(Want to see who our candidates are? Click here.)

It’s not Spring Break with children at home! Nor is it [...]]]> I’m not knee-deep in discernment and assessment, seeking nominees to become the ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan! Nor am I working on documents to introduce them to the diocese!

(Want to see who our candidates are? Click here.)

It’s not Spring Break with children at home! Nor is it one of the few weeks a year I get to see my mom, who just visited. (Family tends to trump blogging every time.)

My desk is somewhat clean, although my Spring Cleaning Checklist is nowhere near complete.

Yes, I am aware this picture holds a paradox.

Now that I am back, with sanity (relatively) intact, I am looking forward to a few blog projects:

• Writing that series I promised on language and religion
• Telling you about an audacious dream I’ve had for a while
• Maybe even switching up layout and design around here

How have you been? What’s new with you?

Since then, two Mondays have passed. As you may have noticed, nary a word has been published here. There are two reasons: tendencies toward perfectionism and higher priorities.

My tendencies toward perfectionism make [...]]]> When I last posted, I made a dangerous statement: “If all goes well, we start on Monday.”

Since then, two Mondays have passed. As you may have noticed, nary a word has been published here. There are two reasons: tendencies toward perfectionism and higher priorities.

My tendencies toward perfectionism make me want a large enough block of writing time (say, a couple hours) to be able to produce something coherent and considered.

My higher priorities are: 1) Family; 2) St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church; 3) the Bishop Search Team of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan.

Those higher priorities are getting in the way of finding that block of time. I need to strike a blow for my sanity by saying so out loud.

The next seven weeks are the final stages of the Search Team’s discernment of candidates for the office of the Ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan. Our slate is going to be announced on March 15th. There’s a lot to do between now and then. (There will be more to do afterwards as well, since I am coordinating the ballot announcement package, but I’m going to think about that another day.)

In the ten days since my last post was written, I’ve logged twenty-two hours on Search Team business. I have at least another ten waiting for me this week. Search Team priorities are consistently trumping writing time.

Please know that I have not forgotten this blog or the wonderful conversations that have developed here. I look forward to showing up again once I can give it the attention it deserves. In all honesty, that might be seven weeks from now. If I get a couple hours to post without stealing time from my sleep, my sanity, my family or my congregation, I’ll definitely take it. At this point, I can’t predict whether or when that might occur. Due to my husband’s job, I’m planning to live in this diocese for the next decade or more. I have to give my best attention to this leadership transition at this time.

Meanwhile, please keep a good thought and/or say a prayer for the community I am blessed to call my spiritual home.

The last post asked for your thoughts. The civil conversation about religious practice accidentally started in the comment [...]]]> It’s clear to me that I am blessed by the readers of this blog. There’s even a civil conversation about the meaning of religious practice happening in the comments!

The last post asked for your thoughts. The civil conversation about religious practice accidentally started in the comment thread of the last post (and I am not WordPress savvy enough to figure out how to move it where the commenter meant it to be), so I’m opening a new post for another couple of days to see if there are any last poll-takers out there. I’ll post final results on Friday.

Following up from my post You Choose Your Child’s Religion, I see two different ways to go from here.

Option A, Blogging My Conversion(s): I could tell my story, and reflect on it: growing up as an agnostic/deist, becoming an atheist, a Unitarian Universalist, a theist, discovering my family had a Jewish heritage, practicing Judaism, returning to the Unitarian Universalists, becoming a Christian, and finally finding a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church. (Yes, this would include two ordination processes. I would probably talk about God a lot. And yes, it would be a series. Who could fit all that in one post?)  Theory would come second to telling a coherent story.

Option B, Blogging My Ideas: I could write more about how and why I understand religion as language for life. This would include examining the assumptions of the Church, reflecting on the ways I experienced Christianity as a foreign language because I wasn’t raised inside it, and attempting some translating between Christian and Atheist and “None”/SBNR.  I would appreciate help here from people who aren’t Christian, because clearly that’s the language I speak. I would only share my story to illustrate a point.

At this point Blogging My Ideas is slightly ahead of Blogging My Conversion, but not by much.

My blog is set to require manual approval for your first comment. Future comments should post to the thread automatically. All comments that contribute to the conversation are approved. If I think readers will feel attacked by your comment, I won’t approve it. If you speak for yourself and allow for the fact that others will disagree, I’m happy you’re here.

What would you prefer: Blogging My Ideas or Blogging My Conversion?

Friday morning, I read KJ Dell’Antonia’s essay, Children, Choosing Their Religion. In response, I wrote You Choose Your Child’s Religion.

By the end of the day Friday, this blog had 1,873 [...]]]> Last Thursday, this blog had four pageviews. Four. You could count them on one hand, and still have one finger left over.

Friday morning, I read KJ Dell’Antonia’s essay, Children, Choosing Their Religion. In response, I wrote You Choose Your Child’s Religion.

By the end of the day Friday, this blog had 1,873 pageviews. On Saturday: 1,833.

That post has been viewed 3,985 times in the last 75 hours. In the same amount of time, more than 950 people shared it on Facebook. Briefly, it was even The Lead on Episcopal Cafe.

As I watched the numbers climb, it occurred to me that I wrote the post assuming hardly anyone would read it. Given my previous blog stats, I’d say that was a fair assumption. I wrote it simply because I felt I had something to say. What surprised me – astounded me, really – is how many people agreed that I did.

When I haven’t been shaking my head at going viral, I’ve been wondering what it was that caused the post to resonate so widely. I have a few hypotheses:

• The post spoke for organized religion in general. It didn’t bash people over the head with one particular form, although it made clear the faith I practice. So, people who would never feel comfortable sharing something “evangelical” were comfortable sharing it.
• The post was tailor-made to be shared by fellow clergy to support parents raising their kids in church. I did not plan this, but am glad it happened.
• The post was shared by people receiving criticism because they were raising their children in a religion. I heard from some of them. Happy to help!
• The post focused on my personal experience, and attempted not to generalize or condemn. (Some people thought it was sanctimonious and judgmental, so clearly… I could have been more clear.)

Most of all: the post received attention because it became part of a conversation about religion in America today. And that conversation matters. As someone who has held a wide variety of views on this subject in my lifetime, I’m fairly passionate about it. So today, I find myself wondering: can this blog move that conversation forward?

Because honestly, this conversation is stuck. I’m tired of reading Christians who dismiss people who are Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR), and atheists who think Christianity is all about the afterlife. I agree that we should love one another, and part of loving one another is trying to understand each other. If religion is a language for life (and I believe it is), we desperately need more translators.

So I find myself wondering: what can I do, here?

My family recently rediscovered these letters from my father to my grandmother, written in German in the 1930′s.
One of my goals for 2013 is to get them translated.

 *     *     *

This is where you come in, because I see two different ways to go forward:

Option A, Blogging My Conversion(s): I could tell my story, and reflect on it: growing up as an agnostic/deist, becoming an atheist, a Unitarian Universalist, a theist, discovering my family had a Jewish heritage, practicing Judaism, returning to the Unitarian Universalists, becoming a Christian, and finally finding a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church. (Yes, this would include two ordination processes. I would probably talk about God a lot. And yes, it would be a series. Who could fit all that in one post?)  Theory would come second to telling a coherent story.

Option B, Blogging My Ideas: I could write more about how and why I understand religion as language for life. This would include examining the assumptions of the Church, reflecting on the ways I experienced Christianity as a foreign language because I wasn’t raised inside it, and attempting some translating between Christian and Atheist and “None”/SBNR.  I would appreciate help here from people who aren’t Christian, because clearly that’s the language I speak. I would only share my story to illustrate a point.

You, not I, made the last post huge. I would love to know what you think about where to go from here.

What’s the thread that holds together my next set of posts:

Conversion Story or Religion as Language?

There’s nothing wrong with raising children outside of a religious tradition, and that upbringing doesn’t preclude them from being part of a community or later finding a community of their own… There’s no [...]]]> KJ Dell’Antonia of the New York Times Motherlode blog has a new post out: ”Children, Choosing Their Religion.” Here are a few salient quotes:

There’s nothing wrong with raising children outside of a religious tradition, and that upbringing doesn’t preclude them from being part of a community or later finding a community of their own… There’s no one religious community that everyone in our family will feel welcome in, and we have faith that our children will find their own way to the community they need, religious or not.

One unsought result of a family identity based in part on shared religion is that throughout history, families have struggled to accept the children who don’t remain within the religious fold…

My children may find their own ways to organized religion, or stick with the pleasant acceptance of its absence that their father and I enjoy. As long as they’re not picketing military funerals, I’ll be fine with whatever they chose. I don’t see our family life as “losing” religion. I see it as gaining an entirely different… trait: that of including whoever they turn out to be in our definition of family.

There are a few points worth noticing in her argument:

• Religion, as described by Dell’Antonia, is not a meaning-making language necessary for a full life, not a set of practices for the growth of the soul, not an irreplaceable force for good in the world. Religion is roughly equivalent to “community.”
• Because Dell’Antonia understands religion as community, it is optional. People can find their way into any community they choose. There is no significant difference between a religious community and any other community.

The fact that these are her assumptions means that she is just one more example of a seriously deficient system of religious education. She appears to have received some religious education, but not enough, and most likely as a child or teenager. <Sigh>

Dell’Antonia also postulates that families who practice religion have trouble accepting children who, as adults, do not keep the faith of their childhood. When I read between the lines, I wonder whether this statement is born of difficult personal experience: did her parents, or her husband’s, raise issues because they married each other across religious and cultural lines? Perhaps because they (rightly) suspected their grandchildren would not be raised in their religion?

I was raised more or less the same way Dell’Antonia is raising her children: with no exposure to religious experience. I am grateful that my mother has supported my ever-deeper involvement in religious life in my adulthood. (My father died when I was still an atheist.)

I discarded the secularism of my childhood for any number of reasons. Here are a few:

• Contrary to Dell’Antonia’s assumptions, “Religion” and ”community” are not synonyms. Religion is a way of making meaning of life. Religions endure because they successfully enable generation after generation to celebrate the beauty and wrestle with the agony of human existence. Nothing else – not shopping, not good friends, not even great dinner parties – substitutes.
• Religious communities are not an end in themselves. Their purpose is to practice the religion they profess. By the practice of their faith, they seek a depth of soul and connection to the Divine that is impossible to achieve any other way. Religious communities exist to connect human beings with God, the Eternal. (Religious communities forget this at their peril, but that’s another post.)
• Religion provides a connection not only with God but also with the hundreds of human generations who have told the stories, sung the songs, and practiced the rituals over millennia of human existence. A community which transcends time and space and exists for the purpose of intentional spiritual practice is unlike any other.
• Religion provides a countercultural force to the militarist greed which is the curse of 21st century America. Religion teaches that you are not defined by your fame, power or fortune, but by your faith: what is your relationship with your Creator?

I am raising my children in a religion because I believe that I would deprive them of something as necessary as food or water if I did not: I would deprive them of a language for life. English works, but it only goes so far. The stories and rituals of Christianity are the truest language I know to describe the purpose and meaning of human existence. There is no doubt in my mind that I would be a smaller and worse person if I had never become a Christian.

I can be (and hope I am) a practicing Christian without condemning or cutting myself off from those who practice other faiths or none. The idea that raising my children in one religion precludes my ability to accept them in adulthood if they choose another is fallacious.

Dell’Antonia believes she is raising her children “outside religion” and that they may choose their own religion later. She does not seem to recognize that she has chosen a religion for them. It is the religion of secularism. I was raised in this religion also. Only in hindsight do I see its tenets:

1. Organized religion is unnecessary.
2. God doesn’t really matter.
3. To be a success in life means that you get a good education and a good job. If you want to get married and have a family, that’s ok too.
4. Also, be honest and kind.
5. We celebrate holidays because… we celebrate holidays.

Over that, I’ll take organized religion any day.

I’m no stranger to making resolutions and goals for the New Year. But too often, [...]]]> Want to make some changes in 2013? You’re not alone. I’m also pondering ways to make the coming year better than the last. Some recent app discoveries are giving me hope that this year, I might succeed.

I’m no stranger to making resolutions and goals for the New Year. But too often, old habits and patterns surface quickly; the changes I planned don’t come to fruition. That’s definitely what occurred with last year’s goal to celebrate the Sabbath weekly in 2012. I started strong, but didn’t have the stamina or the strategy to stay on track.

I haven’t finalized my goals for 2013, but I have found some virtual friends to help: apps that have made a difference for me. Some, I’ve used for years; others, for a few short weeks. In case you want a virtual boost for your 2013, I thought I’d share.

With apologies to Android users, I strongly recommend:

Forward Day by Day ($6.99). I still have a sidebar link to the Mission St. Clare website, but this new app from Forward Movement is what I actually use for praying the daily office. (Ok, praying Morning Prayer, which is as far as I’ve gotten in praying the daily office. So sue me.) For those who, like me, would like to dedicate each day to God in company with the Church, this is the best app I’ve found. It comes from the Episcopal Church but Christians of other denominations and no denomination at all will find it helpful. If you want to integrate daily prayer into 2013, this is your app.

Lift (Free) has the power to change your life by helping you change your habits. It’s simple: you select from a list of habits you want to adopt, or add your own. Then, when you accomplish what you intended, open the app and “check in” to track what you’ve done. Lift encourages you with reports of your “streaks” so you want to stay on track. (Lift does promise an Android and web version in its future.)

My theory is that if I try to change too much at once, I’ll accomplish nothing. Right now I’m only tracking four things (the one highlighted in green is done for today):

And, right in the app, I can see my progress:

You can do social stuff with Lift too, so tell your friends. (If you join any of my challenges, let me know so I can give you props!)

Things ($49.99) is shockingly expensive for an app, but worth every penny. If you juggle multiple roles and projects and you wish you could be more productive, go buy a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and read it carefully. Then buy this app and use it to manage your to-do lists. In my busiest times I have been known to say that I would buy a Mac just for this app. I’ve owned it for years and run it on my laptop and mobile devices. (It works best on desktop or laptop.) It tracks projects, scheduled tasks, recurring tasks, delegated tasks… everything. If you’re interested, read the book first, or you won’t get the full functionality. (Even after reading the book more than once, I’m still learning!)

HomeRoutines ($3.99) is my most recent discovery and new favorite app. Tracking recurring routines in Things left me overwhelmed with the sheer number of to-do’s on my list. HomeRoutines is designed primarily for, you guessed it, home routines… daily, weekly, and monthly recurring personal, family, and housekeeping tasks. It also has a simple to-do list built in. If your primary work is caring for a home and family, this might be the only task app you need. I use it to track not only my own routines but also my children’s. It’s amazing how much more they want to check off a list on a screen than on a piece of paper.  The gold star you get when your routine is complete is nice too!

*     *     *     *     *

Using just one of these apps can change your life, but using them in combination works even better.  For example, if you want to create a new daily habit, list it in a routine on HomeRoutines, then track it in Lift. You get both the prompt to do it every day AND the satisfaction of seeing how many days in a row you have accomplished it.

I have made countless resolutions, and often failed to accomplish them, but this is a combination that is working for me.

*     *     *     *     *

If you use apps, what do you recommend for the new year?

If you don’t use apps, how do you motivate yourself to make change stick?

Advent makes me remember the moment I stumbled onto blogs that captivated me.

It was four years ago. I was the Children’s Ministry Director at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and a postulant for priesthood.

I needed something to do on a Wednesday night with a group of kids, so I did a [...]]]>

The stable in the desert, ready for guests.

Advent makes me remember the moment I stumbled onto blogs that captivated me.

It was four years ago. I was the Children’s Ministry Director at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and a postulant for priesthood.

Mary and Joseph, on the windowsill, have begun their journey. (I need to clean that window!)

I needed something to do on a Wednesday night with a group of kids, so I did a Google search for “Advent crafts.” I expected to find instructions for classroom use. Instead, I discovered homeschooling Catholic mommy bloggers. I felt as if I had entered a different world.

The first website that popped up was Dawn’s: By Sun and Candlelight. She had instructions for the Advent candle craft I used with the kids that year. Her blog is a chronicle of the seasons of the Christian year in the life of her family.  Clicking through Dawn’s links, I discovered Elizabeth Foss, and her list of what makes a “considered childhood”:

As much as I am able, every day, I will ensure that my child will…

• Live the Liturgy
• Experience loveliness
• Breathe deeply: Fresh air and exercise
• Serve others
• Listen to, contemplate, and exchange ideas.
• Develop expressive skills.
• Practice logical reasoning. Math.
• Receive focused attention and affection

That phrase “Live the Liturgy” captivated me, especially when it was followed with Elizabeth’s posts about observing the O Antiphons at home, and many other posts on living the liturgy as a family.

More clicking through links led me to Leila, who had some insightful things to say about “Order and Wonder”

The reality is that this time before Christmas has been given to us as a time of pondering, of silence, and, above all, of waiting. And these things — pondering, silence, expectation – are exactly the dispositions we need to instill wonder, not only in the hearts of our children, but in our own, which so often can be overwhelmed by the noise and bustle of life…

The shepherd is still tending his sheep in the fields.

I read these blogs furtively for all the years that I moved through the ordination process in the Episcopal Church. I was furtive because I didn’t understand why I found them so captivating.

I wasn’t Roman Catholic; I wasn’t about to become Roman Catholic. I wasn’t homeschooling; I wasn’t about to start homeschooling. So why was I reading these blogs?

Finally I realized: I was reading them because they offered a vision of a whole life centered on God, and described a family life of Christian formation. They were based in the idea that each family, each home, is a domestic church. They taught children the beauty and meaning of Christian life, day by day.

The wise men are still very far away.

I continue to fail at creating a domestic church. I say I continue to fail because I continue to try, and I never feel I succeed. (This feeling of not-quite-there-yet-maybe-soon? must be a mandatory side dish of motherhood.)

Advent gives me hope, though, because our family does better in Advent than any other time. This is the season of the year where we do have traditions, and rituals, and they do connect us with the stories and meaning of our faith.

Our Advent wreath… our nativity scene, with the children moving the main figures closer to the creche every day… our Advent and Christmas books between our library book boxes…

These things make me feel that I have made progress. When my family gathers for dinner and a child lights the Advent wreath and we all sing grace, a person could even think we knew what we were doing.

How do you pass on what is most meaningful to your children?

How does your home reflect your faith?

This year’s Advent wreath reminds me of Charlie Brown.

Our family has a tradition of an Advent wreath in the center of the dining room table. We light a candle every night and sing a song that sounds a lot [...]]]> Martha Stewart would not feature Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. But it stands for Christmas nonetheless.

This year’s Advent wreath reminds me of Charlie Brown.

Our family has a tradition of an Advent wreath in the center of the dining room table. We light a candle every night and sing a song that sounds a lot like this one.

And every year, just before Advent, I buy an Advent wreath. Except this year. This year, I stood in the garden store and said, “I have an awful lot of evergreens… I can probably figure this out… I would much rather have a wreath I made.” So I bought ribbon, and candles, and florist’s wire, but no wreath. Bear in mind: I have never made a wreath in my life.

I came home, cut some small spruce branches, and unearthed the Advent box.  And did I find the Advent wreath form I thought I had? No, I did not. But I found enough to give me hope:

A small wreath form and four candleholders, plus my purchased florist’s wire and branches from our trees.

I already knew this would look a little weird, but I plunged ahead nonetheless. First I wired the candleholders to the wreath form, and then I wired the branches. Eventually, I had this:

Still definitely in the “oh-heck-this-was-a-bad-idea” category.

When I got the whole thing finished, it was clear that there was no way a center white candle would fit in the middle. I decided that was okay. And when it was all said and done, it looked perfectly acceptable (at least from a distance):

Ribbon hides wreath weirdness.

I learned a few things from this experience:

1. Check what you already have before you go to the store. (I’m a late bloomer here.)
2. Stumbling through wreathmaking felt better than buying a wreath.
3. It only takes about half an hour to make a less-than-perfect Advent wreath.
4. A less-than-perfect Advent wreath is fine, because Advent is not about decorations.

Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art;

dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart. 

 

I used the URL www.plainsongfarm.com because I already owned it. I bought it in 2001, soon after [...]]]>

Creative Commons license, http://www.flickr.com/photos/freakgirl/3273518391/in/set-72157594283911132/

I started blogging just about a year ago. I had no idea what I was doing. I was so shy about the fact that I had started a blog that I told no one, not even my husband.

I used the URL www.plainsongfarm.com because I already owned it. I bought it in 2001, soon after my husband and I moved to our property. I renewed the domain name annually, but had never built a site for it. We had never created a farm, though we still imagined one in our future. Maybe, I thought, the site could become a blog?

I hit “publish” on the first post in late November. I kept posting occasionally for the next three months, still without telling a soul. Then, I went to a gathering of leaders and was emboldened to go public. At the end of February, I not only hit “publish” but also shared the post on Facebook. I told my husband. I added the blog site to my Facebook and Twitter “about” pages. I started thinking of myself as a blogger.

Being a blogger over the past year has led to some amazing blessings. Because of this blog, I was invited to become a curriculum reviewer for Augsburg Fortress/sparkhouse. I was invited to blog for Building Faith. I made new friends through the Episcopal Church’s Acts 8 Moment. I was even appointed to the Bishop Search Team for my diocese. (Volunteering to build the search website probably helped.)

When I started managing the online presence for our Bishop Search, this blog went on the back burner. I had a website to build; I had a search blog to update. I kept thinking I would revive this blog when things slowed down a little. But then, even when things slowed down a little, I didn’t revive the blog. I’ve hardly posted since June. And after some thought, I figured out why:

When I bought the domain www.plainsongfarm.com more than ten years ago, I intended it to be about the development of a place called Plainsong Farm. I believed God had called me to make a place called Plainsong Farm, and I trusted that eventually this place, whatever it was, it would need a website. I didn’t intend for this to be a site about church leadership and administration, but that’s what it became, until I realized it wasn’t headed in the right direction… at which point it just stopped.

I believe God is still calling me to embrace that original vocation. So, over the next few months, this site will be returning to its roots, here in the place where we live. This blog will focus on discovering the beauty of life in Christ at home and in harmony with creation.  We’ll still be practicing resurrection, but with a different focal point.

And, an announcement! A new website is in development: www.churchwork.com will provide a place for my reflections on church leadership and administration, as well as some new resources for God’s mission in the 21st century. I believe contributing to the conversation about the church’s future is also part of God’s call to me. Just not on this site.

It’s probably a little nuts to start a second blog because you’re not writing on your first one. But the best decisions I have made in life have been a little nuts… so… I’m willing to try it again. Nut-filled birthday cake can be pretty delicious.

As always, I ask your prayers and welcome your comments.