Posts

Lighting the Candles without Fitting the Mold

A few years ago, I inherited the task of assigning Advent candle lighters for our church. For as long as anyone could remember, nuclear family units had been assigned each week’s readings and scriptures. Parents would help children to light the matches and teenagers would read the apocalyptic texts with gusto. But there had been […]

Flying Solo

During my mid- to late-twenties, I went through a phase: Everywhere I went, I met Scottish people. I even found some in Mexico at an all-inclusive resort where my mom and I were vacationing. Every time I met Scots, I thought, “These are my people.” And they all assured me that I was right, and […]

Still the Single Rev

I was 25 when I graduated from seminary and was ordained. My first position was as a chaplain at a small college, where I was routinely mistaken for a student. To me, the four years between my own undergraduate studies and my chaplaincy work represented an enormous gap in both age and experience. But to […]

Failing the Bechdel Test

We were driving to my parents’ house when my sister, Lindsey, mentioned the Bechdel Test. I had never heard of it, so I had to ask what it was. “It’s like a baseline test for women in movies. You ask three questions: Does the movie have at least two named, female characters; do two female […]

A Home of Her Own

I blamed the puddle on the kitchen floor on my dog Sophie, who sat, wagging her tail and gleefully chewing on her bone as I ranted about her apparent issues with appropriate places to pee. Then I felt the drip on my head. A quick sniff of the liquid I’d just mopped up was further proof that the […]

When a Single Rev Opts to Adopt

Interview of the Rev. Joyce Borger by the Rev. Sarah Kinney Gaventa When did you know you wanted to adopt? Was it an easy decision? Difficult? I’ve always wanted to adopt, at least it was already in my mind when I was in high school. In my mind there were so many children already in […]

Living and Loving in Limbo

Seminary did a very good job at teaching me that it would be really hard—nay, impossible—to date anybody as a young clergywoman. “Don’t even get your hopes up,” should have been printed on my diploma. I, like many others, saw the flood of seminary classmates rushing down the aisle before heading off on internship or to their first church. […]

Rumor Me This, Rumor Me That

The town was all a-twitter. The gossip network was running full force. The new pastor, they said, had a man staying in the parsonage. He had been there over a week, visited the church, and met many of my parishioners before the rumors got back to me, of course. I had only been ministering there a […]

Being Single, Being Me

I began seminary with several single classmates, but our number was significantly reduced over the three years we spent there. By senior year, it seemed like a mass headlong rush to the altar. Those of us who had not joined the stampede mostly avoided the topic, as though voicing it would speak it into reality, but in a fit […]