Doing Something Right

My daughter was given a homework assignment that required her to use math to design her dream home. She named her dream home "Open Hearts Hospital". You see, her dream home is a small apartment on the 3rd floor of a hospital in Africa. She is the greatest!!

So while she was designing her hospital and dream home, I was reading an article in "The Christian Century" written by Parker Palmer. It talked about a man dying after donating part of his liver to his brother mainly because of poor post-surgical care. He had a couple of quotes that I thought might apply to our broken system. "Exhibit A in my case for educating a 'new professional', by which I mean a person who not only is competent in his or her discipline but also has the skill and the will to resist and help transform the institutional pathologies that threaten the profession's highest standards. I know of no field where the new professional is not needed."

or "Such an education would call us to identify and examine our own shadows. Only when we name and claim our own shadows and become accountable for the darkness that we create will we be able to evoke 'the better angels of our nature,' inner sources of light that make both individuals and institutions more humane."

I have faith that the new generation of pastors will work on reforming our system.

Final Thought (I Promise)

"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war.Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Following that great quote, my beloved daughter and her BFF convinced younger brother and cousin to eat dirt. Hazing starts young..... and continues through commissioning and ordination. I wonder if I agree to eat some dirt the higher ups with release me from this hamster wheel that I am turning upon endlessly.Good thing that I'm getting in shape. Looks like I will need all the strength that I can muster up.

Paying the Price

Well, Daughter was made to call every single one of the girls on the Cheerleading Squad last night and ask if they had seen her Cross Country shoes (since that was the last time she saw them). One of the girls said, "this must be awkward", Ryss said, "YES". I told her that until I came back from Houston she had to run in her old shoes and then we would go to the mall and use her babysitting money to buy a new pair. She was not a happy camper. And you are right, Thief, the wilderness would be a bad place to lose your shoes. Having spent so many years in the military I should have come up with a better analogy - like visiting grandma.

I have been a busy, busy girl. Finished the sermon for Sunday and bulletins for the next two weeks, now I just have to touch up the sermon for week after next and I will be almost ready for the D.Min. seminar. Even if, I had to email them and ask them "What time does it start?". You would think that would have been included in the information somewhere.

I couldn't talk to my PD Guy yesterday because they had to rush a family member to the hospital. I'm thinking that his wife is really feeling overwhelmed right now. She still works full-time, her 92-year-old mother lives with them, and her husband is sick. I need to remember that the next time I'm bitchin' about all I have to do.

I think that I need to talk to someone who is an expert in Parkinson's, so I am going to dig into my referral information and see what I come up with. Maybe they will have some insight. In the meantime, I will wait.

A new opportunity was handed to me today. We are going to be using the upcoming Sweet Potato Festival as an evangelism/outreach project. We will pass out cold water to the crowd, so now we are trying to design a "Living Water" Float for the parade. I am going to delegate the design part because my talents definitely don't lie in that area.

For you United Methodists out there, much of the chatter about General Conference that I am hearing has to do with how we ordain clergy. Some of the talk is about moving to a new model for churches that worship under 50. A team approach.... sounds good in theory. However, as more and more, small membership churches close their doors, less and less student pastors are given the opportunity for practical experience. Not one, Not One large church in my district (of over 80 churches) has a student pastor on staff. They can all afford to pay for a fully ordained elder for associate positions and so that's what they have. Who is going to get these larger churches to step up to the plate and allow student pastors to serve?? This is another example of them wanting more clergy on one hand and throwing up roadblocks to the process on the other.