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“But you see, I am here, too.”
A meditation of the last year has been:
Before one can surrender or give one’s self–we first need to have a self.
My priest says it like this sometimes: “Don’t pack up your soul and run away.”
(Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus replenishes that self as we empty it. But we do need to connect with that self, and stay connected to allow this to occur.)
As my Discernment has continued, a few months ago I did a nice thing for some of my peers, and and then very quickly received a “rant” thinly disguised as an apology. What I wrote in response describes how one presbytera/pani started being availably present– without packing up her soul and running away:
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“Sorry Susan…. I happen to know that at least two people are quite upset over being reminded of past traumas….“
But you see, I am here too, and your words don’t quite look or feel like an actual apology. (If they are, then I guess I’m not up on [your culture's] modes of redress.)
I too am reminded of past traumas– on almost an every-[forum] visit– some I am sure you cannot even imagine.
PTSD is LIKE that. It isn’t helped by life stopping. It also isn’t helped by shutting up about it. Some people talk about. Some don’t. That’s their choice. And that’s my choice too.
Some people yell “shut up” about it. Some people welcome any opportunity to heal, wherever and however it presents itself.
When we had our December 2000 housefire, for example, and I had just left my Red Cross job (which involved counseling FIRE VICTIMS), the job itself had become a new source of PTSD. Not the service work– I loved learning about and delivering five disparate and complex types of community services while finding and training new staff and leadership to deliver and fund them. No, the unmitigated stress was the administrative end of cleaning up a longstanding, many-tentacled regulatory mess… amid organization members still present who had a stake in keeping it all hushed up. It was a brief but incredibly intense assignment– a 15 year process condensed into three years.
For several years after this assignment– and our own fire came weeks after the assignment came to its planned close– I could not talk about the Red Cross without a meltdown; sometimes I might say to Greg, “Please… not now.” But did it mean the county’s blood drives and billboards for disaster relief funds could be avoided? No, it meant that I archived my Red Cross work, and spent some time healing.
We never had even a day off to deal with our own fire. We lived IN the fire stink; I cleaned and did insurance and learned all about being sued while Greg (an intensely private person) freaked out about the fire itself, about being sued, and about people having had to invade his home and privacy to stop the fire and look for our daughter, and then investigate the fire’s cause which the insurance lawyers tried to pin on HIM!
The healing interval took about…. 10 years. During some of that time, I watched from a distance as the chapter I’d given my sanity to save ate itself alive. During that time Greg and I also buried– we did the funeral– one of the local colleagues the chapter had eaten up. And counseled his family. And spoke about his Red Cross service.
All this… with no counselor available to me during any of the time we have been here. [Now I see one three hours away.]
So I would say I learned quite a bit about PTSD. I have never certainly enjoyed the luxury of just avoiding it!
When I was ready, I opened the archives to re-connect with the colleagues who had helped me.
PTSD bumps one up against the pain, on a daily basis. One dealing with it deals with it as best one can. We choose when (and how deeply) to engage.
Those of us who enter the healing professions deal with it openly; our own healing becomes yeast which others’ healing depends upon– like my own priest yesterday helped me by telling me a few glimpses of her own horrific childhood events, and how she has grown past them with Grace and human help. (She’s about 5 hours’ drive away. It took me almost 20 years to find one not embroiled in our own circle of colleagues.)
What people here never seem to GET is that I am committed to a vocation that has precluded talking about my own real life, EVER. There has often been nowhere just to breathe. There is often nowhere where I can focus on my own perspective, my own thoughts, my own discoveries.
I don’t ask anyone else to walk a mile in my shoes, but surely I don’t appreciate being messed with by people who don’t know a thing about what we actually are and do– out here in the real world where the real, practical help is given to people.(People like you who have received our help?)
Yesterday, for example, we two tackled unanticipated emergencies with two members of my family– terminally ill and about as far from me as Scotland is from Albania…. Greg had driven four hours to get home from an intense conference; before dinner had gotten into his bloodstream (he’s diabetic), he got a call to a deathbed and went off on that…. while both our phones rang with homeless people needing beds….
And while YOU were sitting around exacerbating the very thing you thought so troubling to the people you “happen to know are upset.”
Now I ask you, is that right? Yes, I ask. Because you see, I am here, too, and I am not going away.
~Susan
What is it like to be “Fracked”?
People in southern PA, with friends in not-yet-fracked-up NY state, asked me to say what it has been like in our neck of the dust.
I must first thank God for what we still keep: His blessings in the way of life of the people here, and holy work to do among them…. we just share a tiny fraction of their loss.
The Nutshell Version: We failed to understand what the massing of white trucks on the County’s borders portended.
For us (we rent our home), it all “started” one day when we happened to witness a Land Grab . We actually saw one of the coordinating meetings in progress over coffee at our favorite Mom-n-Pop diner.
The next clue was like War of the Worlds as a tower we had not noticed spouted flames, their flickers reflected all over the cloudy night sky amidst a terrifying torch-throwing sound.
Then we started gathering information, and by then it was too late for clean water– our local help-yourself spring suddenly sported a “Do Not Drink the Water” sign when I went to fetch our supply of drinking water. (I posted about this earlier.) Now we fetch and carry all of our drinking and cooking water from a friend’s roadside spring an hour west, about three-four times per year. But the white trucks began massing on his county’s borders last fall. Soon we anticipate being in competition with well drillers for WalMart’s and Lowe’s water jugs…. with water from unspecified sources.
My house is full of nasty dust– we sit between two nearby wellpads; a new “pond” for them to suck all the local groundwater out of; and the farmers who can at last pay off their tractors and who are diversifying from dairy into other means of having grocery bucks. Just up our road is the dirt-moving company whose trucks’ wheels leave their drying mud all over the road, to be pulverized into… more dust blowing all over my porch storage and into my house.
Our road, which was also the ambulance route to a large portion of the county, has not seen much ambulance traffic this past year. We also have grown creative in popping over and around ridges not clogged with trucks hauling water and chemical uphill towards the wellpads, at a snail’s pace. (There is another TBTG item– the friend who taught me safe/fast ridge-running when we arrived in ’94.)
Tourism is nearly defunct. Only a few hunters came last fall.
Apartments are perma-booked with revolving groups of gas workers. A one-sleeping-room/houseshare is $600-$1,000 a month. Apartments? A thousand and up– way up– per month (goodbye student housing). TBTG our landlord is also a principled friend, or St. Paul’s Canon Rector would now be homeless– IF we could find housing, it’s all way over our pay grade. But the landlord can afford now to maintain this crumbling old lady– a brick Victorian– we call home.
I have understated each point. John will recall how hard I used to try to get to H’burg for meetings… now I travel to the ‘burg and Lancaster just to see frack-free zones and get fresher air. The gasoline prices? God provides… I combine ministry volunteer trips as much as I can, and camp in people’s driveways when I can soften the trip with an overnight stop.
You must understand that our fracked-up water flows SOUTH to…. y’all. Some of it also flows north into NY state.
Bear in mind that what will happen in your area has actually already been decided by Big Money, long before you will see the white trucks (that are now white or red trucks here). It is far bigger geographically and economically than was the strip-mining (rape) of the Appalachians…. If you hear the helicopter traffic suddenly increase bigtime overhead, that’s the seismic crew planning where they will be digging. (The people who knew ahead of time, and benefited biggest financially, are the ones who you may not have noticed have been improving their properties and/or expanding their business footprint.)
Hereabouts, it has all slowed a tad due to price manipulations (there’s a current “glut” on gas), but it will come back up soon I am sure. The gas peeps are sure enough they’ll be here for a long time that they have bought and built their own hotels and barracks– and brought their women to supplement our own young ladies’ interest in the nice men who are so lonely, so far from homes back in Oil Country.
We pray for these men, most of whom we think come here to earn a fair wage for their families… they’re just the guys in the trenches. We befriend them when we have opportunities to do so.
~Susan
What KIND of clergy spouse are YOU?
There are as many kinds of clergy spouses as there are “us.” I picked up the following from an Orthodox spouse’s blog here, and it describes the kind I am, too.
Note– In the tradition described below, all marriages are heterosexual, but IMO the expectations and growth demands are universal.
~S~
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Please feel free to add to the discussion here or elsewhere. For instance, the post has been picked up by Byztex.blogspot.com, and the blog author (who is currently a seminarian) and commenters there have added much more excellent food for thought. –PresbyteraAnonyma
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So you think you want to be a priest’s wife…..
Before you head off on your husband-search to seminary or to a choir concert featuring eager young men in black singing liturgical music, make your way through the following checklist:
- Do you love being at church? A lot? Not just on Sundays?
- Have you established a prayer rule and regular confession? Now is the time to do this, before husband and children come along to complicate your routine. Also, you will likely have to find a new confessor once you move to a new parish, and make it a priority to go regularly, possibly traveling some distance.
- Can you wait patiently for services to start, or for your husband to finish chatting with parishioners after the service? Are you ready to train your children with the same patience? PK’s (priests’ kids) say that the thing they remember more than anything else about growing up is always –waiting- at church!
- Can you handle living in somebody else’s house indefinitely? While many churches now offer a housing allowance, a lot still own a parish house where the priest and his family will be expected to reside, often right next door to the church where parishioners can observe your gardening skills or lack thereof, or drop in when you least expect it.
- Do you find yourself content to be second banana? Can you stand happily beside someone else who is in the spotlight, whether it is your husband or whether it is already-established lay leaders in the parish you move to?
- Are you ready to deal with expectations about the way you and your children dress, the amount of money you spend on your pets, or the kind of recreational activities your family chooses?
- Are you prepared to work part- or even full-time, at least temporarily, to make ends meet in a parish that can’t or won’t provide their priest a living wage? Do you have a marketable skill that will help you find work that you will enjoy?
- Do you have interests to pursue outside the church? These can give you a much-needed break and change of perspective.
- Have you thought about the ways in which you will contribute to the life of the parish—and the ways you won’t? Can you be firm but polite about your decisions? Do you know what your gifts are and aren’t? If you aren’t sure, are you willing to give something a try when asked, but turn it over to someone else if you find you are not the right woman for the job?
- Will you remind your husband that you and the children are also parishioners, and ensure that he gets a weekly day off; that the phone will not be answered during family dinner; and that barring emergencies, milestones in your children’s lives will take precedence?
- Can you gather your strength to move your household away from your familiar surroundings at short notice if the bishop decides to reassign your husband to a new parish?
- Do you have a network of family and friends to whom you can turn, even if only long distance, to confide in? Can you keep a balance of friendliness to parishioners without favoritism or making any of them ‘special’ above others?
- Are you any good at all at holding your tongue? You will be offered opportunities to do so almost daily.
If these all sound a little daunting, they are. Clergy wives face challenges that their parishioners scarcely ever think about.
The good news is, a lot can be learned as you go along—in fact can hardly be learned any other way. What is mainly needed is open eyes and a good attitude. Seminaries are now making a point of helping seminarians’ wives to look ahead and prepare for life in the parish. Seminary is also where you will meet other women who will be undergoing similar experiences, and with them you can help build supportive relationships for the future.
Still think you might want to be a priest’s wife? One thing left to do: start praying. And never stop.
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When a wolf Calls you… an offer you can’t refuse.
It was the last day of vacation. I felt very strongly that we had to squeeze in one more particular activity before the day ended. We managed to get to the local petting zoo before they closed, got the scooter unloaded, and I took off at full tilt to soak up critter-time. Greg followed with camera.
I always miss Faulkner so badly during our vacation, and so I’m always hungry for vacation dogtime. (The timid dog I had befriended and helped tame, at the first camping stop, just hadn’t “done it” for me. Oh, those “borrowed” dogs seldom do, but at least I can feel fur to hold me over!) So I thought the zoo might give me some reminders of old Pleasant Valley days, volunteering at the demonstration farm. It did, and then some!
As I careened past the empty ticket booth, I saw a sign for an otter show– just started. I managed to slow down enough to arrive at the middle of that, and hung over the rail with the other “kids” watching my cousins play and oodle their way thru grass and pool. The presenter answered ALL our questions. I thought this was what I had come for. It would have been “enough.”
But the show ended, there were still about 20 minutes of time before closing, and I had my camera. It had been pix-pix-pix all day– so off I went. I met deer, llamas, emus, and more, in quick-mode– chirping and whistling to them for good camera shots, and communing briefly. The lesson I’d learned earlier that day– slowing down if I want to try to catch butterfly pix– combined well with “farm sense” about not coming up on critters faster than each one can comfortably handle.
I was able to adjust that farm-sense to scooter-speed management. So, ‘Whee!!!! What else lives here?’ was well tempered with, ‘Those peacocks don’t seem to like this speed….’ And it was then, just after noting their drab peahens camouflaged in the bushes, that I fetched up suddenly in front of a caged timber wolf.
I knew at once what it was, before I saw the sign, tho I had not at all expected to see a wolf at this facility…. he gave me a good look at I paused but he didn’t stop pacing restlessly. And I read unhappiness there. I can’t capture all the cues I read, but the bottom line was clear. On farm chores, those cues would have prompted me to set down the pitchfork, delay the chores pending, stop for a visit to see what was needful, and address the need.
On a farm the contunnuum of the visit-check includes stepping in to run a hand over the critter. ON someone else’s property that’s not good manners unless dire injury indiocates immendaite intervention…. and oh yeah, this was also a wild animal. All I could do was sit, make sound and ody language, and look with attention. My picture-taking plan suddenly slowed to nature-time speed like a scooter’s holdback brake kicks in as soon as the power lever is released. I had slipped thru to the the spirit world, one leg in each reality, as surely as sometimes happens in ministry moments with human beans. A smooth mental skid to just the right speed of knowing.
During that l o n nn g g g moment while my “inner tourist” collided with my “inner whisperer,” there was time to realize that I wasn’t sure if I should even take out the camera. It just seemed wrong to take a picture of unhappiness. It seemed like disrespect to catch him (I somehow knew it was a male) at a weak moment in his life. But there he was…… and he wouldn’t look me in the eye again….. but he was whining a little, softly, as he passed….I paid out the line of attention, trying to understand…
In an effort to preserve that moment for my failing memory– to be able to see him as he was and not in imagined recollection– I snapped a few shots. I didn’t stay long. I looked around to see his setup– it’s a large, quite roomy enclosure with some natural features…. didn’t see any company with him…. I left his area resolutely, out of an uncertain but strongly directive respect.
I haven’t been able to look at the pictures yet. It was that kind of restlessness you see in the lion house at even the best zoos, from the ones who have been there too long. And this IS a GREAT little zoo.
Well, before we left I encountered the zoo owner, and learned that this is a knowledgable fellow-student of animal behavior, whose zoo is there to teach families a better way of being with animals and their environment. It’s not a “petting zoo.” It IS a “touching zoo.” From the fingertips, all the way down to the deepest part of the heart. So despite the urgency of closing hour, the owner was quite pleased to discuss the wolf.
I learned that he does have a companion wolf I hadn’t been able to see, and regular playtime. When I mentioned the unhappy whining, the conversation stopped cold. For a very brief moment he looked a tad gobsmacked. (I thought I had offended him.)
He said, “That sound wasn’t unhappiness. That was wolf talk for ‘I like you and I want to be with you.’ Something in you touched him. That doesn’t happen very often, even here.” He kindly gave us some extra time before closing up, to talk wolves. He said that when the wolf’s companion beats him to the cool den on such a hot day, it makes him unhappy.
But I awoke the next morning full of understandings from that last-day activity, which had come to me in sleep. The whole time we were rush-packing to get on the road for home, I was standing against a gale of emotion pushing me back to the zoo. It was much stronger than the sterotypical Chicago street-corner gale-fight one sees on the Weather Channel!
I took a few stolen minutes to whip out the laptop and send a quick email to the owner about a return trip. My view was that since his wolf had invited me, I would have to be allowed in. Even on my crazy schedule, and maybe outside zoo hours. I would have to accept the invitation to continue the wolf’s conversation– with the owner present to interpret (and maybe learn from) my interaction with this wolf. A sense of incompleteness– a work to finish.
I was not looking for this. But when the wolf Calls you– and you hear it– believe you me, you cannot shut it up again.
I already know what my next reply to him must be. And it needn’t wait till I can drive back there. While wolves don’t do email, I bet they read scent messages quite clearly. :~) Maybe I can Skype with him, too!
~Susan
God’s in control of the fracking?!? (Who knew?) :~)
I am not at ALL suggesting that anything about fracking is good, but a neat guy just stopped by, and there is a kewl apparent upside even in the midst of all the land-raping.
An appropriately-garbed fellow (reminded me of our son Mike) came up to the porch mos’ ‘speckfully just now (I was proof-listening on my new laptop to an AfAm volunteer audio-book recording of a public-domain Spurgeon work). This fellow, who I later learned is a PhD, was asking about getting onto the farmland behind, uphill, which is owned by our landlord Bruce.
Kevin is from PAF: The Public Archaeology Facility (PAF) is a research center within the Department of Anthropology specializing in Cultural Resource Management. PAF’s primary goal is to train archaeologists to be field and research specialists within a cultural resource management (CRM) framework.
PAF’s research focus is the Northeastern United States with an emphasis on the Susquehanna, Chenango, and Chemung Valleys of New York and Pennsylvania. Students receive intensive mentoring in the legal, administrative, and research management of archaeological projects through a variety of grants and contracts awarded to PAF.
http://paf.binghamton.edu/community_CGI.cgi
[my paraphrase of a long chat] “Oh, well, we just want to post flags every 50 feet to dig test pits in the wetlands, to be sure that if there are any archaeological sites under all that fracking, we can make them go around them and then we can look into them or at least record their locations for other diggers. But we don’t want the cows to get sick eating our flags. Are they good cows to go among, is there another pasture they can go into when we dig, and who owns the next piece over ‘there’ and ‘there’ and ‘there’?”
So of course I hooked him up (TBTG for cell phones), but how cool is THAT!??! His “farm manners” were exquisite, and I was in my jammies, totally OK having him set a spell to tell me what-all they do.
Nice peeps. Even in a yellow shirt too much like the frackers wear, but it’s for their safety I am sure. I hope the kids he supervises will stop in for a sip of water, even if we are not home- I’ll ask Greg to set out the big yellow cooler full of Potter-county, NFU water). And they can park here, too!
Dogs liked him. Almost as good as seeing Mike in his plant-conservation days.
BOLO, so you can make these folks welcome if you see them on your place!
~Susan
Which one threw the brick?
Well, once again I was out there in the world trying to follow a Call, and managed to hurt someone’s feelings. In the midst of a very bad day health-wise, in the middle of a tough week in the middle of a tough month…. I accepted an invitation to sneak into a lunch line….. where I convinced a dear and sweet lady– a fellow workshop participant– that a white person had Done It Again. Then I muffed the apology I knew I owed her.
I think that we Episcopalians sometimes think that as long as we are still “thinking,” as I assured her I would be doing for some time, we have done no real harm. (She was not an Episcoplian, and she was having as hard a day as I was, I am sure)…. I could trace back the “reason” for my rudeness all the way back to the strokes that slowed my response when she quietly tried to tell me of my mistake… but I’m pretty sure that even if I hunt that rabbit to the farthest end of the hole (“I just should have stayed home!”), I was in the wrong.
How could she have known what I went through to get to that workshop? Or what it really cost me, on so many levels, to be there? Or how many people had made it possible?
Why was it her responsibility to realize that in a thoughtless moment, I was unconsciously following norms established at another, similar workshop she had not attended? I was so hungry– but if her weak health that day was invisible to me, why did I assume that she might see mine?
A friend likes to send me inspiring emails. Today’s posed a neat “case study” in moral vs. ethical theology:
Subject: THE BRICK
A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars, and slowed down when he thought he saw something.
As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag’s side door!
He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid, and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, ‘What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That’s a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?’
The young boy was apologetic. ‘Please, mister…please, I’m sorry but I didn’t know what else to do,’ he pleaded. ‘I threw the brick because no one else would stop…’ With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. ‘It’s my brother,’ he said. ‘He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.’
Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, ‘Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.’
Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. ‘Thank you and may God bless you,’ the grateful child told the stranger.
Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home.
It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message: ‘Don’t go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!’
God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes when we don’t have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us. It’s our choice to listen or not.
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It IS a neat story…. and for a minute, I felt better about that lunchline thing. But somebody still has to fix that car. Someone still has to repair the budding relationship I harmed. And that would be…. whoever has the first chance to do it.
Ah well, next time maybe there will be room at the lady’s table for me to sit down and talk it over. Or better yet, listen till she’s done telling me how bad she felt when I did that.
I hope THAT part of the story is covered by the email’s second section:
“If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring. He sends you a sunrise every morning Face it, friend – He is crazy about you! God didn’t promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, or sun without rain– but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way. If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.”
Please God, help me if I get another chance with that beautiful woman. Help us all! We’re all holding bricks, seen or unseen, and we’re all falling out of our chairs at the same time, seen or unseen. And no one I know is driving a Jaguar, but by golly, bricks are bricks!
~Susan
What image are you burning into YOUR mind this month?
“As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people.” Ezekiel 33.11
I had a moment to reflect on that Scripture again this week, in the checkout line today– the current Time Magazine cover.
Osama (quite a beautiful man physically: intelligent, liquid eyes, sweet mouth)– with a big, red, dripping X over his image. I thought, well, it’s a better image to insta-burn into my mind than the killshot video going viral right now, but I wonder what my new friends over at the Islamic Society feel when they see this? I do not KNOW.
It’s a new friendship… so all I really know so far is that their lives probably changed that day… and that those things have changed in a way that means my loving but weak hello message did not get a reply. Race/class, culture, and tech toys– oh my!– all colliding in one Crosswalk.
Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some. Hebrews 10:24-25
~Susan
Ready, Set, Go?
With spring weather finally here for real, the Lenten music I worked on is calling me to jump in the boondocker and go sing it. I’m working on a new casebook– a musicians’ words-n-chordbook– pulling all my favorite songs into a go-anywhere-and-sing booklet. The van is back in the shop but it’s set up now to allow more portability now than ever, TBTG!
I’ve been gathering workshop songs, too, to enhance the facilitation of AR and other workshop topics.
Hope to see you, soon!
~Susan
What I’ve Heard This Year
Here’s a collection of some of the things said to me, that resonated during this year of Discernment.
- “At first, I was kinda scared about what you suggested. Then I realized, “Hey! Susan loves me! She wouldn’t hurt me!” (Same input from two independent sources, in the same words!)
- “Hey, you are not a princess!”
- “When you speak, your voice has a lot of power.”
- “You always shoot straight.”
- “I thought about what you said, back when…. and I realized recently that….”
- “Where’s she going now?”
- “I need a support group for People Loved by Susan.”
- “What am I gonna do with you?”
Now, these were all helpful opportunities to focus my thinking and my attention, at the time…. but they do not mention Jesus.
That is clearly something for further formation!
~Susan
