Church in the Balcony

Yesterday I sat down in church. Yes, I did tell the story for all ages, and I helped with the sorting of children after they left the sanctuary, helped calm a three-year-old and distract him with playdoh and building train bridges until he forgot he missed his pop-pop. I counted noses before the 6th-7th grade group headed down to the park for Earth Day. Then I grabbed a secret cup of coffee and headed to the balcony where there is no carpeting to ruin if coffee spills and I disturb fewer people with my coming and going.

Then I sat. Only one other person was with me in the balcony, but he was tolerant of my leaving to check on classes. The day was so beautiful many of our families were not at church, small classes often mean fewer issues and less need for the "mean lady" to take kids from class for a while for a little break.

So, I got to hear most of the service. Most of the music. I even got to have a little of the fellowship of experiencing a moving service next to a kind person. I can't remember the last time I listened to a sermon in the pleasant company of a fellow congregant. It magnifies the meaning and deepens the emotion.

Then I ran off to set up tables advertising a fund raiser, peeked in for the singing of the final hymn and then zipped back down to the fellowship hall to welcome the hot and sweaty middle schoolers back from the park, reminded young ones not to eat a whole cake and poured more coffee.

When I leave my work as a religious educator after these seven years, I will leave church for a full year. For a year I will hike or have brunch or visit friends or just sleep on Sunday mornings. Then, I hope, I'll come back to church and sit through services and experience a moving sermon in the warm embrace of loving fellowship. I don't think I had any idea how much I missed it.

Amen.

A Loving Leaving

I am not sure why no one told me this, but when you leave a job a really bizzaro thing happens. Someone else comes in to do the job after you. For real. And people really care a whole lot about who they get to do your job. Yes, for real.

The next Director of Religious Exploration was announced today. And my gosh, she sounds just amazing! And when I emailed her to congratulate her, she seemed super kind and intelligent and very caring. Holy amazing transition batman! I think we're in the middle of the middle phase of a loving leaving. Hot dog!

One thing though. I promised her that we'd have the library all organized before she arrives. Maybe you haven't seen our office, but the library might be half in stacks on the floor. We worked really hard on organizing it last summer, or well--our ADRE did. And I know where most of the books are. But if someone who wasn't us looked at it, well they might think it was, you know. A mess! A really big mess with sloping piles of fabulous resources for children, families and teachers. But still. A mess.

Better get on that.

At the same time, we've got almost all of the summer program in place. The story tellers for summer are just about set. And the teaching teams for next year are shaping up. I brought home the dog bed that used to sit under our desk. And while the files will take a few more weeks, we're on it. SO many files we collect in seven years. Oh my!

This is what we do when we leave because it's time to leave and we want more than anything in the world for everything that happens after we leave to be good. It's a lot of work, but it's good work.

And really, I'm on the library. Seven weeks, that's about 39 books a week! Psssht. No prob.

Listen to Your Mother

Leave it to your mother to quietly point at something, raise her eyebrows and give you a little nod. Oh yeah, really gotta pay attention when all three of those things happen.

Except in my life they happen on facebook these days, since I ruined my mother's life and took three of her four youngest grandsons 1,200 miles away.

Yes, my 80-year-old mother is on facebook. And she has a kindle and an ipad. And she skypes, too.

"You're in the UU World again" I think was about all it actually said on facebook, the point and eyebrows and nod were totally implied though. I could tell.

My UU World had been sitting on my desk, waiting to be read in the rush of all things family and church and the ittle bitty district job I'm juggling right now. But yep, sure enough there it was in the blog responses to articles in the last UU World, a post I could barely remember writing much less living. December 8th somehow feels like a million years ago. But I clicked through to the post and sure enough, it was something that we'd just been talking about across the kitchen table in the RE office a few days earlier. And as I read it I thought "people must think I either have been straight up lying in this blog or that I'm a total idiot for leaving this job."

And then I read back through the posts. "Love the job, love the people, joy and peace and bliss and blah blah blah perfection in all things church and faith" and holy mother of all things of worth and dignity, I swear, it's all true. I have absolutely loved serving this congregation. It is full of the most amazing, giving people who are full of love and who I swear to the spirit work like oxen on espresso! I could hardly speak when I sat at the table with the board of trustees to submit my resignation, it was so sad. And when a beloved six-year-old gave me the chalice she'd created at a chalice chapel, well, I'm still teary about that. I will rip out little pieces of my heart and stuff them in the cushions of the pews and the bins of legos when I leave.

But I have to go. Some people have a call to serve God or work with the street children in poor cities. Some people wake up and join the Peace Corps. I didn't get those texts on the God phone. Nope.

For me....it's pretty straight forward. It's time for me to leave the congregation I love.

And if you stay when it's time to go, well, that's about the most unkind thing you could ever do to a group of people you love.

So, thanks mom, for pointing me to the blog and reminding me that I used to be a blogger. And that people might be wondering.....hunh? What on earth happened here?

Nothing happened. Life is complicated. I am making the tidiest most amazing and well organized office, storage and programs (teacher teams for 2012-2013? Already on it!) any leaving person has ever left behind. It is a profoundly loving leaving.

Eventually, I will love actually sitting through a church service and singing hymns and that thing where you go away on a Friday and come back on a Sunday and rest and relax....I think it's called a weekend away. But I will miss being the adult who children trust and the storyteller people listen to and the strong one who keeps things together from time to time.  I will miss it a lot.

But the seasons go round and round and the years actually grow wings and fly by. And even when you're nearly 45 your mother can still remind you about the things you really need to do. On facebook.

It's a good thing and sometimes good things just break your heart.

A Great Job in the Pacific Northwest!

I'm leaving this work, but it might be just right for you or for someone you know!

Go here. 

Blessings.