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More from Fidelia:
The Holy Spirit resides in my mattress … I’m pretty sure. The first time I noticed this was when I was in college, though I didn’t call it the Holy Spirit then. I would go to bed after struggling with a paper or project and would wake up with the perfect thing to fit in the project or the perfect connection in the paper. It wasn’t just an idea … it was like the whole paper was written in my head while I slept.
This tradition continued when I went to seminary and started serving three small rural churches in southern Indiana. I would struggle with a sermon or, even worse, have NO IDEA what I was going to preach on, and so I would go to sleep, and wake up with the entire sermon in my head. All I had to do was sit and write it.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t done the work beforehand. I went to a Presbyterian seminary and was schooled in how to do exegesis. I took Greek, Hebrew, Old Testament and New Testament Exegesis, and basic preaching. I knew how to do the outline, how to make the connections, to check commentaries, to read in other translations, to check the context, to talk with other pastors in my lectionary group, and to journal my own thoughts during the week before I get to that point. I did all of these things … but I believe it is the Holy Spirit residing in my mattress that does the real work.
At first my family didn’t understand how this worked. My immediate family came down to celebrate my first Christmas as a pastor with me. (I am one of 8 children, and everyone came except one sister and her husband … it was a full house!) About mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve I still had not finished my sermon and was busy preparing dinner. My family freaked out, “Tricia, don’t you need to go to your office (in the next room) and write your sermon?” “No,” I’d reply, “I’ll go take a nap in a little while, and it will be fine.” Read more
Why I should not be a pastor:
- I stole money from an employer when I was in high school.
- I had plenty of sex outside the sacrament of marriage
- Being a pastor feeds my big head.
- I hardly ever pray.
Why I am a pastor:
- God called me anyway.
In seminary, my professors taught me many things. I learned to exegete, to lead a meeting, to sing hymns on pitch, and to recite significant dates in the history of the church. Unfortunately, I did not learn what to do when a blindingly handsome stranger with straw gold hair and dazzling white teeth began attending the church where I am pastor.
I consider myself a reasonably mature person. I always scoffed at stories of ministers getting embroiled in sexual indiscretions. I believed the phenomenon of male pastors running off with their secretaries was an embarrassing mid-life-crisis cliché. Certainly I would never get so overwrought with passion that I would cross a boundary of appropriate behavior.
Sigh.
In reality, I am just as subject to the humiliating lack of rational thought that comes with romance as any middle-aged man.
So, when the handsome blonde man came to church, my rational thought flew out the window and my inner 15-year-old came out with a vengeance.
He tended to come to church early, and when I saw him, my heart started fluttering, just like it would in high school. I found excuses to go near his pew—rearranging the flag, making sure the matches were stocked, stacking the bulletins more neatly. I would “casually” strike up conversation, learning about his work, his interests. He never mentioned a wife or girlfriend, which I thought was a good sign, but whenever I invited him out with the other young adults, he did not seem interested at all.
Even my boss got into the act. If my boss noticed that Mr. Handsome was in church, he’d shove me into the sanctuary and say, “Go talk to him!” Read more
