The Priestess Is In

Synchronized Working

Years ago, before work changed the way it did, people talked about setting up small offices for people working at home. At that point, every one had an office. You needed a copier, a central place for messages to be taken, a fax machine. If you were very lucky (or paid a lot) a place for file storage.

Enterprising work-at-homers gathered to start small offices. There was a meeting room, work cubicles, perhaps a receptionist and all the shared technology. It was in an office building and someone cleaned it up. You paid a certain fee per month and got everything you needed to function. Including the occasional meeting at the water cooler. It was a good and very temporary system.

The technology changed so quickly and as it changed, so did our work. Cell phones, laptops 3-in-one printer/copier/scanners became completely affordable, even as written documents became more and more obsolete. If you think about it, it’s astonishing how much of our work gets done on line these days. Well, it’s astonishing if you’re a person who remembers carbon copies (oh blessedly on the way out as I was becoming a secretary. What a delight the Selectric was! I could type as quickly backward as forward. I always made a lot of mistakes in my hurry to be done.) Early adopters’ lives changed quickly. But at this point, even the most reluctant embracers of technology are moving along far differently than they did.

I still print my sermons. I’m sure if at some point I get a Kindle or an ipad that will stop. Why waste the paper? Why have it building up around the house? Make a pdf and send it to one of your e-readers. Goodness knows I’m a much more efficient filer on line than I ever was in a file drawer. And thanks to the search function I think I’ve found every poem I’ve ever written except that wonderful piece about the Susquehanna at twilight. (sigh.)

I spend time these days, working in the realm of ideas and trying to decipher which ideas are best suited to which media. It’s interesting… and publishing doesn’t seem to have a very clear idea which way it’s going yet…

So, much is taken care of… except that water cooler thing. Cue the rise in number of coffee houses. Now they’re not just the new meeting room, they’re the new water cooler. Every Monday morning, I have a study date with a friend, now two. Mostly, we work on our own work. But we each know what the other is working on. Occasionally, we’ll stop and say… “so, am I on track here?” and read a short piece aloud or push our laptop across the table. No one else at the table does theology. Neither woman is churched. But they both, boy howdy, came equipped with ideas and opinions.

So there we are. We write. We nosh (gotta keep our meeting place in business). We talk about world events and what more appropriate responses should be. We offer advice. We just listen. We Google. We giggle. Occasionally our separate wonderings fuse into a solid workable idea that changes each woman’s work for the better. Even more occasionally we realize we can collaborate on something. Most importantly, we remember we are not alone as we strive to do good work.

Shared Laughter

There may be nothing more delicious than the quick exchange of shared amusement between strangers. Together, but alone, you notice the same thing, a burst of life that fills you with joy — a joy contagious enough to share, and then having shared to encourage outright laughter.

People are always looking to be amused… and in kindness… it’s only a mitzvah if we share our amazement at the world’s follies with one another.

Be on the lookout for delight. It’s there if you look for it. And fairly often, someone else will be looking too! Enjoy… and laugh!

Free Education and Certification

Ever since I saw the TED program on the Kahn Academy I’ve been fascinated. So simple. So straightforward. MIT is in the mix now. So are Stanford and Harvard and lots of other big name schools. There is conversation going on fast and furiously about possibilities for certification rather than diplomas from the big schools. And even if it’s just for fun. If you like physics, or don’t understand it at all, why not tune into a master and figure it out?

I’ve written on this page before about the blogs (Fixes) written by David Bornstein and others that are found on the Thursday NY Times Op-Ed Page. They’re examining things that work to make people’s lives better. (oh what a novel idea, things that make life better, not horror stories!)

His post today is about ALISON which is teaching certification for work programs. And it is providing these courses for free. Although the bulk of students come from UK and US and India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Nigeria and the Middle East where ALISON has 200,000 students. But there are also students in tiny countries who would not otherwise have access to the career of their dreams or a skill that fills a local need. This way, enterprising people are looking at jobs that are available, and going after the certificates needed to match their skills to the openings… It’s a great tool for a new world.

This is an idea worth supporting… and ingenuity worth celebrating. Hooray.

 

 

Compassion

“Compassion is an unstable emotion, it needs to be translated into action or it withers.”

It wasn’t until I wrote the tag line for this morning’s musing that I realized how many of us these days are confusing posting to FaceBook with standing for the right. It’s a lovely, but wrongheaded notion…

There is no substitute for doing the kind deed or offering the kind word.

And the world is in need of kindness…

Susan Sontag, you wonderful woman, thank you for your words of wisdom throughout the years. I miss your voice.

 

 

Your Place of Peace

As a minister, you’d think I would have a regular schedule of retreat and pilgrimage, wouldn’t you? But instead, like the rest of us, I spend my time hurrying from place to place, meeting to meeting, event to event. I don’t remember the last time I sat on a rock in a stream. Particularly on the rock in my steam. or when I waded along the ocean for hours in the morning, running in and out of the waves, simply because I could.

I have the unbelievable luxury in my job of time off in the summer. Time to write and think, of course, because that’s my delight. But also, time to rest and renew and revisit the places that remind me of creation’s beauty and strength.

And maybe if I spend a month practicing the art of appreciation, it will be habit I cannot let go come the beginning of of my work year.

In the meantime it’s pretty beautiful on my porch this morning…

Where do you go, that’s not so very far, to fill up your soul?

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Scents and Memory

It’s been so hot here and when i went out to the garden to get some herbs, I brushed against the tomato plant… mmmmmmmmm. right back to my youth.

I have read that we remember things better when they lodge in more than one place in our brain. Songs stick, because there are words, rhyme, meter and tune which all help. And scent of the ocean and and and…

If, when we meet people, we would remember that each of us has joys and memories buried deep within, and tried to evoke that, we would find many more things in common. Peace like memory is built on many levels.

p.s. Reading the poem again today was frustrating… I work so fast sometimes that I don’t fully develop an idea or an image… the challenge in pushing out a daily poem… which will change as I edit it for the book…

The Challenges Don’t Stop

It’s not that anything particular has happened recently. But I’ve been thinking about the fact that challenges of all sorts do not necessarily keep company with the seasons rhythms. You can lose a job or receive a difficult diagnosis in the midst of the season of bounty as easily as any other season. I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about this before, but perhaps it’s that the seasons and rhythms of our lives trump the year’s turnings…

When this happens, the disconnect between what’s going on outside and what’s going on inside can be great. Whether the challenge is ours or that of a beloved, our job is to remain open and present. Not everyone can do that. It does catch me off guard when people gradually withdraw from a relationship because a partner/friend/colleague has encountered one of life’s great roadblock. Not everyone who’s offered the challenge can stay present in it either.

But, because they’re challenges, they keep offering other opportunities to be the best we can be and to do the best we can. Because in the end, that’s all we can do.

The Sacred Journey

There are trips you take (sometimes just in your soul) which set you on the path you will walk throughout your life. It’s a stripped down life. You don’t bring along most your possessions to weigh you down. Often it’s hot. The big thermos jug of water (tea, lemonade) in the back of your vehicle keeps you hydrated. You carry your foodstuff’s along and eat by rushing creeks, under the shade of trees, or overlooking the desert. The days are long and you settle in to the rhythm of landscape. On such journeys there is both the time and the quiet required to reassemble your soul without all the distractions. Every once in a while you need to go on a trip long enough to leave you delighted in the stillness.

The journey leaves every day. The path is nearby…

Kindness

We are so easily sarcastic and cutting. I’m not pointing any fingers here, there have been times it’s been an artform in my life. And that irony was meant to amuse. And it always amuses the artist, and often the audience… and it frequently wounds the object of the biting, so-called witty repartee.

And yet, we the witty, are aghast at bullies. And not all sarcasm is bullying… but it can be an easy edge from one to the next.

Words are unbelievably powerful. Choosing words of kindness can build up a world rather than destroy it. If we’re going to work to stop bullying, and we must, then we must learn the art of kindness… not that awful saccharine, glib stuff… but real and heartfelt sweetness that makes space for everyone…

I’m working on it… and on finding a way to make observations funny, but not wounding…

Working Together

My church has a huge, no really huge, yard sale. Three wonderful people plot and plan and price to set it up. But what makes it work is the community. We have to donate. We have to tote and carry. And then we have to sell.

We need the yard sale, it makes a lot of money and our budget is dependent upon it. If we did it only for the money, it would be a pretty remarkable thing.

But more and more, I begin to believe that what’s best about this sale is not the money, but the community it builds. Last year 70 percent of us helped in some way. Last Sunday, we stacked chairs (and moved them outside, and eventually into the trailer.) We moved tables into position (carefully marked on the floor). We hauled boxes (inside and stacked them under the tables, carefully matching labels of box and table). We emptied the boxes (arranging the merchandise.)

The organizers had jobs for everyone, even the 7 year old.

That’s what makes great society, when everyone participates and has a role, regardless of abilities and age.

What are you doing that you might allow people to help you with and, thus, engage? You really don’t have to do everything yourself. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for your spouse, your family or your community. Share! It’ll be hard the first time… and then it will be a good time.