Sep 20, 2010

Visibly. Invisibly.

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Invisible Illness Awareness Week, or something along those lines, just ended, and I am thinking a lot about the things that show and the things that don't. When I got home tonight, after a pretty long Sunday at church–a very good day, but long–I wanted to take Sam for a walk. LP had given him dinner, and the window of opportunity for being outside before dark was narrowing. He seemed excited to go with me, but when he realized I planned a neighborhood walk instead of a ride in the car to more exciting places, he balked.

This happens often. It's got nothing to do with his cancer. 

But my desire to stay in the neighborhood had to do with my invisible illness, Rheumatoid Arthritis. After a long day, and sometimes after a regular day, I have joints that complain. My right rotator cuff is the worst, so I did not want to get back in the car and take the kind of short car ride that involves a lot of turns. 

I find it sort of hilarious, in an awful way, that the joint I find most bothersome is one I never knew anything about, except in other people's stories. I'm not sure I even knew exactly where it was.  A friend refers to it as my "old football injury," and that entertains me. It's surely true that the only throws I make now are gentle, underhand slow pitches of a cookie into Sam's mouth. 

But to look at me, you wouldn't know anything was the matter. 

Sam, on the other paw, now has a big lump on his back leg. It was invisible, at first, because black and rust-colored fur covered it. I found myself talking about his diagnosis at the Farmer's Market the other day, and then hearing someone else repeat it to the person she was with, pointing out the tumor as if I could not hear her though we were only a few feet apart.

A histiocytic sarcoma is pretty awful. The sarcoma interferes with limb function, so when it appears in the extremities, the limb needs to come off, which was not really an option for Sam in the opinion of our vets or, frankly, our family. He's 7-and-a-half, which is beyond the average life span for a Berner, and he has arthritis in both elbows and one wrist, and it all sounds like too much trauma when there is no guarantee it will extend his life. 

Though of course it might.

But then he's left with one adult in the house to rehab him after surgery, one adult whose invisible illness makes her less able to help a big dog who might require if not lifting then support for walking. 

This makes me sad and not a little angry. I felt the same way as Molly declined, and we discussed her care and recognized that as she needed to be lifted in and out of the car and had trouble even with the ramp, I would not be able to manage her by myself. It was a hard, hard situation as we got ready for my husband to go away for work and weighed her enthusiasm for life against her increasingly crippling arthritis in three legs. 

Her visible illness, my invisible one.

My tendency to take the blame for everything, to take full responsibility, probably sounds a lot like what my own illness does. In Rheumatoid Arthritis, your immune system attacks your joints. Because it's a disease found primarily in women, books are written that speak the self-blaming, self-attacking language in ways that hurt even more. The medicines that are effective suppress immune response, so the system stops freaking out.

As the person for whom The Onion headline "Area Mom Freaking Out Again for No Reason" may have been coined in the first place according to my kids, I get this. 

When the groundwork has been laid so effectively, so deeply, so invisibly, how do you stop blaming and attacking yourself for everything?

I'm going to say that one of the biggest growth steps for me has been working as a pastor. Somehow in my pastoral life, I can see the difference between things that are actually my responsibility or fault, and things that are not. I may not be able to do it 100% of the time, but it's a vastly larger percentage than the one in my personal life. Over the past eight years, I've experienced a slow-growing understanding of the distinctions, and maybe someday I'll be able to apply the recognition, visibly, to heal the invisible wounds long since scarred over, the wounds of self-blame.

Filed Under: Bearnaise Sauce Dogs, Ministry, The Inner Landscape · Tagged: ,
Aug 23, 2010

I’m Nobody

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Songbird  I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

They ’d banish us, you know.

  

How dreary to be somebody!        

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

~Emily Dickinson

I just changed my Twitter handle from an email nickname to my real name, which I've been slowly making more available to blog readers, too. It's a strange journey from six or seven years ago, when I hadn't thought about whether it mattered if I identified myself on the Internet, to joining the generation of anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers, and now to recognize that by cloaking myself in the persona (much enjoyed) of Songbird, I've done exactly the opposite of what I hoped to do when I began my work in ordained ministry, which is to forge my own identity.

Now, identity is not the same as fame. I never thought it was. If I wanted to leverage fame–someone else's–I might have kept and traded on my maiden name. I was wearing it when I graduated from seminary. I could easily have kept it when I married again; I could have been ordained with it. 

But I had this notion that I could be in the world with my own name, though borrowed from a spouse, and develop my own reputation as a pastor and a person and maybe a writer. I had no idea I would be building a group of friends and readers using a nickname; I could not imagine or predict Facebook, where I daily communicate with a strange admixture of childhood friends and mom or academic bloggers (met and unmet in real life) and people from right here in Maine and lots and lots of RevGalBlogPals and my own children, too. I couldn't have foreseen Twitter, where in blasts of 140 characters I do–what? I don't even know, really. Keep up with friends who are too busy to blog anymore, make a few new connections, carry on behind-the-scenes conversations if my tweets are "protected" as they sometimes are, and give up that hope in the seasons I decide they won't be.

I don't know how much I care anymore about being a writer, which is to say being published. There are those who would argue that if you are unpublished you are not a writer. And I suppose if I were called to write books, I would have had an idea for one by now. I hope, now that I'll be preaching regularly again, to get back to writing about life and the lectionary here.

Mostly I'm a little sorry that a tremendous amount of my effort over the past five years belongs to a cartoon character more than to me. And at 49, I want to claim my work and my life, for me at least, whether or not it matters to anyone else. 

I'm writing, even if that doesn't make me a writer. 

I'm Martha Hoverson, and I'm nobody. Who are you?

Filed Under: Midway, Ministry, Writing · Tagged: ,
Aug 16, 2010

Good News

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NYCCIn case you haven't heard it elsewhere, I'm happy to report that despite a coughing fit one paragraph from the conclusion of the sermon, I did receive the vote of the congregation to be the pastor at First Congregational Church UCC in North Yarmouth, Maine. I start on September 1st. I'm beyond delighted, and deeply grateful. 

Thanks to all who offered words of support along the way. I had the opportunity to be in conversation with a number of wonderful churches, but I feel convinced this is the way the Spirit meant me to move in the end. 

Filed Under: Church Life, Ministry · Tagged: ,
Jul 28, 2010

To know the place for the first time

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FPCC NY

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

It's my next-to-last day in the office at Y1P, and I'm glad to be able to announce my coming plans. 

In the United Church of Christ, with our Congregational polity, it's never definite until the congregation hears the candidate preach and takes a vote. But I can say that the search committee of the First Parish Congregational Church of North Yarmouth, Maine, has extended a call to me to be their settled pastor, and I have accepted pending a candidating sermon on August 15th.

You may read more about the church here. I'm sure you will note the Pet Place, a food and supply pantry for people having financial trouble caring for their pets. This gets many paws up at our house. 

It may seem strange, after all this flying around, that I am staying in the area, but I believe that the Holy Spirit played a role throughout the process, on both sides. I'm grateful to have had the chance to talk to and meet faithful UCC people from other Conferences, and to look far and wide, but I'm also quite certain the right fit is here.

Further on in "Little Gidding," Eliot writes:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

It won't be my first time in North Yarmouth on August 15th. I preached there once as a student in 1997 (Hope no one remembers, I suspect it was a terrible sermon! I remember it was hand-written and about King David.), and the former pastor is the friend known occasionally on my blog as Country Parson. I've been to a number of events in the gorgeous new Fellowship Hall. 

Around the town, LP learned to contra dance at the Westcustogo Grange. And locals should know, I'm extremely familiar with the menu at Stone's. 

I'm excited to learn what the future will hold and thank you for your prayers and good thoughts during this whole process. 

Filed Under: Call, Ministry · Tagged:
Jul 10, 2010

Assiduously

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Do you ever think about who taught you to pray?

I guess I learned from my mother, goodnight prayers taught and repeated over and over again. She liked prayers with a form. I think she found them reassuring. 

"God is my help in every need. God does my every hunger feed."

When she was dying, she avoided her own church and had a friend take her to the Unity church mid-week. In those last months of her life, those friends committed to pray for her each morning at the same time. I found it fascinating that they prayed separately, in the privacy of their own homes. 

The other thing she liked was quiet. She didn't like the hubbub of a busy church service, or the appraising looks of anyone not in her carefully chosen inner circle.

I am not like her. 

On the RevGalBlogPals cruise in April, Nanette Sawyer asked us to think of things that helped us find the feeling of God's presence in the core of our beings — or something very close to that, I may not be saying it right. And I remember jotting notes on a post-it, one of which was "Praying with others." 

It's not something we do a lot in Congregational UCC churches in Maine, at least not in my experience. As a little Baptist girl growing up in Virginia, I remember the whole Sunday School class praying, sentence prayers we called them. If you felt shy or didn't know what to say, you could squeeze the hand of the person next to you. So from Bernadette Lane, and other teachers, I learned to pray on my feet, to find something to say no matter what the situation, to be comfortable putting words on the murmurs of my heart that I could speak aloud in a room full of people.

I liked the way it felt, that we all prayed together.

As a pastor, I get to pray in worship almost every week. Sometimes I write a prayer, but often I bind up the themes of the day the way a florist wraps ribbon around the stems of flowers to make a bouquet. I hope the effect will be evocative, that people will hear something and feel something that brings them closer to God.

In my first church, I remember sitting in my little garret office with a woman who worked for a Nazarene congregation. She came to see me about starting an afterschool program, but somehow, most likely because of her kind pastoral presence, I told her about the job search I was in at the time. I remember that on a darkening autumn afternoon, she offered to pray for me. I remember feeling cared for, deeply, both by this person I hardly knew and by God. As she said "Amen," tears slipped down my cheeks.

I pray a lot with other people, prayers for and about them, their needs, their worries, their fears and hopes. I do it willingly, gladly, sincerely.

But when it comes to praying for myself, I find I am quite inarticulate. Many of my prayers are monosyllabic, consisting of "please" or "help!" 

It helps me understand my mother's love of that prayer already formed, meant to be repeated, comforting. I can pray those prayers. In the first months of being treated for Rheumatoid Arthritis, awake at night due to the prednisone that helped so much, but made life a little miserable at the same time, I dug from memory the Serenity Prayer, or something close enough to it that repeating it made me feel less alone.

But what I really love is to pray with others, and sometimes my desire for that and the lack of it means I don't pray as much as I might should.

In this phase of my life, as I try to discern what's next, taking into account the multiplicity of personal and professional factors involved, I find I am confused and changeable. Friends whose natures are more organized recommend lists and systems, but I live by intuition, and I also know how to "con" a list of factors, for and against. I know how to con myself. Robin recommended the Ignatian method, and since I am ignorant of it, I turned to Google for further information.

First on the list: Pray assiduously.

And I suspect that means some combination of all of the above: prayers with others and alone, prayers sitting still or walking the dog or driving the car (eyes open!), prayers sung and prayers written, prayers of one word and of many words and of no words at all.

One of the other things my mother taught me was that there was always a right way to do something, one right way. I'm not sure she was right about that. I suspect God could use me in more than one place or more than one way. But it's my hope that there is a better way than others, a place I can be fierce and fabulous for Jesus, a place I can honor as many aspects as possible of my call to be a minister and my call to be, well, Songbird.

So I will pray, assiduously. Feel free to join me, wherever you are.

Filed Under: Learned From My Mother, Ministry, Prayer, The Inner Landscape · Tagged: , ,
Jun 2, 2010

Perceiving

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I went to a Myers-Briggs workshop for pastors today. It's not my first go-round with Myers-Briggs. I remember being so fascinated with the type indicator when I first learned about it that I could not resist "typing" everyone I met. My karma ran into my dogma when my daughter became equally fascinated a couple of years ago and started to do the same thing. I remember trying to figure out my parents' types, getting them to take the MBTI short form, talking to them about it. 

"Daddy," I said, "just because you scored as Thinking doesn't mean you don't have feelings, too."

"Well, Mawtha," he answered in his slow drawl, "maybe I don't!" 

Funny.

My mother came out right on the line for 3 out of 4 categories; it would have taken a more subtle version of the instrument to capture her, perhaps. And at the age she took it, I suppose she had done some of the lifework that brought her closer to the middle, naturally. My attempts to comprehend her did not end with her death, but there was one breakthrough moment that came for me the last time I did one of these workshops, an insight into how our relationship influenced my approach to the world, at least in her lifetime.

I've done some official version of the MBTI four times: twice in 1992 (for a church couple's group event and for a church governing board retreat, different facilitators so I did it twice within a few months); for a pastor's retreat about five years ago, and for today's workshop. There were differences between the first two scores, and I attribute those to the loss of a baby in between. I was grieving, and felt significantly less extraverted than usual. But even then, my letters were the same as the previous time, ENFJ. 

It became a complaint from a certain person in my life (you know who you are–if you're reading…), that I was "just so J."

So it came as a surprise to take the test some years later, 13 or 14, and get a different set of letters, and to have them be ENFP.

Well. 

I remember sitting in the living room at Rockcraft Lodge, surrounded by people I knew pretty well, wondering if I knew myself! I read the materials on ENFP, including that famous prayer interrupted by, "Look, a bird!" 

They have a lot in common, those two ENF types. It's no wonder I felt okay about the other type description. But I've come to believe that in the dozen years between tests, the first two being followed closely by my mother's death, I came out from under her influence. 

I realized that as a child, my people-pleasing little ENF self had bent toward J because it seemed like the simplest way to fit into her world. 

I couldn't be I. 

I couldn't be S. 

Maybe I could be J. Maybe I could strive to be more orderly, to organize my brain like the one that penciled beautiful lists on paper lined and unlined. 

I guess I gave it a good try. But in the years after her death and my divorce, I loosened my grip and found it felt right, and all those years later, a test validated the emergence of what was there all along.

P.

Perceiving. 

I don't know why I'm a person who tries so hard to adapt to the people around her. I suspect it's a combination of my nature and the way my mother raised me, and I don't want to lose that quality entirely. But at 49, I wouldn't mind a life that fits like a hand-knit sock instead of the high heels borrowed from my mother's closet.

Filed Under: Midway, Ministry, The Inner Landscape · Tagged: ,
May 30, 2010

What I’m Praying

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I realize that my blog friends may wonder why I've been unusually quiet. It's because I'm engaged in a job search, and I can't write about it in this public forum. 

But I think I can tell you about what I've been praying, for some time now.

When I first went to visit Andover Newton in 1992, the text used in worship was Isaiah 6. It was the first time I sang, "Here I Am, Lord," and the text and the hymn inspired me throughout seminary.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8, NRSV)

But all I really assented to was going to seminary. I had my fingers crossed about whatever was coming next. I hoped, hoped, hoped I could be faithful to God's calling without disarranging other lives, or having people be upset with me. 

Despite that tendency, which has absolutely continued, about six months ago, I started praying, almost without meaning to, "Here am I; send me."

I'm still praying, "Send me," and trusting that the rest will sort itself out, in God's time, in God's way. 

Your prayers appreciated.

Filed Under: Call, Ministry · Tagged:
Mar 14, 2010

Epic

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When Snowman was home a couple of weekends ago, we got talking about my ordination. He was in 6th grade, and I asked him what he remembers.

"It was EPIC!"

"What do you mean? I mean, I know it was important to me, but how did it seem that way to you?"

"All these old ministers came up out of the congregation. This one old lady hobbled all the way from the back. It was like an Entmoot!!!"

And really, it was.

Entmoot
 

Filed Under: Children, Highbrow Family Values, Ministry · Tagged: , ,
Nov 2, 2009

Why I Do This

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  In the midst of probably the lowest blogging ebb I've had in the past five years, I received an email from one of my earliest blogging friends, Jody Harrington at Quotidian Grace, who will be writing an article about clergy bloggers who are also mothers. It was a great reminder of what blogging has meant to me over the years. I started blogging with 3 posts in 2003, then came back to it in the winter of 2004, but it was probably another year before it became a daily habit. I've done it at three blogs:

  • the defunct Blogger version with the non-pseudonymous lame title;
  • Set Free, to which I moved all the old posts, though I lost the comments;
  • and finally, Reflectionary.

Fall Break Apple Pie blog What does it mean that I've had a slump this fall? It's a combination of a very demanding job and children reaching an age where writing about our life together feels like over-exposure of their individual lives. I used to blog when we made a pie, but as blogging has declined overall, I don't know if anyone cares, whereas in 2004, when we made the pie in the picture, I didn't care if anyone knew!

And I'm not preaching every week, so I don't have the "need" to write as a sermon process.

But I think I do need it for other reasons. I need it as a spiritual discipline. I need it as a release valve. I need it as a place for processing. Sometimes I need it as a resource for feedback or affirmation or wisdom from others.

November is that month when people commit to write a novel, or a short story, or knit a sweater, or simply to blog everyday.

I'm more likely to be writing a Christmas pageant than a short story, and although I have a sweater on the agenda for a certain someone for a certain holiday upcoming, I think I'll choose the blog commitment and simply make it to myself.

Filed Under: Ministry, Mothering, Weblogs · Tagged: , ,
Oct 10, 2009

One of Us

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For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we
are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so
that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16, NRSV)

If God had a name what would it be?

And would you call it to his face?

If you were faced with Him in all His glory

What would you ask if you had just one question?

(Eric Bazilian, as recorded by Joan Osborne, "One of Us")

I believe I was in seminary before I heard the things I sort of knew described in this way: Jesus was fully divine and fully human.

That may seem surprising, but really, it's one of those concepts you spend a lot of time talking about in seminary and hardly ever trouble to unpack in church. A lot of what we "know" about Jesus comes not so much through teaching of scripture but through the singing of hymns and the repetition of whatever rituals have meaning in a particular tradition.

Some churches default to the divinity of Jesus, while it's probably more typical in progressive churches to focus on his wisdom and his kindness and his inclusion of the marginalized. The latter is fine for devising some life guidelines, but there are times when life frankly sucks and we enter the abyss of grief or the closet of despair or even the breezeway between identities. Some times in our lives defy guidelines, even the simple ones about loving God and neighbor. Some times in our lives center on questions: Why this? Why now? Why me?

In those moments, I'm glad I know that Jesus asked a question, too, about where God was at the crucial moment. I'm glad I know he felt the letdown of his friends' abandonment. I'm glad I know he got angry. I'm glad I know he made a mistake. And this doesn't begin to touch on the embodied experience, not really, of hunger and thirst and desire and tired feet and fear of death and boredom with the chronic complaining of others.

It comforts me to know that a person I think of as having been part of God and one of us became connected fully to God again, able to share the experience of being human. To me this says that the Cosmic Fund of love and goodness and creativity and justice contains our human perspectives and embraces our human flaws with the knowing of having lived those things and more. And while it may not fix what ails us, it's better than being alone.

Well, I believe it is. And this is what I want to know about God. I don't want to argue about what it means for Jesus to be without sin. I want to embrace the idea that beyond what we see, there is more, and in that More is an understanding of our humanity, and a love for it and for us, flaws and all.

Filed Under: Grief, Ministry, Writing · Tagged: , ,
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