Beauty Tips’ Greatest Hits – Page 7 – Beauty Tips For Ministers

October 26, 2013October 26, 2013

Outfits That Don’t Work

These shoes totally don’t work for church. It took me two Sundays of wearing them before I realized that. They’re too wacky.

I saw a woman at Starbucks yesterday who exemplified two things that interest me a lot: creating a personal style/cultivating an image and that ineffable thing we call presence.

She was middle aged and had dyed red hair, about shoulder length. She was wearing a low-cut leotard top (literally a leotard, like “GOD, I’m a dancer, a dancer dances” style), a maxi skirt and a pair of flip-flops. She had a couple of large clip-in flowers in her hair.

Okay. So that’s a definite Look. That’s a LOT of Look for Starbucks in suburban Massachusetts. I wondered if maybe she was a receptionist at a fun salon or in some kind of job where looking quirky and wearing a sort of costume-outfit would be a bonus for the setting.

But the thing is, she was not comfortable with herself, and she therefore drew negative attention. You know those people who take fashion risks in order to (a) express their creative flair or maybe (b) to get attention –and they don’t quite pull it off and wind up exuding insecurity? The overall vibe is simultaneously defensive and flirtatious: “Look at me! Oh, you’re looking at me. What are YOU looking at?” She had that going on. It’s confusing.

It made me think about taking style risks and doing something bold and dramatic and sometimes regretting it. It happens. Many of us have thought we put together an interesting outfit that we really feel good about and then realize once we’re out the door that it SO doesn’t work.

When that happens — and it does if you are moving out of your comfort zone at all — DO NOT REVEAL your self-consciousness in voice, posture, glance or gesture! Do NOT apologize for the fashion (or hair or make-up) disaster. Maintain your poise. Broadcasting self-consciousness, insecurity or embarrassment is a huge distraction, and double so for a minister (because of our responsibility to be a non-anxious presence). Just as your face and voice and body should not reveal that you think your sermon is stinking up the sanctuary (it’s not about us at that moment — the Holy Spirit might be bringing absolutely the right word to someone through a sermon or prayer we deem lousy), so should your demeanor not project fashion self-consciousness.

If the blouse is gaping, find a pin and fix it for now.
If the pants are too short, pull up your socks, make a mental note to let down the hem, and forget about it.
If the bow tie feels suddenly too twee for the occasion, don’t fiddle with it, don’t take it off, don’t apologize for it and don’t think about it. Live and learn.
If the skirt’s a bit too short, smooth it down over your thighs the best you can, glue your knees together and sit at an angle.
If the new hairdo suddenly strikes you as utterly absurd in mirror of the sacristy, give it up to God and get out there. Do a quick fix if you can, but if that “quick fix” is going to turn into a fumbling with the comb, frantic re-parting the hair and spit-licking a new style into place, fuhgettaboutit. Just make sure it’s out of your face. Throw your shoulders back, say a little prayer and forget about yourself.

I have said that, haven’t I? That the whole point of taking super extra duper care with your appearance before you step into the public eye is all about being prepared enough to be able to forget about yourself?

Oh, I haven’t? Well then I said it.
Remember it.
Think about yourself when you have time to yourself.
The rest of the time, we are thinking about them.

September 18, 2013September 19, 2013

Old Sermons And Your Body

So you’re in a new parish and you think, “Great! I’ll just reach into the barrel of old sermons and use those! I am TOTALLY SET, BABY! Saturday night she is MINE AGAIN!”

Ha ha! It’s a cute fantasy! But honey, you will never be able to have a Normal People Saturday night for as long as you serve in the preaching parish ministry! Not gonna happen! You know why? I’ll tell you why: it’s called muscle memory. When your body has had years and years of Saturday “my body is here but my mind and heart are totally focused on tomorrow morning” pastoral conditioning, it won’t give that up just because your calendar says, “Free Day!” or “Sermon Already Written!”

Am I right? Even when I’m on vacation or sabbatical, Saturday nights are not a time that any part of my being relates to as a Woo-Hoo Partay night. A quiet dinner with friends, maybe. But not a traditional Saturday Night in the way that most of the working world thinks of them.

And then there’s this, which is the most serious thing I wanted to write about, which is about pulling a sermon out of the barrel and trying to make it fit today’s congregation.

I don’t believe in it.

I don’t believe that an old sermon, left mostly untouched, comes with enough of your life and spirit force to feed the congregation you serve today. I believe that we cheat ourselves and our congregations when we take an old interpretation of the Word, when the Spirit was talking to us in one particular way — and apply it to a new and different time and place.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t use beautiful sermons that you love and that have traveled with you to various worshiping communities and ministered to all of them. Of course you should use them. What I’m suggesting is that you use them as an actor and director use a Shakespeare play: with love and respect for the author’s talents, but with an understanding that the words need and deserve fresh energy, rehearsal and interpretation for the current audience. That’s the closest analogy I can get.

This is about entering into your liturgy as an incarnate being, not a a talking head who once wrote some beautiful words for a congregation and who can then consider those words automatically worthy to recite for a new congregation. No part of our liturgies should be mere recitations (and I know that there are some who disagree with me on this point). Not that one is acting the sermon (or prayer, or invocation), but one must absolutely be connected to those words, be personally plugged into them, so that there is no gap whatsoever between what the preacher is saying and what she is LIVING in that moment.

Does that make sense?

I may have written a sermon about, say, healing, ten years ago, and love and remember that sermon as having deeply ministered to many who heard it. It’s a “goodie” and one that I should be able to give again. That’s a perfectly fine plan. What isn’t perfectly fine is for me to pull it out of the folder (or hard drive), read it over once or twice, and stick it in my folio to bring to the congregation.

I need to spend some time with that sermon.
Is every phrase as true for me now as it was true for me then?
If so, then I can deliver those words with the full authentic force of my conviction. If not, I need to write phrases that are true for me today.
Are my illustrations the best I can come up with for this day and time, and for this particular worshiping congregation? If not, I am cheating them and me and God and the moment by not making an effort to make them fresh.

Is the message one that I am committed to giving again in this new ministry? Is this still the message of my ministry? Before we settle into a new parish, we need to spend some time with that question. You have heard it said that every minister has one sermon that he or she preaches in different form every weekend. If you’re growing as a human being and deepening your relationship with God, your message will subtly (or perhaps dramatically) shift as you mature in ministry. Please make sure you attend to that through spiritual direction, prayer or dedicated work with trusted colleagues or mentors. There is nothing that will erode your joy and integrity in ministry so fast as giving a message you don’t feel is really coming from your deepest, most life-giving, passionate heart. I believe that your congregation would rather hear you struggle for meaning from the pulpit – struggle to find your new message — than to have you recycle one that no longer speaks to the most authentic condition and vision of your soul.
I know I would rather hear that from my preacher than a bunch of rote or creaky material he’s pulling from a file cabinet.

I think you get what I’m saying so I’ll stop now. I am having a really interesting experience spending time with old sermons and worship materials and grasping some of them to my chest with a sense of breathless delight (“OH! I love this! I can GIVE this!”) while setting others aside to be mined for good readings, ideas and some turns of phrase. Those will have to be a kind of springboard for a new take on the subject.

Your sermons are your spiritual teachings, your “life passed through the fire of thought,” as Mr. Emerson said. If the fire is gone, that’s okay. Just don’t try to fake it. Some of our best works were beautiful, resonant things when we original wrote them. They didn’t have a long life span. Let them be part of a time that is now over, bless them, and let them go.

Keep it fresh, and deliver no word that does not feel that it absolutely belongs to your soul TODAY, in this moment.

Blessings on your preaching. We are so fortunate to be entrusted with this ancient art form.

August 27, 2013September 2, 2013

Encountering the World Which Encounters You

I take walks around my city neighborhood every day, and I am starting to see the correlation between home owners (or renters) who make an effort to beautify their yard and porch and human beings who make an effort to beautify themselves.

I live in a kind of borderland between a “good” neighborhood and a “bad” neighborhood. It’s gritty (to use a word a local friend uses). There’s a lot of trash around sometimes. People don’t always curb their dogs. Someone has a toilet commode out as kind of bizarre yard art. A few houses are boarded up or condemned. When you make crack house jokes in my neighborhood, you’re not really making a joke because there are crack houses — or were, which are now boarded up.

But we have a cute park nearby. A little less nearby is an even more charming park with a pond, and everyone knows you don’t go there at night but it’s adorable in the daytime.

I look for the flowers and the small altars that my neighbors have put out to show that they care about beauty, that they have pride of ownership, that they have a few extra bucks to put into adding a spot of color to our shared environment. I hold nothing against those who don’t have the time or money to garden: some people show their self-respect by sweeping up especially carefully around their bit of sidewalk, making sure the lids are neatly on the garbage cans, dusting the window sills. When you walk the same streets every day with a beagle who needs to sniff every square inch, you notice the little things. You notice how the little details about someone’s home exterior communicate so much.

It is the same with our personal exteriors. Care taken with the appearance communicates a consideration for the people around us with whom we will be coming into contact. Adding the belt, shining the shoes, trimming the nose hair, applying a bright coat of lipstick, smoothing on a pair of pantyhose — these are not irritating little necessities imposed on us by an oppressive culture. They are the equivalent of hanging a fuschia plant on the porch, or putting a blooming geranium in the window, trimming the lawn so that rats don’t have a place to hide in the overgrown weeds, sweeping up the candy wrappers that got loose when the sanitation workers dumped the trash into their truck.

[A couple blocks away from Casa de PeaceBang.]

We tend to buy the old argument that taking care with one’s appearance and fussing with what we’re going to wear and how we’re going to cut our hair is vain and selfish. I disagree. OF course there are vain people who are obsessed with their appearance. There are also vain people who are obsessed with their prayer lives. Think about this: the time and attention it takes any of us be well-groomed and nicely put together is time spent preparing to encounter the world. Sitting before a mirror or choosing clothes and accessories carefully can be an act of conscious engagement, something we do out of a sense of grateful obligation and desire to being a clean and respectable property on the block, if you will.

The next time you get a rush of joy from the pretty scarf around your neck or get excited about your awesome new shoes, don’t be embarrassed. It’s not at all shallow or silly to be happy about contributing a bit of beauty to the neighborhood.

June 26, 2013June 26, 2013

Conference Winners

Hi dears!
Before I head off to sleep, I wanted to share a couple of things that made my last conference go just a wee bit more smoothly and beautifully.

The first was a pair of Fly London shoes with super-comfy soles, not totally flat but not their usual platform, either. The pistachio green color went with everything I packed, and I got stopped at least six times and asked what kind of shoes I was wearing.

They’re called Pank, which is really funny because that’s my nickname for one of my best friends and colleagues, the Rev. Hank Peirce (Pank).

Now here’s the brilliant tip. For some reason, although I wear bare feet with leather shoes all the time and walk around lots and lots, I always seem to get blisters doing that at conferences. If I wear shoes, I get blisters. If I wear sandals, I get blisters. This year I determined not to get blisters and so applied a thin layer of this amazing stuff on the top and bottom of my feet and the back of my heels. I never had a bit of discomfort and I was THRILLED!

Another accessory that I loved having was a nametag holder from the Brighton Collection. I attend at least a dozen events per year that require a nametag, and I’m tired of poking holes in my clothes with pins or putting a big, ugly badge holder around my neck. I bought this about a year ago and I have used it several times. I used to think the Brighton Collection was super dowdy but I went into the store recently and much to my dismay I loved a lot of their stuff. Either I’m becoming more dowdy or they’re making cooler pieces. [Click on photos to enlarge.]

The last thing that was terrific was to find a very small, soft leather tote bag at TJ Maxx two days before I left. It’s so hard to find a small, light leather tote: they’re either huge or they’re small and made of heavy leather with lots of hardware. I was thrilled to find this one on wicked sale. Your bag becomes an extension of your body at a conference and it really helps you survive the long days if you find one that really works for your proportions and your needs.

Here I am in my happy conference shoes and nice nametag holder all ready to start my GA.

I was also very happy with my blue nail polish from the OPI Euro Spring 2013 Collection. It’s called You Saw, I Saw, We Saw Warsaw.

I know some of you kitty cats are at your general synods right now, so be sure to write in with your horror stories and halos of praise!

May 19, 2013May 19, 2013

Marina Abramovic’s Concept Of Charismatic Space And Its Importance For Clergy

I have never done this before, but I am assigning you, my dear pigeons, a movie to watch. It is called “The Artist is Present” and is about Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic.

Here is why you must, must, must see it:

Abramovic is the first person I have known to perfectly articulate and exemplify what it is we must bring to worship, which is a particular consciousness. In order to create the possibility for shared consciousness among worshipers, we must first get there ourselves through multiple disciplines: study, prayer, work, rest, self-examination, preparation.

Abramovic refers to her performances in terms of creating charismatic space, and when I heard this phrase I almost jumped out of my skin with a great Ah-ha! This is the phrase I have been looking for all my ministerial life to describe what it is we are trying to do in worship. In all my years of training lay people, seminarians and clergy to craft liturgy and lead worship, I have spoken in terms of “managing energy” and “moving through the liturgy with intentionality.” I have always taught that there are performative aspects to liturgy that we must take seriously as artists; that we cannot simply show up to read something or light a candle and to expect God to make it happen for the community: the “it” being that ineffable sense of time out of time, or what we call “sacred space.”

I have attended countless worship services where the worship leader droned on and on about “sacred space” and used all the right language but totally failed to create charismatic space.

Before you get suspicious of the use of the word “charisma” in this context, may I please remind you of the Greek and Pauline origins of the word. A charism is a gift of the Spirit. It is not merely about personality and star quality. Watch Abramovic bring transcendent presence to the moment she shares with those who stand on line for hours to sit with her, and you will see what I mean. She is not just a rock star performance artist. She is a committed and disciplined woman hard at work in the service of her vocation. You should be able to relate.

Also, if you ever doubted the tremendous power that being fully present to another human being can have in their life, watch “The Artist Is Present.” It will remind you that we may experience salvation through being truly regarded by someone who has devoted themselves to being in our presence.