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Big Boots, Big Jewelry, Big Smile (- Big Breakfast)

WELL, I see from today’s scale that I managed to gain five lubs since January 23. Given that I’ve been homebound and consoling myself with regular enormous breakfasts at the wonderful cafe up the block (Bacon!), I’m not surprised.

Big snowboots bum me out so much, the only thing I can think to do to counteract their enormous hideousness on my lower extremities is to try to balance them with enormous necklaces up top. Pretty soon I’m going to be wearing hubcaps around my neck.

A mantra for the coming weeks: more flowers, less bacon. It’s so hard to remember that those pancakes don’t love me back.

Big boots, big jewelry, big smile. Gotta keep the smile as big as we can!

Happy Valentine’s Day, pigeons! Big hugs to my beautiful, lovely lovers of life and God!

Photo on 2014-02-14 at 11.24 #2

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Good Smells

Scents are such powerful things. I put some rose oil and lavender oil in a blue spray bottle with some distilled water and am spraying it around the house all the time. It is SO fresh and really lifts the spirit.
I got a bar of beautiful rose soap and that’s wonderful, too. I find that I am very picky about scents. If it’s the wrong rose or the wrong lavender, it doesn’t make the cut.

I hope you will think about how scent can minister to you today, wherever you are. Maybe the smell of chocolate baking, or chocolate and orange in a warm cup held to your face. Piney or woodsy scents (another one of my beloved fragrances is piñon wood), or a deep red wine with a hint of leather in it. Yum. Heaven.

I hope this doesn’t sound snobby but I think that having GOOD scents around us — not chemically heavy, manufactured versions of them but luxurious and natural concoctions — is great medicine. Think frankincense and myrrh, darlings.

After bathing today, I got out my summer citrus-based perfumes and doused myself in them. I’m not going anywhere, so there’s no chance I’ll wind up as a Human Lemon Bomb to some unsuspecting and innocent humans.

This is my enduring favorite. Yuzu Rouge. It only lasts for like, five minutes, but OH those five minutes!

I have a bottle of room spray that I bought in Barcelona forever-ago that I have been hoarding because the company stopped making it. It is called Eucalyptus Bleu by Esteban of France and whenever I spritz it (you just need the tiniest little dash) I feel that I’m in one of those incredibly beautiful, fashionable little boutiques in that most magical of cities.

Luxury means different things to different people. For me, a bottle of something special and delicious will bring me to my happy place and keep me there for a long time. For someone else, a snowy afternoon snowshoeing across a beautifully empty field will do it. Don’t listen to those inner voices that shame you into needing or wanting some beauty, luxury or good and heavenly smells in your life. Yes, God provides all we need, but God has also provided roses and cacao beans and pine trees and there’s no reason you shouldn’t rejoice in them. Ministers cannot live by Spirit alone, my friends. Now go get out of those smelly pj’s, take a nice warm bath, and anoint yourself.

Yours in yummy smells, PB

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The Super Casual Experiment

Hola, pigeons!
“SATURDAY! SATURDAY! SATURDAY!” (Elton John riffs)

Sometimes we have seasons of blechness. It might be depression. It might be a the first barfy tri-mester of a pregnancy. It might be cancer or migraines or menopause or Crohn’s disease or chronic bad pain or acid reflux. The fact is, we’re not all well all the time. Many of us live for long stretches in a condition of “I’m not officially ill but I’m not in great health right now, either,” and that’s not something we tend to talk about amongst ourselves very much.

How come?

I suspect because as willing as we tend to be to share the innermost workings of our minds and souls, we consider health matters private matters, not appropriate for discussion. How come? I challenge that!
I find great hilarity and comfort in talking about health issues with my ministerial colleagues (now family, really) who started down this road with me when we were shiny kids in our 20’s and are now staring down fiftieth birthdays. We talk about everything from bowels to biopsies to bad knees. That’s one of the beauties of making good friends early on in ministry and keeping in close contact with each other, so make sure to do that, seminarians!! That said, I get the impression that most ministers push our own bodies to show up for others while showing up far less readily for ourselves. I think that our bodies, like money, are an uncomfortable subject for faith communities and we don’t know how to navigate that tension.

I am sitting here typing this on a Saturday night with cold hands and a cold noggin and a draggy feeling after many consecutive weeks of mildly lousy health with nothing really wrong with me. I have been taking care of myself as best I can, sleeping more, taking probiotics and other magical potions and elixirs, trying to drink enough water and keeping tiring extracurricular activities to a minimum. I take advantage of the days when I feel really terrific to do errands, laundry and cooking. I save extra reserves of energy for extra-full days and Sundays.

Because I get so easily chilled (yes, mother hens, I am having my thyroid checked), I shampoo and style my hair at night. And I leave extra time to get beautimous before going to work because I think it’s important not to broadcast that I’m feeling less than radiant. I think it’s important to be mindful and intentional about letting our communities know when, and if, we’re having health problems. I do not consider myself to be having health problems, just a season of blechness. I am headachey Winter Hag. Blech, hear me roar.

Today, though, I made an interesting decision: I decided to go to a public event with my hair in a ponytail and no make-up, in yoga pants, a wool coat and a baseball cap. Because it is Saturday, because it was not my church’s event (we had a presence there) and because I was not attending in the role of community leader, I thought I would do leave the house as I was and see how I felt about it. Kind of an experiment for you, pigeons. Here was what I concluded:

>Attending a community food fair on a Saturday afternoon dressed like a regular weekender was a signal: “I’m just here for the eats and to say hi.” I felt a significant sense of relief in being there in that mode. I was relaxed and did not feel “on” in the way that requires a major output of energy, although I wound up networking a little bit.

> I like being able to go somewhat incognito at times. When people have to do a double-take and say, “Oh, Vicki! Hi!” that says to me that my baseball cap wearing self is significantly different than my put-together-ready-for-leadership-looking self. I think folks pick up on the difference and know that in baseball cap mode, I’m there but I’m not available for heavy lifting.

> Being pale and washed out and ponytailed makes me feel vulnerable, and that’s okay sometimes, but not often!! It was definitely worthwhile to experience the difference between “Put Together Ready To Meet and Greet” Vicki and “Hi, I Stopped By For A Little While” Vicki. One more level of dishevelment and I would have been just plain sloppy, and that is NEVER okay. Very casual is fine now and then. Sloppy and gross is never fine.

I went to Starbucks to work on my sermon and ran into a parishioner and he had to come over and look in my face to figure out who I was. If nothing else, my experiment persuaded me that my efforts with the mascara wand and lipstick tube do make a difference.

Winter Hag is getting back to Sunday prep now. She wishes you all God’s blech-ings.

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Dermatologist Blooper

Hey pidgies,

I’m depressed. I was supposed to go out for a nice dinner with my board president but we are in the midst of another snow storm. There are scads of things I could and should be doing in my study: filing, preparing an Order of Worship for Sunday, finishing up the newsletter column, making phone calls but I feel very worn and my voice hurts. Lots and lots of extroverted ministry compressed into a few days = weary girl without much worthwhile to say. Tonight is a night to listen and to pray.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you a bothersome thing that occurred several years ago when I went to have a mole removed by the dermatologist. Basically, she hacked the crap out of my face and left a weird, ugly scar in its place. I am finally going to a plastic surgeon to have it properly taken care of, but the moral of the story is that had I gone to a plastic surgeon in the first place, I would have never had this ugly thing to cover with make-up and feel self-conscious about for all this time.

Nerium has helped a lot, but even Nerium can’t do total miracles. By the way, although I still love and use Nerium every day and swear by it, I don’t sell it anymore. The company’s customer service was too frustrating to deal with and I regretted the stress it caused my subscribers when they wanted to make changes to their ordering plan.

Anyway, word to the wise: go to your local med spa and find a good plastico who can fix your face up right. Dermatologists have a different skill set. Let the dermy diagnose but don’t let them cut into your precious punim.

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The Annual Barrage of Deadlines And the Advent Guest

In a totally serious vein, my pigeons, I write to open a conversation about the particular spiritual struggles of this season. I have been feeling a tremendous amount of existential sadness in that quiet time before falling to sleep, as the depravity of evil human behavior floods me. Images of shootings, torture, rape, child abuse, slavery come to mind from the news and from local community life, and my mind flits from one scene to the other, from one situation to the other, like a bird crashing into walls.

Our church is involved in a lot of outreach ministry this time of years, as I’m sure yours is.
Yesterday at our church staff meeting we talked briefly about wrapping gifts for local kids — something that we are doing at our church and that one of our staff members is doing through her own congregation. We talked about how we wished we could be there when the kids open their gifts – how we wished there was a way to say, “This gift? This toy or this pair of pants or whatever it is? I really want you to know that it comes with my love, with my care for you as an individual human being, even though there’s no real way to say that here in this package.” The sadness of thinking about children and youth opening these gifts in an institution fell upon us all and we were struck silent for a few long moments before we continued with our agenda.

‘Tis the season when church workers become especially aware of how much need there is for basic things like food and shelter, and how much spiritual need for a bit of sweetness and comfort for the holiday — especially for children. You all know. The phone calls, the drop-ins, the annual projects, the Mitten Tree, the frozen turkeys lined up on the parish hall linoleum.

In the midst of this, we pastors are also preparing the most high expectation services of the year (except for Easter, but I would argue that Christmas is far more fraught with emotional vulnerability). The “show biz” elements of the winter holidays involve endless attention to detail: placement of pointsettias, folding of many extra programs, oh my god we forgot to order Advent candles, or someone accidentally forgot to mention that we can’t have ANY NUTS in the cookies for the reception! Because allergies!

Who’s wearing the lavalier mic at the midnight service? Remember that we forgot to think about that in advance last year? And the minister pronounced the Benediction from outside and no one could hear him? And no one knew the service was over and we all just stood there with our little “Silent Night” candles burning in our hands? We can’t have that again!

And then there is the Annual Barrage Of Deadlines. The church office needs to be closed, and everyone wants and needs and ought to take some time off, so the minister and worship team and staff have to choose readings, sermon topics, hymns and music for December 22, Christmas Eve, December 29 and maybe January 5th at the same time. All of which means that you and I, my dear colleagues, are living in two to three weeks in one moment. Of course we are always looking at least a month ahead (if we know what’s good for us!), but this season, doesn’t it feel particularly difficult given how deeply we desire to respond to Advent’s invitation to silence, prayer and waiting?

As a creative extrovert, I thrive on collaboration, planning for and envisioning the future. But as an overly-empathic contemplative, the demands of the season bombard me at the soul level. On the surface I’m having a great time. It’s all interesting, fulfilling, deep and wonderful. Beneath that, however, there is a spiritual strain that I am finally learning to identify, respect and articulate. It has been whispering to me for many years, a loyal Advent guest, and I have — up to now– left it shivering at my door while I bustled around spicing nuts, making cookies, obsessing about Christmas carols and candle lighters and composing prayers in my head and meeting deadlines.

I know that this guest of spiritual pain comes with gifts, but right now I don’t want to talk about that. I just want to say, “Oh, theres’s someone at the door. I better let them in.”

Believe it or not, just as I wrote that phrase, my dog started barking downstairs. And guess extra what?
There’s no one at the door.