2 new favorites

I recently came across two blogs I absolutely adore, and wish I had become aware of them years ago! Allow me to introduce you :) (I'm aware, not all of you will appreciate this as much as I do, but that's okay, I know some of you will!)

First, check out Beauty Tips for Ministers. The tag line of the blog is "Because you're in the public eye, and God knows you need to look good." Before someone starts down the mental path of "wow, how superficial," let me explain. Here's what the author (known as "PeaceBang") writes about her blog:

"This blog is for the encouragement of self-care, the sharing of tips, and the celebration of shoes, lip gloss, fragranced shaving cream, and all of the other accoutrements of vanity which have hitherto been considered wholly unholy, and therefore generally discussed only in hushed whispers among the servants of the LORD.

In this space, we are free to remember that although we work from our hearts and our souls, we are also incarnate beings, and that our appearance does matter.

It is also written with the intention of bringing a little bit of joy and laughter into your life."

What I love is that it's tapping into something so untalked about. There aren't that many female clergy in the country, at least not compared to the percentage of male clergy. And lets be honest, girls, there are just some things a female pastor has to think and worry about that will never cross our male counterparts' mind. For instance, the latest post is a letter from a reader who is having to deal with male parishoners making inappropriate comments about her appearance. How do you respond to that, lovingly yet firmly? What looks are both cute and completely appropriate for preaching and home communion with the elderly? PeaceBang can help you out :) One of the things she says that I appreciate is why this matters. In some sense it's a bit of a theological issue. We can pretend our appearance doesn't matter, and dress as if we truly believe that. Or we can consider that: "our bodies are on display as an incarnation of our message and ministry, and for that reason, I am not offended by the fact that ministers’ bodies are a subject of conversation in the parish. We are embodied people, for heaven’s sake, and have only gotten ourselves into terrible trouble pretending to transcend our physicality." I like that, "we are embodied people." My theology says that's true. Therefore, way to go PeaceBang for helping some of us out when it comes to the fine line of the appearance of female clergy!

My second favorite new blog is called Dirty Sexy Ministry (if you're offended by the title, well I didn't come up with it, but I do happen to love it...) It's written by two young women who are both Episcopal Priests. Their tag line is: "two priests, with a feminine outlook on the world. After all, celebrating the Eucharist with a slipping bra strap adds perspective." I truly love it. They are great writers, for one. But even more, what I love is how much humanity they bring to reflecting on ministry. I know that when I was younger, and had never really known any pastors personally, I always had this sense that they were on some kind of pedestal. That the very basic human things, like working out, taking care of one's body, loosing sleep over problems, fighting with family members etc weren't an issue for them. They were the pastor. They were perfect. Or close to it. As someone preparing to be a pastor, this perception of ministers is one of the things that scares me most. Will people have the same expectations of me? What happens if my congregation finds out I enjoy a glass of red wine each night or, gasp, might even swear now and then if I'm really angry?? They write about what their minds often wander to while in worship, how hard it is for them to settle down and pray, how much more appealing mindless trashy TV is than preparing sermons sometimes etc. Stuff I already struggle with. I love that they point out that ministry is amazing, but it's more human than holy. I love that. Truly love it.

Running Forward

I've been saying for about two years now that I am going to move forward in the ordination process to the next step, which is called 'candidacy.' And until now, I hadn't. It's a long process (a good one, just a long one!) full of much paperwork, writing, essays, interviews, tests, psychological evaluations, and more writing, and I won't go into detail here about how it all works. (If you actually want to know, ask, but well, it's detailed enough that I find people's eyes begin to glaze over halfway through my explanation!) The week is finally here. I fly to Seattle this weekend to meet with the elders at my church on Sunday, a committee made up of elders and pastors around Seattle on Tuesday, and then two weeks later I go back to stand before all of Presbytery (all the ordained pastors in the entire Seattle area) to be questioned. One of the questions I had to answer in the essay I wrote this weekend is

What have you learned about the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament and how well suited are you to this office?

I'll be honest, this was a tough one, and allowed me to really pray and reflect. I've been thinking about this question for weeks now, and I finally had an answer. As I have been interviewing at churches for various positions, and even turning down a church that really wanted to pursue me further (the job description didn't fit me well) I have been able to start to articulate what it is I feel called to do. I'm still scared, being a pastor is a very tough job, but I am done running away from this call. I'm done trying to find excuses and talk God out of calling me to ministry. I'm ready to move forward. Writing the following paragraph in my candidacy essay finally feels like confirmation that I am ready to run towards this call. And that feels incredible!

Saying I want to be a minister of Word and Sacrament still sounds a bit strange to me. I want to be a minister and I feel called to this role. Each of my supervisors in my internships, the two congregations I’ve been part of here in Pasadena, and each of my close friends and family members all constantly affirm this call over and over again. Yet this title of “minister” or “pastor” still seems a bit daunting to me. To have the title ‘Pastor’ or ‘Minister’ still feels like one I’m not worthy of. I look at myself and see an imperfect person redeemed only by the cross and resurrection, exactly the same as everyone else. I fear the expectations that seem to come when people hear one is a pastor. Yet, at the same time, I cannot shake the desire I deeply have to serve in this capacity. To be present in the midst of the most sacred moments of a person’s life is a calling and an honor I don’t take lightly. Proclaiming week after week the forgiveness of sins through Jesus, looking deep into a person’s eyes and reminding them they are partaking of Christ’s body, marking an infant with the sign of the cross, sealing them into the covenant family of God, praying at bedsides of those taking their final breaths, these are the tasks my heart leaps at the thought of participating in. It’s as if I am constantly hearing God whisper, “this is what I have made you to do,” and no matter how intimidating the job description of a minister looks to me at times I simply can’t imagine anything else I desire to do.

1,000 Gifts

These past couple weeks I've been praising God for...

271. Our marriage group

274. Our homiletics weekly TA meetings--such fun conversations about preaching

276. My Thursday night women's small group--LOVE these ladies & the chance to share our lives while breaking bread together every week.

277. All the amazing Spring Retreat events that went so well!

283. A fabulous relaxing Sunday afternoon post-spring retreat: a long nap, dinner out, TV watching with my husband

284. Getting to teach youth group these past couple weeks

285. Bluegrass Sunday (the week after Easter worship is always led by a visiting blue grass band. It's fabulous!)

289. Seeing a friend I hadn't talked to in a long time last week, and seeing the incredible work God is doing in her, the amazing transformation that has happened in her life

290. Jodi Picoult's new novel

291. Re-reading The Great Divorce by CS Lewis with our college group of guys

295. Video chatting for quite awhile with baby Lily :)

296. Great girl talk conversations with the high school girls on the retreat--lots of questions/conversations about boys, sex, parents, God, and how they all go together....

7 Quick Takes Friday

It's been a bit of an up and down week around here, so here are the high and low-lights

**1**
For the last several years I've been following the story of a high school acquaintance of mine who was diagnosed with alveolar sarcoma, very rare form of cancer. She was a copy editor for the San Francisco Chronicle and when she was diagnosed they gave her the chance to write her story. The first part was published and the response was overwhelming. People from all over the country wrote in, connecting with Alicia's authenticity and frankness about doctors appointments, fear, grief, hope, faith and friendships. She ended up writing 17 more installments over the next couple years, having her story published on the front page of the Chronicle every time it came out, and even having it turned into a book. Alicia lost her battle with cancer yesterday morning, it had spread to her brain, her breasts, her hip, her lungs, and essentially caused her body to shut down. Her writing is truly remarkable, and if you'd like to read more, you can read an article that was published yesterday on the Chronicle's website about her, and there is a link at the bottom to her entire story that she wrote. NPR also did a story about her today and if you go to this link you can hear that, which includes soundbites of her reading her journal for an NPR interview she did a few years ago. We didn't know one another well, but we did spend a lot of time together starting a Christian club on campus, and in a drug/alcohol prevention club we were in together. I remember the day I met her as a sophomore, she was the only other Lutheran student in the christian club, and we bonded over sharing our relatively awful confirmation experiences with one another :)

**2**
My poor honey had a fever for part of the week, I think he's still recovering a bit, but it was definitely a bit of a lazy, lethargic week around here.

**3**
I had the chance to lead youth group again on Wednesday evening, continuing our series on relationships. This week I talked about listening, and how listening really is the foundation for a solid relationship with anyone in our lives. We talked about the things people do in conversation that drive us crazy, my husband and I did a couple skits to demonstrate several horrific things we have seen people do in conversation to us, and then we had them break up into pairs and practice different listening skills. They especially liked when I let them practice being bad listeners :) It's a topic I am very passionate about, and it was really fun getting the chance to help students think a little deeper about it.

**4**
On Tuesday as I was prepping my talk I had asked on my facebook status what people's pet peeves were in conversation--what people did to show they were bad listeners. The response was crazy, people went nuts sharing what drove them crazy in conversation. Among the top responses: texting while talking to someone in person and always immediately changing the subject back to yourself to tell your own story instead of asking follow up questions to allow the person talking to continue sharing.

**5**
Tonight is Messy Game night at our church. It's an annual event the junior high students throw for the 5th/6th graders (okay, jr. high students and their parents. and the high school leaders...) It's apparently impressive--by the end of the night most kids can't even be recognized they are so covered with chocolate, shaving cream, and other substances. I am supposed to be there, but oh darn, a high school student had a part in her school play tonight...so my husband is chaperoning the messy festivities and I enjoyed a play & am now home eating ice cream, drinking wine, and watching Gilmore Girls :)

**6**
I love being a preaching TA. I love hearing sermons, offering feedback, guiding a group of students in conversation about the sermons as they critique one another etc. But most of all, I love the other preaching TA's and our weekly time together. The 4 of us have worked together since September (a few of us go back to last year) and it's been so fun getting to know them and diving deeper into the world of homiletics together. The conversations we have each week are always so thought provoking, and remind me how much I love this particular field.

**7**
Last night my honey & I watched a GREAT movie from 1986, Children of a Lesser God, about a teacher at a deaf high school. It's intense, fabulously acted, and beautiful. It was nominated for best picture that year, and the main actress won best actress--add it to your netflix list :)

One Little Step

It's Earth Day, a 'holiday' I think I care about more this year than ever before. Oprah had a fascinating show today on the subject, and I'm still amazed at the number of families and people around the country that still don't ever think about the impact their choices have on our planet. It is astounding to me how many families still choose not to recycle or turn out lights or leave the air conditioning on while keeping the windows open. There's one HUGE thing though that if all of us stopped doing would make an enormous positive impact on our planet. Watch this short video on the true story of bottled water, I promise you will learn something and you will be surprised. We were. I know some people still think they want to buy bottled water that is flavored because of the taste, but I found last weekend a great solution. I cut up a lime and stuck a slice in my nalgene bottle with the water and for the whole weekend I had great flavored tap water :)

I think this is so much more than promoting another "soap box" idea, to me it truly is a deeply theological issue. In Genesis we were given the task of caring for our world, and I'm pretty sure if God showed up today he'd look at the piles of plastic bottles, the floating garbage islands in our oceans, and the pure amount of sheer waste we produce every week and tell us we haven't exactly lived up to the task he gave to us. I don't know, just an opinion. Seriously, watch this video, it's not long, and it does matter.

The Story of Bottled Water

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Random Tips & Tidbits

This is probably going to be a bizarre collection of tidbits, but that's okay :) None of these really warranted their own post, but are all new things I've discovered that are making my life happier, so I thought I'd share.

I don't know about all of you, but even with only 2 people living here, I am amazed at how quickly the apartment becomes cluttered. I can spend hours one day a week really cleaning, and it lasts about 40 minutes. For a bit of a neat-freak like me, this drives me nuts. This past month, in one section of the latest Real Simple they asked readers their best trick to keeping control of household clutter--how to keep your living space from becoming unlivable so quickly. My favorite trick is one I've started implementing--the 25 Item Rule. Once a day, I run around the apartment and pick up 25 items that have somehow made it to a location other than the one in which it lives. Even after only a few days I am amazed at how much this helps!

Has anyone ever cooked with Quinoa before? (Pronounced Keen-Wa) It's a whole grain that is super high in protein, gluten free, cholesterol free, and provides all 9 essential amino acids :) I wasn't sure what exactly to do with it, but knew it was super healthy and kind of rice-like. Since white rice is my husband's favorite side dish, but has zero nutritional value (especially when doused with soy sauce) I thought I'd try to experiment to see if Quinoa would be a passable substitute. It's super versatile, you can throw it in soups, salads, use with chopped veggies and chicken as a stir fry etc. Tonight I'm cooking it with chopped peppers and asparagus and using it to put baked salmon over. You cook it just like rice, boiling water and letting it absorb until fluffy, and then do anything you want with it. Anyone have any favorite quinoa recipes for me? The one we tried last week was from the back of the Trader Joe's box of Quinoa and was delicious! You can find it here.

I'm attempting to make my own granola tomorrow, from a recipe I found in this month's Real Simple. Breakfast around here has become my husband's new obsession (he has never been a breakfast fan!) and granola has become a big part of it. But it's kind of pricey, so at whole foods today I bought the ingredients I need for homemade granola way cheaper than a box of premade stuff. We've been making fruit smoothies every morning and mixing it in a bowl with granola and eating it like cereal for our morning meal (really, Charles is obsessed, he has to have his morning smoothie now!). It is kind of nice to start the day knowing you already have eaten about 4 servings of fruit, yogurt, and whole grains! But it's not the cheapest meal either--frozen fruit gets expensive! Costco and I are getting to know one another well when it comes to their frozen fruit aisle!

My new favorite entertainment while cooking/cleaning is to listen to NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on podcast. For those who haven't become acquainted with this fabulous show, it's a weekly news quiz put on by NPR with famous panelists trying to figure out the week's headlines by filling in rhymes, picking the true story out of a list of several absurd tales, deciding who people are by hearing quotes from them etc. It's hard to describe but it is seriously amazing--hysterical, and informative! Go to itunes and enter Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and you can download past episodes for your listening pleasure.

Well my timer just beeped, which means the salmon and quinoa should be done. Happy Monday night to you all!

7 Quick Takes Friday

Hi friends! Here's the latest from the Kennedy household this week!

**1**
Last night we hosted 3 high school kids on our couches for the night. I'm tired. They stay up late. I get up early. Yeah...but really they are great kids and their parents were out of town so they hung out here with us last night. We taught them Ticket to Ride (a favorite board game) and watched Aladdin before telling them at 12:30 that it was bedtime. I'm not sure we're ready to parent teenagers yet :)

**2**
I was supposed to have another interview with a church this morning, but for some reason they never called. Not sure where the communication breakdown happened, but seeing as how I'm wiped out it might be a good thing there was miscommunication.

**3**
My husband preached a great sermon last night for his preaching class, I was so proud of him! It was a tough text and he worked hard but he was awesome :)

**4**
I am reading Jodi Picoult's new book House Rules right now and as usual, am loving it. Seriously, she writes incredible stories that constantly amaze me and keep me guessing. It wasn't originally on my list of books to read this year, but that's because I didn't know it was coming out this spring. It's now one of my 28 books for the year.

**5**
I'm so thankful for my husband. I have just been reflecting on things this week a little deeper and realize how amazing he is. Not that I didn't already know that, but we had some cool opportunities to serve together this week and I just love him. Yesterday I was helping him with his sermon and he stopped looked at me and said "I hope you know how much I appreciate your help. I have the most amazing wife ever, I love being married to you." Melt my heart...:)

**6**
Wednesday night I got the opportunity to speak to our teenagers about The 5 Love Languages, which was such a great lesson! Several of them told me they really enjoyed it and want to bring it up with their friends now. For those who aren't familiar with the Love Languages, the basic principle is that everyone has a different way they receive love from people, and when we are aware of this we are much more effective in demonstrating love to the people we're close to. So we gave them the inventory (30 questions to help you figure out which one of the 5 is yours) and talked about what that meant for them. I broke them into groups based on their love language and had them teach the rest of the group what showing love and affection to them looked like. The 5 main ways that people receive love are through Gifts, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, and Acts of Service. I think this is really important to realize about ourselves, our spouses, our kids, our friends and family because it can solve all kinds of problems! For instance, to show my husband love, I know gifts is dead last on his list. He doesn't usually enjoy receiving them, he doesn't really love thinking about them and shopping for them, it's just now how he's wired. On the other hand, Acts of Service or Quality Time is huge for him. So for his birthday or our anniversary, we go away together, do something together, share an experience together and that is WAY more satisfying for him than me buying him a book or a movie. For me, I'm a Words of Affirmation person, which means my most prized possession is the book of letters my parents put together for me when I turned 18 from all my friends & family telling me what they loved, appreciated, and remembered about me. Talk about a gift that spoke directly to my deepest love language! If you are interested, spend 5 minutes & take the online inventory here at this link and then let me know what your results were! I'm compiling a list of my friends/family's love languages cuz I think they are fascinating!

**7**
Confirmation starts on Sunday! I am SO proud of my husband and all the hard work and hours he has put in to designing a confirmation experience for these students that will hopefully be a great seven weeks. This week's topic, understanding our own faith stories and learning how to write/share that with others in a way that isn't "preachy" or even all that "theological," but simply sharing who Jesus is to each of us and what He's done in our lives.