Living word by word

new models needed

    There has been much rich conversation today about upcoming sabbaticals, sabbath, and pastoral ministry. My favorite definition so far, from David Wood, one of our co-facilitators: " A sabbatical is a time when all that has been 'background' to your ministry -- your own spiritual life, your family, the origins of your call, your passions -- is given time to be foreground, while the foreground of ministry -- the tasks of preaching and pastoral care and administration -- drop away for a time." Exactly.

    On another, crankier note, I was reminded again how little we know about doing ministry in the era of co-parenting and new gender roles. Eugene Peterson is often held up as a model for how one can be in parish ministry while still doing serious reading and writing. Here's a man who served a congregation for 28 years, with only one sabbatical in the midst of it, and still wrote countless books. His secrets? Well, he clearly had a strong vision of the ministry of the laity and handed over many tasks to his members. But there's another thing -- he has a wife, one who clearly was happy to take the traditional role of pastor's wife and see that as a calling.

    Well, I don't have a wife. I have an active father to my children, but definitely no wife, and not one eager to be an upfront pastor's spouse either (not that anyone at my congregation expects that of him). It's really hard for me not to be resentful of the many men in generations past -- and quite a few still today -- whose careers benefit from the fact that their spouses have willingly picked up the slack.

    I have to constantly remind myself that our mission is together as a family, even though our work worlds tend to pit our careers against one another. Fortunately for Will and me, our passions and commitments are blessedly compatible, even when the reality of modern life makes us feel like we're competing for time.

Go Jenell

My friend Jenell managed to find something useful to say about the program in homemaking that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Southern Baptist) is offering only to women. Not surprisingly, her blend of compassion and wit made it onto the LA Times Op Ed page. Go Jenell! Well said.

Enchanted

I went to a Disney movie last night, and I enjoyed it. It was, as all the reviewers have noted, new territory for Disney, spoofing its own star brand, The Princess. Creating Giselle, a Cinderella- Snow White - Briar Rose – Ariel- Belle amalgam, the makers have thrust their cherished meme into the (sort-of) real world of New York City, where she must find her way, at least until her True Prince finds her. They manage to make you laugh at all the truly laughable qualities of the Princess while still letting you care about her enough that, in the end, you don’t resent the storybook ending one bit.

 

Well, maybe a little bit. At first, the movie seems like a wink at moviegoers my age, who have figured out that the princess dreams we grew up with were not necessarily our allies in facing the realities of modern love and marriage. OK, Enchanted admits, love at first sight is not the wisest basis for a lifelong relationship. The Princess is even allowed to get angry – in fact, this anger is the pivotal moment in the movie. They even let her rescue her guy, sort of.

 

I would be a scrooge to begrudge the ending, in which Princess simultaneously gets her guy and grows to appreciate some of the contours of real life relationship. At least they don’t kill off the mature, assertive, rival girlfriend.  But the lapse into fantasy that most irritated me was when Giselle steps into a maternal role. What, you may ask, seals the deal with her potential stepdaughter?  A high end shopping spree capped by a mother-daughter pedicure.  “Is this what it’s like?” the little girl asks. “What?” Giselle says. “When your Mom takes you shopping.” Yes, there it is, the real thing that binds us to one another in families: shared self-indulgence. That’s the scene I don’t want my little girl to see.

 

The moment that most encapsulates the Disney mythology is near the beginning, when the realist father gives his six-year-old a book of heroines: Rosa Parks, Marie Curie. He wants her to have it instead of the fairytale book she wants, he explains, because these are real life women. “See? Madame Curie,” he points, “she devoted her life to science and research, and .. uh . . . died of radiation poisoning.” Every man’s dream for his little girl.

 

There’s the rub. Fairytales never end with the heroine actually dying. Actually, some of them do, just not Disney’s Americanized versions of them. Despite a Disney ban at our house, we still have lots of princess fantasies going on, and I’ve made my peace with them by reading – reading the original  tales by Hans Christian Anderson or even the Brothers Grimm, as harsh as they may be.  There is some very deep archetypal stuff going on with the good and evil in these tales – they have survived for a reason. Yes, mature and good women are often lacking in these stories, but I’m secure enough in my motherhood to believe that this alone won’t warp our mother-daughter relationship. And if I’m reading to her instead of popping in a video, I am neither the Absent Mother nor the Evil Stepmother. And maybe she’ll be less likely to assume that a true princess has to have a microwaist and a $70 manicure.

 

 

women on Advent

Journey with Jesus is featuring a series of guest essays for the season of Advent, including pieces by Nora Gallagher and Sara Miles in upcoming weeks. This week's is from Joan Roughgarden a Christian evolutionary biologist who teaches at Stanford. I'm afraid the last writer in the series will be a bit of a letdown after this line-up. But, in the spirit of Advent, we'll just have to wait and see.

praise God and pass the lipstick

My, my recent posts have been heavy lately! Whew! Really, life is OK here in Minnesota. The leaves have fallen, which just means there's more light let in at the ground level.

Check out this blog, Beauty Tips for Ministers. What a hoot. (Thanks Melanie!) On the whole, I think motherhood has put me in greater danger of frump than ministry per se, but I gotta agree with her assessment of clericals for women (sexist conspiracy). And about the lipstick, she's probably right there too.

snow day from collars

Well, so far the collar seems to inspire conversation only with bus drivers. Probably most of my parishoners haven't noticed a difference since they mostly see me on Sundays anyway.

I gave myself a snow day from the experiment today, not only because I wanted to be warm but also because I was going to the seminary for a workshop, and I've always been a bit irritated by people who wear their collars when they're spending the whole day with other clergy anyway. And in this case today, I  knew I'd been in the company of a lot of lay professionals and volunteers, and I didn't want to be making (or be perceived to be making) any unintentional status statements.

The collar does make me more conscious of ways I may be breaking certain stereotypes:

• What does it mean when the person in the collar waits for a bus?
• What does it mean when, fumbling for change for bus fare, the person in the collar nearly knocks certain, um, personal hygiene items from her bag?
• What does it mean that one of her clericals still has breast milk stains on it? (haven't worn that one in a while. . .)
• No one else may know what that curious stain on the back of my shoulder is, but I immediately recognize it as ground up cracker mixed with saliva smeared there while my toddler gives me a hug good-bye in the morning. Both of my vocations mark me.