Suicide Is Not A Cause for Public Fear

It's been a shitty week. For a myriad of reasons, I'm sure. General depression. Bruce's sentencing. Change of the weather. My lovely housemate moving and the ensuing depression of my cats. Work is always difficult.

There are good bits sprinkled in of course. Coming to church on Sunday was a highlight. I love my people so much. And I've been working on a new counted cross stitch of the Lord's Prayer. Been chilling on my couch watching movies or listening to Barbara Brown Taylor's "A Walk in the Darkness" (which is fantastic as she reads it for the audio version which is like a mini sermon every chapter).

But on Tuesday, something happened that pissed me off. UW Police sent out a warning that there was a woman who was suicidal and possibly armed. They evacuated 300+ people from the vicinity. They hunted (I'm aware of the verb I'm using) down the woman who had fled into a grove of trees. As the police were talking to her, she shot herself. Jean Gibson died yesterday. She was known to my homeless friends though not to me personally.

News: "Gibson was found by police and shot herself while police tried to communicate with her.   Gibson was taken to the hospital with life threatening injuries. UW Police say she died Wednesday from the injury and the case is still under investigation." (link to full story here)

Bruce got sentenced to 10 years

Here's the News : http://www.channel3000.com/news/former-bishop-to-be-sentenced-in-deadly-owi-crash-case/27243598

I'm crying and listening to loud rock music. Not sure how else to function at the moment. So I guess I'll share my pain with you.

As someone called to this synod by Bruce and then as one who was ordained by him… I'm very attached. I will hold all other Bishops up to his standard. It is very high.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

The church does a horrible job of talking about sex. Pretty much, we just avoid talking about it or we tell teenagers to "wait for marriage."I've heard people say their defense of this is "because it's in the Bible." That annoys me. Maybe I missed it?

Just read a great blog post by Jaime the Very Worst Missionary where she writes:

"To top it off, we've done a really bad job of teaching about sex in the Church. Our approach has been to shame girls for having it, and shame boys for wanting it. And when the smart kids ask, "Why wait?", we shrug our shoulders like a hillbilly and say, "Because the Bible says." Then we give the girls a purity ring and we give the boys nothing and we cross our fingers and hope they'll cross their legs. So dumb."

When I was in high school, I attended a class called "Good Sex" at a friends church. It was taught by the Youth Pastor and his pregnant wife. They began the class by saying, "So, we've had sex. Obviously." It was great! Well, some of the theology was superb. Some of it was stretched.

You've all seen this literal drawing, right?

I recall a lesson on "Do not stir or awaken love until it pleases." It's from Song of Solomon, that sketchy book about breasts and climbing them. And what that doesn't say is "wait to have sex until you are married." What it does say is, "Don't manipulate and force love. Wait for the right time."

Honestly, I'm not fussed if people have sex before they are married. I'm fussed if people abuse the holy act that is sex. I hate the idea that I could go out to a club and get picked up by a guy I've not previously met and go back to his place and have sex with him and then never see him again.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT??

Being Girly and Pastor-like

Me at my Ordination in Dec 2012

I am a female pastor. Well, really, I'm a female AND I'm a pastor… but the two separate identities are so intertwined that when I discuss one, the other arises.

The topic of women in ministry is in many ways a very old debate and in others, still quite new. My church body, the ELCA, has been ordaining women since 1970. I had a female pastor in the church I was confirmed in. I knew that female pastors were rare, but there was never a time that option was closed to me as it was to women even a generation before me. 

I remember thinking, when I first considered being a pastor, that I didn't want to become a frumpy pastor. This is tragically judgmental commentary on how I felt about female pastors at the time. Most of the females I had met in ministry had short hair, dressed in pants and button up tops, and were not…. girly. 

Romeo and Juliet kill themselves for love (and other reasons to listen to teenagers)

"My child is yet a stranger in the world; She hath not seen the change of fourteen years, Let two more summers wither in their pride, Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride." -Daddy Capulet

Juliet is 14. The character is so often portrayed by a woman in her 20's or 30's that I worry that we miss much of the story. Romeo and Juliet are teens. They have so much passion. Juliet threatens to kill herself once, drinks a potion that might kill her or will ideally let her sleep for 72 hours, and ultimately takes a dagger to her own body. 

Suicide. Two attempts. One complete. And that's just Juliet. Romeo wants to die as soon as he hears that he is banished. He also threatens to kill himself unless someone can come up with a solution to this banishment which means he cannot be with his love. He drinks poison and dies by a sleeping Juliet's side.

Q&A, Millennial style

I just got back from a week long mission trip with 50+ teenagers. I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep. But I'm also reveling in the amazing conversations that I had at midnight that caused the lack of sleep.

Did you know that teenagers ask amazing questions? Seriously. Everything from LGBTQ questions to the realities of heaven and hell. And the answers from me are taken with a grain of salt (or two) and added to the mix of all the answers and information available at the moment. They weigh what they hear from religious "authorities" against what they experience in their daily lives, in and outside of a church building.

This is how our generation operates. We question. We discuss. The conclusions we draw are rarely case closed, period, end of sentence. We're open to ideas that might come to us years down the road. We've seen too many people so staunchly fixed to their beliefs that anytime those ideas are threatened, people get hurt.

For I Know the Plans I Have For You

... says the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11

Rev and Dr Baker

It's always been one of my favorite pieces of scripture. And if you've been around me long enough you know how much I hate the whole "God will never give you more than you can handle" crap. So this is the promise I turn to. That God has plans for me and they're good.

This last Friday I got to stand up with one of my best friends as he married an amazing woman. And having been his friend since the beginning of seminary and bonding over the ups and downs of relationships that come and go and are amazing and then crap… well, I was overjoyed for him.

Because we had both asked so many times (over a delicious brew at Goose Island where we earned our Masters of Beer Appreciation) if there was anyone out there for us. And we had to battle through all the bullshit of being best friends who were opposite sex and all the times that people told us we looked like we were together and surely one of us liked the other and just wasn't sharing that. We heard it a lot over the years, even when we were in Iowa and Montana for internship. We wallowed away a New Years Eve on Skype together, each in our own timezones.