When it rains, it pours

Just kidding.
I'm addicted to to-do lists.

Usually, I love monsoon season. I love the season of rain. I love the way the desert soaks it all in-- how she knows how to survive in times of feast and famine by taking things as they come.

But lately, the rain has been driving me crazy. Because I have so much to do!

Whenever we see people, or someone calls to say 'hi', they always ask things like: "Have you found a vehicle yet?" "Is everything set for the wedding?" "Have you started packing yet?"

No, no, and no!

And time keeps on slipping into the future.

And every time I'm planning to run errands, it rains. And then the power goes out, so we can't even stay here and work. And I think maybe God is trying to tell me that I should just chill, but I don't want to chill, I want to get things done!

So yesterday, I ran the labyrinth in the rain. To try to remember what the desert teaches. And mostly I was just frantic and wet. But for a brief moment in the center, I realized that I carry the center with me everywhere. And that everything will probably be okay.

Then, I went home to work on my to-do list.

The Great Wide Open

We go over the calendar each week at staff meeting, and so it came to my attention yesterday that I have nothing on my calendar after August 12th.

Freedom is a terrifying thing.

We do not have an ambulance. We do not have any car, actually. We do not even have the kind of plan I like to have, with timelines and to do lists and everything neat and orderly.

But there is great freedom in that.

And I have discovered that it is exactly what I need. Because even though there can be great sorrow and fear in openess, there can also be deep peace, and room for things we can't even imagine.

Rest assured, dear friends, that we will find a vehicle and will almost always know the next place we were going. but I'm giving up to-do lists indefinitely. because I need the room to breathe.

A life-giving vehicle?

We've spent a lot of time pondering and researching how we will go on our journey.

We want everything we do to be life giving. And so it is not enough to ask, what gives us life? We also are asking, what will give the earth life?

We thought for about two seconds about riding our bikes. But without a lot of logistics, support along the way, and major training, the trip would become more about getting places than being present to people once we got there.

For a while we thought an old Volkswagen camper van was the ticket. Some have beds and a fridge, stove, and sink. We even researched how to put a new turbo diesel engine in one and then convert it to run on vegetable oil fuel. This is still technically a possibility. We found one in Atlanta on the Internet. It's getting a new diesel engine this week. It's an 82, and the owner needs $11,500 to get his money back out of it. That's a lot to pay to drive around an old, loud van without power steering or air conditioning and without veggie oil conversion.

On Monday I was pretty frustrated about the whole vehicle situation. On Tuesday, Nate from Veggie Wheels in Venice California emailed with a brilliant idea.

Convert an old ambulance.

Most have heavy duty diesel engines and plenty of space. A friend of his did this and it worked great.

Built in "bookshelves," electrical outlets for the laptop.

We're pumped by the idea.

So, if anybody has an old diesel ambulance they'd like to get rid of, just let us know.

Listening

Sometimes for my morning meditation, I listen to Krishna Das. Because his songs take about ten minutes (which seems like a good amount of time for meditation/reflection). And since I have no idea what he is saying, it is rather meditative, because I don't get caught up in the words. The one I like the best does break out into English at the end though. It's something like this: "Calling out to hungry hearts, all the lost and the left behind. Gather round to share this meal. Your joy and your pain, I make them mine."

The truth is, I'm already ready for a listening tour. Listening is a big part of my job. It's certainly my favorite part. Listening to people. Listening for God. Listening for God among gathered people. Etc. I'm not saying I've perfected the art, but its definitely part of what I do.

And here is what I have learned from listening:

There is great transformation afoot. In the world, in the church, and in the lives of many people. Some of it painful. Much of it a struggle. But all of it moving, growing, changing. All of it pushing people towards life.

And I long for a place where people can share that transformation. Deep pain and deep joy. I know I'm not the only one hearing these things. But I spend a lot of time talking to people about them. One on one. With the door closed. And I think, "All these people should be talking to one another. All these people know something. but it's so big and scary, they think they have to keep it to themselves."

So I want to build a community that can call out to the hungry hearts. I want a place where, as Mary Oliver puts it in her poem "Wild Geese", people can "tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." A place where we don't have to grovel, but just have to be. A place where we can find belonging.

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. "

The Universe is moving

I'm preparing for a retreat with my spiritual community, St. Hildegard's in Austin. Before we all show up we are to meditate on some quotes that have shaped the vision of the community. One I read last night rang with truth and hopefulness.

"There is one elementary truth--the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that never otherwise would have occurred...

Whatever you can do,
or dream you can do,
Begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now."

- Goethe

A small curious thing has been happening lately. Old friends have started calling and emailing. For both of us. Some people we haven't talked to in a long time. Lot's of them. It's wild. And very cool.

Committing to starting Join the Living has moved our internal intention even more toward community. Finding, building, strengthening, creating, community.

It's like all those scattered folks we have a spiritual connection with are feeling the tug. And picking up the connection again.

Just a bit of magic we've been noticing and enjoying.

We are not alone

We’ve both wondered at times if we have lost our minds.

The details of just how we will make our journey happen are a bit overwhelming. Sometimes I get afraid. But then there are moments of peace. Like on Saturday afternoon.

We encountered a cardinal on Saturday afternoon. We saw him first as a flash of red in the olive tree in the front yard. We had just come home from some errands. And there he was. I’ve only seen a cardinal a couple of times in a couple of years in Tucson. This time felt sacred.

We drove by him at first when we were coming into the driveway, but then I backed up after Kate got a glance of him. We watched him for a while, then he flew out of the tree, onto the ground and hopped toward us. Hello, I said. He looked toward our car. Turned his head to the left. Hopped toward us again. Turned his head to the right. Danced around a bit. Then flew back to a low branch.

He was a sacred visitor.

Saturday was the day before Pentecost—the day each year that the Christian tradition remembers when God as Spirit first came to both comfort and fire up the followers of Jesus. The next day, we would walk into church through a sea of red streamers and banners. Red is the color church tradition calls on for festive days like Pentecost.

On Pentecost the church celebrates that this passionate, prodding presence is still with us. Some times the Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove, as fire, or as wind. I once heard Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of South Africa, say the Holy Spirit is like someone poking us from behind with a stick to get us moving.

Our little red friend felt like an encounter with the Holy Spirit herself. Hello, I am here with you. It is time to get moving.

At the 8 o’clock service, Kate read from the book of John in the Christian scriptures before she preached. “Jesus said to them,” she read, “…Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

The words sunk into me. The way the ground drinks in water here in the desert.

In her sermon Kate said, “The sermon I most often preach to you is put down your nets and follow Jesus. And I feel I would be a hypocrite if I did not do the same.”

It is not easy to put down our steady incomes, our health insurance, our back yard with a view of the mountains, a church community of people we love. But it is clear to us. We must go.

Because we aren’t the only ones who are thirsty for peace. Thirsty for signs of life. Thirsty for evidence that we are not alone. That we are not crazy. That there are other ways to live than gripped by fear.

We will go. But we know that we don’t go alone.

Today I quit my job

It may be that I have lost my mind.

Today I began the formal process of announcing a decision I have been contemplating for some time. In mid-August, I will leave my job with a nice big office and a pension and health insurance and try to do what God is calling me to do next. Which apparently consists of reducing our three bedroom house (also comes with the job) into a camper van and driving around the country to find signs of life.

Sometimes I can't believe it myself.

But I know it is what I have to do.

I decided almost ten years ago to begin the long and often ridiculous process to become an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. Because I knew the world held a deep sadness and I believed that I was given the gifts to call people to new life. Not that I would single-handedly save the world or anything, but I just found my own deep joy in calling other people to theirs. I knew God had given me the gifts to preach and proclaim good news, to offer blessing and forgiveness, and to celebrate the presence of Christ in a gathered community.

So, almost two years ago, a bishop put his hands on me and said, "Make her a priest."
And that was that.

I took a job in a lively, progressive church that was trying to push the boundaries of church: proclaiming that all were welcome and working for social justice. I was so happy I didn't know what to do.

But something was missing. I loved the people I was serving. Deeply. But I found more and more of my time being consumed by tedious tasks that I found meaningless, rather than actually getting to spend time with those people. What's more, most of those people looked very different than I. I am young and queer. Most of the people who attended the church where I serve were the opposite (in one way or the other or both). Many of them came to take me seriously to one degree or another but I still often came up against a dominant culture that didn't even know it was there. I was shocked by how out of touch the larger church is, and how significant it was that the church is dominated by a generation that is over 65.

One of the greatest elements of what Christian community is supposed to be is its diversity. But Christian churches often lack that when it comes to age (and many other factors, unfortunately). I still don't know what it is, but the church strikes me as a place that is extremely resistant to change. Perhaps it is because I am a young whipper-snapper, but without a generation between me and the people who are old enough to be my grandparents, there is no one to mediate my energy and the wisdom of an older generation. Plus, I can only assume the shifts in our culture and society as we have moved to what some call "postmodernism" have been significant (they are all I have ever known, so I take them for granted).

And so it comes to this: I am still a priest. I still know that God is calling me to proclaim good news and freedom to the oppressed. But I think the church I am called to serve does not have a building (or many of the tedious tasks that seem to come with one). So my partner (who, in case you were wondering, is just as qualified to be a priest as I am, except she chose not to kneel before a bishop) and I are setting out to find it.