When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even...

I am in the process of learning how to use the digital camera that I received for Christmas last year. As I looked at the 504 images that were uploaded, it became obvious that my photography skills developed as the year progressed.

None of the photos I took last Christmas are of particular interest...and this one is the only one I have with snow.

No, it's not a Christmas picture--it was taken on April 24, 2008. My daughter is pushing angrily through the snow on her way to a swim meet, while my husband trails behind. It was easier to walk to the pool than to shovel out a vehicle, especially as the roads had not been ploughed. Tell that to a 10 year old!

But it does remind me of the legend of King Wenceslas, whose steps melted the snow so that his servant was able to follow. I am surprised that this photo doesn't show the steam rising from my daughter.

..to see ourselves as others see us....

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

Robbie Burns was inspired to write his poem after watching a louse climb through the hair and bonnet of the lovely young woman in the pew in front of him.

I have just watched myself on DVD, teaching a lesson on reflective journal writing for a group of teenagers.

There is much to be pleased with and proud of--this is an earnest and dynamic woman...but the picture I had of myself before looking through the lens of a camera did not include multiple chins or sausage fingers...

Does this woman look like she lives with respect in creation? To seek justice and resist evil? Or does her appearance proclaim her a full participant in the affluenza epidemic?

"They also serve who only sit and wait." This has become a mantra as I wait...and so I sought the origin of the quotation.

I don't know why I didn't remember it was Milton--except that Milton belongs to a time and place of grey sky and limestone and eager study, my brain hurting in its growth, Professor Barnes, Queen's, 1978...

In that classrom was that electric moment when I first read the words "Batter my heart, three-person'd God"--John Donne, robust, manly, earthy, and spiritual--the man who wrote "The Compass" and "The Flea".

Milton flew under my radar.

And now, I see, the misquoting that I and a million others are guilty of: "they also serve who only stand and wait."

To stand, not sit. Standing: poised, ready, for that first moment of imbalance we must risk in order to take a step.

Get out from under that tree, Jonah! Recognize the difference between the reason for this waiting and the purpose of this waiting.

After the Staff Meeting

Dark brittle branches against an indigo sky; horned moon with Mars and Venus.

A clarity of snow.

Soft prayers on the sidewalk.

Alone, going home.

It's Official...

My request to enter discernment was made public on Sunday morning at church. I felt awkward, but excited...my relationship with God is such a personal thing...yet it is now so public, and needs to be.

There were only three of us sopranos in the choir, which meant that I was mostly hidden from view behind the organ. I didn't have my words for this yet...so remained silent.

When the service had ended, there were many hugs and congratulations.

And silences.

Redefinitions need to be made. Clarifications are needed. Relationships reassessed. This comes with any change.

Discerning between...what?

I have to admit I was tickled to hear that when my letter was read to the board, it was greeted by a moment of 'stunned silence'.

When I was a full-time drama teacher, 'stunned silence' meant one of two things: the work being received was either amazingly good or apallingly bad. Either one forced me into a 'heightened now', a place where I pulled together all of my knowledge and skills to articulate my perceptions and guide my learners to the next step. My understanding of my church board's stunned silence is that I am the third candidate in the last 6 years to make this request.

No one with whom I have shared this decision has been really surprised, once they've had a bit of time to process it. My church friends have been delighted...the only determinedly secular friend who I've told expressed concern about how my husband would feel 'when you're better at it than he is'.

I've heard that newly apprehended prisoners who are guilty sleep like babies in their cell, while the innocent lie awake. I guess I am 'guilty', because I have been so at peace with this decision.

Actually, when I stop to think about it, I have a tendency to giggle.

I am in no real hurry, knowing that the process is lengthy, but since I spent so much time struggling with the decision to enter discernment, it would be nice for it to begin relatively soon--like January, or February. But when I received the phone call from the minister from a nearby town who sits on our board, she explained that the United Church is in the middle of redesigning or redesignating the ministries.

I can't very well enter discernment when we don't know what options exist to discern between.

In the meantime, I hold these things in my heart, I ponder, and every now and then, as I work with our data on literacy, I have a little giggle.

Of Remembrance...

Today is Remembrance Day.

I hear my daughters saying goodbye as my husband heads off to work. I need to type this quickly and shower so that I can get a load of laundry in before their breakfast. I won't see them again until tomorrow night, and I am all too aware that they are approaching the end of childhood. The next few years will pass too quickly.

I will go to work this morning, and will spend an hour at my desk, finally getting to a data job that I wanted to have finished 2 weeks ago. I will then, resentfully, because I will only be a quarter of the way through that job, descend to a meeting, where it will take an hour for everyone to 'get on the same page', before beginning the hashing and slashing out of the details for a presentation that will itself undergo two or three reworkings over the next while. I will regretfully leave my desk at the end of the day, because I know that I won't have finished what I had started in the morning, but I will need to get home to pack and fly to tomorrow's meeting...and to call my brother, because it is his birthday.

May I not forget what truly matters within the mundane of today.

..and the world is about to turn...

The tune of 'Star of County Down' runs through my head this morning, with the lyrics from Voices United: "and the world is about to turn."

Against the exciting hope for change in Empire with the election of Barack Obama, came the news that 195 jobs in our local mill will end in two weeks.

Domtar's press release came at the end of the day--as usual, ensuring that the local newspaper, a weekly, had gone to press before they could add the story. The glib and unconcerned voice of Domtar's vice-president, interviewed in Montreal by CBC radio, sickened me. His stats are friends and husbands of friends. They are the parents of children who are already struggling to find their places in the world.

These workers deserved better than to hear that their jobs would end in two weeks. They deserved better than to hear it on the radio or from a friend calling to ask what was going on.
And our community will deserve better than to hear 'oh well, at least the pulp is still operational".

a calm continues...

I wake this morning to stark bare branches against a blue sky.

I feel calm. I grow aware that part of me must have been waiting to see if I would go through some sort of emotional hangover, that perhaps my decision to enter discernment was born of an over-excited condition caused by stress...

Picture a disheveled Jonah on the beach, checking himself over as the whale disappears over the horizon...

But all I am feeling right now is a calmness. I am wondering how the Board meeting went last night and how long it will be before a committee will be set. I rewrote my letter to remove the line about privacy--I didn't want the hoopla that attended my husband's announcement--no hallelujah jazz hands, please--but the reactions of others to my relationship with God is out of my hands.

My calm comes from the sense of 'rightness', that things are in 'right relationship'. This Jonah is, at least, on the right beach.

And my brother has a job offer.

...a job that's meaningful...

In my hometown, there is a pile of rubble--all that is left of the paper mill that provided a livelihood for hundreds of families. My father laboured there until his retirement. For my brother, it was a different story.

When the mill shut down, my brother, in his mid-forties, found his way into mineral exploration. The outdoor work suited him; his intelligence and work ethic put him into a leadership role almost immediately.

And now, with the price of metals, his job is gone.

When he called to tell us, I told him about my decision to enter discernment.

"I just need something meaningful," I said.

"I think teaching kids to read and think is pretty meaningful," he said.

"It's important," I said, "but it's not meaningful to me any more."

This decision has changed nothing in my situation--I will continue as I have--except that it has changed everything in my situation--because my eyes have a new focal point on a distant horizon. My talents, my skills, my education, my faith -- all meet there. Patterns of behaviour at work that used to keep me tense and stressed are revealed as pathetic attempts to control what cannot be controlled--chains have slipped from me...I've stepped out of my old skin...

Discernment is a 12 month process once the committee is set. Working and taking distance ed for the M. Div. means a steady income and no drastic changes for our daughters. My retirement date is November 2015...the year our youngest will graduate from high school.

I have the luxury of self-actualization, while others, like my brother, experience life as a struggle much closer to the survival end of the continuum.

The Other Side of the Storm

Underlying the maelstrom of angst at work has continued this question: am I running from or to?

Have I been excavating to the true Ellie, or wrapping her in new duds?

I have been more at peace this week, and it has been a letting go. I have amused myself--and my husband--with "the woman who wears this jacket has decided that we need to go out to eat tonight." "The woman who wears this jacket wants some good port and ancient cheddar now."

The woman who wears this jacket screwed up her courage to ask her husband to hold off a year between his last on-line course and heading to seminary so that money might be available for her also to take courses...but the conversation became "I am going to write a letter for discernment to be established" instead. And then, her husband said, "I've been thinking that I would really like to take a year between finishing my on-line courses....."

I am standing on a hilltop now, in one of my beautiful new jackets, thinking "The woman who wears this jacket is a woman who knows she is exploring a possible future, not running from an uncomfortable present."

I am afraid in all the best senses of the word, but also relieved.

Tonight at choir practice I will give our church board chair this letter:

"Over the past few years, I have been wrestling with what may be a call to ministry in our church.

Please accept this letter as my request to the Board for a Discernment Committee to be established for me to explore this call. I know that this process within our church necessitates public knowledge, but ask that my desire for privacy be respected as far as possible.

Thank you for your time, attention, and prayers."

of Pride and Prejudice...

A perfect weekend was planned by my book club. A river-side B & B in a classic period home, lunch at a fabulous restaurant, a 4:00 pm performance of Pride and Prejudice, and dinner at an even more fabulous restaurant...an hour or two to shop in a city bookstore...

And everything in me screamed against going. I don't like sharing a bathroom; I don't have the money for these restaurants; I've already seen the perfect stage adaptation of P & P, at Stratford...as the only owner of a van, I would have to be the driver...and my daughters need their Hallowe'en costumes and the bathroom still hasn't been painted...

I kept my mouth shut with pride and held my prejudices in abeyance, created a playlist on my iPod that nestled Coldplay next to Ella Fitzgerald, Rufus Wainwright next to Joni Mitchell, the Beatles next to Louis Armstrong, and packed my suitcase.

Under cold stars in our driveway, I sipped my coffee and greeted each member as she arrived...and by 6:45 a.m. we were on our way.

I truly love to feel the highway unrolling beneath my wheels. As the miles passed, the pleasant conversations and music did their duty...I could feel my spirit beginning to unfurl.

When our book club began 8 years ago, we were, for the most part, acquaintances. Within the world we have built together through our discussions of books, we have become deep friends.

I allowed myself to enjoy my friends and the spirit of our weekend. I could feel the shell of resentment I have been building for myself over the past few months crack and break away.

The inability to find a parking spot on the street in front of the restaurant turned into the discovery of a lovely boutique; the intimacy of sharing at the B & B led to a much needed mentoring; there was nothing in the weekend that was hollow or wrong...and I write this morning with the lightness of heart that comes from the secure knowledge that I have loving friends.

(And a new, hot pink cashmere jacket that I got half-price...and since I couldn't decide between two others, chose both.)

Some much-need renovation of my self has begun.

Where am I?

Where am I?

Good question.

It is easy to explain away August--the renovations of our house that had us living out of suitcases in other people's homes when we weren't out camping in the rain in our tents...

So too September--the start up of the school year, hitting the ground running, attending and presenting workshops--and, of course, the renovations still incomplete...

But now it is mid-October. I have done almost no writing. The stresses of my job are weighing more heavily than they ever have in my 21 year career. I feel unbalanced. I have lost perspective. I am going to be 50 and I don't know what to do when I grow up.

Wrestling with the concept of being called, I thought: okay, I'll enter discernment. After all, that's a process that will help me to know what I am to do.
And at that, a great dead silence.

I said, sure, God, okay...and there was nothing.

All through September...nothing. So that is not my path--unless I am meant always and only to hear the 'no's', and never the great grand 'yes!es'.

So here I am, which is I don't know where.

Waiting. Listening. Learning to let go.

Giving It a Go Part 2: Night of the Living...uh..Sermon

As June 1st drew nearer, I didn't worry about writing my sermon. I knew what my message should be and trusted that the words would flow as needed. What I didn't take into account were the tensions and stresses of my job and the household schedule, crammed with soccer practices and various social obligations that left me, a true introvert, unable to recharge my batteries.

By 4:00 p.m. on May 31, I was muttering to myself about having to go to yet another function: my sister-in-law's 40th birthday.

Armed with a Jackson-Triggs White Merlot and with every intention of an early departure, I waded in.

We've had a long, snowy winter and a cold, wet spring, but this particular evening was bright with the promise of summer. We sat on a sunny patio overlooking a wide expanse of green lawn down to the river. Somehow my glass remained full through the celebration and by the time I got home, although it was only 9:30, I was in no shape to write.

"Fetch me some chips," I commanded my husband, and he drove to Safeway. In my reckoning, the grease and the alcohol would bind at some elemental level, leaving me more than ready to write the perfect sermon.

At 10:03 I was asleep; at 1:42 I was awake, in the bathroom, bowels in a knot, but my mind strangely ready to work. At 5:40 I polished the last sentence and tucked myself back into bed.

As we headed to church a few hours later, my only fear was that the overhead fans might waft any lingering alcohol fumes from my person to the sensitive noses of the ladies in the far pews. Actually, I was nervous, but I had been scared sober.

And my service? Well, the response was gratifying. I had worked some things out in that sermon, and was delivering from a point of authority and purpose. There is nothing like a little nervousness to help you live fully in the moment.

I also realized that although I have attended a thousand and one church services, I had never noticed what the minister does while the collection is being taken.

I was particularly pleased with one thought that came to me: on this type of journey, a change of attitude is more important than a change of clothing.

At this point, I think I need both. I was excited to begin this blog in June...and now that I am on summer break, with time theoretically at my disposal, I am reluctant to unpack for my journey.

Why?

Givin' it a Go Part One: Hymn Selection

On June 1st I had the opportunity to try something I'd always wanted to do: lead a church service.

I was quite excited by the idea. I've been a secondary teacher for 20 years, but the past few have been spent as a literacy coach, without a class of my own. I've honed my presentation skills--the bigger the audience the better.

I've spent years and years preparing for three 76 minute classes a day--an hour long church service? Hah! I could practically do it in my sleep. Especially since I wouldn't have to worry about being interrupted by folks asking to go to the bathroom or trying to creep down a pew and out a side door for an illicit cigarette.

Two weeks before the service, I sat down to see what the Scripture readings would be. Wow! The story of Abram's call. I wouldn't have to dig too hard to develop a sermon for that. I wanted to speak from the heart and to connect that ancient tale with the here and now.

Knowing that, I followed my husband's advice. The first deadline would be to make certain the church secretary had the prayers etc. for the order of service. The sermon could wait.

Woohoo! I got to pick all the hymns!

Four hymns to choose--mine, all mine! Slowly, methodically, I went through the hymnal, one by one, putting little coloured stickies at each possible choice. By the time I got to the end, there was a bright fringe of turquoise and pink around the book, and I had learned a lot about my current theological stance.

As a child in the Baptist church, The Old Rugged Cross was my personal favourite, closely followed by Just as I Am. We don't do much singing about the Blood of the Lamb these days in the United Church, and I don't mind that--but it did seem to me that there were an awful lot of cheery peppy little numbers that were...well...just...shallow. And more than a little guilty of the very thing I am coming to believe is the worst sin of all: complacency.

I had never really paid much attention to the flow of our church services--except when it was interrupted--but I realized that I wanted a particular pattern. I thought of my childhood lessons on the structure of the Lord's Prayer: praise and gratitude, confession, request... So, our first hymn? Great is Thy Faithfulness.

My children's time was based on the idea of packing more than you needed for a journey, and how sometimes all you need to carry actually fits better in your heart. I would be bringing in a picture of my grandmother. One of my earliest memories was sitting next to her on the piano bench, learning 'God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall'. I remember watching her fingers on the keys and looking forward to singing for my mom and dad when they came to get me. God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall wasn't in the hymnal, but the words would be printed in the Order of Service.

Now, I didn't want to hit people on the head with my message (not too hard, anyway), but there was no doubt about the hymn I wanted sung right before my sermon: Open My Eyes That I May See.

And now, a sending forth: I, the Lord of Sea and Sky. It contains one of the most powerful lines I have ever sung.

"I will break their hearts of stone, give them hearts for love alone..."

Oh yes, the pattern was set.

And look, it only took three days to decide...

My Own Little Inkling....

Time for a little confession here.

When my husband and I were first married, I decided to become a member of the United Church and took confirmation classes. As I was handed a notebook in which to write my thoughts, a fully-formed sentence seemed to read itself aloud in my mind: I’m going to be a minister.

It was the oddest thing that has ever happened to me. I wasn’t sure I should mention it to anyone, but that evening I told my husband.

“Did I ever tell you,” he began, “that when I was a teenager our minister told me I should consider the ministry?”

I laughed. “Was that before or after your flirtation with the military?”

The conversation ended. I pushed it to the back of my mind, where it nudged awake my memories of the story of Jonah, then slept for a almost a decade.

And the journey begins...

I suppose this post's title is just a little bit misleading--this journey actually began about four years ago, when my husband announced that he had been thinking about becoming a minister and would soon begin the discernment process in the United Church of Canada.

Anyone who has ever been half of a couple knows that a decision made by one partner has an impact on the other. If my husband decides that removing his socks and leaving them in balls at the side of his bed is what he wants to do, and I am the one who does the laundry...well, it's not easy for two people to work in harness together.

When he began, I was told point-blank by a member of his discernment committee that there was a 50% divorce rate for couples in our situation. I still don't know if that was true at the time or whether it is true now...but I do know that the person who told me that made a point of explaining to me, a number of months later, that many ministers have affairs with their church secretaries because they share so many confidences.

My husband and I were both appalled at this. Not at what she said--but that she said it. As a teenager, I had friends whose father was a Pentecostal minister and yes, his wife left him when she discovered he'd had an affair with their church secretary. I have worked in publishing, insurance and in education--I know that some people who work closely together sometimes have affairs. I wasn't appalled at that idea (although I do find it sad).

What upset me was the fact that this person seemed to feel obligated to frighten me as much as possible--instead of offering any support.

My husband found the process exciting and uplifting, as his call was clarified. I came away believing that if the statistic about divorce was correct, it had a lot to do with the process that was in place and the people who were administering it.

No marriage is easy. Change is always challenging. The life-partners of those who are called need to know they aren't alone. Obviously God is with us--but a little human sharing of our common experiences wouldn't go amiss, either.

So here is my venture into the world of blogging...what I hope will be my own little honest but optimistic, critical but positive, personal expression as this adventure continues.