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More from Fidelia:
I am a bit of a curiosity in town. I know this, and if I go out wearing the collar, I now expect it: cordial smiles from the nuns and nurses at the Catholic retirement home, curious stares from many people, trying to figure out if I should be called “Father” or “Sister” or something else entirely, nods of bewildered greeting from all manner of people on the street, from policeman to punk rocker wanna-be. All in all, it’s usually a much more positive reaction than I would get in some other regions of the country and the world. And it’s not so bad, most of the time.
But what I didn’t expect is what happened to my parents on the other side of the country. In my hometown, they have become minor celebrities.
Because nobody else has a pastor for a daughter.
Whenever my parents attend social gatherings or run into people they haven’t seen in a while, people nearly pounce on them and ask about me. How is she doing so far away from home? What do pastors really do, anyways? What does she do on the other days that aren’t Sunday? Does she have any friends? Does she like being a pastor? What do people call her? Somebody once asked my mother, “How do you raise a child to become a pastor?” My parents shrugged helplessly. “We don’t know,” they said. “It just sort of happened.”
I keep thinking people will get bored of this and eventually go back to their usual topics of conversation. After all, I’m just a curiosity to them, right? Ordained ministry isn’t exactly on a lot of career opportunity radar screens. It’s not a common aspiration. Hearing my parents say, “Oh, our daughter is a pastor in New York,” is a little bit like hearing, “Oh, our daughter lives on Mars and makes her living relaying messages from outer space.” No wonder people are curious. No wonder they are full of questions. But they don’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. Read more
A sermon on John 5:1-9
“Do you want to be made well?”
What an Ash Wednesday question.
On a day where we traditionally hear about our own sinfulness
and are faced with our own mortality,
“to dust you shall return,”
what a question to consider.
Of course we want to be made well. Of course we do. Duh.
Why did Jesus even have to ask?
He’s at the pool by the Sheep Gate,
the one rumored to be stirred up by an angel of the Lord from time to time,
the one where the first person to get into the moving water gets healed.
A site of miracles? Perhaps.
Rumors of miracles, at least. And for some of these folks…well, a rumor was enough.
A neighbor’s cousin’s friend stepped into the stirred-up waters and was blind but now can see!
And when you’ve been ill for, say, thirty-eight years…well, there aren’t many options left.
A miracle pool looks pretty good.
Except, this man, who’s been ill for thirty-eight years,
isn’t physically able to get himself into the pool.
He’s alone, for whatever reason.
His family has all died,
or left him, unable to deal with his sickness.
Or maybe he left them, out of shame, or out of a sense of duty.
We don’t know.
So like Blanche, he’s “always relied on the kindness of strangers.”
Apparently, and unfortunately,
in the throng of miracle-seekers pushing toward the seldom moving waters,
the kindness of strangers is hard to come by.
So when Jesus asks him,
“Do you want to be made well…?”
I want to scream at him, “Of course he does! Why else would he be there, at that place?!” Read more
Oh, The Conversation. We’ve all had it. It’s a vocational hazard of being a female pastor. It often begins with the uncomplicated question, “What do you do?” But we just don’t have an uncomplicated answer, do we? Not only are there people who don’t know women can be ministers; there are also plenty of folks who believe women shouldn’t be ministers.
In the time since my ordination, I’ve gotten a better at navigating The Conversation in all its permutations. A lot of practice and a little bit of confidence go a long way. I try to be gracious and understanding and educational, but sometimes I wish I could just be feisty. Recently, a guy came to do an estimate for some work in the parsonage. He knew it was a parsonage, so when I opened the door to let him in, he asked, “Are you the pastor’s wife?” I politely explained that no, I am the pastor, but I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to retort, “Are you the sub-contractor’s husband?”
I wrote this story a couple years ago, when I was still quite new to The Conversation. I called it “What It’s Like to Be a Female Pastor with a Back Condition”: Read more
