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But in the midst of all that spiritual work, the everyday work of dusting, scrubbing and organizing real rooms doesn’t go away. This month, we bring you a sermon that reminds how this, too, is a spiritual pursuit.
I have a secret.
I have a very long term, very intense, shameful love/hate relationship with housework. I love the idea of housework. Years ago I bought the Cheryl Mendelson’s book Home Comforts. Mendelson is a lawyer, who grew up in a farm in Pennsylvania, and her passion is housekeeping. She loves to sort and clean and cook. Her book is so beautifully written that it seduces you into the idea that housekeeping is an art. She writes:
What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping. Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else.
(Sigh) Isn’t that lovely? I’ll read that paragraph and swear to myself that I will become a capital H Housekeeper. My house will be airy and light, dust free, with clutter put into its rightful place. The sink will sparkle. No crumb will mar my hygienic kitchen counters. My home will be a place of peace and beauty.
Yeah, right. Read more
It was the weekend after Christmas Day, the year of our Lord 2006. The rector was out of town. I had been ordained to the priesthood for, oh, maybe three weeks. I had assisted at other weddings, but this was the first time I was running the show myself. I wanted everything to go well, not only for the couple’s sake, but also to prove that I could do this, that I was capable and competent.
After the procession, during the opening prayer, I didn’t think too much about the woman who was sitting while everyone else was standing. It was an oddly warm day for December, and I remember thinking that I would probably be sitting down, too, if I had that option. I would not have remembered her at all, that woman fanning herself with the bulletin, if it weren’t for what happened a few minutes later. While I was reading the Gospel, I looked up from the pulpit to see someone stretched out on the floor. The woman who had been seated in the second row, well, her heart had stopped. I just stood there for a few seconds. “Let’s take a break,” I heard myself say. Read more
We walk a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate attention as female pastors.
Despite having encountered a variety of bizarre advances while performing my ministerial duties, I still have no idea of the best way to respond to them (I occasionally offer people the opportunity to rewind and begin again, but not everyone finds that as amusing as I do). The most frustrating thing about it for me is my sense of helplessness in those situations – the feeling that I can’t defend myself without compromising something else about my ministerial identity.
When I was a bartender, there was no question in my mind about whether or how I could let people know when they’d overstepped the boundary. Likewise, when I’m just a woman out in the world, I don’t hesitate to be direct in fending off unwanted advances. Get me in my preaching suit and put me in front of a congregation, however, and suddenly I feel like I have to just suck it up and take it. As a result, I deeply resent comments that would just make me roll my eyes and toss off a snappy comeback in any other context.
Now, I realize that married clergywomen also deal with unwanted advances, but it’s different when you’re single. “I’m married” draws a firmer line and sounds less snippy than, “Thanks, but that was an inappropriate remark.” Most of the people who say these sorts of things don’t actually intend to be lecherous. They think they’re being nice. They think we ought to be flattered. They think that because we’re single, we have no reason not to be flattered. Singleness makes us likelier targets and reduces our defenses. Lucky us. Read more
