Category Archives: personal

Unhealthy Clergy

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I worked as the Data Analyst for the three year, multi-million dollar, multi-national research study (it was a real study!) dealing with healthcare benefits for Episcopal clergy and lay employees.  In our research, it became blatantly apparent that clergy are an unhealthy bunch.  The nature of the work and difficulty we have setting boundaries contribute to our lives being less than healthy.  We are undisciplined in this area, too.

I have found that I actually have to physically leave home and neighborhood (get out of town) so that I will  take a true day off!

This article appeared recently on AOL‘s blog, “Politics Daily.”  It is entitled, “No Rest For the Holy: Clergy Burnout a Growing
Concern,” by David Gibson, Religion Reporter.  Here are a couple paragraphs:

“The untenable nature of the experience for me [being a pastor/priest] was being designated the
holiest member of the congregation, who could be in all places at all
times and require no time for sermon preparation,” Barbara Brown Taylor,
an Episcopal priest, said in describing her memoir, “Leaving Church,”
about her decision to abandon the pulpit. “Those aren’t symptomatic of a
mean congregation; those are normal expectations of 24/7 availability.”

Indeed, unlike doctors or police, for example, pastors are supposed to
be people who have dedicated their lives to a spiritual goal and are not
expected to focus on themselves and their own welfare in the here and
now.

“I really don’t think people think about their pastors,” said Rae Jean
Proeschold-Bell, research director of the Duke Clergy Health Initiative.
“They admire their pastor, and their pastor is very visible. But they
want their pastor to be the broker between them and God, and they don’t
want them to be as human as they themselves are.”

Further on:

A program called the National
Clergy Renewal Program, funded by the Lilly Endowment, has been
underwriting sabbaticals for pastors for several years; the program will
provide up to $50,000 to 150 congregations in the coming year. And
places like The Alban
Institute in Herndon, Va., are studying the topic and offering
expertise and resources to denominations trying to make their clergy
healthier…

But experts also say the solutions have to start at the congregational
level.

Congregants can encourage pastors to take time off, and not view
everything in the church as the pastor’s responsibility. They can also
be sure to provide healthy food at church events. But clergy must also
learn find time to exercise or relax, even if it means saying no to some
requests. Otherwise, they won’t be healthy enough to serve their flock
later on.

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‘Till Tuesday

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I loved ‘Till Tuesday – the name, the music, the look, the album covers.  I’ve followed Aimee Mann long after the band broke up – have all her albums.  She has been referred to as the “last of the tortured artists” and an “artist’s artist”.  I remember in the mid-1980’s sitting in the studio working on my graphic design projects listening to this album.  “Coming Up Close” is easily the best song!  New Wave, female vocalists with low voices… I had a platonic crush on Aimee Mann.

 

Well, she really needs to have a guitar in her hands in this video – not so good at free dancing.  This was when MTV had “VJ’s” and actually played videos – all day!  Then, of course, there was the keyboardist.

Thoughts of Subway Riding this early morning

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LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 3: Passengers wait for...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I really do miss riding the subway, daily.  I even kind of miss the crowdedness of the trains during rush hour – all of them.  To ride the train is to experience all kinds of cultural and social forms – great rudeness and even more kindness… frustration and wonder… selfishness and compassion… the very young and the very old – it is all here.  Perhaps I’m waxing nostalgic, since I rarely ride the subway these days, but on Monday night as I was traveling to and from seeing Willie’s musical (Willie Martinez is a parishioner and Jazz leader – he is the drummer for the
band), “This Side of Paradise” about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, it felt good sitting on the subway and watching the people and their interactions, seeing the “up and coming” cultural changes, the vast array of cultures and dress and languages and attitudes, and knowing that this is New York City, the center of the known world.

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Times and times again…

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Another big snow storm is supposedly upon us. Friends of mine in Baltimore said they measured three feet from the last storm. We, in Brooklyn, lost out. We got barely a dusting. This time, however, may be different. The weather guy said last night that we could get 8-12 inches. I’ll believe it when I see it. Snow is falling at this point…
I have been mulling over in my mind how this blog might take shape in the future. As I have always intended, it is a place for me to “dump” things to which I can return later – to keep track of links or quotes or ideas and to “think out loud” as I try to figure out this crazy world of ours. I’ve been doing less “thinking out loud” and more posting of quotes.
I thought that I might us this space to chronicle this new ministry project in which I find myself. It is the creation of something completely new from scratch, from the ground up. It makes me nervous, but also excited. Getting used to doing ministry full-time is challenging. For the past 4 3/4 years, I’ve been a working priest. I’ve worked full-time and then did ministry during my “down” hours. I worked two jobs, and that was very frustrating. Months would go by and I would have no days off. It wore me out… it is an unhealthy way to live. Now, for these past three weeks, my job is my ministry. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I feel guilty spending hours in a row planning or reading or thinking about the work of a priest and the work of the Gospel of Christ in this blistered world of ours.
Society and culture is changing so quickly. As a tech-guy, I love the advances in technology and what they allow us to do – and be. But, the changes that are going on go far deeper than just the advancement of technology and our use of the new technology. My mind whirls when I think of the possibilities of the iPad (and like instruments), but my mind shutters at the thought of what is developing within the hearts and minds of people. The changes go to the heart of who we think we are and how we deal with one another. Technology may augment or finder aspects of that deeper reality, but technology is neutral – it is we that change. (Should I use “us” there instead of “we”? I’ll be lazy and not use the technology to investigate the correct grammatical usage. My failure, not the technology’s failure!)
Add to this the “gift” of the last generation that pulled us away from any mooring or tether to anything tried or solid to help ground us in something other than the immediate, the trendy, the superficial… as we stumble along trying to find our way unable to receive and recognize the lessons from lives past.
The next twenty years should be amazing, from the standpoint of a neutral observer of people and society. I don’t know were we will be, and I think few people will be able to imagine where we will be. These are strange times, as if all times are not strange, but these truly are fundamentally strange times.
As people who deal with people who are living out their lives in “real time” and as people who talk amongst ourselves a lot, I keep hearing from priests that something just isn’t right. Something strange is doing on in the underlying strata of our society and lives. There has been some sort of turning, and we can’t at this point quite figure out to what. Some say they think we will enter into a new Dark-Ages. Some say they think we may be coming close to an end of the age of democracy. I don’t know – that may all be extreme. Something, however, is certainly up.
In the changing and the new contexts, where is the Gospel? Where are the people who live lives so rooted in the Way of Christ that the image people see in them, in us, is something profoundly different than what is “imaged” or seen in most worldlings?
The way we live out our Faith in the coming days will have little in common with what has been commonly experienced in this country since its inception. These are heady times, these are challenging times, these are times that will look in many ways far more like pre-Constantinian times that post (our recognizable times). How do we navigate these coming days?
The snow is falling hard, now. Perhaps we will have a big snowfall, after all.

New Times

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The beginning of the year 2010… 2010 years in the designation of time that began with the life and death (and resurrection) of a Nazarene. (If the claim of resurrection was made then, I doubt time would have been designated different then the current method.) In these days of global plurality, it is often called CE or the “Common Era.” A.D. or “anno domini,” “the year of our Lord,” has fallen out of favor.
With the coming of each new year, there is a kind of optimism (hopefully) that the days ahead will be better than the days behind. I certainly feel this way. Sometimes, I know that the coming year will yield some very different experiences and outcomes – I will be changed. This is one of those years.
I will be changed through the experiences of the coming months, and I’m honestly excited to see how I’ve changed by this time next year. This is my last week at CPG. With the coming of next week, I take up my new position as Diocesan Missioner for the Red Hook Project and ImagoDei. What all that means, I have no clue at this point. I will be responsible for making it mean something and doing something that will benefit the cause of Christ in the Diocese of Long Island. I’ve nervous. I’m excited. I’m afraid. I’m expectant.
I will not be the same person I am right now at the beginning of 2011. By the grace of God, I will be more of the kind of person I was created to be, more able to love honestly, less hypocritical, more humble in my understanding of myself and the world around me, wiser to the ways of the Systems of this World and the Kingdom of God, and having a good and beneficial influence on those in my life – to be more fully the imago Dei to those around me. This is my hope.

Convention wrap-up made the TEC press

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So, in the Episcopal Life Online edition this morning, in the section reporting on what is happening at diocesan conventions, here is this “paragraph” (sentence) among the discription of what happened at the Long Island convention:

“The bishop announced the creation of a three-year Red Hook, Brooklyn Project, a model community and liturgical ministry as well as residence where the spiritual needs of people can be met.”

That’s me. I am privileged to begin a project to situate the doings of the Church (liturgy/worship, discipleship/formation, the cure of souls, good works) within the contexts of Postmodernism and Post-Christendom among generations that are primarily unchurched and unimpressed with the institutions of American Christianity.