The Bunnies Aren’t Running

My mother bought me my very own elf on the shelf a year or so before she died. Kringle was not even a proper size elf. He was a mini elf. I realize that is like saying a “pygmy grain of rice.” I never knew that the small humanoid characters working for Santa come in gradations of “little.”  Kringle was as big as my thumb.  Every year, Kringle would appear on the first of December. Max hid him for me each morning. He got a great deal of satisfaction from keeping score of who won the daily game of hide-and-seek.  We have a lot of fun with it.

One year, we decided that saying good-bye to the game for an entire year on Christmas Eve was just too sad. We acquired an army of small bunny figurines (there must be an army of them- they are rabbits, after all) and Max started hiding them each morning about thirty days before Easter. That has been going on for about three years. We decided that, if “elf on the shelf” was a thing, then “bun on the run” should also be a thing. Sadly, the idea has never caught on with the international marketplace.

This year, the bunnies have not been running. I never did get Easter decorations out this season. I don’t know if it was because Easter is so late this year and I could not figure out when to shift gears into spring, or if it was my energy investment in the Spiritual Formation Course I was teaching. Somehow or another, I never quite got around to Easter home décor. If I am being completely honest, I must admit that I still have my winter wreath on the door and my Duffy the Disney Bear (another idea that never really caught on in the international marketplace) is still wearing his Santa costume. The bunnies are still in their basket in a cabinet, where they typically reside for eleven months of the year. I guess they have put down roots.

I feel like the Easter version of the Grinch. However, if the Grinch could discover that Christmas is Christmas- even without the roast beast- then I could certainly lean into the idea that Easter is Easter, even without the running bunnies.

The past several Lenten seasons have been true desert experiences for me. God has brought me through some critical times of despondency and rebirth. I watered the seeds of new plantings within me with tears. They grew into beautiful, strong trees that are now pillars supporting new levels of spirituality. As much as these refining times have hurt, I would not change a thing because they have ultimately led me to more creative, more nuanced, and more joyful faith. My pastor preached about this experience recently in a sermon. He talked about how God periodically explodes our image of who and what He is, in order to build an even bigger, more amazing, more complex understanding. These spiritual growth spurts are often chaotic, humbling, and mysterious. It makes sense if we understand them as the incomprehensible divine creative inspiration bursting with energy. I am blessed to have been the receptacle of that divine creative inspiration in some real and dramatic ways.  I am even more blessed that I could perceive the Divine igniting within me even through the destruction.

This Lent has been quieter and more solid. The ground may have been moving beneath me, but I have felt steady and rooted. My Lenten growth this year has been more about receiving, accepting, and appreciating than about burning the chaff. I have worked hard on my Spiritual Formation Course. I have given up Facebook to allow more time in my day to breathe, sleep, meditate, and pray. Both Lenten disciplines have felt more like abundance than sacrifice. It is like my own year of jubilee.

As we approach the Triduum, the holiest time of the year for a Christian, I bring myself to the cross with such a sese of gratitude, not just for the most precious gift of salvation, but for the wonderful work God has done in me. I lay my everything before the cross this Holy Week- my pain, my shame, my brokenness, my reconciliation, my love, my faith, my hope, and my gratitude for whatever process God decides to use to grow me into the person He created me to be. 

This Easter, I will be standing beside a new Christian as she receives Baptism. I will be sponsoring her as she takes this next step towards God. This is a daunting prospect because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t think there is an instruction manual for being a baptism sponsor. However, I strongly suspect I don’t have to do it; I simply have to be it. And, even more, I suspect it isn’t me that must do or be anything at all. It is God being within me who will do the guiding. He may use me to do some of it… and, in guiding I will also be guided.

It is a miracle.

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

Terri/Dorry 😊

The Energizer Bunny Lies

I am discovering that everything you see on television and everything you read on the internet is not always correct. My latest revelation is that the Energizer Bunny lies.

I have spent my life believing that emotional energy is an infinite resource. If I wore down, it was because I was obviously doing something wrong. If I only had the right motivation. If I only was not so lazy. If only it didn’t take me so long to complete tasks. If only I had the right batteries. If only something, I could keep on running endlessly, beating my bass drum, and bopping across surfaces.  If only something, I would never halt suddenly and flop over on my side. Unfortunately, in the real world… at least in my real world…. I seem to flop over on my side with an alarming degree of regularity.

This Lent, I have been teaching a course at my church. Several years ago, I adapted some material I learned in my working days and that I have picked up along the way on my spiritual journey to create a class on stewardship and ministry. That course focused on stewardship and ministry, but it also covered other subjects such as prayer and working together as a church. My church offered the course as the world was just cautiously emerging from our COVID cocoon. As you may recall, that was a gradual process. It took a lot of people longer to feel safe enough to occupy public spaces than others. The class consisted of four weekly sessions. I taught each class twice each week, to allow for different schedules and to create opportunities to allow for some social distancing. Between the two offerings, I hosted about thirty people.  The feedback from the class was highly positive, suggesting that it might be worth trying again when breathing the same air as our neighbor began to feel a little safer. Since the course was much broader than simply stewardship, the pastor and I toyed with the idea of making it a more foundational class for people who were new to our congregation. Time passed and stuff happened. The timing just wasn’t right to hold the class again. Last summer, I began working on an expansion and adaptation of that course. Finally, we launched the new St. James Spiritual Formation Course the Tuesday after Ash Wednesday. We are again presenting the classes twice each week, on Tuesday evening and Thursday midday, plus one Saturday session.  This represents 33 hours of teaching time between March 11 and April 10, plus prep time. It also represents exposure and focused interaction with 50-65 people each week. For someone as introverted as I am, that is very peopley.

I will share more of my observations about this experience in another post once I’ve finished the course and have time to reflect on it. For now, let me say that it has been immensely satisfying, rewarding, nourishing, and growth-creating  It has also been exhausting.

Knowing that the journey was going to require all my energy for the duration, I purposely tried to structure the rest of my life to minimize competition for my emotional energy. I intentionally “protected my introversion” by limiting any other people-focused activities in my schedule. I once had a colleague tell me that I am a “closet extrovert.”  Most people see me interacting with others, especially when teaching a class, and assume I must be extroverted because of the way I present myself. They don’t realize two significant factors. One factor is that much of my success in teaching has to do more with listening intently and mindfully, not talking. I can connect and help people towards discovery because I notice signals and listen to everything everyone says to steer the presentation in the direction the students most need to go. The other thing is that, when I finish, I am exhausted. Actually, it is even more than exhausted. I am almost catatonic. I stagger around the room in a trance, unable to hold a thought or frame a sentence. I understand, on some primitive level, that I should be packing up and helping to clean up the debris from the learning party over which I have just presided. However, I can’t seem to figure out specifically what to do. The idea of simply unplugging my computer and putting it in its case is overwhelmingly difficult. I have no judgment about how much I can carry at one time. I forget things as basic as remembering to retrieve my purse from the seat where I left it before leaving the premises. I have a little team of keepers who have made it their personal mission to keep me away from sharp objects after a session. They have taken over the mental load of food wrangling, kitchen duty, and general maintenance to protect me from myself. I am very grateful.

Even with this emotional safety net, it is a marathon. We are more than halfway through now and I may be winning. It is, however, requiring me to carbohydrate load. I fear the beat of my little bass drum is well and truly out of rhythm. I get depleted. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. The huge rewards I am reaping are more than worth a little depletion. Besides, creative energy is a renewable resource, and God is a great recycler. Still, I don’t think it matters which brand of batteries I have installed in me. The Energizer Bunny is a fraud.

Have an energetic day!

Terri/Dorru 😊

Do you have experiences that deplete your energy in the short term but create energy in the long term?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Hole In The Wall

When I first moved to Florida, I shared many of my frustrations and challenges around home maintenance. I owned a small condominium in California. I thought that would have given me at least a clue as to what I was in for when I purchased my house in Florida. Anyone following me around for the first year or so I lived in “my pretty little house” in the Sunshine State could tell you that I was completely wrong. I had no idea what I was doing.

I don’t think I have become any savvier in the past ten years, but I have become more adept at managing my ignorance. It takes more disaster to rock my sense of stability than it did when I first moved here. I have survived ten hurricane seasons, renovation of two bathrooms, the demise of virtually all the major kitchen appliances, the complete replacement of the air conditioning/heating system, and warfare on several fronts with the screen garage door. Oh… and the one event that I try extremely hard to block from my memory- the Great Rat Invasion and Attic Insulation of 2021. I’m not sure I have ever recovered from that one, but I have to say that, in general, I am much more able to take these routine catastrophes in stride.

The other day, Max asked me if I had noticed the hissing sound the hot water heater was making. I had noticed it. It was the first thing in the morning, and I assumed it had something to do with the water heater starting when we turned on the showers. I had not noticed it before, but I wasn’t worried because… I now take things in stride!

The hissing noise did not stop when the hot water heater stopped. We looked all around the area and did not see any water anywhere. It didn’t seem like it was leaking. Max was concerned that the gas might be hissing and that we would be blown to smithereens. I called the plumber and scheduled an appointment for the next afternoon.

That evening, we both went to the Spiritual Formation Course I am teaching at my church. When we returned, there was a fair amount of water on the floor of the garage near the water heater. I guess the good news is that it wasn’t a gas leak causing the hissing sound. Still, it took a minute to figure out from whenst the hissing came. Finally, we realized it wasn’t hissing so much as spraying. A fine mist was spraying from the pipe above the water heater, onto the wall. It was such a fine mist; we could not see it. As the wall saturated from a day’s worth of fine spraying, water ran down the wall and pooled on ground. It was like the wind. You couldn’t see the mist, but you could see the effects. We followed the trickle trail of water back up the wall and found the leaky source in the pipe. After trying to mold several catch devices into the space under the leak and going through about 183 feet of duct tape, we were able to patch things up enough to get through the night until the plumber came the next day. Cleaning up the concrete-bottomed swamp on the floor under the water heater was challenging, but we knew we were saving those raggedy old towels for something.

The next morning, it was clear that our makeshift repair job was not going to be permanent. The damage was manageable, but we were both glad to see the plumber that afternoon. The plumber expressed admiration for our ingenious use of duct tape. I think he probably wondered if we owned stock in the company, given how much duct tape we used. When he unraveled the duct tape to begin working on a more permanent fix, a piece of the wall unraveled right along with it. Apparently, having 14 or 15 hours of fine mist trapped in a humid, confined duct-taped-based ecosystem is a recipe for complete drywall annihilation. We had a literal hole in the wall.

The plumber fixed the pipe for about $150. Max pressed him on how to resolve the drywall issue. Neither one of us is handy at all, so my inclination would have been to throw money at the problem… to pay someone to patch the wall. I was still kind of riding high on the knowledge that I did not need to buy a new water heater and that we had not made an unintended trip to Smithereen. Max, however, thought he could manage the repair. He thought it would be hard to find someone competent and trustworthy who was willing to come out for such a small job. Max consulted that well-known home renovation guru- YouTube. He made a list of everything he needed. We went to the hardware store and spent another $120 on the materials. I figured that, if we ended up having to find a handyman, he would probably want us to get all this stuff anyway, so I cheerfully jammed my debit card into the Lowe’s checkout station. I was still blessing my lucky stars that I wasn’t paying $1500 for a new hot water heater.

When we got home, I started my mental clock. I tried to decide how long it would be before Max would tackle the job. I also had a running bet with myself that, while I deeply desired Max to take on the task and complete the work when I was out somewhere, he would want me around to be supportive.

Oh, me of little faith! Max was on it. Within two days of acquiring all the necessary paraphernalia, I came home from some activity to find the wall repaired. The next day, again while I was out doing something, he painted it. It was amazing. Some people are probably confused about why this is such a big deal. I am mystified by home repair. Max is a little less mystified and a lot less intimidated, but neither one of us can boast “repair skills” in our wheelhouses. I think Max himself was pretty surprised by his deftness.

Today I am a happy camper. I did not have to pay a huge plumbing bill. I was without hot water for less than 24 hours. I have not been blown to Smithereens (wherever that is.) I have no hole in the garage wall. I have discovered that my very beloved partner is a man of mystery with impressive skills I have not previously uncovered. What a bonanza!

Have a satisfying day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What surprising skills have you discovered in your partner? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Max did a great job on the holy wall!

Fasting And Feasting

Fasting And Feasting

Lent is the forty-day period before Easter during which most Christian denominations observe a season of penitence, preparation, and spiritual renewal. The forty days commemorates the time that Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by the devil before He started His public ministry. Lent has always been a momentous time of the year for me. Today is Ash Wednesday and Lent begins.

As a child, I “gave up” something for Lent. The idea was to sacrifice some pleasure to show devotion to God, as opposed to devotion to worldly desires. In the Roman Catholic faith, in which I was raised, there were institutional days of fasting (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and days of abstinence from meat (the Fridays during Lent.)  Again, the idea was to embrace some outward sign to demonstrate sacrifice and devotion to God.

As I matured, I began to question whether what I did in Lent truly resulted in the desired outcome- spiritual renewal and growth. Giving up chocolate did not make me feel closer to God. It just made me feel cranky. And it made me feel an insatiable craving for vanilla ice cream. Abstaining from meat on Fridays did not seem to be too much of a sacrifice. I could eat shrimp, lobster, peanut butter, cheese pizza, and any number of delectable non-meat alternatives. I tried to frame these observances as “intentionalities” instead of sacrifices. I told myself the fact that I was doing something different, whatever it was, would bring me closer to God if my intention in doing it was to focus my attention on spiritual matters. That philosophy helped me embrace Lenten observance for many years. It still felt a little like pounding a square peg into a round hole, however.

I finally decided to forget about “giving up” something for Lent and, instead, actively embrace some positive action. A couple of years, I wrote a letter each day to someone who had contributed positively to my spiritual journey to thank that person. One year, I began going to the weekly anointing service at my church. Another year, I began reading through a “Bible in One Year” process, recording verses of Scripture that particularly spoke to me. All of these endeavors have been fruitful and fortifying… certainly more helpful to my spiritual development than giving up chocolate. When I converted to the Episcopal faith, the whole “no meat on Fridays in Lent” thing was no longer a requirement. It was easy for me to let that tradition go by the wayside of my new spiritual path.

The last several years, I have not had to look for my Lenten desert experience.  God brought the desert to me. The work of Lent in those years was for me to bear the difficulties, challenges, and pain that those swaths of desert presented.  I did embrace some special Lenten observances, but the bulk of my growth came simply from allowing God to lead me into some dark, difficult places in my soul. I leaned into Him and into the experiences He brought me. I relied on Him and kept my spirit open to what He had to show me and what He needed me to do. These past few Lents have been my own personal miracles. This Lent- and I say this with a certain amount of caution and trepidation- God does not yet seem to be throwing any particular desert in my way.

The past year or so, I have been attending a discussion group in which we are exploring the book Celebration of Disciplines: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J Foster. The book discusses how we can use intentional spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, meditation, service, fasting, and others, to strengthen and deepen our connection with God. Since I have often heard Lent described as an observance of spiritual discipline, I thought it might be a promising idea to intentionally tune in to how this book could help frame my Lent this year.

One of the ladies in the group identified the idea of “fasting to feast” as a key component in her current journey. Her comment helped me better understand the value of fasting. I had always thought that the best kind of fast is a fast that creates opportunity. For instance, if I give up eating sweets, then it is more meaningful if I donate the money I would have spent on sweets to a local food bank so that people living with food insecurity might have nutritious meals. I don’t think I’ve put that philosophy together with this pithy “fasting to feast” mentality.

After some musing, pondering, and doing warfare against my own resistance (probably a clear sign that I need to make a change, by the way,) yesterday I decided to fast from Facebook for the next forty days. I was very late to the Facebook party- my brother and several friends nagged me for years to enter the social media world. I resisted until 2018, when I published my first book. As the years have gone on, I find Facebook creeping up on my time, energy, and mental health. I notice a much more prominent level of ugliness on Facebook than in real life. I have been able to ignore the vitriol and the pettiness for the most part, but things have become so much more heated and toxic in the wake of the 2024 presidential election season. I am losing sleep, peace of mind, and joy.

Scripture tells us that, as Christians, we are not “of this world” any more than Jesus was of this world. However, we live in this world. Lately, exposure to the world as reflected on Facebook has begun to infiltrate my ability to not be of that world, if that makes any sense. The internal world God wants for me is not a world infected with the anger, hate, anxiety, and sleep deprivation that Facebook presents. It is time I fasted from Facebook, so to better steward the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health God gave me.

If you are a person who follows me on Facebook or uses my posts announcing new content on this blog as your trigger to visit this website, please do not fear for my safety or think I’ve been abducted by aliens. Please let me know if you’d like me to notify you of new content by email. You can contact me a terriretirement@gmail.com. I may or may not be back on Facebook at the end of Lent. We will see where God leads me.

So that takes care of the fasting. What about the feasting? With what will I fill myself when I am not scrolling happily or not-so-happily through Facebook? I have been working on a new project. I have created a new spiritual formation course that I will be facilitating at my church during the Lenten season. The course will cover the following topics: Knowing God, Communicating With God, Recording Faith, Following God Together, Collaborating With God, and Sharing Faith. This is a project that will take all my focus, strength, patience, faith, and prayer. I think God wants me to be at my best- at peace, well-rested, open to His leadership- as I travel this path. It is a huge emotional and mental commitment, especially for a girl who is about as far on the introvert end of the scale as one can get. 

Creating curriculum and teaching are passions of mine. This is certainly not the first time I have done something like this- and I have faith that, powered by the Holy Spirit, the course will be nurturing, fulfilling, and fun. However, this is definitely the birth of a new creation and there will be labor pains. Given my desert experiences and Easter miracles of the past few years, my intention is to embrace the process and rely on God to take the reins. He will teach me what I need to know and will shape me into who He needs me to be.

If any of you are local and would like to join me on this adventure, I hope you will reach out for more information or… just show up. There are five regular sessions, which I will be teaching twice each week to accommodate people who prefer daytime classes and people who prefer evening events. There will be a Tuesday evening class, from 6:15-8:15pm starting on 3/11. We will have a simple soup and sandwich supper beforehand at 5:45pm.  The other option would be to come to a Thursday midday class from 11:15am to 1:15pm, starting on 3/13. There will also be a Saturday mini-workshop day on 3/29. The course will be in the parish hall at St. James Episcopal Church at 204 N. Lee Street in Leesburg, FL 34748. Please consider joining my “feasting!”

Have a blessed day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Are you interested in having a desert experience this Lent? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Trippy

It is probably a good thing that I have always carried substantial extra padding on my body. I am a klutz. Given the frequency with which I fall over my own feet, my body would be in shattered shards by now without the organic protective gear God gave me. Okay, maybe it was ice cream and not necessarily God’s design. I’ve always said that God can use even something awful to create something wonderful. I guess the fact that I am still standing reasonably upright most of the time is a testament to that philosophy.

This is not something new for me, so I can’t blame it primarily on aging. I agree that I need to be more careful as I perambulate around the planet since I do notice some slight changes in my physicality in the last year or two. It isn’t anything major, but those changes do exist. I know I am less agile. My bones and joints are less able to absorb shocks. My eyesight is not as sharp or as broad. My body more often seems like an alien entity quite removed from my brain. These small signs portend a day when the physical changes may become more limiting. I am also pretty sure that, at some point, I am likely to become more brittle. I will have a harder time bouncing instead of breaking.

Still, my klutziness has been a part of who I am for as long as I can remember. When most children learn to walk, climb stairs, jump, balance, and rearrange their bodies to do the darndest things, I learned to fall. It has been a valuable life skill.

When I was six, I fell off a jungle gym because, contrary to my brain’s perception, my arms were nowhere near long enough to swing from one monkey bar to another. When I was nine, I went to a roller-skating rink. I hugged the railing that surrounded the rink, inching myself, hand over hand, around the circle. I was not inclined to release the rail. At some point, I hit a traffic jam. Two older boys stopped in my way, ready to rumble. They were having a bit of a heated argument. I waited for them to finish their discussion and move away from MY railing. My hands needed inching room.  After about an hour and a half- give or take 87 minutes- one of the boys reared back his arm to punch the other kid in the face.  Unfortunately, I took that moment to release the rail to bravely try to go around the situation. In pulling back his arm, the puncher ended up elbowing me with enough force to send me toppling to the ground. I would have been fine if my butt had simply hit the floor. However, the other kid had also fallen, putting his roller skate wheel directly in the path of my arm. All the damage (which necessitated a traumatic and painful trip to the hospital) resulted from the collision between my wrist and the ill-placed roller skate wheel.

I didn’t grow out of this clumsiness of mine. Fortunately, I am blessed with pretty good bone density. I stopped breaking bones after age nine. I didn’t stop falling, however.

Max has called flip-flops my “fall down” shoes for years for rather obvious and embarrassing reasons. Despite some spectacular evidence that remaining upright while wearing flip-flops is not one of my talents, I went on wearing them for way too long. Finally, he convinced me that I might better preserve both my body and my dignity if I stuck to shoes that were not built to come off quite so easily. Now, I only wear flip flops to the beach. And, yes, I fell in them while at the beach.

Even after I retired the flip flops, my feet seem to have a mind of their own. Years ago, when making my daily visit to my mother in the skilled nurse facility where she resided during her end-of-life journey, I tripped on uneven concrete and smashed myself down onto the sidewalk. Not only did I go down, but so did the chocolate milkshake I was bringing for my mother. I was so disheartened and on the edge of a breakdown my mother, who was living in the shadowland of vascular dementia and had lost just about all her ability to process language, took one look at me and clearly and alarmedly said, “Go home!” 

I fell a year or so ago when delivering food to the homebound. I somehow missed the last two steps backwards when descending the steps to a client’s mobile home. The poor gentleman was horrified and insisted I come in so he could doctor my wound with Neosporin and ply me with hydration. I am so glad I have the opportunity to serve.

Last week, I encountered my latest fall from grace. I say that because I definitely fell without grace. I was hurrying back into the house from the garage after taking out the trash. Something in me snapped and I had a moment of absolute irrational panic. A fight or flight response took over my brain and it compelled me to rush madly back inside the house, completely missing the small step that loomed between me and safety. I caught the tip of my shoe on the step, which launched me directly into the drywall and hall closet door that is directly across from the garage door. That was not good enough for me, though. I am not your everyday klutz. I had to earn a score of 10 in clumsiness. I ricocheted off the closet door and was propelled to the ceramic floor tile. I am happy to report that the tile survived the onslaught.

Max heard my crashing and crumpling but could not see me. He called out, “are you okay?” My subdued, muffled, out-of-body “no” brought him running to me. I don’t think he expected to see me on the floor. This little unintentional gymnastic move caused me to twist my waist, hit my head on both the closet door and ceramic tile, smash my arm against the drywall, tweak my shoulders, and become aware of parts of my body I did not know I had. I lay on the ground for a few minutes, trying to regain my equilibrium and sense of self. Finally, I asked Max to bring a kitchen chair over to me so that I could use it to pull myself to a standing position once more.

When I was upright, I took a more disimpassioned inventory of my injuries. I realized I had escaped without any significant harm. I just couldn’t seem to talk or even think. All I could do was feel- feel old, feel stupid, feel scared, feel unappealing. As the emotional tide began to rise, I could sense the tears beginning to form. The defeated feeling was familiar- I remembered it well from the Fall of the Milkshake outside the skilled nursing facility. I felt helpless and hopeless. Max could see that I was hurt in the personality, but I could not respond to his questions. He finally asked gently, “are you a little bit scared?” He hit the nail on the head as surely as I hit my head on the floor. With a llittle acknowledgement and a little cuddling, I was okay.

I did expect that I would feel worse a day or two afterwards. However, a few days have passed, and I still don’t feel too injured. I have a little stiffness, but no concussion or headache or anything like that. Heck, I don’t even have any bruises. I am a notorious late bruiser, however, so they may still be coming.

However, it is trippy how talented a tripper I am!

Have an upright day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What is your superpower?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com. 

The Charity Of Selfishness

The other day, I attended our mid-week worship service in our church chapel. I started attending this service a few years ago as a Lenten devotional. Attending that service gave me so much spiritual renewal, I decided to continue the habit throughout the year. God and I have been through a lot together over the past years at that service. I have sobbed uncontrollably. I have begged for forgiveness. I have prayed for strength, patience, protection, courage, and endurance. I have asked for guidance on how to walk in love in a world that seems bound and determined to hate. I have laughed at some of God’s little jokes. I have processed experiences I had outside the service and made sense of them in the context of God’s will for me.

As I spoke the words of the liturgy the other day, I became aware of the voices around me also praying. It reminded me of something that Rumer Godden said in her novel In This House Of Brede. In describing the role of the nuns at a cloistered monastery, she referred to the religious house as a “powerhouse of prayer.”  Yes, the nuns had avocations that the abbey monetized to be able to support itself. The nuns wrote books, did illustration work, gardened, and other day-to-day activities. That is how they paid the bills, along with donations. Their job, however, their real vocation, was prayer. Every day, the abbey received letters from people all over the world asking the nuns to pray for them. The nuns did so- in an orderly, intentional, specific, and methodical way. The abbey was a factory. The product generated from that factory was prayer.

One might unwittingly think that a cloistered order of nuns living tucked away from real life beyond the abbey gates would be about the most inner-focused thing in the world. It is easy to think of a bunch of women praying individually and together solely as an exercise in spiritual self-development. In reality, though, that inner-focused action is extremely outer-purposed. Because of the prayers of those women, the Holy Spirit ignites to power the world at large.

The same is true for our own spiritual devotions. As all our souls combine to worship and pray in a church service, we are asking God to bless us and our work. We are focusing on ourselves and our own spiritual development. There is a strong element of selfishness, or at least self-care, involved in the act of praying. However, that spiritual observation that we embrace to expand our own souls contains abundant charity as well. In the same way the nuns of Brede created a powerhouse of prayer to ignite the entire world, our prayer also raises sparks of spiritual electricity to ignite our global community.

I think the same is true for other spiritual exercises. When I attend a discussion group about elements of Christianity, I go because I want to develop my own relationship with God. However, the combined work of all the members of the group produce something much more wonderful and powerful than any one of us creates individually. When we leave the room, I would guess that each of us leaves feeling uniquely enriched. I don’t know if we ever realize how what we ourselves contributed enriched the others.

I have been retired for over 10 years.  I had an excellent job- it was interesting, important, and paid generously. I got to do some exciting, impactful things in my career. I was good at my job and my job was good to me.  Still, I was never one of those people who loved my job. In short, the job just did not fit my temperament. There were many parts of my job that were stressful and unpleasant. There were a few parts of my job that were painful but immensely rewarding. A lot of my job was neutral. There were a couple of adjunct parts of my job, however, that I did love. I got to spend a few weeks each year teaching and developing courses. When I left my career, this was the only part of my job I mourned, aside from the people with whom I worked.

In my retirement, I started looking for opportunities to do that kind of work again. I was not looking for a paying job or the kind of long-term obligation a paying job entails. I just wanted to do what I loved doing… and one of the few things for which I genuinely believe I have talent. In my new church, I have found opportunities to indulge that piece of me that reveled in creating courses and facilitating classes. That has not always been a comfortable or easy process, but the pay-off for me has been beautiful. I feel like my spiritual life is richer, stronger, and more profound because of the energy I’ve invested in these education products. It truly feels like this investment is filling my need for spiritual development rather than addressing the needs of anyone who engages in my spiritual formation classes. It feels like a privilege and an opportunity from God to do this work. It often feels selfish and completely unmerited to be the one who gets to do this stuff.

Then, I remember something I read when I first became an Episcopalian. One author said that effective ministry happens when a person’s passion, skills, talents, and intuition intersect with the needs of the people of God. Perhaps finding the perfect way to use one’s spiritual gifts in ministry is only possible if we lean into our selfishness a little bit. What do we love doing? What gives us pleasure? What gives us confidence? What are we good at? Can other people benefit from it? Perhaps that is what God always intended us to do. Perhaps that is what our most perfect charity looks like to Him… when we are most wholly the unique people He made us to be, fulfilling the unique purpose He gave us the gifts to fulfill.

What charity have you contributed out of your “selfishness?” Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a selfish day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Random Ramblings On The Road To Spiritual Maturity

Have you missed me? January is always a bit hard for me. This year, I feel like I’ve been in a period of incubation, percolating the next chapter of my journey. . 

I think I walked right into a long maelstrom of spiritual exploration and growth after my mother died. I flirted with it some before then, but that transition in my life pushed me firmly onto the path. That was in 2018. I feel like it has not let up much in the past six plus years. God has led me through a windy, thundering storm. I have felt the lightning bolts. The storm has thrown me off the road at times. The emotional weather has exhausted and bewildered me. Much of the experience was unpleasant, but also immensely satisfying. The storm has stripped away layers of debris and watered the seeds of what is good within me.

In the tumult of the last several years, I thought I was making good progress in my spiritual life. I thought I knew who I was. I thought I knew how to live in the world with some degree of emotional safety. I thought I knew where God was leading me. I thought I had a strategy for accomplishing the goals I envisioned. I thought I was filling needs around the church.  The thing is, there are an awful lot of “Is” in this paragraph. As well-intended as I was and as much reflection as I did, I still had a hard time letting God set the agenda and plan the strategy. Somehow, I thought He was relying on me to do all that. I certainly did not want to let Him down!

Lately, I have been concentrating on listening for God and assuming He will direct me rather than fretting over figuring out what He wants me to do. That means trusting that He has given me and will continue to give me whatever I need in the way of directions and tools to do what He wants me to do. I do not always get it right. I often end up having to intentionally stop my brain from thrashing around spastically to redirect myself. I say I must stop myself mid-mindspin. It requires me to exercise considerable spiritual discipline to simply keep trying. I think I can say that it is now a habit to be intentional about letting God take the reins. I may not fulfill my intentions all the time, but at least I have them.

A friend of mine who is studying for ordination into the priesthood just delivered a thought-provoking sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31. This lovely bit of Scripture compares the parts of the body with various spiritual gifts contributed by different Christians. She ended her sermon challenging the congregation to think and pray about what gifts we had to contribute to the body of Christ. She asked, “What part of Christ’s body are you?”

I take these things to heart. I spent some time on Sunday afternoon thinking about it. It struck me that, at this time last year, I was feeling a bit like I was the tonsils. I was catching all the infection and bacteria. I was feeling decayed and inflamed. There were a few experiences that functioned as a kind of antibiotic, removing the bacteria du jour in the moment. Still, the spiritual step throat kept recurring. Sometime over the year, God finally decided to remove the tonsils and get rid of that infection more permanently. It was a great feeling to be healed of this burden.

On the other hand, I was left without a purpose. This week I found I needed to rethink my friend’s sermon challenge, “What part of Christ’s body are you?”  I am afraid that I might be the appendix.

I texted my friend and shared with her that I thought I might be the appendix. She vehemently disagreed. She said she saw me as being the heart. I hope she is right. But even if she is not, I think God can do something wonderful- even through an appendix!

What part of Christ’s body are you?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com. 

Have a blessed day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Home For The Holidays

This year, Christmas has not seemed quite so much like Christmas, for some reason. I am not sure what the difference is. I went back to my post Gentle Christmas ( A Gentle Christmas – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement  ) from last year because the feeling seems a little familiar. I did have a sense that I might have felt the same last year. In re-reading last year’s Christmas edition, I learned that I did turn a very merry corner in 2023. However, last year I felt hopeful and happy about that change. This year, those attitude adjustments I made last year feel a little hollow.

When I thought about what made Christmas not feel like Christmas, it struck me that the statement was a bit of a mystery. It is like when someone says, “I don’t feel like myself.” If YOU are the one feeling a certain kind of way, surely feeling that “certain kind of way” must be feeling like YOURSELF. If it IS Christmas, then the way I feel must be the way Christmas feels.

In truth, Christmas is not just one thing, and it does not feel just one way. It is not as permanent and unchanging as we would sometimes like to believe.

Some events or traditions that do stay similar from year to year may not continue to serve the happiness of those who partake. For instance, I gave up on Christmas cards this year. It was a hard decision because I care so much about the connection that I have with the people to whom I send cards. However, last year my energy lagged as I plowed my way through the list. It became a chore, and I am afraid that the people whose names started later in the alphabet did not get the attention and thought that I would have liked to give them. I decided on a different way forward.

Some events or traditions that change dramatically may not feel good but that does not mean that they are necessarily worse in the grand scheme of things. For instance, I always miss my mother, but Christmas shines a harsh spotlight on her empty chair. My mother, like her daughter, was a Crazy Christmas Lady. Christmas will never be the same without her. However, when I feel that sudden stab of loss, as I do regularly during the holiday season, I tend to lean into it and live in the memory of her wild and uncontrolled festive reflex. That memory wraps around me and fuels me in a different way than while she was alive. Neither way is better. They are just different. I know my mother has gone home for the holidays forever, but she also left love here for me to celebrate.

I have been thinking about my expectations and paradigms around Christmas. Since I understand, at least in my heart, that Christmas does not have to feel just one way, I wanted to figure out what about this Christmas felt not just different but lacking.

Many people who are going through tough times find Christmas particularly difficult. I, on the other hand, have always looked at Christmas as an escape from the reality of troubled times. All my life, no matter what problems I faced or what hurt I was experiencing, I was able to put it aside and immerse myself in magic at Christmastime. And there was almost always much from which I needed to escape. I was able to release the burden of managing pain and fear for those few weeks each year. Instead, through sheer force of will, I could pretend they did not exist at all. Most people feel some post-holiday letdown, but that letdown could be crippling to me as the real world burst from its fetters and came back to haunt me on December 26th.

I realized that is the feeling that these past two Christmases have been lacking- escape. Here’s the good news- and this realization rocked my whole understanding of myself. I no longer need the escape. I have healed so much from the ugliness that attacked and eroded my soul most of my life, I no longer need to cling desperately to the life preserver a few weeks of delusion in December provided.

Now that I have reached this startling revelation, I am finding it much more comfortable to live with a more diverse paradigm of what Christmas feels like. So, this Christmas, what feels like Christmas for me?

As a Christian, I cannot ignore the fundamental importance of the Incarnation of Jesus. These are indeed tidings of extraordinary joy and, no matter how I feel in a particular moment, it will always be tidings of great joy. In my soul, I rejoice with exceeding great joy.

Additionally, God has made Himself incarnate in a very special way for me over the past week. This incarnation mimics and reminds me of that Great Incarnation of the Nativity in a humble way. The honest truth is that so many people heap God’s love over me. They are God’s love incarnate. I am so, so grateful and joyful for the people God puts around me and the love He gives me in my life   I’ve seen it so generously in the past few days especially. There is no greater “feels like Christmas” than this.

I know that one day I will go home for the holidays forever and it will be a joyful day. Until then, I will continue to rejoice with exceeding great joy that home is where the heart is and my heart lives in the love of my family- both the family by biology and the family by selection!

Merry, merry Christmas! Thank you all for your incarnation! May God bless you all in the coming year.

Terri/Dorry 😊

Does Christmas feel like Christmas to you this year? What makes Christmas feel like Christmas? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Silver Slippers Of The Smokies

I must be an extremely impressionable soul.

As I have discussed, we recently took a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. While we were there, we visited Dollywood. We also spent a morning shopping in Gatlinburg. I have never been a huge fan of country music. I am not a detractor or anything. I don’t have a systemic hatred of the genre. There are even a few songs that I can identify as favorites of mine. However, country music as a whole never seemed to really resonate with me.

One trip to Dollywood and that changed. I overlayed Tennessee Hill People Culture over my base personality, like one of those “topper” pairs of glasses. The base frames are the same, but there are various “fancy” magnetic covers for those frames that you can purchase individually to change up your look. The core of my personality was still Terri, but I slapped on a set of sparkly, distinctive, “hee hawing” toppers the minute I got out of the car in Tennessee.

I had to stop myself from speaking with a drawl so people would not think I was mocking them. My drawl reflex was not intended to be rude or mocking. I just couldn’t help myself. My delicate ears heard the drawl all around me. My brain somehow managed to translate it and ordered my mouth to respond in kind. It took a lot of intentionality to ignore that command. I spent the entire time we were in Tennessee humming Dolly Parton songs. I even walked around two-stepping with an imaginary partner. I was offended on behalf of the hill people when I looked at goods in “real handmade Smoky Mountain handicraft” stores and saw “Made in China” labels. My GPS got screwed up one morning directing us to the visitor center for the national park. As we slithered our way up a mountain, with no sign of visitors anywhere (actually, no sign of any people at all,) I instinctively knew we were in a “holler” as soon as a saw a couple of rundown houses grouped together and flanked by equally rundown furniture. In an act of solidarity, I left considerable money in jars all over the area asking for help for hurricane relief. I felt really good about it.

The final straw came on our last full day in Tennessee. We were wandering around the shops in Gatlinburg. Uncharacteristically, I was having a challenging time finding stuff to buy. As we passed a shoe store window, a pair of silver sequin ankle boots caught my eye. Now, silver sequin ankle cowgirl boots may be the thing I need least in all the world. However, I could not uncatch my eye. Finally, Max convinced me to go in the store and take a closer look. I went in, hoping to find something about those boots that I hated so I could let go of the whole ludicrous idea that I might actually buy them.

After trying on the display pair in size eight, I loved them. My foot, however, is not a size eight. It seemed especially ridiculous to pay a price upwards of $200 for a pair of shoes that did not fit. Maybe even ridiculous enough to drive the notion from my brain. Max was not to be deterred, however. He asked the sales guy if they had any other sizes. The inventory showed they also had a size seven and a size 7.5.  After some concerted searching, the guy found the size seven, but it was too small. He looked and looked and looked for the size 7.5 before admitting defeat. Feeling like Cinderella leaving without the prince, I tried to find relief at not having to decide whether to spend so much money on such an audacious purchase.

As we were leaving the store, the sales guy found the problem. He explained that the 7.5 boots were the ones in the window. They did not want to sell that pair because one of the boots had one tiny, tiny sequin missing. I never would have known it was there if he had not pointed it out to me. I tried the boot on, and it fit perfectly. The sales guy said he would call the vendor and see if they could send me a new pair in the correct size.

Several hours later, he called me to report that the vendor discontinued the boot. They could not send me a new pair because there were no new pairs. Just as my brain was ordering a dip in endorphins, the sales guy suggested an alternative. After discussing the matter with his manager, they agreed that they would sell me the sample boots with the tiny, tiny, tiny imperfection for about $75 off the sticker price. I thought that was more than fair- especially when Max insisted on buying them for me for Christmas. They are now hidden in a closet here at home, hoping that I will forget about them and be surprised on Christmas. I don’t think that is going to happen.

So, I am soon to be the proud owner of a pair of sparkly silver boots. The only way these make sense is if I am going to become a country western singer or a Rockette. I don’t think either of those things are going to happen either . Still, I can’t wait to wear them!

Have a sparkly day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What is your silliest purchase ever? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Florida Woman

As of last week, I have been a Florida resident for ten years. An entire decade of my life. I am having a tough time wrapping my head around that fact. It seems like just a moment or two has passed since Max and I encountered the sudden jolt to our systems of moving and turning our world upside down… and sideways.

Just a second ago, we were preparing to celebrate our first Christmas in the South… without family, without friends, without even a Christmas tree. My mother considered this situation to be the eleventh circle of hell. She sent us presents (even though we celebrated an early Christmas at Thanksgiving, before we left California) because she could not bear the idea that I would have nothing to open on Christmas morning. I was 55 years old. She also had Amazon send me a small, pre-lit Christmas tree. It stood, forlornly, in a corner with no ornaments or any additional decoration amidst the boxes and piles of unpacking still taunting me. I remember bracing myself for that Christmas, expecting to hurt and feel bereft to the bone. It ended up not being so bad. Max and I had been so busy and stressed since the end of November, it felt kind of nice to take a “silent night” or two.

In all, it seems surreal to think that time was ten whole years ago. On the other hand, I can look at all the major life events that have happened since we moved to Florida and wonder if there ever was a life before the one I am living now.

  • I had new, meaningful experiences with my mother that built beautiful memory castles in my mind.
  • I celebrated ten additional anniversaries with Max, maturing and enriching our exquisite relationship. We lived through so many shared experiences and so much mutual vulnerability in our new surroundings.
  • I walked with my mother for 13 months on her end-of-life journey after a catastrophic stroke.
  • Four close family members died.
  • I lived through multiple hurricanes.
  • There was a worldwide pandemic.
  • I released three books.
  • I published 412 blog posts, totaling approximately 452,000 words.
  • I’ve petted, fed, and swam with an entire menagerie of land and sea creatures.
  • I’ve healed from past trauma in a way that I never dreamed possible.
  • I lost and gained weight about 1,468 times, give or take a few hundred.
  • I vacationed approximately twenty times, including visits to places I have never been before- New England, Charleston, Savannah, and Tennessee.
  • I revisited the first home I remember in New York and let my soul live there for a time.
  • I converted to a new Christian denomination.
  • I worked as a chaplain, vestry member, teacher, project coordinator, temporary office worker, meal delivery person, and other service positions in a new church.
  • I made numerous friends who I now call “family.”

Put in this context, the perspective is all cattywampus. The ten years no longer feels like an instant. How could all this have happened in only ten years? No wonder it sometimes feels like I must schedule time just to take a breath! Yes, it has truly been a lifetime since we moved to Florida. I have lived that lifetime thoroughly and well.

Have a valuable day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Do you feel you have lived your life well and thoroughly since retirement?  How so?  If not, what can you do now to enrich your retirement experience?