Is it rude to take knitting, stuffie sewing, etc. to meetings? A reader asked Dear Abby yesterday. Abby says doing handiwork in a meeting is rude. We should focus on the speaker instead.


As I explained to Mr.C. yesterday morning, if I didn't have sewing stuff with me at presbytery meetings (including committee meetings), I'd be jumping on top of pews hollering.


Sewing focuses my thoughts on the speaker. With a quick look up I can assess the room if something in the speaker's voice or a sound around me catches my attention.


Our meetings are contentious or boring, take your pick. Sewing keeps me occupied, focused and calm instead of jumping out of my skin.


I guess it would be rude to sew or knit during a counselling appointment or doctor's visit. I don't like the idea of handiwork during a worship service.


Women sewing or knitting looks peaceful to me. It's quiet, for the most part, relaxed and doesn't detract from the event.


Any thoughts?

St.Casserole, armed with the BE 1.0 Swag Bag filled with felted wool, thread and needles

hey you hogsmead GPSing revgal,
send me your address so I can send you a package
if you don't do this soon, the stuff will be buried in my St.Casserole Study for the Weekly Preacher and Litter Box Officiants. Then, we'll be in troubles.

St. Casserole
Surrounded by Important Items or Something

I saw an instructable/crafty/how-to/recycle plan SOMEWHERE on teh internets showing how to make vintage game board into a box. I cannot find it! Have you seen the plans? I've searched with no luck.


Do you know of an old church getting rid of a short piece of bannister with newell posts we can use at Little Church? Mr. C. said to ask you.


St. Casserole

Paying Attention to the Wrong Things

We all do this.

No matter how attentive we may be, we miss many big things.

Praying this morning, I realized I passed up the chance to meet a new group of people because I felt overwhelmed with tasks and didn't have a face shot photo. Only today, weeks after the invitation and my rejection of the offer, did I realize what I'd done.

A colleague here in the Disaster Area got a blistering letter from a pastor. The pastor came down to put on a VBS for a church a few weeks ago. The visiting pastor believed that the church should be grateful, empty rooms for the VBS, provide particular housing, and have the colleague be present often. What she didn't realize is that my colleague serves a devastated congregation and his work is with them, not the visiting mission team. The mission team pastor paid attention to her team, her idea of a gift, her sense of how things should be done. Rather than realizing her needs were driving the week, she blamed the colleague. Wrong things.

The reality of living and doing ministry down here is this: if you come (and God knows we are grateful and need the help) come self-sustaining and handle your own stuff. The pastors and congregations are busy, exhausted and need to pay attention to their work, not your idea of the mission trip.

A child behaves in a way we don't understand. We grab the first idea we have for coping. Parenting involves pivoting to grasp what is needed for the child. I've learned this over and over with the Casseroles. Attention to the right things helps.

A church member blasts the pastor. What is going on? Could it be the member needs your attention? Is the member worried, anxious, losing hope for his future?


I'm not sure I'll ever get great at paying attention to the right things. I work on seeing and listening. I pray and listen.


St. Casserole

Interior of Little Church with sheet rock removed


Note use of different wood colors and re-cycled tongue and groove strips nailed to the wall studs.


We treated the down the street Methodists to a show Sunday. We were outside digging in the debris skip for pieces of antique wood. The Methodist drove past us sure we were nuts.


St. Casserole

Great News! Restoration of Little Church begins!

We worshipped in a pew-less sanctuary Sunday. A Virgina Church sent us new folding chairs for a Sunday School room after the storm. We used these and our other chairs to make a cozy worship space. The sanctuary looked wild!

The old sheet rock is removed so that the wood underneath is visible. The walls and ceiling look like Joseph's coat of many colors with painted boards showing in green, blue and white. These boards supported the old sheet rock and will be used to hold the new work. We speculate the boards are salvaged from the old sanctuary which burned 90 years ago. Good old Presbyies! Waste nothing. Save everything!

The old wood burning stove flue is visible. Up front, near the pulpit, the position of the stove must have comforted the preachers with warmth and shortened the sermon when the heat reminded the preacher of you-know-where.

With the sheet rock gone, the perfect acoustics of the sanctuary left, too. I had to use my ultra-powerful-seminary-trained-playground-supervisor Voice. Worshippers left with their eyebrows blown upwards.

Thank you for helping Little Church! Several of you sent money, one of you sent two large gifts TWICE! Your generosity helps us!

Those of you who contacted me about helping, call me back. Thanks!

St. Casserole, Happy

*pic is after the storm of a ceiling edge showing wood underneath. Imagine all dark wood! The sheet rock will be replaced after wiring, etc. etc. is completed!

Shhhhhhhh...


I'm in my study with one dog and two cats. One of the cats is snoring.



Cracking me up,

St. Casserole, unable to be profound all the time

2008 Books Read

Christianity for the Rest of Us Diana Butler Bass

Resurrection Rowan Williams

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive Alexander McCall Smith
The Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Miracle at Speedy Motors

Yesterday, I headed to the Mockingbird Cafe (thought of you Songbird, will smama and Little S.!) for lunch with two preacher pals. The city looks SO much better although the streets are torn up with infrastructure drainage, etc. repair. Along the Beach road, the lots are bare mostly. It's difficult to rebuild family homes when the codes aren't in place and the insurance companies say, "Oh, we didn't mean you had coverage for that..."


My pals were willing to hear a few stories from my past. I told about the day I was presented to presbytery for approval as a pastor. In those days, we were ordained where we had our first call, so the vote was for my ordination as well as reception into the presbytery. As the Committee on Ministry chair moved for my reception, the Moderator was asked by one of the commissioners, "Do we have to vote on this?" Not "vote on her" or "vote on Miss C." but vote on "this". Without missing a beat, the Moderator said, "No you can vote against it or abstain."


The vote was called for, and the motion to accept me passed.


Not one soul realized that I was the first Presbyterian clergywoman to be ordained
in the state.


Not one soul thought to apologize to me for the previous discussion.


Even I was oblivious. My eye was on the prize of being received by the Presbytery as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament.


This month of blogging about my ordination strikes me as self-serving, which, of course isn't ladylike or gentle. However, in the name of recalling what it was like 30 years ago, I've shared a few tidbits. Frankly, in some ways, clergywomen don't have it any easier than we did back then. Just sayin'.


But a call to ministry isn't about ease anyway. If you have the Call, there isn't anything to do but run through the thorn bushes towards the pulpit.


Love,

St. Casserole

(Photo: Songbird's Sandwich)

Dear Aunt Bostick,

Thirty years ago today, I entered the sanctuary of the church where I served as the associate pastor, dressed in my Geneva gown for my ordination to the Ministry of the Word and Sacrament. It was a Sunday afternoon. My parents were in the congregation along with parishioners and my Commission from Presbytery. I wrote the service with huge chunks from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer interspersed with the 1956 Book of Common Worship of the P.C.U.S. I don't recall all the hymns, but we did sing "Be Thou My Vision". I remember that hymn because I've used it at each of my installations to new congregations since.


I was awed and happy to finalize all the steps taken to ordination. I was sick to my stomach with anxiety and, probably, lack of food. In those days, I didn't eat. Please do not comment that I've been healed of eating disorders "like a miracle!" (as I've heard you say) because I'm aware that I present in human form much differently than I did 30 years ago.


My Seminary professor preached the sermon. He is a Carolinian and his wife graduated from my college so our affinity began at our first meeting. He is at the Seminary still, writing books and becoming more distinguished looking as the days pass. He was kind to come to the Deep South and be with me for the day. I gave him a piece of the pottery distinctive to this area, the one with the black stripe symbolizing the Mississippi River.


I recall that you were there. You looked at me with amazement that I was becoming a pastor. Every pastor you'd even heard of was male and here I was, in your words, "a little girl". You wondered how ministry would be for me since most people found the idea of a woman in ministry odd and somehow upsetting. You were not quite sure if I should be ordained because you couldn't find the place in the Bible where it said I could be. When you told me this, I reminded you of the Biblical cites and that my denomination approved the ordination of women. Still, you weren't sure.


The local newspaper covered my ordination as actual news, not as the natural progression of a child raised in the church who was baptised, educated and given the approbation of God's people for ordination. After the article appeared, I received all sorts of angry letters from people who believed I was going straight to Hell. I saved mail from detractors in a scrapbook. The book didn't survive the 1985 hurricane so it is just my memory of those angry notes I recall today.


I began my ministry as happy as a gal could be. I was so ready, like a puppy, to jump into whatever God placed in my path, or whatever path God led me to walk. I recall joy so piercing that I could hardly stand it.


I am grateful today for all the good influences I've encountered along my way. I'm grateful, too, for my failures and roadblocks which taught me humility, sacrifice and resourcefulness. I thank God for my calling every single day.

Your niece,

St. Casserole

What We Want to See This Summer

"NO Activity" looks great to us!


St. Casserole, hoping for a quiet Season

When I was a little RevGal, my Mother encouraged me to "eat your beets" because eating beets made one pretty, like Annette.

Memories like this make me smile.

What did your Mama tell you?

St. Casserole

Driving to Church yesterday, I came to a painful realization.
I'm at the end of the last of Alexander McCall Smith's No.1 Ladies Detective Agency audio book, the latest book in the series. The Head of the Agency* is talking with her Associate Detective about a third character who has behaved badly. Wisely, the Head concludes that the third character's behavior comes not so much from anger but from jealousy. There is anger, but it rises out of jealousy towards the Associate Director.


It came to me that as I move toward the 30th anniversary of my ordination I have wallowed around in jealousy towards colleagues whose work is more mobile than mine and who've accomplished glories I haven't.

I felt ill.
My blessings and opportunities are enough to entertain me into eternity.
I have blessings more than I can count.


I, therefore, heave aside jealousy and commit myself to returning to sanity.
Because being jealous means ingratitude and evaluating others by their exteriors.


And, Lord knows, I'm grateful for my life, as is.


St. Casserole, chastened again


*I listen to the series on CDs so I do not know how to spell the Botswana names! Beautifully read by a British actress who lived in Botswana, I recommend listening to catch the African inflections.

I wish you could see the sky here tonight. It is 8:13 p.m. CDT with soft clouds bathed in pink along with very white clouds and patches of soft blue sky. Behind the white clouds in the East, lightening appears.

St. Casserole

Why I Live Here

*because a local burglar, who didn't show up for court, was found hiding in a kitchen cabinet in his home.


*because when a caller to the newspaper said she was lonely, 8 different church people called to invite her to their church.


*because in today's obits, a woman who died of dementia is pictured smiling oddly.


*because our communities are sending relief workers and supplies to those in the Mississippi River flood areas.


Most of all, I live here because Mr. C. is here,


St. Casserole

Today's New York Times tells me White Lily Flour is moving production from Knoxville, TN to somewhere else not in the South.

Horrors! How will cooks make great biscuits?


Stunned,

St. Casserole

Busy week:

Pool emptied, painted, refilled



Yard pruned, chain-sawed, clipped



Funeral planned, liturgy ready, heart torn




Courtyard, Verbena the VAT happ



Cats, entertained by gekkos and moths




Kitchen, returned to normal, clean



Preaching, relentless return of the Sabbath, Abraham and Sarah



Life, busy, hot weather, children home, days fly by



Meetings, endless, saw progress!!!, more meetings



Is it Friday Already?,


St. Casserole

Update about FEMA's insistence that ice is a "comfort" item after a hurricane:

"An official reaction to FEMA's no-ice policy came from U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor who referred to FEMA officials as a "bunch of buttheads.", from our local paper.

We love our Congressman Gene Taylor. He's looking out for us. He understands us.

And, he called FEMA a "bunch of buttheads".



St. Casserole, laughing

Next Monday, I will stand at a graveside to lead a service for the reinterment of a child's body. The child died in the 1970's and buried in a faraway State. His mother wishes to have him near her and will bring his body back here.

The theological issues of holding on to the body after death are clear to me. The pastoral issues here speak loudly of the mother's need to have her child near her. Until now, the father did not agree to having his son's body moved. The parents divorced thirty or so years ago, after the son died.

Anyone want to help me plan this graveside service? This is my first re-interment.


The legal and funeral home regulations are fulfilled. No need to worry about those.
Of course, the cemetary will charge for opening and closing the grave. Of course, the funeral home will charge for delivery and handling the remains.

The child received Christian burial years ago. Any ideas for this re-interment?

St. Casserole

This is the world we live in. We are strangers here.
We can do better.

Just Thinking,

St. Casserole