Seeking Authentic Voice

Highway 89A outside Escalante, Utah A number of years ago I drove from Tucson, Arizona north to Escalante, Utah with my son and his dog.  Actually, we were driving to Chicago, but we made a stop in Escalante to see my father. A few days later we drove the "loop" from Escalante along the top of the Rockies and then north to Salt Lake City. Our stay in Salt Lake included some time visiting a number of my family members.  The  mountain side view from the Salt Lake Cemetery where my mother and many family members are buried. The most notable aspect of this trip was time spent with family - from my son to my father to my aunts and uncles.  As a little girl I loved my family and have fond memories of spending time with them. That ended when I was nine and we moved away from Salt Lake. Then my time with family became rare, a mere handful of trips between the age of nine and this trip, as a grown woman of 53. I grew up learning how to be ...

I've been thinking. That may sound like an odd phrase. One is always thinking. At the end of yoga class we are invited to lay quietly in "relaxation" and then to sit quietly in "meditation." All the while as I am relaxing or meditating my brain is racing with thoughts, random tidbits of life dribble through. I have meditated long enough that I do not follow these thoughts, they filter through like the background noise of television in another room. Then there is intentional thinking. Like when one is trying to formulate a response to some situation. Or, when one is writing a paper on an important topic. As a priest with a Masters in Social Work and as a person whose life experience has encouraged a lot of professional psychological therapy sessions I am always thinking about what I say and how I behave. I like to think I am a Reflective Practitioner . image from here All these years of work through therapy and seminary and the graduate school of socia...

Pastor Joelle and I are having a conversation about a comment I left on a blog we both read. The blogger asked a question about the "Appropriateness of Clergy/Parishioner Friendship." The concern centered around being an authentic transparent leader while understanding how much self-revelation was appropriate and when was it too much? I responded on the blog with this: 1.Don't share anything that would make congregational members think they need to take care of you. 2. That said, there are occasions when the congregation should care about you and show it, such as - when you've been really sick/hospitalized or are on maternity leave, have a chronically ill child or are taking care of aging parents or have had a death in the family. 3. They should not be care-taking for you over every day things and stresses like parenting, other parishioners, issues related to running the church, your marriage - you need a clergy support group, a spiritual director and or a th...