16 March 08 - 04:08
No Time to Write!
I have been gently reminded by a few people that it's been over a month since I wrote in my blog. My, how time flies! This will be a pretty whirlwind trip, so please excuse the haste. Since the Sunday School will be leading the service tomorrow morning, including a drama I wrote weeks ago, I don't have to write a sermon tonight, so I have a little chunk of time to cover the past month, and I'm using it before it flies away, too.
In that time, we've hosted a very successful church retreat and an equally successful covenanting service (only six months into my ten month appointment, that's not too bad for the church bureaucracy... 
We're now almost all the way through Lent, which has been a surprisingly productive time, as the church and I both learn to let go of our pasts and work together. One of the letting go parts for me was to let go of the need to do it all myself, and to include other people in my planning horizon. The perfectionist part of me has learned over the years to accept that other people will do things their own way instead of exactly the way I imagined, and that's good. The harder part to execute is that I learned procrastination as a coping skill years ago -- hey, if you never get around to doing it, you never have to worry about it not being perfect, and if you do have to do it, at least you can blame the deadline pressure for its lack of perfection.
So it's really tough for me to plan anything far enough in advance to include other people in the plans. I've been working on that, and in the past month I've executed on the retreat, which was a real blessing here, on getting a very fine flautist and cellist together with me to perform "If God Be For Us" from Handel's Messiah at my covenanting service, on getting a very fine drummer and bassist together with me last Sunday to perform "Dry Bones, Hear the Word," and next month we'll have a session on yoga, meditation, and spirituality at my church, led by a certified yoga teacher and United Church Minister who was just looking for a place to teach. Oh yes, and I wrote the drama that the Sunday School is using tomorrow morning in time for them to prepare it. I can't believe the outpouring of the creative spirit that happens when you look for opportunities to share your gifts with others, and share other's gifts in return.
On the less productive side, our church secretary broke her arm in three places, and we've been struggling by with a different temp every week, that's four to date, and another one next week. Each week, I've had to teach a new secretary how to produce a Sunday bulletin. Next week is Holy Week, and we have four services all of which need bulletins, and also Good Friday is a statutory holiday, so we have one less day next week to do them in. Don't expect a blog next week, okay? 
I'll try for Easter, but no guarantees!
On another different front, I made it through getting the first stage of a tooth implant screwed into my upper jaw -- and for those of you who cringe at the mere thought of that, I'll say no more, only that it really was no worse than getting a filling done. Honest! And this is the original dental phobic individual saying so.
I've survived March Break with all three kids at home and me having to work a normal (ha!) work week, clearly people's prayers were with me! My kids spent three days at the church this past week, and only one of those days were there any children's activities at the church, so I have to praise their remarkable patience. Of course, let me also praise the patience of all those church people who got to listen to the enthusiastic piano playing of two talented girls, both of whom learned how to play Heart and Soul in the past week! I am also pleased with the patience of the choir member who found half a Tim Horton's fruit punch bottle in her seat in the choir loft at Thursday night's practice. This kind of patience with what real kids are like, messy, annoyingly repetitive, and under foot, is what it will take to ensure that there will be a next generation in the church, and I am grateful and humbled to serve a church that is that kind of patient.
Speaking of what real kids do, my nine year old daughter has decided that she wants to raise $20000 for the IWK Children's Hospital by her tenth birthday, in July. Most of her plans seemed to involve a lot of my work. (See aforementioned comments about not having enough time to even write in my blog.) But after our retreat, the leader talked to my daughter and to me, and told us both to go out and realize her dream. I asked her to start with a more realistic goal, say raising $100, and if that works, she can try for $1000, and so on. With that in mind, I suggested that she hold a bake sale after church on Palm Sunday. That's tomorrow morning, and the whole family has been baking like fiends this week. We're not the only ones, I've been getting calls at the church wanting to know when they can bring their baking down. And we've already received nearly $100 in money just handed to her from people who want to help out this bold little kid who can stand in front of 150 people and tell them what her dream is.
And maybe that's a good place to end in this time-pressed state, as I stand on the brink of Holy Week, with a child's dream, and the adults ready and willing to help to bring it to life.
Blessings, Heather.
No comments
No trackbacks:
