Midsummer Update

Life update!  I'm still here.  Just blogging less.  Someone asked me recently, "So, since you don't have a call yet, has this summer just been one long Saturday for you?"  Well, yes and no.

Graduation

I graduated from Luther Seminary in May as a Master of Divinity, which is the best superhero moniker I know of.

me with my best bro Austen

hooded!  me, Kim, Jamie, and Ashley in the front

Such regal.  Very education.

Graduation weekend was fantastic, and I am so lucky to be part of the amazing class of 2014.  Watch out, church.

End of internship

I also left Light of the World at the end of May when my 21-month internship was up.  Many, many, many tears were shed.  They are a beautiful people and a beautiful church, and I miss them every day.  I feel so lucky to have been with them and learned from them in the past two years.

Last children's message

Blessing at communion

Covered in bows as a way for the children to say "thank you"

Tears.  Lots of them.  I miss these kids like mad.

Moving

As of June 1st, my lease was up at the seminary, and I didn't have a call or a job.  So I moved from my beloved little apartment ...

... into my car, essentially.  I've been house-hopping since then.  

One week in Northfield, house-sitting for my godson's family while the Cannon River flooded.  Two weeks back with Natalie, who's now living with her girlfriend Katie and who took rent payment in the form of helping begin remodeling her basement:

One week house-sitting for a local pastor & her family, complete with their chicken coop:

She wanted my bread. Cared naught for the eggs.

Now I'm installed in a lovely house in Northeast Minneapolis till call or September 1st, whichever comes first, while its owners are working at Holden Village.  It's full of stained glass and is right near some classic Minnesota bike paths, so I'm happy as a clam.

Summer of Scripture

Along with some Episcopal friends in Madison, Wisc., and some internet friends around the world, I've been trying to read through the whole Bible in the span of 90 days.

It's been a beautiful experience to get this deeply into scripture, and to do it in a community that keeps me accountable, prays with me, wrestles with me, rejoices with me.  I'm currently in Isaiah 40, about a day behind schedule, and hoping to catch up (through Isaiah 66) this evening. 

Hiking & biking

Working out and being outdoors are two things that feed my soul, and they are perfectly combined in the gorgeous Minnesota summers in our parks.  I've been putting an average of 25-50 miles on my bike each week, and I feel fantastic.

Hiking the east side of the Mississippi

Looking up an east side cliff

At my favorite spot, Hidden Falls

Minnehaha Falls

Working at "the ranch"

"The ranch" is the name I have affectionately given the five-bedroom house and quarter-acre yard that my mother maintains.  I go over and help Mom and Dad with house care and other projects at least once a week.

This has included scrubbing, sanding, and priming the garage on three sides...

sundry gardening, weeding, mulching, moving rock and brick, OH and almost being mauled by a mama snapper laying her eggs.

Hi.

Doodling

Doodling!  I've been doing it forever.  No one in the family knows why I started drawing symmetric and geometric shapes, but I was doing it by age six.  Recently I've started playing around with word art as well.

Continuing therapy, medication, and Al-Anon

I hit the one-year mark in Al-Anon in February, and I've continued doing my program work.  I've done my Fourth and Fifth Step -- the personal inventory shared with a trusted person -- and a couple of Ninth Steps -- making amends to people I've hurt.  I've also become a trusted servant in the Al-Anon group on Reddit, which is my way of giving back to the program when I'm moving around so much that it's hard to commit to being a leader or a sponsor in a local situation.

Therapy and medication continue to be a part of my life and I am incredibly grateful for both.

Speaking of gratitude...

Friends

My friends continue to be amazing people who hold me up, cheer me on, feed me delicious food, make me laugh at Dateline till my sides hurt, take me camping, tell me I look amazing in that dress, and help me correctly evaluate if what just happened on that date was absolutely ludicrous.

Austen and Ari keeping me company ... we're all on Tumblr.

Seminary friends hiking from campsite to beach

"Writing prayers" aka drinking wine and sharing stories

Katie and Natalie being so cute it's gross

So .... ?!?!

I'm still waiting on a call, guys.  I promise y'all will be the first to know when I get one!

The Beauty Collective

I crossed paths with a college friend last summer, at a mutual friend’s wedding; I was officiating, Noelle was photographing.  We got to chat and catch up a bit, and to delight in each other’s successes, that five years after graduation we were chasing our dreams.

A few months later, Noelle contacted an assortment of her friends with the following proposal:  would we be willing to be photographed for a local project called The Beauty Collective?

You can read about the first installment of the Beauty Collective on her blog (and I highly recommend that you do - Athena explains it so beautifully). 

In short – as women, we have all experienced insecurities about our appearance at one time or another, and as a photographer, I come across this in every. single. session I shoot. I am constantly told how unphotogenic someone thinks they are, and every time, I find that it is quite the opposite. 

My goal with the collective is to get a group of women together – no more than 5-7 – and I would like to create portraits that empower them and show them that they ARE beautiful. 

After several months of weather-caused delays, four of us got to hang out at the Q’arma Building in Northeast, and Noelle worked her magic.

There was something terrifying about being photographed with no promise of filter, of touch-up, of Photoshop to save me from the scars on my chin.  I specifically asked that my hands not be photographed, because I’ve never loved them, and of course Noelle got them involved in a third of the photos, because that’s the whole point of the project.

And you know what?

It was amazing.  And I feel beautiful, in a way I have not felt in a long time.  Even without good lipstick and perfect concealer.  Even with my hands showing and my hair askew.

So if you are reading this, I implore you:  let yourself be beautiful, today.

"Came to believe that only a Power higher than ourselves..."

I went to Al-Anon today.

I went a few times, with my mom, when I was a teenager and my dad's alcohol abuse was really disruptive.  Going to Al-Anon, I discovered, was a way to make him stop drinking, at least for a few weeks.  If you know anything about AA or the Steps you are laughing right now, because the entire purpose of Al-Anon is to teach friends and family members of alcoholics that they cannot control the drinking, and I was essentially using Al-Anon to try to do just that.

I didn't really stick with Al-Anon after the first few visits, but the purposes of AA stayed on my radar throughout college.  When I learned about the Lutheran understanding of grace, of God coming down to us, of our complete and utter inability to do anything but cling back to God when God is already holding on to us -- that rang true with what I'd heard in Al-Anon.

I'd been scouting around for some sort of emotional support group for most of 2012.  I have a fantastic network of people who love and support me.  But I knew I needed a situation where I could deal with my brokenness and my anxiety on a regular basis.

But just recently we had a conflict situation at church -- nothing big, but there was a miscommunication about money that I couldn't stop thinking about even once it was resolved.  And someone else who was in on the situation mentioned that she'd used her Al-Anon learnings to let go of trying to control and fix everything.  I'd been thinking about this problem, and this problem alone, for about 30 waking hours straight.  I wanted to let go, too.

So I went home and looked up Al-Anon meetings nearby.  There's a ton in the Twin Cities area.  And I went to a beginner meeting this morning.  The beginner meetings are designed to go along with regular home groups, and attendees are encouraged to go to at least six beginner meetings.  They talk through the first three Steps and some of the other main parts of Al-Anon.

Today we focused on the second Step:

Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

And we were supposed to go around the room and briefly share what this meant to us (or pass, if we wanted to.)

Easy peasy, right?  I spend my entire life talking about a Higher Power.  The hard part would be sharing only briefly.

Except I panicked.

I didn't want to share that I do the Jesus thing.  Not everyone in Al-Anon is religious.  In fact some people avoid AA and other 12-step groups precisely because they think (or have experienced!) people using the Higher Power language to evangelize their own personal religion.  This wasn't at all what I experienced, and I was terrified of ruining it.  I was terrified of dredging up everyone's issues with a hypocritical church and a wrathful or apathetic God and every other piece of baggage that institutional Christianity heaps on people.

And I didn't want to share that I'm training to be a pastor.  I didn't want to look weak.  I didn't want people to think "Of course, another pastor with psychological problems."  I didn't want to be some confirmation that we're all codependents who look for other broken people and adopt them.

So when my turn came, I stammered through something that I think lacked meaning or coherence.  I don't mind for everyone else because other people shared really great and helpful stuff -- but, for me, to be so very afraid to share anything whatsoever about my actual faith is terrifying.  I should be able to do this, and easily.  And I couldn't, because I was so afraid of what people might think.

Which, of course, is the whole point of step Two.  This is not about me.  This is not about me controlling what other people hear or think or believe about me.  This is about God, and about being raw and honest and vulnerable about what God does to get me through the day.

I don't actually know how to talk about that in a roomful of strangers.

But I guess I'll find out, because I'm going back next week.

A minister's inheritance

My uncle Maynard passed away two months ago.

His longtime companion Vern, and his nurse Suzanne, sorted through his effects at the house in Arizona.  Photos are being saved, journals preserved, items sent to friends and family.

Including three boxes to my parents' house, to the new reverend in the Kegler family.

It is an odd and weighty thing to receive what has been sent.  There are sixty years of service in those boxes.  I hope to chronicle them more and take photos as I go, but it is honestly overwhelming to open each box and find the history within.

I have inherited many chalices, including his personal chalice used for daily mass -- the silver worn from use, the brass base heavy and sturdy.  Also a traveling communion kit, with full cup and plate, used by Catholic priests in German prisoner-of-war camps in America in WWII.  To hold that is to hold a history that traces back thousands of years -- a thin line threading through centuries, a strand of love even for the enemy.

Most recently I am fascinated by this.

Dr. Thomas A. Dooley III

"In recognition of the public service to alleviate suffering among people of the world" 

Dr. Thomas Anthony Dooley III, according to the foundation that bears his name:

Tom Dooley met his destiny in 1954 while serving as a young Navy Lieutenant assigned to caring for refugees in North Vietnam. From that experience his life took fire and was never to be the same again. Tom, who grew up in a comfortable suburb of St. Louis, was tormented by his new found realization that half the world goes to bed hungry every night, that half the world spends a lifetime without seeing a doctor – that half the world still suffers from the diseases of Biblical days.

The young physician was unable to ignore these realities of human existence. He was determined to bring to the other half of the world medical care, education and training for better health and a new quality of life. In 1958, he founded MEDICO, and in the three short years before his painful death from cancer in 1961, he established 17 medical programs in 14 countries. Tom Dooley captured the heart of America and became a legend in his own time.

In those few short years he became one of the world’s most admired men – honored by such notables as His Excellency the Pope, Albert Schweitzer, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon, Dr. Charles Mayo and posthumously by a special medal authorized by the United States Congress.  (dooleyintermed.com)

This medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, is the highest civilian award in America, and now I own a small replica.

I had never heard of Dr. Dooley before Father Maynard's death.  It seems that Dr. Dooley and my uncle had met while they were both in St. Louis, and had become friends.  (Of this I have no doubt, because my uncle was one of the kindest and friendliest people I knew.)  After Dr. Dooley's early death at age thirty-four, he was championed for canonization in the Catholic church, with my uncle leading the charge.  Ultimately the beatification process failed, but Dr. Dooley is still recognized for his humanitarian contributions, and the foundation that bears his name continues that work around the world.

Dooley wrote three books, Deliver Us From Evil, The Edge of Tomorrow, and The Night They Burned the Mountain.  His biography, Promises to Keep, was written by his mother (who passed on many things to my uncle after Dooley's death in 1961).  I'm hoping to read some in the next few weeks and come to better know the man my uncle so revered.

Uncle Maynard

My uncle Maynard died this morning.  He was 87.  He’d struggled the past several years with Alzheimer’s and general old age.  He started palliative care last Monday.

He had no children.  He was my father’s only brother.  And he is the Catholic father who baptized me.

My parents were both raised Catholic but were uncommitted to any institutional church at the time they married.  They had a justice of the peace officiate the wedding, in my father’s living room.

When I was born, it was almost instinctual that I be baptized, and Catholic; there was enough family impetus, especially with a priest for a brother, and no good reasons not to.

I had my own reasons, it seems; at five months old, I screamed through the whole Mass, from first words to finish.  This is a favorite story in my family.  The hilarity has increased as I’ve grown older and come to insist, every time, “I knew you were baptizing me Catholic, and I objected!”

Uncle Maynard was older than my father, and like my father was retired well before I finished grade school.  He became a chaplain on cruise ships, staying in Arizona when they weren’t sailing.  I saw him only rarely, perhaps once every few years.

My mother remembered today a winter phone conversation I had with Uncle Maynard when I was three or four.  We were still unchurched as a family, and Maynard had some concerns about my lack of education in the faith.  He asked me, kindly, “Emmy, do you know whose birthday we’re celebrating?”  ”It’s Jesus’ birthday,” I told him earnestly.  He chuckled with that tone of voice that adults use when they ask a question they don’t think you can answer:  ”And do you know where Jesus was born?”  ”Of course I do,” I said, exasperated.  ”In the hay.”

He laughed so loudly my mother could hear it through the phone line.

Tonight my mother told me that thirty years ago, before I was even born, Uncle Maynard told her and my father that the church was in error.  It was time, he said then, to begin ordaining women.  By the time I began pursuing my own ordination, he was too sick to remember from conversation to conversation what I was doing or even how old I was.  I haven’t talked to him in years, and in the past few, he’d be so confused by phone calls that he’d accuse the other person of lying about who they were.

Tonight, perhaps, is the first night he knows that the little girl who knew where Jesus was born is learning to tell everyone else.

It is a sad thing, and I am mourning him.  And yet it is a beautiful thing now to be taking up the work that he began.

I commend you, my dear brother,
to almighty God
and entrust you to your Creator.
May you return to him
who formed you from the dust of the earth.
May holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints
come to meet you as you go forth from this life.
May Christ, who was crucified for you,
bring you freedom and peace.
May Christ, who died for you,
admit you into his garden of paradise.
May Christ, the true Shepherd,
acknowledge you as one of his flock.
May he forgive all your sins
and set you among those he has chosen.
May you see your Redeemer face to face
and enjoy the vision of God for ever.
-a Catholic prayer for the commendation of the dead