I just wanted to say thank you for all of the support over the last few months as I've got my blog up and running, I've really enjoyed interacting with everyone here, or on Facebook or Twitter.
I'll be out the rest of this week and next, as Husband and Dog and I are leaving for our long-awaited beach vacation after a few weeks of nutty work travel. We're getting everything together -- a house sitter/plant waterer (my poor garden would perish), the beach towels, some sunscreen, an extra journal, and soon we'll be setting off. I'm looking forward to being refueled and rejuvenated, ready to spend the rest of the summer in DC, come hell or high humidity.
See you all at the end of June!
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Hmmm...
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| 13 & H NE -- June 11, 2014 |
It seems as though DDOT Urban Forestry is a little off their game. The sign seems to be doing well, though.
Monday, June 9, 2014
DC Pride and Parenting
This weekend was DC Pride. St. Thomas' had a picnic, and afterwards we went to a parishioner's front porch to drink sangria and watch the parade. The sheer length and volume were astounding. The parade lasted from 4:30 until after 7:00, with every sort of float imaginable. It seemed like every politician in the city had marchers, as well as every major Christian denomination, some rogue Mormons, and some Jewish marchers. (My favorite sign of the entire religious contingent: Shabbat Shalom, Queers!) The spirit of campy irreverence and love reigned. The parade was also surprisingly commercial, with banks and hotels sponsoring floats. Chipotle won hands down for best corporate float, with a cowboy riding on a bucking burrito. Usually I don't like seeing a lot of corporate sponsorship in a community event like this, but it was a sign of just how far the gay rights movement has come. Everybody had a good time, except for maybe the protesters, who had to have a police escort for their own safety.
This weekend was also a baptism for a baby in our congregation, a beautiful little girl adopted by a married gay couple. Both parents are pillars in our community, part of who we are, and it was a joy to be a part of that baptism, knowing full well that child will grow to maturity in grace and love within a Christian community. And is she ever loved!
Now, I could write a book about everything that St. Thomas' has taught me, but perhaps the most surprising and lovely lesson of all has been about what it means to be a parent. This lesson began two years ago with one of our first gay adoptions, as I watched two men raise a baby up close for the first time. And it blew my little Central Pennsylvania mind.
First of all, in a same-gendered parenting team, there's no "default" parent. If the baby starts crying, in church or in the middle of the night, it's not automatically handed off to the mother. These parents actually have a conversation about it, and work out a plan. Over and over again, I've seen them take turns and work together to solve the problem. It seems simple, but it makes all the difference in the world. And for same-gendered parents, nothing about parenting seems to be taken for granted. Every child in each of these relationships has been longed for, waited on, hoped for, greeted with tears and joy. This isn't always the case on the other side of the fence, as babies of straight couples sometimes accidentally make their way into the world, unplanned and taken on a burden instead of a blessing. Lastly, I've seen a great deal of imagination and humor in the act of parenting. It's almost as if the joy spilled out and into creativity and laughter.
I'm not saying gay parenting is intrinsically better, or that straight parents can't also be parents who are great at communicating and who are excited and ready to be creative parents. But I know when it's time for us to start thinking that direction, I'll be thinking about my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, and taking a page out of their parenting book.
This weekend was also a baptism for a baby in our congregation, a beautiful little girl adopted by a married gay couple. Both parents are pillars in our community, part of who we are, and it was a joy to be a part of that baptism, knowing full well that child will grow to maturity in grace and love within a Christian community. And is she ever loved!
Now, I could write a book about everything that St. Thomas' has taught me, but perhaps the most surprising and lovely lesson of all has been about what it means to be a parent. This lesson began two years ago with one of our first gay adoptions, as I watched two men raise a baby up close for the first time. And it blew my little Central Pennsylvania mind.
First of all, in a same-gendered parenting team, there's no "default" parent. If the baby starts crying, in church or in the middle of the night, it's not automatically handed off to the mother. These parents actually have a conversation about it, and work out a plan. Over and over again, I've seen them take turns and work together to solve the problem. It seems simple, but it makes all the difference in the world. And for same-gendered parents, nothing about parenting seems to be taken for granted. Every child in each of these relationships has been longed for, waited on, hoped for, greeted with tears and joy. This isn't always the case on the other side of the fence, as babies of straight couples sometimes accidentally make their way into the world, unplanned and taken on a burden instead of a blessing. Lastly, I've seen a great deal of imagination and humor in the act of parenting. It's almost as if the joy spilled out and into creativity and laughter.
I'm not saying gay parenting is intrinsically better, or that straight parents can't also be parents who are great at communicating and who are excited and ready to be creative parents. But I know when it's time for us to start thinking that direction, I'll be thinking about my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, and taking a page out of their parenting book.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Bomb Threats
It was an interesting morning for H Street. While I had left the apartment at 7:30 to get to Alexandria by 8:00, I got a text at 8:00 or so from Husband. "Bomb threat on H, whole street closed between 13th and Maryland." Oh. Ok.
You haven't heard anything about it on the news, because it wasn't covered by the news. Twitter users, mostly @dcvet and @azarrella as well as the @DCPoliceDept, were the only sources of information. Several businesses were evacuated, including AtlasVet (who continued to see patients even though they couldn't get into their building.) The bomb squad was called, and the package cleared. Thankfully, other than a few flashing lights and inconvenient rush hour detour for some, the morning passed uneventfully. Better safe than sorry.
But it's one of those moments that makes you reflect on the risks of living in DC, in the shadow of the Capitol building. I thought about those risks a lot the week of the Navy Yard shootings, too. It's just that when there's a bomb threat, or an active shooter, or the Capitol is evacuated because of a car chase, you are acutely aware of how much trust it requires to live where we live. It's an act of trust to believe that first responders will respond, an act of trust that your neighbors will help you if you need them, an act of trust that people won't go around blowing things up or gassing us, an act of trust that you won't get caught in the crossfire of DC's gun violence problem. Even if it's an unthinking trust, it's still an act of trust. We depend on each other more than we know, and for the most part, we live up to the trust placed in us. I take heart in that.
You haven't heard anything about it on the news, because it wasn't covered by the news. Twitter users, mostly @dcvet and @azarrella as well as the @DCPoliceDept, were the only sources of information. Several businesses were evacuated, including AtlasVet (who continued to see patients even though they couldn't get into their building.) The bomb squad was called, and the package cleared. Thankfully, other than a few flashing lights and inconvenient rush hour detour for some, the morning passed uneventfully. Better safe than sorry.
But it's one of those moments that makes you reflect on the risks of living in DC, in the shadow of the Capitol building. I thought about those risks a lot the week of the Navy Yard shootings, too. It's just that when there's a bomb threat, or an active shooter, or the Capitol is evacuated because of a car chase, you are acutely aware of how much trust it requires to live where we live. It's an act of trust to believe that first responders will respond, an act of trust that your neighbors will help you if you need them, an act of trust that people won't go around blowing things up or gassing us, an act of trust that you won't get caught in the crossfire of DC's gun violence problem. Even if it's an unthinking trust, it's still an act of trust. We depend on each other more than we know, and for the most part, we live up to the trust placed in us. I take heart in that.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Listening is Loving
By nature, I'm a solution-oriented person. When I come across a problem, my Pennsylvania German genes go into overdrive and I analyze, assess and then make a plan. Then I organize resources and people and execute the plan; if it doesn't work, I re-analyze, re-assess, and re-plan, and go at it again. I love this sort of work, and I share that love with my father and three brothers, who, all four of them, are engineers and builders. We're just a solution-oriented family.
Which is why pastoral care, the part of my job where my job is to just be present, is the hardest part of my job. Yesterday morning I found myself sitting across from a woman at a free breakfast in a church basement on Capitol Hill. I was introduced to her as a pastor, and within seconds words started tumbling out of her. I sat and listened to her pain, confusion, her story of abuse and neglect, her anguish as to why a God who was supposed to love her would let what happened to her happen, and witnessed the tears streaming down her face. And her story was truly horrible, a story of evil come to wreak havoc in the world by people who should have loved and protected her. I spent a year at a torture abolition non-profit; I've heard horrific stories. This was up there, and this was a story of SE DC.
As a priest, there is nothing you can do in the face of that sort of pain. There is no plan that can fix the past. You can't repair a broken human soul. There are no action items, there is nothing that you can say, and nothing that can be done. And so, you sit. And pray. And listen. And hope, that in the listening, that you are some sort of representative for the part of humanity that promises not to neglect, abuse, betray or berate, and that you are some sort of representative of a flicker of divine love somewhere, although in this moment, it seems very, very far away.
The only thing that gives me comfort in this situation is something that I heard a few weeks ago at a conference, something that I've been thinking about over and over again, is this claim by pastor Frank Thomas: it's almost impossible to tell the difference between loving and listening. What you do when you listen is so close to that act of loving that the person being listened to can't tell the difference.
I hope that's true, because it's all I've got.
Which is why pastoral care, the part of my job where my job is to just be present, is the hardest part of my job. Yesterday morning I found myself sitting across from a woman at a free breakfast in a church basement on Capitol Hill. I was introduced to her as a pastor, and within seconds words started tumbling out of her. I sat and listened to her pain, confusion, her story of abuse and neglect, her anguish as to why a God who was supposed to love her would let what happened to her happen, and witnessed the tears streaming down her face. And her story was truly horrible, a story of evil come to wreak havoc in the world by people who should have loved and protected her. I spent a year at a torture abolition non-profit; I've heard horrific stories. This was up there, and this was a story of SE DC.
As a priest, there is nothing you can do in the face of that sort of pain. There is no plan that can fix the past. You can't repair a broken human soul. There are no action items, there is nothing that you can say, and nothing that can be done. And so, you sit. And pray. And listen. And hope, that in the listening, that you are some sort of representative for the part of humanity that promises not to neglect, abuse, betray or berate, and that you are some sort of representative of a flicker of divine love somewhere, although in this moment, it seems very, very far away.
The only thing that gives me comfort in this situation is something that I heard a few weeks ago at a conference, something that I've been thinking about over and over again, is this claim by pastor Frank Thomas: it's almost impossible to tell the difference between loving and listening. What you do when you listen is so close to that act of loving that the person being listened to can't tell the difference.
I hope that's true, because it's all I've got.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
Hidden Life
Although it's been a very busy week, I've been thinking about what is seen and what is unseen in our daily life. It started with finding this guy upon my arrival home from Brooklyn:
There are other things that exist at night in the alley that ordinarily go unseen. Husband and I once saw a raccoon, nonchalantly walking the top of the fence, all the way down the alley. I've spotted a possum under a car -- I thought it was a cat at first. Definitely not a cat. There are at least two cats back there, big roaming tom cats, who work at catching the rats that scurry, and now and then people, looking for a late-night place to tryst, to fight, or (sadly) to shoot up.
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| H & 13th NE - May 20, 2014 |
I almost stepped on him, but luckily I didn't. Although he did make me shudder a little bit, mostly I was just impressed. I had no idea slugs that large even existed on the East Coast. Where I'm from, we have snails and slugs but they top out at a few centimeters. Here's a metro card for scale.
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| H & 13th NE -- May 20, 2014 |
I was less excited when I found that slugs had been making their way up to my second-floor balcony garden. Maybe this had been going on for a while, and I had never noticed, but knowing that there were slugs around made me look a little harder for evidence of them. The next morning, I found that my Johnny Jump-up seedlings had been slimed.
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| Vicar's "Garden" -- May 21, 2014 |
There are other things that exist at night in the alley that ordinarily go unseen. Husband and I once saw a raccoon, nonchalantly walking the top of the fence, all the way down the alley. I've spotted a possum under a car -- I thought it was a cat at first. Definitely not a cat. There are at least two cats back there, big roaming tom cats, who work at catching the rats that scurry, and now and then people, looking for a late-night place to tryst, to fight, or (sadly) to shoot up.
What I've seen, I'm sure, is just a sliver of what actually happens around me in my neighborhood. I just found an entire species that I didn't know existed here. How much more is hidden?
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