"How did you make the switch?"

"How did you make that switch from nursing into being a pastor?"  This is a question that I get a lot.  I've answered it twice in the last four days.  Once for a young man I've known for a few years and once for someone I just met yesterday at a party (yup, party talk).

The short answer is that I married a Lutheran.  At the time, I had no idea what 'Lutheran' meant.  Now, of course, I see it for its quiet subversion as one expression of a 2,000 year old story.

A cool part of being asked the question is that I usually get snippets of someone else's story.  The young man who asked it gave me bits of his story as we talked.  Things I wouldn't know otherwise across our almost 20 year age difference.

My bio is elsewhere so I'll spare you the details here (caitlintrussell.org).  Suffice it to say for now that having a religious commitment that pushes in on me from the outside is a good thing.  But first, before that push, there was and continues to be space.  Space to acknowledge flaws and fatigue as well as gifts.  Space to wonder, think, and doubt.  Space to know, experience, and learn.  Space to drop into the 2,000 year old story and figure out my part in it.

When I made the switch from nurse to pastor, my brother started calling me a "nurse of the soul."  My own soul needed some serious healing well before that switch was flipped.  Those are stories for a different day.

Writing mojo, blogs, and paradox

I read blogs.  I don't follow them religiously but drift over to them to check out what some of my favorite thinkers are thinking.  I've been thinking about my own blog and wondering about the things I think.  This blog has seen some spotty authorship from me at best.  Partly because a lot of my writing mojo is poured into sermons that are posted elsewhere.

I'm also biased toward in-person conversation, literally bodies hanging out together.  Talking while working together, playing together, making the world better together.  You get the idea.  Occasionally I'll sit with someone or a few someones and one of them will ask why I don't blog.  I point at them and at me and say, "This, this is what I do, I'm an in-person kind of person."  That makes the blog world trickier.  But I also like the bigger conversation of the blogosphere - getting to be in a conversation with people that I don't get to meet in the general flow of life.  In-person is cool and being connected into a larger conversation is cool.  Let it be known, paradoxes are also among my favorite things - two things that get to be true at the same time.

  

Rick Warren's son...

My heart broke this week for Rick Warren, his son, and his family on hearing the news of his son's suicide. Rick Warren is well-known in Christian churches as a pastor and writer.  One of my fellow seminarians is a pastor in her native Appalachia.  Her thoughts offered to the Warren family from her own experience of depression are heartfelt and powerful.  I offer them to you by way of her open letter.

http://appalachianpreacher.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/an-open-letter-to-rick-warren-and-all-parents-who-have-lost-a-child-to-suicide/

Peace,
Caitlin

Ordination, an invitation

It's finally happening!  Augustana Lutheran Church in Denver is calling me as one of their pastors.  If you are looking for the party place on Saturday evening, February 2nd, my ordination is an option.

Ordination details
Saturday, February 2nd at 5:30pm
Augustana Lutheran Church
5000 East Alameda Avenue, Denver

Light refreshments will follow the service.

Rostered Church Leaders, Clergy, and those who have prepared for ministry and are awaiting call are invited to vest, process and be a part of the laying on of hands.  Stole color is red.

The color of ordination is red to symbolize the Holy Spirit who is in charge of ordination.  You are all welcome to wear red if you have any and you like to wear it.  Of course, all colors are welcome!!!  :)  I just want to give you a heads up in case you show up and wonder why red seems to be abounding on people and in the sanctuary.
 

"Do you have any pastoral words...

...to help in this tragic time of ct?"  This question came to me via text the Friday afternoon of the killings in Newtown.  My heart, already broken open, dropped into my feet.

The texter went on to say,
"It's so hard to comprehend.  I'm trying to focus on the majority of love and good in our world." 

My answer?
"That is a good place to focus.  Any words of explanation are insufficient for the loss of life and the loss of innocence for those who survived and those grieving.  I just know that, for me, believing in a God who died on a cross gives me hope that God is there.  Where else would God be but with those who are suffering and dying at the hands of an evil act?  At the end of the day, the "why" question is unanswerable.  So we are left with turning to each other with love and hanging on...because, as you say, love is still out there too."

Insufficient?  Absolutely.  Honest?  Yes.  Pastoral?  Don't know.

I simply know that God's presence, God's power, baby-sized into skin and solidarity among us, is the hope I defiantly celebrate during these 12 days of Christmas.

Disagree in Love [or, 'Oh that beloved Vincent Harding']

One of my professors during my time at seminary is a man named Vincent Harding.  He was a colleague to Martin Luther King Jr., occasionally his speech writer, and also his friend.  When my fellow students and I talk about Dr. Harding, it has that slightly whispered quality of reverence and maybe a little sigh thrown in for good measure.  I was sitting in a class taught by someone else who brought in a few other professors including Dr. Harding.  They sat up front, panel-style, and were asked questions – proceeding to answer them in ways that revealed obvious areas of agreement and also exposed the fault lines among them.  At one point, Dr. Harding turned to one of his colleagues, spoke the professor's name in his usual quiet way, softness around a steel core, and said, “I’m going to disagree with you in love..."  

"I’m going to disagree with you in love.”  Who says stuff like that?!  Who even stops to think it before they dive into a disagreement?!  

As we move towards November, we could use a little more of Dr. Harding's disagreement in love - not as a way to avoid conflict or to give each other an artificially cheerful thumbs up that keeps a superficial peace.  This disagreement in love takes us more deeply into the disagreement and possibly through it.

Weekly vindication for being an "a##*ole"?

I overheard someone make a comment this morning.  It was something about a particularly vocal Christian they know who "spends his week being an a##*ole" and heads to church on Sunday for his "weekly dose of vindication."  My heart sank and is still sinking.  I've spent the morning busily doing other things but this conversation simply won't exit my brain.  So, here I sit, deeply believing in the power of Christ's forgiveness and deeply believing that the cross of Christ helps us tell the truth - the truth about ourselves and our experiences.

Part of the truth is that this guy (I know him too) has hurt some people I know and have come to love.  I've heard him speak about Jesus and faith and I also struggle to see how he connects life and faith together in how he has treated some people.  

While it plays out differently, I also see these things in me.  I hurt people too.  Sometimes I know it and sometimes I don't.  I'm pretty certain that there are people who wonder about the connection between the faith I confess and their experience of me during the week.  But I also place my hope in the promise that whatever happened at that cross also has a part to play in what needs to die in me.  Because God loves my neighbor (you) and by extension God loves your neighbor (me).  Therefore, the forgiveness that comes from the cross is not an empty one.  It is one that also names the pain, the perpetrator, the victim and the consequences as we move through the muddle of our humanity.  I believe that the way I treat you all has true consequences for me on both large and small scales.  I also believe it is true that God forgives wholly and completely.  And I am grateful for it all.