Meaning and Authenticity

I came home today, from a very long day at the church, and sat down with David to watc h Episode Four of John Adams. He and I were both struck by how John addressed Abigail in his letters to her as "dear friend" -- this, during a separation of five long years. She was left at home, raising the children and keeping the farm going, while he was in Europe -- France and the Netherlands -- trying to help the American cause. David's remark was about the mutuality in their relationship shown by that term of endearment. Both David and I saw ourselves, and each other, in John and Abigail Adams. We both laughed out loud at John's responses to various things, laughing at the recognition of their similarity to David's responses at times. Same with me. I apparently share some similar outlooks on life as Abigail. When it was over, I wondered aloud whether Paul Giamatti bore any resemblance to the real John Adams. At that, my husband, the historian par excellence, pulled the Dav...

Thanks to Jan for these neat maps of countries and states visited! visited 27 states (54%) Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

visited 16 states (7.11%) Create your own visited map of The World or determine the next president

David and I and the girls are going to Pensacola soon. (Young Man with Integrity will be here every day to look after the cat for us, bless his heart.) Oh, I'm so ready for a change of scenery. I guess it will be hot in Florida, but I look forward to some ocean breezes, at least. And maybe some evening walks on the beach. My friend, Seeker Executive, has a rental condo right there on Pensacola beach. Actually, it's her father's, and they are giving us a week there for free. Talk about GENEROUS! Thank you, Seeker Executive! (and I miss seeing you!) My arm is hurting more yesterday and today than it has previously. Go figure. It just really aches, and when I rotate it there's a sharp pain still. Bummer. Nevertheless, I'm busy, busy. The church I serve has no Christian Education at all during the summer, so I've come up with some extra projects for myself. In June I started the Evening Prayer (Taize style) service on Tuesday nights and that's been...

I've been tagged by Jan for a meme. Thanks, Jan, and I hope Dolly turns out to be pretty tame there in South Texas. Here are the rules: a. List these rules on your blog. b. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog. 1. My husband and I honeymooned in Frederickberg, Texas. The place we stayed wasn't very nice. He LOVED the museum there--something about WW2, I forget exactly. I consider our "real" honeymoon to be our trip to the Canadian Rockies. We both enjoyed that. 2. When I was 17 I wrote an article for "Employer of the Year." My boss, John S., won based on my little essay. 3. I had a strange experience 3 days ago. As I was driving home from church I felt a strong calling to become a 2nd grade teacher. I'm still "processing" that one. 4. I lived in Plano, Texas for a number of years. Never again. 5. I was a switchboard operator for an electronics manufacturing company in my last year of high school. "Continental Telephone ...

It's going to be another 100 degree day here. This is my little sister and I -- oh, those were the days!

I'm 52. I don't fall easily. Two days ago, walking along in my church's parking lot, in what can only be described as the utter caprice of the universe, I fell down. No obvious reason; I didn't trip. I suppose I just fell off my shoes. It was unlike I've fallen in the past, where I take a few extremely ungracious steps forward in a hollow attempt to keep myself from actually hitting the ground. No. This was SPLAT. One second I'm walking along, talking to Cindy, our church administrator, and the next I'm flat out on the rough cement. I hurt my arm, and that's been an irritating inconvenience, but more than that, and the subject of this post, is how upsetting the whole experience is for me. Not the arm -- the fall itself. I'm an existentialist , big-time. I'm fascinated by issues of responsibility, freedom, guilt, authenticity, reality, death, control. And there's something about falling, at 52 years old, anyway, that is quite death-like and qu...

The saga continues, but it's good news. I went to the orthopedic doc yesterday to get the cast, as my regular doctor said to do, but this guy said a cast wasn't appropriate. Just a sling. He showed me the x-ray and said it looked like the radial bone was pushed forward a bit. He could cast it, he said, but it would be six months before I could move my elbow after the cast came off. Better to try to move it as much as I can stand the pain in the next three weeks, then it should be fine. So, good news there. The pain pills made me sleepy, so I cancelled my appointments yesterday, keeping only the wedding rehearsal last night. Wedding is tonight and I'll figure out a way to do that, holding my notes in my left hand, I guess. ...................... I've been asked to do a workshop on prayer at our regional assembly in October. In my reading, I found this by John Mogabgab: 'Come,' my heart says,' seek his face.' Your face, Lord, do I seek" Ps. 27:8 Praye...

i fell down yesterday. yep. walking in the parking lot of my church, i must've stepped on a rock and fell off my [flat] shoes. dumb....and what a shocker....i really don't know what happened. one moment i was walking along and the next moment i was on the ground. splat! our church administrator was with me....her voice was the only orienting factor in my life....for several moments i didn't know where or even who i was...all i knew was cindy's voice and the pain in my arm. this was about 9:30....as it happened, i had made an appointment for 10:30 with my doctor about the sore throat, so i just drove myself, using my left arm only, straight to the doc.... david really thought there might be a small break in my arm....the doctor sent me to get it x-rayed, and it turns out that he was right....i get a cast on it today. ugh. typing with the left hand only is a drag. i have a wedding rehearsal at 6 tonight. can't miss that. soooo, my prayer this morning is: dear god...

What is my prayer today? Well, dear God, You know that the tiredness I felt yesterday morning became a sore throat in the afternoon, and, while it's a bit better this morning, I can tell it is still there, along with my ears that are strangely hurting. Yes, okay, I'll call my doctor to see if I can get an appointment this morning. Thank you for the new client yesterday; I'm grateful, and I anticipate good things for her and for me in working further with her. Holy One, you know my friend asked me about spiritual direction--I continue to seek your guidance about that. I don't want to turn her down, but is that my false ego? what is best for her, God? I do think it took quite a lot of courage for her to ask me. Last night as I was reading I came across something that applies to her so beautifully...were you speaking to me, perhaps, through that? I felt such tender love yesterday morning for Lovely Passionate Feminist. It was after 9 am, so I knocked on her door and asked...

I pray for LIFE today, dear God. I'm tired and I have too much to do. I don't want to drag around. I don't want my tired body to drag my spirit down with it. I don't want to do what is unnecessary to do. So I pray for guidance on how to maintain a really creative tension between working and taking care of myself. I know, Holy One, that if I can remain aware of You today the tired feeling will be overcome by the Loving Energy You Are. I know as well that remaining aware of You will help me know when to stop working and get some rest. Here You are. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Katherine Ah. In Thomas Merton's Book of Hours I read: Our souls rise up from our earth like Jacob waking from his dream and exclaiming: "Truly God is in this place and I knew it not!" God becomes the only reality, in Whom all other reality takes its proper place--and falls into insignificance. May it be so.

Here are some photos of my new office. It's tiny, but it has a window to the street (one of only two in this house), and I've been able to make it really mine in terms of color and functionality. When I was five and six years old we lived in Nederland Texas, east of Houston. I have this memory of a neighbor's house--the children there were older so we didn't play over there much. But on this one rare occasion all the younger kids, like me, were in that house. And forever in my memory are the sheer purple drapes the mom had hung in one of the bedrooms. Oh! I thought they were beautiful! The windows were open, too, so there was movement and they sort of floated in the room. Because of that image in my mind's eye, I decided to decorate my office in purple. Purple drapes (not sheer, though), purple lamps, and I arranged some flowers with purple and pink in a purple vase. I love it! I love sitting in this room. The feel of it is cozy and beautiful, and I feel a sacrednes...

The Friday Five from RevGalBlogPals: Mother Laura writes: "We're settling into our new new apartment, and after a lifetime at Montessori Katie is having a fantastic summer at YMCA day camp. ....So, in celebration of summer, please share your own memories and preferences about camp." 1. Did you go to sleep away camp, or day camp, as a child? Wish you could? Or sometimes wish you hadn't? Never did. We weren't church folks and I guess we didn't have the money, either. My mom's idea of camping out was when the electricity blew. 2. How about camping out? Dream vacation, nightmare, or somewhere in between? It's just never been on my radar. I don't like bugs. I don't like hot weather. I do like nice soft comfortable mattresses. If we could find someplace with a nice cool breeze, that sounds great. 3. Have you ever worked as a camp counselor, or been to a camp for your denomination for either work or pleasure? I never have and I never will. I did go ...

Sometimes writing a sermon is a pulling-your-hair-out-experience ... AAARRRGH!!!!!! I've been at it since 6 a.m., six straight hours (well almost, with a few short breaks!) and have only now found a way in. (photo fr michaelhyatt, google images)

I listened to a podcast of "Speaking of Faith" this afternoon. Krista Tippett was interviewing John O'Donoghue and his beginning words were these: Your identity is not equivalent to your biography. There's a place in you wher e you've never been wounded; where there's a seemlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary. There's a place in you where you've never been wounded. Wow. Just recently I said those exact words to a couple of different people. I was stunned to hear the words echoed in this way. I know that place within me. One night as I drove home from particularly powerful group therapy session, I was intensely focusing on and processing the experience. Before I knew it, I was about a block from home. It was then that I remembered that my housemate's parents were visiting and staying with us. I w...

I get daily devotionals from the United Church of Christ. Today's was especially beautiful, helping me imagine how it would be--how I would be--if I truly believed that God was head-over-heels GONE for me. Wow. Actually, imagining this isn't difficult for me, but I do need reminders. It's not difficult because of a dream I had, oh, about 20 years ago now. I was simply walking in the mall (of all places). I was walking in the mall, but I carried myself as if I were beautiful . My head was held high. My shoulders were back and I was standing up tall. I was swinging my arms and smiling. I was confident about taking up space on the earth, for I knew that I was loved completely and that my life was a gift from God--a gift not to be wasted but lived to the fullest. That dream itself was a gift from God, sent straight to me just like so many biblical characters! The gift said, "Katherine, this is who I have created you to be, now you GO FOR IT, girl!" I'm ...

A friend and I are planning to facilitate a six-week group for women this Fall. We're calling it: Centered Living: Creating Your Authentic Life I hope we can get the word out to some people who might be interested. (If you're out there, let me know!) My friend is an LPC and a certified Gottman therapist. We're going to concentrate on giving women some tools so that they can practice living from that centered place within them. We'll deal with the obstacles to that as well. Speaking of obstacles....We have planned this for six Wednesday evenings at my church, but now my church is considering moving all committee meetings to one night each month, and, of course, that night just happens to be Wednesday, so we'll have to see how that plays out. I'm hoping my friend can do Thursday evenings if it turns out to be necessary. Anyway, I'm sure we'll find a day of the week that suits us both. I'm looking forward to it. Recently, I was reminded how important th...

I was extolling the benefits of blogging today. A friend of mine is a poet...she writes such beautiful things, from the simple pleasures she finds in gardening and watching birds and rabbits in her backyard, to her heavier musings on the human condition. She has blessed me greatly by giving me copies of some of her poems over the last three years or so, but I'd love to be able to just go to her blog and read them whenever I like. My friend lives alone, too, so I was telling her about the real community that emerges among bloggers. Still, she was a hard sell. She's resistant to the idea. Blogging isn't for everyone. But the conversation got me thinking about how important blogging has become for me. It's given me an important means of self-expression. It's a way to keep in touch with Linda and Jan and Kathy and AvaNell, fellow bloggers whom I know in "real" life. And it's allowed me to 'meet' others and come to know something about them-...

Today was one of those incredibly productive days. You know--when the brain is firing on all cylinders. It made me realize how often my brain is barely firing at all these days. I blame it on the heat. As always in the summertime in Texas, it's too damn hot . Nevertheless, on this exceptional day, I went to church (preaching next Sunday, not today), facilitated a Wellness Ministry meeting, came home and worked on all kinds of little things that I've needed to get done for a l.o.n.g. time! Feels good to get them off my desk. Here's something I wrote for the Area newsletter. I'm on our Spiritual Life Committee, and we want to remind pastors of the importance of attending to their spiritual lives.... _______________ Cherish Your Ministry Most clergy experience a rich sense of fulfillment in serving their congregations—fulfillment that provides zest and energy. Yet, if we’re honest, most of us have also had times when our vocation seemed so demanding that our spirits drie...

We had a wonderful holiday today. Young Man with Integrity, his girlfriend J and her little 2 y.o. M came over. Then Life Giving and her entire family joined us for the cookout. With Lovely Passionate Feminist here for the summer, we had seven adults and three children under the age of three. Wow. It was so much fun. When I called to invite Life Giving, Little J got on the phone and asked me whether we were g oing swimming (they were going to a swim party later today at someone else's house). I said , "No, honey-bunnies, no swimming over here." Well, D heard my end of the conversation, so before anyone arrived he went to Target and bought a little inflatable swimming pool for both little girls to enjoy. And it was such a neat one. As you can sort of see from the photo, it has a little cover on it. You hook the hose to the cover and it comes out as RAIN inside the pool. Pretty cute! Anyway, so sweet of D to do that. And the girls had such fun. I took some little plastic bo...