Julie’s News from Maryland

Today was my last official day of classes at seminary. I think classes continue through the rest of the week, but because I only have classes on Tuesday this was my last day. My last day. I can hardly believe it. It seems like just yesterday was my first day and here I am at the end.

I wish I could say that all my work was finished, but not quite yet. I have work to do at my internship at the Stewardship Office tomorrow and a presentation to give at my field ed parish on Thursday. Fortunately, my presentation and accompanying report are finished, so all I have to do is go and deliver them to the group, which I think will be fun. But, after that I’ll be finished. No more reports. No more exams. No more homework. Just cruisin’ towards graduation. Yippee!

It’s done! I did it! I am employed! Last week I got a call back from a church where I had interviewed in Maryland asking me to come be the associate rector. It was very exciting! I had really liked the church and had very much liked the rector when I interviewed there earlier in the month. However, just the week before my Bishop had asked me to hold tight while she explored some options for me in the diocese, so I had to as the church in Maryland to wait a few days. The rector was very gracious and told me that I could have until Friday to give her a decision. Right away I emailed the Bishop.

In the meantime, Rick asked if we could visit Maryland so that he could see the area and look around a bit. With the kids out of school for spring break, we piled everyone in the car and headed to Maryland on Wednesday. We had a wonderful time touring the day school at the church and a great day touring the surrounding area with a very gracious and hospitable parishioner who gave up his entire afternoon to show us around. We all fell in love with the place. In the car on the way home I asked the kids if they liked it, Nicholas said, “I didn’t like it, Mommy. I LOVED it!”

I talked to the Bishop on Thursday and got her blessing to go ahead and accept the job. We did and we are thrilled. I think they are all pretty happy too! We are very much looking forward to this next adventure.

Oh, I suppose you want the details. The church is St. Martins-In-The-Field in Severna Park, Maryland. It is just a few miles from Annapolis. It is a beautiful place, very peaceful and quiet, so unlike New York City. We really feel like it will be a place that we can relax and shake off the craziness of New York City.

I will spend 1/4 of my time being a Chaplain to the day school associated with the church.  I’ll lead weekly chapel services for kids from preschool to middle school.  Then, the rest of my time will be spent just supporting the vision of the church.  I’ll preach a couple of times a month and do what the rector needs me to do.  It is a really good job for me - capitalizing on my gifts and skills, while stretching me to do new things. 

God is good all the time. All the time God is good.

This week another of the clergy clothing vendors was on campus. I need to buy some clergy shirts and collars, so I stopped in to see what they had. I’ve bought some regular button down shirts from Old Navy, both short-sleeve and long-sleeve and I’m going to have those collars converted so that I can hook a clergy collar to them. But, I wanted to buy a simple black, non-button down “shell” that I can wear under sweaters or just when I want a plain black clergy shirt. Sounds simple, right? Not so much.

I tried on the size 6 shirt, the size that I would normally wear. While the shirt fit pretty well, the collar was ridiculously tight. I couldn’t even button it around my neck. So, I tried the size 8 shirt and the size 10 shirt and had the same problem. Turns out that in order to get a shirt that will fit around my neck, I have to buy a size 12 shirt. You know, I never really thought that I had an unusually large neck, but according to this clergy clothing supplier, it would seem that I do. Basically the salesman told me that there is nothing they can do about how the necks are made in proportion to the rest of the shirt, that’s just the way they come. So, I gave up on buying a shirt and moved to ordering some clergy collars.

I told the salesman that I was ordering collars for the first time. He measured my neck and we tried on two different sizes, 14 1/2″ and 15″ and settled on the 15″ collars. I asked him how many to order and he said that they come 4 to a box, so I ordered a box. He wrote up my order and took my address and credit card info so that the company could send me the collars. Simple, right? Yeah, not so much. Two days later, remarkably fast, I might add, my clergy collars arrived. However, they arrived without any of the studs necessary to attach them to the shirt. Apparantly, the studs do not come with the collars, you have to order those separately. Now, let me ask you, if you were the salesperson and someone was ordering collars for the first time, wouldn’t you mention that they would also need to order the studs that attach the collars? How hard is this people?!

I’ve managed to find a company that will make me a custom plain black shell shirt with a neck that will be the right size without the shirt having to be 4 sizes too big for me. I put in that order and am waiting to hear from the salesman. We’ll see how that turns out. I went online and ordered the studs for the collars, maybe I’ll get them next week.

I’m telling you, this stuff is more trouble than it is worth. I mean, I sort of understand the whole “clergy collar as uniform” thing - it does help people recognize the priest in the crowd, especially visitors who wouldn’t know the priest from anyone else in the room. But honestly, does it have to be this much work? And cost this much? For pete’s sake, these clergy clothing suppliers have such a racket since they know that nobody else makes these clothes.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  I did find a clothing designer in Sweden who makes beautiful clergy shirts for woman that look like they might even be made for real women who have shape and are normally sized. The downside is that by the time you pay for the shirts and the import costs, each shirt ends up costing almost $200 - not exactly doable on a clergy salary. In fact, I think that is more money than any other single clothing item in my closet. Maybe I’ll save up my birthday money for a couple of years and get one just for the treat of having a cool clergy shirt.

Today we went to The Shake Shack. The Shake Shack is a little hamburger and hot dog stand in Washington Square Park. We’ve heard that they have the best burgers in town, but we’ve never had the stamina to wait for them. You see, the line to order food at The Shake Shack is notoriously long. And not just a little long, but super long - sometimes more than an hour just to order the food. Everytime we’ve been near the park and looked at the line, we just couldn’t imagine waiting that long for a burger, so we’ve passed. Rick waited in the line for an half an hour once, but then decided to move on.

We had good timing today though. We were on our way home from seeing our friends in a school play. We weren’t super hungry yet and we didn’t have anywhere to be, so we decided we’d go for it. Rick and the kids ran around in the park while I waited. To our good fortune, the line moved rather quickly by Shake Shack standards and I’d ordered the food within 25 minutes of getting on line. It took another 20 minutes for our food to be prepared.

And man was it ever worth it! I’m reasonably certain that was the best hamburger I’ve ever had. I can’t even tell you what was so good about it, it was just really yummy. Even Nicholas thought it was amazing, and he doesn’t like anything (Hey, Mikkie, he likes it!). I think (gasp) that we might even like them more than the ever marvelous and incredibly legendary In-N-Out Burger (say it isn’t so!).

I can’t decide if I’m bummed that I learned this a mere 6 weeks before moving or if I’m grateful. If I had known these burgers were really this good I might have spent many more hours of my time standing in that line, but had many more satisfying burgers. Yummm.

That is my prayer.  Well, actually my prayer is a little more like Anne Lammot’s prayer, “Help me. Help me. Help me.”

So much of the ordination process has involved important and incredibly difficult decisions that often ended in us doing what seemed like the most illogical thing.  First, it was “When do I go to seminary?”  I have been called to the priesthood for such a long time and finally landed in a church that would ordain me, but it was at such an inopportune time for me personally.  We wanted to have children and I knew that I couldn’t go to seminary and start a family at the same time, so I waited, thinking I would go to seminary when the kids were older and life was stable. Then God made it clear that it was time to go to seminary now, so I quit my job, against all logical financial calculations, so that we could go to seminary.

Then we had to decide where to go to seminary.  Naturally, in my plan, we would stay at home and I would go to seminary in the Bay Area.  But God made it clear to us, against all logical practicalities with small children, that we would go to seminary in New York City.  So we packed up and came.

Seminary has not been easy for any of us.  It has pushed and challenged us each in different ways and has nearly torn us apart.  We’ve worked incredibly hard to stay committed to this difficult process and to one another as we’ve done this.  We’ve changed for the better, but change is hard.  By all logical calculations we should be a wreck by now, but we’ve managed to get through this together.

Now, at the end of the journey, when I was hoping that things would be easy, I find myself facing another difficult decision, “Where do we go from here?”  In my dream world all would be clear early and we’d know where we were going and what we were doing.  The most logical choice would present itself clearly and we would know exactly what to do.  Boy, was I wrong.  It is so hard to know what the right thing is to do.  It is so hard to know where God is calling me.  I keep waiting to get hit in the head with the Holy Spirit’s 2×4 so that we’ll know what to do and it just hasn’t happened.  All of a sudden I’ve had to start thinking logically about what we might do next, which seems so counter to the rest of how things have happened.

Someone once told me that sometimes we find ourselves in a position with many options and that we get ourselves all worked up about making “the right choice.”  And that the reality is that there often isn’t any one “right choice” but rather just many different paths.  Each path has something to offer and will bring good and bad things with it.  I think I’m going to ponder that for a while - try to stop looking for the one “right” thing and just listen for where God is calling me to go.

Last night the seminary hosted our annual Talent Show and Follies. The Talent Show portion is an opportunity for anyone in the community to strut their stuff and show off what they can do. It was great! After that, we have the Follies - the part of the night where we lovingly poke fun at our esteemed institution and all that we’ve experienced here.

I made a short film for Follies. Well, I did the filming and the editing. All the credit goes to Megan who wrote and directed it. It’s pretty funny, though maybe not so much to people who haven’t been at seminary with us. But, still, we had a good time and folks seemed to really like it. Enjoy!

Today I completed my last homework assignment for seminary.  That’s it gang.  I don’t have any more assignments or any more exams for the rest of the semester!  Woo-hoo!  Yippee!  Hurray!

I’m not completely done with everything that needs to be done, however.  I have a report to write for my field education mentor and some ongoing projects at my internship in the Stewardship office, so I’m not going to be lying around sunbathing for the next month.  And, I have taken a contract job (might as well make some money before we move), so I have that work to do.  In fact, I need to learn CSS and Clear Space X in the next few days so that I can start working on this web site that I’ve been hired to help create.  Never a dull moment.

It is nice to stop for a second and breath and realize that I’ve done all the work I need to do for this degree.  Now I just need to show up to class for the next couple of weeks and then I’ll be ready to process into the chapel with my classmates and get that degree!  Only 30 more days until graduation - May 14 at 11:00am.  I can’t hardly believe it.

After visiting all of the necessary committees last week, it would seem that I am, in fact, going to be ordained to the transitional diaconate. The COM approved me to the Standing Committee and the Standing Committee approved me to the bishop. So, upon official approval from the Bishop, I will be ordained in June. While I don’t like to speculate, because anything could happen, based on the conversation I had with the Bishop about my future it seemed pretty clear that in her mind it included my ordination. Yipee!

So put it on your calendars folks: Saturday, June 21. 10:00am. Trinity Cathedral in San Jose. Everyone is welcome and I’d love to have you there.

I enjoyed my time in California immensely. I’ve been away almost three years now and it still feels like home. I kept wondering if that would ever go away, but it hasn’t yet. I wonder if that goes away for people - how long does one have to live away from their home state/town before it stops feeling like home? Or, is it just that California is so special that one never gets really gets it out of their system?

If you’ve been following the saga, late last year we had Nicholas evaluated at the NYU Child Study Center.  The psychiatrist and psychologist and team of people agreed that our first task was to help alleviate Nicholas’ anxiety.  The doctor said that we might talk about other issues later, like ADHD and maybe a learning difficulty, but that our initial concern was his anxiety.  The diagnosis was “general anxiety disorder” and we began with a low dose of prozac and some specific activities that we could use at home and at school to help him transition from one activity to the next.

This strategy has been incredibly helpful at home.  Our new bed time routine has changed bed time from a two hour activity that included screaming, yelling, kicking the wall, and throwing things around the room to a 1/2 hour routine that flows quietly and easily and ends with Nicholas slipping off to sleep with ease.  This is just an example of several activities that have improved for Nicholas each day.

But, we continue to have incredible difficulties with disappointments and impulsiveness.  He is unable to control himself when he feels anxiety or disappointment. He acts out, sometimes in merely inappropriate ways (like chasing people and trying to kiss them) or in dangerous ways like throwing things.  It is frustrating for him, for us, and for the people around us.  Punishments don’t work.  Reward systems are helpful, but not entirely effective.  His therapist has given him some strategies for dealing with his anxiety and sometimes it works, but not always.

We met with the psychiatrist last week and he and the psychologist both believe that these behaviors are indicative of ADHD.

I hate that diagnosis.  I’ve believed for such a long time that people use that diagnosis too much in an effort to just have robotic children that all behave appropriately in the classroom.  I’ve believed that parents and teachers were too lazy to do the real work of getting to know a child and helping them learn to help themselves and took the easy way out by medicating them.  I just hate it.  It comes with so much misuse and misunderstanding.

Luckily, we have a great doctor and a great team of people helping us.  We’ve tried and the teacher has tried for years to help Nicholas.  Play therapy, group therapy, more than one medication, and various disciplinary and reward based systems have helped in various ways.  But, the reality is, this child is suffering.  His body is jittery and full of energy and it explodes out of him in ways that he can’t control - no matter how much we try to control him from the outside.  It is clear that there is something here that needs to be addressed and the doctor helped us to understand the mechanists of the illness.  He also gave us the statistics about what happens to children with this disease that don’t get treated - it is a grim future.

We began ritalin today.  We will be watching over the next few weeks and experimenting to find the right dose.  I want to believe it when the doctor says that this is the right thing, but I am skeptical.  Does any one have any stories they can share with me? Successes?  Failures?  Ways that this disease has affected them or their family?

I got an interesting piece of information today about the GOE Ethics question that I did not pass. 250 people took the General Ordination Exams this year. 50 of those people got a score of 1 (like me) and 100 of those people scored a 2. So, 150 of the 250 people that took the GOEs this year, 60%, failed to earn a satisfactory score on that one question. Hmm. Could it be that the question was flawed? Could it be that when 60% of the test takers are unable to deliver a satisfactory answer to a question that maybe there is something inadequate about the grading criteria? I don’t know, I’m just asking.

In any case, I am in the midst of doing the make up work that the examing chaplains in my diocese have asked me to complete. I’m not bothered about doing the work, it is just more work. And, heck, I’ve got lots of time, what with my classes, my two internships, two children, a job search, and an impending move. It’s the plane flight to California to meet with them and deliver my answers that is a bit of a challenge. But, the bishop has charged this group with helping me fulfill this requirement and this is what the group has asked me to do, so fly to California I will.

This is the point where I’d love to be able to say “April Fools”, ’cause as I read it, it totally sounds like a joke that I’d have to fly all the way to California to deliver my answers in person.  But, no.  It’s not a joke.  It’s totally real.