of some of the rules funeral homes must follow when selling you goods and services.

My housemate's mother had prepaid for cremation and an urn and had those papers with her will. That is a good option if you are settled and don't plan on moving, or if you choose a plan that can move with you. It was one less thing my housemate had to worry about immediately after her mother died (when she was exhausted from several weeks of hospital vigil).

At the very least, take the time to think about what you would like to have when you die. You won't be there for it, but if you do the planning now, while you are alert and alive, your family and friends can be confident that the are doing what you would have wanted and it removes the stress of having to make to decisions when they are the most vulnerable.

So here's a basic after death planning checklist to get you thinking about what you want.

1. I want to be: 

donated to science / cremated / buried / other (please specify)

If donated, I want to go to:
local teaching hospital / anyone who will have me on short notice / specific medical issue (specify below & arrange in advance)


If donation doesn't work out, I want to be buried / cremated.

If cremated I want: 
to be interred in a columbarium / interred in a plot / kept on a shelf / scattered

If buried I want: 
basic casket / mid-line casket / the works casket and all the trimmings

If other, I want:


In general my religious beliefs require the following in the handling of my mortal remains: 


If my remains are interred, I want the following on my marker (i.e.: name, birth & death date, quote): 




2. I want my funeral to be: 

a community potluck / a religious service / at a funeral home / a poetry slam / a music jam / other specified below


3. I belong to the following organizations that would like to participate in my funeral: 


4. I belong to the following religious organization and would like to use its funeral / burial rites: 


5. I want the following music at my service / gathering: 


6. Please don't play the following at my service / gathering:


7. I want the following read at my service / gathering: 


8. Please don't read the following at my service / gathering:


9. I want my funeral expenses to be paid out of                                            (name account). I have budgeted $                    for this. If my plans exceed my savings you have my permission to adjust my funeral plans accordingly. 

10. I have / have not purchased a pre-paid funeral plan. My plan is with: 


11. I want my obituary published in the following papers / websites:


12. I would like the following organizations to be notified of my death: 


13. I want flowers / gifts in lieu of flowers. If gifts, then to the following organizations: 


14. One last thing:



As you fill out this checklist, have a web browser open and do some basic serching on the cost of the things you would like. Just get a rough idea so that you have and idea of a cost range. That will give you a budget to save towards (and let you decide if your would rather have a live band at your memorial service or a top of the line casket).

At a minimum think about saving $2000.00 for your final expenses. If you have an emergency fund, your funeral expenses can form the basis of that fund.  Death is the final emergency we will all have after all.

Anything you can do now, from making a will, to noting down that you will come back and haunt anyone who plays "Wind Beneath My Wings" at your service, will help your family and friends send you off in style you would like. The less they have to guess what you would want the easier it will be for them. Knowing you set aside money for your funeral is a final gift you can give your them in a time when they will be missing you.

Savings Stretch Goals

Usually I write about costuming or faith formation, but I like to write about what I am thinking about and currently that is budgeting and saving. My son is getting old enough that he and I have had several conversations about how to make a budget so I thought I would write up my system.

The system I use is frequently called the bucket system. I happened to come up with it on my own and just found out this week that it had a name. In the bucket system you have one pot for each type of regular expense. You treat each bucket just like a bill and pay it monthly.

In my case the buckets are virtual. I have one savings account for each category. My credit union lets me have as many different savings accounts under one checking account as I desire and does not charge extra for this.

When I pay my bills, I put a set amount into each bucket. Some of my current buckets are: monthly expenses, allowance, emergency savings, auto savings, health savings, Christmas savings, tax savings, education savings, and house savings.

Monthly expenses: this money goes in my checking account and includes rent, utilities, medications, pet expenses, insurance premiums, and food money for the month. (Note: I don't leave the paycheck in the checking account.)

Allowance: this is my discretionary spending money for the month. I can spend it on coffee or crafting supples or gifts or anything I like as long as I don't go over the monthly amount. I can also save it to buy larger things that I want.

Emergency Savings: my emergency fund is an unemployment or catastrophic disaster cushion. My goal is to have between 3-6 months of living expenses saved at any one time. It is helpful to make some rules about what this can be used for. In my case, if the roof caved in we could break into this account, but if we want a new TV we need to save for it with other money. It takes a long time to save up a disaster fund so it should only be broken into when all other funds have been exhausted. I tend to convert this into certificates of deposit so it is harder to get to on a whim.

Auto Savings: this is our savings toward a major payment on a car. We currently own a car but eventually it will need to be replaced. If we can save a small amount for 10-15 years we will have a substantial down payment on our next car. This savings is not intended to pay for normal repairs or maintenance. Putting $50 a month away for 10 years adds up to $6000.00-- which is a decent down payment on a new car and will save us loan costs in the future.

Health Savings: we put aside a bit of money each month so that when medical copays, medications, and other health expenses that aren't covered by insurance crop up we have funds to pay them. We figured this amount out by going back over our bills from a previous year, adding up our costs plus a bit for inflation, and divided by 12 for a monthly amount. I like to think of it as pre-paying for medical expenses.

Christmas Savings: we like getting folks gifts for Christmas. Even if we buy inexpensive gifts, it adds up. So we figured out how much we spent in a given year, divided by 12 and now we have cash to pay for gifts or money to donate when we are ready to shop. Having a set amount to spend also keeps us from going too crazy at Christmas and we avoid having a big bill to pay off in January. I want to point out that we are still spending the same amount on Christmas that we did before we started this account, we are just saving up for it instead of putting it on a credit card and earning interest on the money instead of paying interest on a credit card loan.

Tax Savings: we got in the habit of putting some of each paycheck away in a tax savings account over 20 years ago when my husband was a contract worker and we were responsible for all of our own tax withholding. Even when we switched to regular jobs where the employer withheld money for taxes we found it useful to put 5% of our paycheck into a tax savings account. Then if we owed money to the IRS in April we could use that savings to pay it off. If we didn't owe on our taxes then the money we saved became a bonus that we paid to ourselves. We could spend it on anything we liked-- travel, furniture, or just move it to our emergency fund and speed that goal along. Note: if you work freelance and are responsible for paying all your own taxes, we found a good rule of thumb is to put 40% of the gross freelance check in the tax account.

House savings major: We own (or share with the bank) our house. Houses need regular upkeep. In our case, we knew we wanted to remodel the kitchen. We put a set amount away for over 15 years and when our oven finally burned out we were able to combine this savings with a home equity loan and afford a much more major remodel than we had originally thought. Now that this major expenses is done (and we already took care of the bathrooms) I may turn this account into a travel savings bucket.

House savings minor: this is for annual expenses of house upkeep-- things like minor roof repair, furnace service, window cleaning, plumbing emergencies, & other professional goods and services that a house needs on a semi-regular basis.

Education savings: We are putting money aside for our son's college. We started when he was little so have had some compound interest on our side. In just a few years we will start spending out of this account.

The keys to the bucket system are:
1. Don't leave all your money in your checking account.
2. Treat your savings goals like bills, pay them monthly (and have a set budget that you refer to when paying those 'bills').
3. Have a separate bucket for each saving goal-- it keeps you from accidentally double-spending your money.
4. Be consistent, as long as you have a steady income, pay into your buckets.
5. Have clear categories and rules for yourself (and anyone sharing your accounts) for when the money from each category can be used.
6. Use credit cards with discipline. Pay them off at the end of the month and don't buy something on credit without first checking where you will pull the money from to pay it off.
7. When you reach your goal spend the money you saved and enjoy it!

Here is my budget priority for figuring out how to save.

Living Expenses These are the things that let you keep your living situation stable: rent, utilities, food, chronic medications, health insurance, transit (bus or car/insurance/gas) funds an allowance for daily expenses that let you have a little fun. It can be helpful to look carefully at your living expenses and figure out what could be cut if needed and what the bare minimum you need to keep the lights on is-- that amount forms the basis of your emergency fund.

Tax savings This can be a gateway to getting better at savings. If you put money away until tax time and then luck out and don't need to give it to the IRS you have an instant bonus! This is really the way we started saving and realizing that locking in a set amount and declaring it untouchable until a goal or deadline had passed made it much easier to keep from spending the savings that was accruing.

Emergency fund This is your cushion should something drastic like a job loss or major crisis hit you. It is recommended to have between 3-12 months worth regular expenses (which is why it can be good to figure out what your bare bones cost of living are). So if you need $2000.00 a month to cover the basics then the goal is to save between $6,000-$24,000. If you can afford to put $200.00 per month away then you will meet the lower goal in 2.5 years and, if no emergency has happened you can just keep adding until you have an amount that works for you. Generally the more difficult it is for you to find work (due to education, specialization, or other factors) the larger your emergency fund should be. Another way to think of it is that if you can put 8% of your paycheck in your emergency fund then every year you save will give you a month of emergency fund money. This is a good place to put all or most of any bonuses, overtime, windfalls, or any extra money you wind up until you are at your minimum savings goal. The faster this grows the more you contribute to your own stability.

Other buckets Divide up what is left into your buckets and then pay that set amount in every month. Even if it is only $5.00 a month, it adds up. Some ideas for other buckets include short term goals like saving for a new bicycle or medium term goal like saving for a trip to France, and long term goals like saving for a house or for retirement. Back when we were renters, we set up a bucket that was 'downpayment money'.

The bucket system can encourage you to look at what you need as a minimum to stay in your home and then lets you add stretch goals to your life. So if you get a raise or a better paying job or an additional income you can decide where to save that additional money instead of just spending more of it without realizing it.

You can add new buckets, increase your amount of saving for your current buckets, or even give yourself a raise in your allowance, but the key is that you do it deliberately-- that you choose what to do with your money. When one bucket is full you can take the money you were paying into it and add it to a different bucket. If you don't want 10 accounts each getting $10.00 a month, then fill one bucket at a time, or one short-term and one long-term bucket (but keep a list of all the buckets that you want to fill eventually and when one fills up, start the next one).

I can't stress enough the importance of both giving yourself an allowance and treating your savings goals as bills. An allowance that is in a separate account from your savings keeps you from spending your hard-won savings accidentally. Treating savings goals like bills gets you in the habit of taking your own goals just as seriously as the folks at the water company take getting your money. Labeling the buckets with your goals can help you stop yourself from spending money you have 'sitting around' because you have given that money a long-term purpose. You can choose to spend it, but you'll know up front that it will take you that much longer to reach your goal if you do. If you are sharing accounts with someone, an allowance keeps you both from spending into your joint funds or from one of you accidentally spending the rent money.

You can use the bucket system with kids to help them learn about savings and budgeting. You can make physical buckets out of jars, envelopes, bottles, or piggy banks and decorate and label them with the names of kid's goals. So if they want to save for a game, a book, fuzzy socks, or crafting supplies, or an IRA they can label a jar, figure out how much they need to save for how long and then can watch as the jars fill over time. (And you can introduce the concept of matching funds if you want to give them added incentive to save.) When they are old enough to have an account at a bank or credit union, they can take their physical buckets and turn them into virtual ones.

This system grows with you. When we first started out we were living hand-to-mouth and we made a slightly more than our living expenses*. That money went into our only bucket, our emergency fund. (And for a while it felt like every time we got $300.00 saved we would have an emergency that would wipe it out and we'd start over.) Now we have many buckets and they are helping us during a transition to being self-employed, something that would be a lot more stressful than it is given that we did not get to dictate the timing of the employment move.

If you don't already have a system for budgeting and saving money, try the bucket system. If saving sounds like a drag, think of it as controlled release spending. You'll get to spend the money eventually and it's pretty fun (and much less stressful) to be able to do something like shop for Christmas gifts and not have outstanding bill to pay off come January.

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*"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." ~Mr Micawber in "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens

Fledglings

I grew up in a small town in Wyoming. About the only thing it had going for it from my perspective was the amazing Carnegie library downtown. It was a multipurpose space-- library with books, space for small concerts, host to various children's activities (especially in the summer).

I loved the weekly treks to the library. My mom would load us in the car and I would gleefully (with the enthusiastic assistance of the children's librarian) fill my bag with the 20 books allowed and return home to devour them. The library and the church were the two most important buildings during my childhood.

School, not so much (for many reasons, the most ironic being I was already a fluent reader when I started first grade but my teacher insisted I had to 'learn' her way).

I loved the library because the adults there shared my passion for books and never told me I had to like certain books or that I shouldn't read above my grade level or put any limit on me other than a total book limit and the instruction to take care of the books. The library was my first experience in the idea of a shared community resource that everyone can use but that everyone should do their part to take care of. I still remember taking a deep breath of book scented air every time we walked through the doors.

I loved church for a similar reason. I don't remember a time when I wasn't a full communicant in the church. I was recruited to be an acolyte when I was 9 and served (with a brief hiatus because the new priest didn't believe in acolytes - my first protest letter was written to him) until I left for college. It was the other place in my life were I felt affirmed as a person, where I was actively recruited to develop leadership skills, and where I was encouraged in my participation in the church.

As an adult, my relationship with both institutions has changed. We have a library just up the street from us, but most of my interactions with it are via it's website. I hop on-line, look up the book or audio that I want and frequently end up downloading the content to read on my computer, or listen to through their audiobook app. I go in person to pay fines and to pick up books from the on hold shelf (which I check out at a self-service kiosk). I rarely interact in person with a librarian. As for church, I burned out years ago on having a relationship with a specific congregation for many reasons, some of which I have written about before in detail. However, I still interact with the church on-line. I write reflections, I read the lectionary, I meditate on the nature of god, forgiveness, good and evil, death, the nature of prayer, and the afterlife.

A part of me mourns the loss of my childhood intimacy with both libraries and churches. It was wonderful being surrounded by people who believed in my potential and who actively encouraged me to become who I am today.

Upon reflection, I think it is just a normal function of growing up. It is the job of adults and children's librarians to focus on the development of children; to surround them with love and teach them the tools to be able to function in the adult world (where, if we are lucky in our health, we will spend most of our lives); and to give them a safe space to practice for adult-hood.

When I was a fledging adult, I wanted nothing more than to free myself from the oversight of adults-- I wanted to be an adult. I was excited to be out in the world and ready to leave the restrictions of childhood behind.

Now that I am a full-time adult, with a fledging of my own, I can only hope that I did my part of the job in this cycle. I poured my love and energy into his school. I helped his teachers, encouraged his interests, and taught him as much as I could about being a functioning adult. Now he teases me about starting college, getting his drivers license, and leaving home. We have a two more years but he is starting to pull free-- which is as it should be
It just occasionally makes me yearn for the kindly librarian filling my bag with books or the priest walking me through how to serve as an acolyte.

I am haunted by the smell of stacks of books and the scent of burning beeswax.

And I realize that there are worse ghosts to have.

-----

This essay was originally published at the Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul on 08 October 2015.

Faithful Scholars

September 30th is the feast day of Jerome patron saint of archaeologists, archivists, Bible scholars, librarians, libraries, school children, students, and translators*. Known for his re-translation of the bible from Hebrew to Latin (the Vulgate Bible), he had a long career in the Roman Catholic Church. At times he was close to the center of power as a favorite of popes and at other times he was either a self-imposed hermit or a true outcast. As such he had wide experience of the ups and downs of life in the church. He went out of his way to learn Hebrew at a time when Greek was the language of scholars (though how well he learned it seems to be up for discussion in scholarly circles).

The lessons for the day reflect this scholarly bent, with Timothy exhorting followers of Christ to be:

be proficient, equipped for every good work

Psalm 19 giving us the classic sermon closing line of:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.

Psalm 119 stating:

Your commandment has made me wiser than my enemies, and it is always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your decrees are my study.
I am wiser than the elders, because I observe your commandments.

and the Gospel of Luke giving us:

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures

Something I have always appreciated about the Episcopal Church is its focus on learning and on providing paths for education for lay-people. From Sunday school to Education for Ministry; from diocesan-wide youth events to weekend trainings for adults; and from anti-racism training to mandatory Safeguarding God's Children training-- all of these events help foster life-long learning in the church.

I believe it also fosters life-long learning outside of the church environment by making learning and becoming educated a normal activity. In the church I grew up in I was encouraged to not just learn rote scripture or memorize what a passage was 'supposed to mean' but to actively engage with the classic three-legged stool of episcopalian metaphor, and the teachers I had worked hard to engage us where we were at. Ultimately, this reinforced my understanding that learning in general was a Good Thing.

I took the ideas I learned in Sunday School to college with me and those skills helped me analyze texts and synthesize my thoughts throughout my college career (and this was back in the day of the card catalog).

Just after college, stuck in the wilds of Texas, EFM (Education for Ministry) was my salvation. I met nice people, engaged with the scripture, and didn't feel quite as desperately alone as I did most of the year we lived there. It was also my introduction to a formula for learning that I have used ever since.

Experience + Reflection = Learning

This idea was further developed when I took leadership skills training and train-the-trainer workshops through the Diocese of Olympia continuing my experience of the Episcopal church as a place that encourages all types of learning from structured classes to intentional self-reflection.

It is my hope that, especially in this age of digital communication, my experience will not be rare or unusual and that the Episcopal Church will continue to be an heir to Jerome and all other scholars who valued study and learning and put that at the heart of faith.

-----

*Also apparently patron saint of flame wars-- so truly a saint for modern times.

Resources used:

"Jerome." The Lectionary Page: Jerome. Ed. Kelly W. Puckett. N.p., 11 Sept. 2015. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. .

"Jerome." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,, 22 Sept. 2015. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. .

Kiefer, James E. "Jerome, Scholar, Translator, and Theologian." Jerome, Scholar, 
Translator, and Theologian. Society of Archbishop Justus, 29 Aug. 1999. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. .

This essay was originally published at the Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul on 23 September 2015.

Beauty in the midst

Last week I was reading about Constance and Her Companions. One of the fabulous things about the Internet is how much information used to be obscure, hard to find, or just existing in a single copy in a library somewhere is now no more than a quick search engine click away.

In this case it was a compilation of writings by the sisters that were gathered an annotated by an unknown person just a year after the epidemic that killed all but one them.

It is a long document, but worth reading. When I read it, one short sentence leapt out at me. From August 29, 1878, sandwiched in between notes about the number of new cases of fever that day and a note that four 'romish' priests were dead was the line: "One cares so much for the lovely weather, the evening light; one sees such exquisite pictures everywhere. It seems almost heartless to care for them!

That line made me stop and think about how easy it is to fall into the idea that I should feel a certain way in some circumstances. That I should be solemn at a funeral, sad at the bedside of a dying friend, and happy at the birth of a child when frequently my feelings are much more complex and unpredictable.

When my son was born I did feel so much joy that I started crying, but at the same time I felt terror, exhaustion, and straight up crankiness. At my father-in-law's funeral I was distracted between feeling his loss, a tendency to giggle at odd things, and distracted anxiety that my son (then around four) wouldn't sit still at the right times and it would be my fault.*

I never had just one type of feeling during those times when I had a cultural expectation of what I was 'supposed to feel' and when I saw the line from Sister Constance's papers quoted above it brought me up short. Here she was in the midst of suffering and death and she could still see beauty and feel it move her. She felt 'almost heartless' but I think it was a gift from God and it reminded me of another story.

My housemate's family were in the displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe at the end of World War II. They were in the camps for a long time and lived with a great deal of uncertainty about what would happen to them. In spite of that, the adults got together and set up schools for the children and classes for the adults. The adult classes were places where skilled artisans could teach others their trades including leather and metal working. Using scraps and sharing what little they had, they learned to make art from one another. In the midst of confusion and doubt they banded together to keep each other's spirits up and minds engaged in the world around them, until, at last they made it out of Europe to the United States. My housemate has a few of the things that her grandfather made in the camps and even without the context of where and when they were made, they are beautiful.

I think the trait to see beauty even in the midst of death and destruction, the ability to make beauty out of nearly nothing, and to raise others up into beauty makes us both fully human and in touch with the divine.

So Sister Constance was not heartless in her recognition of beauty, she was touched by creation in the best possible way.

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*Disclaimer: all of the fear of being judged by my in-laws came from my own insecurities and never from them, but it took me about 15 years to figure that out.

Resources used:

"The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis: With the Acts and Sufferings of the Priests and Others Who Were There with Them during the Yellow Fever Season of 1878." The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis. Ed. Unknown. Project Canterbury, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2015. 

This essay was orginially published at Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul on 16 Sept 2015

Greatest Hits: Psalm 51

What started as project to methodically read the psalms in order has turned into hoping in and skipping around the psalms based on what other reading I have been doing, searches for the occurrence of particular words or phrases, and in following the lectionary.

As I was looking at some of the lessons for August, I read Psalm 51 and realized that it is one of what I think of as "the greatest hits" in Psalms. Unlike many of the psalms that I examined when I was reading them in order, this psalm is so familiar to me that, less than halfway though reading, it I remembered how it went.

Curious, I went and looked it up in the Book of Common Prayer (which can be downloaded as a searchable PDF!) and found that, in addition to appearing in the Psalter, Psalm 51 also appears in the liturgy for Ash Wednesday services, and a section of it is presented in the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families for Morning.

Since I had a searchable version of the BCP I looked for Psalm 51 in the lectionary and found, before I lost count, that it is called on at least 10 different times throughout the entire liturgical calender.

This is the psalm as I stumbled upon it during my reading:

51 Miserere mei, Deus
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; *
          in your great compassion blot out my offenses.
Wash me through and through from my wickedness *
          and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, *
          and my sin is ever before me.
Against you only have I sinned *
          and done what is evil in your sight.
And so you are justified when you speak *
          and upright in your judgment.
Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, *
          a sinner from my mother's womb.
For behold, you look for truth deep within me, *
          and will make me understand wisdom secretly.
Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; *
          wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.
Make me hear of joy and gladness, *
          that the body you have broken may rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins *
          and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, *
          and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence *
          and take not your holy Spirit from me.
Give me the joy of your saving help again *
          and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
I shall teach your ways to the wicked, *
          and sinners shall return to you.
Deliver me from death, O God, *
          and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness, O God of my salvation.
Open my lips, O Lord, *
          and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice, *
          but you take no delight in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; *
          a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Be favorable and gracious to Zion, *
          and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you will be pleased with the appointed sacrifices, with burnt-offerings and oblations; *
          then shall they offer young bullocks upon your altar.
                            ~(BCP, Psalm 51, pp 656-657)

This seems like an excellent opportunity to look at this frequently used psalm from a different point of view.

Robert Alter makes the case that the first and last two lines of this psalm were added by a later editor. The first two were likely added by editors to set the psalm during David's time even though it was probably composed centuries later (and those two are left off of the psalm as it appears in the BCP). The last two were added to rebut or soften the original author's focus on personal atonement (as opposed to making burnt-offerings at the temple). Both of these ideas make sense in the context as provided and once pointed out are hard not to see. There is a sudden shift from a historical setting to a personal plea and then back to an institutional setting at the close (which hints that perhaps some burnt-offerings would be welcome by God- in direct contradiction to the main authors heartfelt plea only a few verses earlier).

Here is the psalm from Mr Alter's book as it would appear if he had left the 'added' verses off.

3 Grant me grace, God, as befits Your kindness,
          with Your great mercy wipe away my crimes.
4 Thoroughly wash my transgressions away
          and cleanse me from my offense.
5 For my crimes I know,
          and my offense is before me always
6 You alone have I offended
          and what is evil in Your eyes I have done.
7 So you are just when You sentence,
          You are right when You judge.
8 Look, You desired truth in what is hidden,
          in what is concealed make wisdom known to me.
9 Purify me with a hyssop, that I be clean.
          Wash me, that I be whiter than snow.
10 Let me hear gladness and joy,
          let the bones that You crushed exult.
11 Avert Your face from my offenses,
          and all my misdeeds wipe away.
12 A pure heart create for me, God,
          and a firm spirit renew within me
13 Do not fling me from Your presence,
          and Your holy spirit take not from me.
14 Give me back the gladness of Your rescue
          and with a noble spirit sustain me.
15 Let me teach transgressors Your ways,
          and offenders will come back to You.
16 Save me from bloodshed, O God,
          God of my rescue,
                    Let my tongue sing out Your bounty.
17 O Master, open my lips,
          that my mouth may tell Your praise.
18 For You desire not that I should give sacrifice,
          burnt-offering You greet not with pleasure.
19 God's sacrifices-- a broken spirit.
          A broken, crushed heart God spurns not.

Striped of its familiar wording, of the editorializing verses, and with the much more vigorous 'fling' used in place of the less emphatic 'cast' this 'greatest hits' psalm takes on a much more personal and immediate feel. It also keeps the focus on the grace of God that is mentioned in the first line. At no point does the author claim to be worthy of rescue. Instead the author lists out all the brokenness that needs healing or purifying or strengthening. The offering is not 'young bullocks upon Your altar' but is, instead, 'a broken spirit, a broken, crushed heart.'

The author lives in hope, hoping to teach others and hoping to show them the way back to God but it is an offer of service, rather than a demand for such a gift.

Unlike young bullocks, broken spirits and crushed hearts are not in short supply as suitable offerings to God.


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This essay originally published at Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul in September 2015.

Resources used in this essay:

The downloadable Book of Common Prayer

Alter, R. (2007). The Book of Psalms:: A translation with commentary (pp. 180-183). New York: W.W. Norton.

Washed in the blood

(Warning for visceral description of blood.)

I've never been a big fan of the book of Revelation and it has been years since I read the entire thing from start to finish.  However, it does crop up in the lectionary from time to time and this time it is: Revelation 7:13-17.

As I was reading though the lessons, the phrase "they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" sprang out at me and I really thought about what it would be like to wash something in blood and have faith that it would come out, not only clean, but purified.

Fresh blood is warm and sticky.  It has a distinctive smell that can drive animals into fear or frenzy. Dried blood leaves indelible stains. White cloth dipped in blood will, in the normal course of events, be permanently marred.

So what does it mean to be washed in blood as a visceral experience?  Would that metaphor have more power for people who had regular experience of both animal sacrifice and killing and eating their own stock?

I, for one, rarely eat meat and what little I do eat, I buy from a grocery store when it has been drained of blood and prepared for prompt use.  I have never hunted, and the only animals whose death I have witnessed have been well-loved pets (and most of those from old age). The most blood I have experience with is my own, shed either through menstruation or by accident.

In the realm of metaphor, most of what I have seen comes from the communion table where wine subs in for the Blood of Christ.  Communion wine might be dry or sweet, but it tastes noting like the salty blood from an inadvertent paper-cut and has none of blood's proverbial thickness.  In my thinking, blood stands for loss and suffering; for separation and impurity; and for sacrifice and death.

The idea that one could take a garment, or a person, wash them in blood, and have them come out clean says to me that these are people who have suffered and lost, who have been immersed in suffering, who have had pain stick to them like dried blood; and yet, they have come though the other side of suffering clean and dry, their robes made white, their pain relieved.

As the psalm for the day says: 

Restore, O Lord, our fortunes
like freshets in the Negeb.
They who sow in tears
in glad song will reap.
He walks along and weeps,
the bearer of the seed bag.
He will surely come in with glad song
bearing in his sheaves.
(Psalm 126:4-6 from "The Book of Psalms" by Robert Alter)

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Resources used: 
Bible Gateway  (all quotes in this essay are from the NRSV translation)

Alter, R. (2007). The Book of Psalms: A translation with commentary (pp. 447-448). New York: W.W. Norton.

Originally published in: Speaking to the Soul: Washed in the blood on 1 September 2015

Facing Mortality: one year later

My housemate's mother passed away in July 2014 and my housemate is acting as the estate's personal representative. This post is inspired by her experience.

It has been a full year since my housemate's mother died. 

The tide of her mail, bills, and boxes of personal papers and artwork has receded. It now takes up a small corner of the den instead of two banquet tables and my housemate has made progress on cleaning out her mother's house but there is still work to be done. 

Things that have been helpful to her: 

• Having a space at our house where she could keep an 'office' of her mother's paperwork. In the beginning there were a lot of different things to keep up on like medical billings, insurance, setting up an estate bank account, and having a place to put the mail as it came in. We ended up with two large plastic bins for junk mail, catalogs, and subscriptions-- since dealing with them wasn't time sensitive and a smaller inbox for bank statements, medical bills, and other potentially important and time critical mail. The nice thing about being able to use our den for this during the first year, was that my housemate could close the door and walk away. It wasn't piled up in her bedroom. 
• Having me process junk mail in batches, including an hour spent on the phone telling catalog sales people to take her mother's name, and our address, off of their mailing list. Once I realized that telling folks straight up that the person they were trying to sell to had died, I found that they were all quick to take care of matters. One woman went so far as to offer to look up the name in other databases she had access to and she saved me 3 more phone calls as a result. It made me sad to have to repeat the same information over and over, but not nearly as sad as my housemate might have felt. 
• Making a database of addresses from the collection of papers, cards, and old address books that we found during while looking for official paperwork like wills and car title. 
• Being lucky enough that her mom's house was paid for. This allowed her to use it as a base of operations and only bring essential paperwork over to our house. It also has meant that she could take her time going through her mother's things at a pace that worked for her. It would have been much more stressful if she had had to go through things quickly. 
• Hiring a lawyer who specialized in estate work to help her with the legal process of filing the correct forms with the county courthouse. The house is in another county from where we live and is a two-hour drive so having someone local was very helpful. It also didn't cost that much and everything was included in one upfront fee. 
• Having weekend-long family work-parties at the house. There was an overwhelming amount of things to sort through and having a passel of folks there, that my housemate trusted got some big jobs done. My housemate's mother had been operating in survival mode for several years before she died (one of the many reasons she opted for the risks of surgery) so in addition to dealing with the belongings of a normal household, there were layers of projects that had been to be abandoned due to lack of energy that needed careful sorting through. One of the ways she coped with low energy was to have caches of items she would need near where she would use them. Things people helped with:
• Sorting tools in to broken, duplicates, and usable categories 
• Rounding up caches of costume jewelry and putting sets back together 
• Sorting, washing and packing clothes for donation Sorting perishable and non-perishable food and taking it to the local food bank along with unused personal products like soap and shampoo
• Cleaning out the potting shed and re-organizing it 
• Finding the stashes of yard tools and consolidating them 
• Gathering up office and art supplies and sorting them (many will be going to a local school)
• Dump runs and runs to the recycling center 
• Rounding up potentially hazardous materials and prepping them to go to the county haz-mat facility 
• Cleaning out the extra freezers and refrigerators on the property 
• Leafing through books before sorting and packing them for distribution to family, friends, and local thrift stores. 
• Assessing and make some minor repairs to fixtures in the house 

Even with all the time spent on the estate so far, there is still a fair amount to do. Including following through with what we have learned and making sure our own estates are in order. One good thing that came out of this is the awareness of the complexity of dealing with even a simple estate and the steps we can all take to make life easier for those we leave behind.