A Full Calendar

So last week, this week and for the next few weeks, both the church calendar and my personal calendar are so full, there's barely a space left.  Our Godly Play program begins next week and we are setting up the new room, which has to be ready for tours by this Friday.  We have our church wide yard sale on Saturday.  Consecration Sunday is October 3rd, and there is a different task to be managed in the office for that every week until then.  And we're planning a gala first anniversary celebration of our Recovery Eucharist on October 1.  Add to this, our boys are transitioning back into school and homework, we've had tickets for an all day family event in NYC this Saturday for months, my mother in law had a birthday up in Vermont last weekend to get to - well, you can see, this is a very full time in my life.  (If you read my post from June 30, you know I refuse to name myself "busy.")

I guess I'm stopping for a moment in the midst of all my activity to blog in order to remind myself that even though I am moving fast these days, I am NOT like that guy on the picture up there - running and running until I forget why I'm running.  Just because all these things happen to be coming at once doesn't mean that I have to get lost in it.  There are very good reasons we're doing everything we're doing this fall, and I believe God has called us to do it.  So as for me, God gets me up in the morning and leads me through each day, and despite my spinning brain, it seems that by the grace of God, there is always time and space for everything that most needs to be done to get done.   I have to let go of the rest and trust it'll get done another day if it's really important.

As my husband was busy building shelves for the Godly Play room with his cordless drill, he explained to me the difference between his new lithium battery and his older battery.  Well before it ran out of juice completely, the drill with the old battery would begin to slow down.  It would lose more and more power and be less and less useful until finally the battery died.  His new drill with the lithium battery makes it so that the drill works perfectly well at full power the entire time there is any charge left in the battery.  Then suddenly, when the battery reaches the end of its charge, the drill just suddenly stops.  The new lithium battery makes the work completely efficient until the battery is done.

So this is how I'm looking at things these days.  When my calendar is this full, I am on lithium battery mode.  I may not get the chance to slowly wind down at the end of each day.  I just go and go until I can go no more, and then I have to stop and fall into bed.  But yet, in the dark of the night, God still recharges me and makes me ready for the next day.  And you know, there are much worse things than fully using up - right to the last drop - all the energy God gives me each day.  I go to bed knowing my day has been full of life and, if I am lucky enough to wake up in the morning, tomorrow will be, too.  Soon enough, I'll have more open space for rest and relaxation and unscheduled time.  Right now, I need to fill my full days with creativity, trust and a different kind of relaxation - a relaxation into God's assistance - even as I move at a lithium charged pace.  With this attitude, I am able to appreciate the many gifts such 'full calendar times' bring.

Willingness

On Sunday, fifteen of us went on a field trip after church down to St. John's in Stamford, where we met with Linda Clapp of the Godly Play Foundation. We wanted to learn more about what Godly Play is all about. I've got to say, having a third of our active congregation say yes to going on a field trip that was a forty minute drive away on a 90 degree day that would take up an entire Sunday afternoon was both impressive and encouraging to me. It's not that all of these people want to get involved with teaching young children. But all of them are willing to entertain the possibility that they can help get this new project up and running at Grace by this fall. They are willing to learn what it's all about and willing to see if something about it calls them to get involved. They are willing enough, in fact, to give up a whole afternoon to just come and see.

There is something wonderful about being willing. I've been encouraging my boys to try out "yes" more often in their lives - as in - how do you know you don't like avocadoes until you try them? Before just immediately reacting to something new with a no, sometimes it's good to pause, think about stretching your usual boundaries and be willing to be open to a new perspective. You might discover you've been missing something you really love.

So to get back to being willing to take a whole afternoon to check out a new church project that everyone knows will take a lot of effort to enact: usually when you ask people to give up a whole afternoon, let alone potentially take part in an ambitious new project, they react almost fearfully - "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly add another thing. My life is so hectic, I don't have room for even a tiny thing more." It seems life is unmanageably busy for most of us these days. In fact, if you're not wildly busy, it almost seems like there's something wrong with you. A few years ago, I decided that when someone asks me how I am, I'm no longer going to respond by saying "Busy!" Because I don't want a busy life. What I want is a full life.

Sometimes choosing to get involved in a new project brings wonderful gifts into your life - a nourishing new fullness. Often, when you get involved in a challenging yet satisfying new project, you end up feeling like you're getting much more out of it than you ever put into it, even though you've given a whole lot. But you've got to be willing to come and see. If you just automatically say no to new opportunities, you may be missing out on a rich fullness that would make all the busy-ness of your life simply pale in comparison.

So I am so very grateful for the willingness of these 15 people to just come and see - to check something new out enough to see if anything about it calls to them. I'm really glad they tried out "yes."

Called to Trust

Before I left on vacation last week, I attended the splendid consecration service of our new bishop, Ian Douglas. The Koeppel Center at Trinity College, usually used as a sports arena, was transformed into a beautiful worship space by colorful fabrics and banners. Choirs from all over the state, African drummers and a steel drum band provided spirited music during the liturgy. (Carl and Bo were among the many choristers that took part.) Over 40 bishops were in attendance in their red vestments, along with hundreds of priests and deacons, vested in white, along with the celebrating bishops in their white and gold copes and miters. With that number of clergy in attendance, it was quite a procession!

I had volunteered to help, and I was given the task of helping to shepherd in the procession. In fact, I was asked specifically to shepherd Katherine Jefferts Shori, our presiding bishop, into the service, which gave me the opportunity to meet and talk with her before the service. Oh, I liked her very much, and felt immediately at ease with her. I was most impressed her presence. She is an unusually centered person, and her calm energy seems to relax everyone in her vicinity. I asked her if she was enjoying her work as presiding bishop, and she told me that it has been a great gift – a blessing. She particularly enjoys the variety in her work, and seems fed by it. “The Spirit always has something unexpected in mind, so every day is new,” she said.

I was thinking how much trust in the Spirit it must take to be a bishop. Stepping into such a significant leadership role brings great pressures along with it. I was immensely grateful to hear that rather than becoming overwhelmed by the many pressures of her role, our presiding bishop seems to receive each task as a privilege and as a gift. I asked if she ever gets overwhelmed by her many responsibilities. She told me with a warm smile that she just has to trust that moment by moment the Spirit is putting the thing that most needs her attention in front of her. That was a powerful testimony to me.

I pray that our presiding bishop’s faithful sense of trust will ripple out like waves in a pond to the entire church. I pray that Bishop Douglas also has that kind of trust in leading our diocese - and that I do, too, as the priest in charge at Grace Church. I pray our vestry also lives more and more each day into trust. And I pray that everyone who walks into Grace Church not only recognizes that trust is alive among us there but is put at ease by it, just as I was put at ease in the bishop’s presence that morning.

I was visiting with our own Bishop Ahrens yesterday and telling her how things are going at Grace Church. She told me she has no doubt that God has called me here. I have to agree - but I'm also clear that it's not just me who's been called here. The people of the church have been called here, too. Whether they've been attending Grace for decades or have just started coming, I think God has something in mind in calling us all together here in Trumbull in 2010. I think we're all being invited into God's mission together. It will take lots of listening and lots of discernment to hear and begin to understand that call. It will take lots of courage to answer it. It will take lots of willingness for this church to step into leadership, and it will take lots and lots and lots of trust – in God and in each other. But by trusting in the power of the Spirit, which is guiding us every moment, I hope we will be fed by our work together, and that we will come to treasure as both a gift and a blessing.