Born Again Again

Just as it is the cable news network’s job to keep the fear-mongering ratings up, it is the job of religious leaders to remind us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. It is our job to make sure that we keep up our interfaith dialogue. It is also our job to inspire people to forgive.

 There is a prevalent idea in culture that pastors are money-grubbers. I think I have met one of those. Maybe. But, for the most part, we hate asking for money. The majority of church budgets go to salaries, and we feel bad about that, even if we make less than a third of the average person in our congregation. So we can get embarrassed during stewardship time.

When we talk about grief, we often speak of it in terms of letting go, moving on, and getting over it. People want to know when they will be back to normal. But the loss of a loved one is not a bump in the road that we go over and then the pavement is smooth again. Grief fundamentally changes who we are.

A friend was going to seminary, and she became very disappointed that someone in her home church did not send her a birthday card. When I heard this story, I thought that the congregation probably did her a favor, because it’s good to know that there are a lot of things that the church cannot do for you once you become a pastor.

A few blocks away from where I live, there’s a lovely green space. Renaissance Park is a revived bit of Chattanooga along the Tennessee River. There’s a walking tour that you can take, where you call a phone number and hear the history of the place.

I am so pleased to announce the release of There's a Woman in the Pulpit, a collection of stories from the RevGalBlogPals.

The bifurcation of the agreed-upon version of life has an extra layer of meaning for me. Not only did it help me to understand what is happening as a parent, but it’s helping me with my own story-telling, as a daughter.

I wonder if pastors use alcohol because we don’t always have the space to express those core emotions in healthy ways. I wonder if we feel like we have to bear everyone else’s burdens, so we don’t have room for our own. Or when we talk to other pastor friends about our frustrations, they come back at us with well-meaning, awkward platitudes, which quietly indicate that we’re not really allowed to have those sorts of feelings.