Hi guys,
I would have written yesterday, but what a Long day.
Yesterday as part of the Lenten series going on in Spartanburg, the Church of the Advent, Church of the Epiphany, St. Christopher’s and St. Matthew’s have been getting together each Wednesday night for a program dealing with hunger. The first night was a meal, some people just got rice or vegetables but only a few got steak.
Then last week, the program was about finding services and how difficult that is to do. And last night the program was about moving the food pantry food from the new building to the gym. They decided to do this because it would concentrate all of the activity to one location, and the potential to get folks through faster is there also. It’ll be interesting to see how it works next Wednesday.
This past week has been a struggle to get back on track but it’s getting better. That’s all I will really say about that.
Something weighing heavily on my mind, well a few things…
There is Charlie’s retirement, and the possible moving of my process over to St. Matthew’s. It makes me sad to not have my process at Our Saviour, but on a more-practical level, it also makes me nervous. It seemed to me like Our Saviour folks were going to help financially, with things like the Psychological testing and such. So, if I move my process, will that financial support be there? If not, what am I going to do?
Another question that has been weighing on my mind for about an hour or so now is this; my employment consultant from the Commission for the Blind called me and said that some equipment they’ve been waiting on has finally come in. It’s cool equipment, I’m sure it’ll help learning these things but why should I go down to Columbia to learn to use it? What good is it going to do me? When all is said and done with using that piece of equipment, will I be able to get a job knowing how to use that?
Another question that has cropped up was that Verizon Wireless is still an option, which would mean going to Columbia. My concern is that if my process moves to St. Matthew’s and I go down to Columbia, I’m sure I’ll come home during the time when I’m at the Commission, but what would happen if I got a job in Columbia? That is the major source of anxiety for me right now.
Whether I choose to go forward with it or not, it could take a few weeks, and who knows what could happen with my process. I’m probably worrying over nothing, but these are concerns for me. Please do me a favor and keep me in your prayers, I feel a little bit overwhelmed by the many things bouncing around right now. More importantly, I’m not sure what to do. So prayers for peace, a greater clarity in my life, and strength to face whatever happens would be appreciated.
Love to you all,
Nancy
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Second week of Lent- now the trials begin
Hi guys,
I normally would email about this on sunday to you guys, but that has changed. I'll just add emailing you guys to the weekly email that I send to my spiritual director. A bit of news to follow, but this past week in review first.
So things were going fairly smoothly until sometime last week. I'm not entirely sure what happened. My dad came home and I don't know, my sleeping schedule got mixed up and here I am, not able to get up at 7:30 right now. I've tried dilligently for the last few days, I will get back on track, I will.
The same sort of thing has happened with my daily rounds of morning and evening prayer. If you're FB friends of mine I haven't posted both in a few days. I'm lucky to get one posted.
So, on this past Sunday, I got a chance to read the scriptures and the psalm for the first time. Nervous doesn't describe my feelings. That was a rather odd feeling for me. I can stand in front of cameras and I can stand in front of a presentation, but standing up to read in church is nervewracking. I think the difference here is that I was reading.
Reading aloud isn't something I did a lot as a kid. Not really sure why, but as I've gotten older, my primary mode of reading has been listening to either JAWS or to books on tape, or in the Sunday school class at CoOS the folks in that class would pass a book and read it. So I never did that.
I've had a bit of practice in Rob's Bible Bread & Wine class. That has been a good experience. Finding a good font, size, and lighting issues make reading out loud a source of anxiety for me. I generally have talking points for presentations, so reading out loud is different.
All that being said, it went really well. Rob practiced with me beforehand. He wanted to make sure I was safe traveling around. Of course I was fine, I had Doc. When I took Doc up there with me, he had a hard time settling, but once he did, he put his chin on top of my shoe. That made me feel better.
Once we'd read the Gospel and it was time for Rob's sermon, he said that when someone does something new for the first time, it's better not to acknowledge it, so he said that Doc did a good job. That one made me laugh.
So, the cool part is I've done it and doing it again will be that little bit easier. The really neat part is that I'm reading on Palm Sunday. The call came out for who wanted to do what and I said I'd never done anything during Holy Week before but would like to, so there ya go.
Now, as far as process stuff goes, I've gathered all the paperwork I have to send in. My references have been asked and given a deadline. I've got the appointment for the physical exam scheduled with my family doctor all that's left is to send in my packet, and call the psychologist in Columbia to schedule the testing. Once I have the date for that, things can start moving.
Speaking of my process and CoOS, I got the Acorn today and found out that Charlie- my sponsoring priest is going to be retiring in June. I'm not in panic mode, I'm actually more curious as to what happens to my process. If I don't meet with the Bishop until after June, who goes with me? Even if I meet with him before then, who gets the responsibility of being my sponsoring priest?
I actually kind of find this funny. My process has been full of transitions of all kinds from the very beginning, but I guess with any kind of discernment there comes transitions.
We shall see,
I'll keep you guys posted.
Oh and btw, I'm going to be up in Rock Hill on the 2nd to help with the food packaging event. I figured it'd give me a chance to see some people. I miss you guys.
Peace,
Nancy
I normally would email about this on sunday to you guys, but that has changed. I'll just add emailing you guys to the weekly email that I send to my spiritual director. A bit of news to follow, but this past week in review first.
So things were going fairly smoothly until sometime last week. I'm not entirely sure what happened. My dad came home and I don't know, my sleeping schedule got mixed up and here I am, not able to get up at 7:30 right now. I've tried dilligently for the last few days, I will get back on track, I will.
The same sort of thing has happened with my daily rounds of morning and evening prayer. If you're FB friends of mine I haven't posted both in a few days. I'm lucky to get one posted.
So, on this past Sunday, I got a chance to read the scriptures and the psalm for the first time. Nervous doesn't describe my feelings. That was a rather odd feeling for me. I can stand in front of cameras and I can stand in front of a presentation, but standing up to read in church is nervewracking. I think the difference here is that I was reading.
Reading aloud isn't something I did a lot as a kid. Not really sure why, but as I've gotten older, my primary mode of reading has been listening to either JAWS or to books on tape, or in the Sunday school class at CoOS the folks in that class would pass a book and read it. So I never did that.
I've had a bit of practice in Rob's Bible Bread & Wine class. That has been a good experience. Finding a good font, size, and lighting issues make reading out loud a source of anxiety for me. I generally have talking points for presentations, so reading out loud is different.
All that being said, it went really well. Rob practiced with me beforehand. He wanted to make sure I was safe traveling around. Of course I was fine, I had Doc. When I took Doc up there with me, he had a hard time settling, but once he did, he put his chin on top of my shoe. That made me feel better.
Once we'd read the Gospel and it was time for Rob's sermon, he said that when someone does something new for the first time, it's better not to acknowledge it, so he said that Doc did a good job. That one made me laugh.
So, the cool part is I've done it and doing it again will be that little bit easier. The really neat part is that I'm reading on Palm Sunday. The call came out for who wanted to do what and I said I'd never done anything during Holy Week before but would like to, so there ya go.
Now, as far as process stuff goes, I've gathered all the paperwork I have to send in. My references have been asked and given a deadline. I've got the appointment for the physical exam scheduled with my family doctor all that's left is to send in my packet, and call the psychologist in Columbia to schedule the testing. Once I have the date for that, things can start moving.
Speaking of my process and CoOS, I got the Acorn today and found out that Charlie- my sponsoring priest is going to be retiring in June. I'm not in panic mode, I'm actually more curious as to what happens to my process. If I don't meet with the Bishop until after June, who goes with me? Even if I meet with him before then, who gets the responsibility of being my sponsoring priest?
I actually kind of find this funny. My process has been full of transitions of all kinds from the very beginning, but I guess with any kind of discernment there comes transitions.
We shall see,
I'll keep you guys posted.
Oh and btw, I'm going to be up in Rock Hill on the 2nd to help with the food packaging event. I figured it'd give me a chance to see some people. I miss you guys.
Peace,
Nancy
Sunday, March 13, 2011
First Sunday of Lent- a couple days in
Hi guys,
So I've been on my Lenten schedule for only a couPle days so far.
I'm finding that when I start morning or evening prayer I get interrupted. I'm not really sure what to do about that. It's beginning to get easier but Particularly in the morning I find myself more focused on how long it's taking rather than what's being said.
I do also find myself sad that I'm the only one doing this. Although I'm grateful to my friend Ben from Vocare who emailed me to tell me I want keeping my schedule. I appreciate that.
I heard from the interns director at the monastery. A bit early considering the application deadline isn't until the 31st. He had concerns about my safety being able to get around. I waited until the next day to email him Bach. I got advice, prayed about it, and slept on it. I'm very happy with what I came up with. He emailed me back thanking me for my thoughtful response and that they were reviewing applications. Now the hard part, waiting.
Other than that, the structure is helping. I'm up early, still adjusting to that and the early-morning quiet.
I think Sundays are a good day to relax my schedule, although I may continue to do the office, I'm not sure yet.
Until next Sunday.
Blessings for a holy Lent,
Nancy
So I've been on my Lenten schedule for only a couPle days so far.
I'm finding that when I start morning or evening prayer I get interrupted. I'm not really sure what to do about that. It's beginning to get easier but Particularly in the morning I find myself more focused on how long it's taking rather than what's being said.
I do also find myself sad that I'm the only one doing this. Although I'm grateful to my friend Ben from Vocare who emailed me to tell me I want keeping my schedule. I appreciate that.
I heard from the interns director at the monastery. A bit early considering the application deadline isn't until the 31st. He had concerns about my safety being able to get around. I waited until the next day to email him Bach. I got advice, prayed about it, and slept on it. I'm very happy with what I came up with. He emailed me back thanking me for my thoughtful response and that they were reviewing applications. Now the hard part, waiting.
Other than that, the structure is helping. I'm up early, still adjusting to that and the early-morning quiet.
I think Sundays are a good day to relax my schedule, although I may continue to do the office, I'm not sure yet.
Until next Sunday.
Blessings for a holy Lent,
Nancy
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return
Good morning all,
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days and decided that now is a good time to implement these things.
As far as Lent goes, I made myself a plan.
This plan started out very simply. I wanted to learn to do the Daily office, and incorporate table blessings into my family's life.
Well, it sort of got bigger from there.
Rob Brown challenged me to do the Daily Office every day for a wweek using the Daily Office online from Mission St. Clare. http://www.missionstclare.com/english/ So, the mobile site that I use on my ipod is a Lot easier to use, but I guess that means I should do some investigating of the desktop version as well. Maybe I'll learn something.
As far as the table blessing aspect goes, I thanked God for everyone that had anything to do with the preparing of what I ate for breakfast. PB&J and a bananna. Not elegent, but there ya go.
So as I started to think about Lent as a whole I stumbled upon something awesome last week. In the newsletter that the Diocese puts out every two weeks by email, there was a link called 'Monastic Internships'.
My first reaction was "Oh wow, that's awesome!" I find it important that what actually got me considering the priesthood in the first-place was a TLC Documentary series called The Monastery where five ordinary guys went to live in a Monestary for 40 days.
So when I saw the link, I immediately felt this urge to learn everything I could about it. So while investigating the site, I found that even though it's a Monastery that consists of men, they're offering the monastic internship experience to women as well. So I was like, "oh yeah, gotta check this out."
The more I read, the stronger my urge became to give it a try. My gut reaction was to fill out the application right there and then. But cooler heads prevailed and I waited. I sent the email to my spiritual director and told him about it and my feelings on it and asked if we could talk about it.
Some of the things drawing me to it are the sense of community where the main focus is their developing a deeper relationship with God, the ability to learn more about the Anglican tradition (I figure if I'm considering being a priest in a church that I don't know much about, I can't really make the best decisions), the structured way of living, and the opportunities to participate in their ministries.
So I talked to Roy about it and I emailed Charlie about it and they both thought it was a great idea, so I filled out the application. Interestingly I ran into a bit of a good problem while filling out the application. They wanted two references, one a clergy-person that knew me very well. Therein lies the problem. The number of clergy I have surrounded myself with could have easily been four or five. So, what I decided to do was to put Roy down as my reference and my best friend Wes as another. I figured with our conversations on lots of things and Roy's understanding of why I found this internship opportunity beneficial would hopefully go a long way.
As with last year when I was applying for Episcopal Service Corps internships, a good reference may not get you into the internship. So I remain gardedly optimistic.
So, back to Lent.
I mentioned the internship because looking at the monastery's website, it gave me an idea. I need structure. In fact, I feel like I'm yearning for some sort of structure. So using their daily schedule as a model, I created my own with a couple goals in mind.
To make space for God every day, to spend quiet time with God.
To give myself a little bit of freedom within the structure. Having choices for things to do helps a lot.
If I'm going to continue on in higher education, I need the GRE. It's all paid for, I just have to take it, I have no more excuses, other than I've been Really lazy. So, I have study time set out to either study the GRE or read some books that I've gathered on spirituality and such.
Other than that, I think just seeing the schedule will make sense.
7:30 Morning Prayer
8:00 Breakfast/ shower
9:00 Quiet time/ walking dogs
10:00-12:30 Study
Housework
Free time
Etc.
12:30 Lunch and clean up
1:30-5:00 Study
Housework
Free time
Etc.
5:00 Feed Dogs/Evening Prayer
5:30-8:00 Dinnertime
8:00 Family time
10:00 Compline/Quiet time
So, I wanted to create a routine that could flex if it needed to. Dinner time in-particular is not a static thing. Especially with my parents working, it could be as late as 9 o'clock.
I've been trying out various aspects of this since Monday. My schedule may change a bit here and there bases on how things are going, but for now I'm going to stick with this basic template.
So now my friends who read my blog, I'm curious, what are your plans for Lent? Don't feel bad if you don't have any, I'm the only one in my house who does.
Blessings to you all.
Leave a Comment with what you're thinking for Lent.
Nancy
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days and decided that now is a good time to implement these things.
As far as Lent goes, I made myself a plan.
This plan started out very simply. I wanted to learn to do the Daily office, and incorporate table blessings into my family's life.
Well, it sort of got bigger from there.
Rob Brown challenged me to do the Daily Office every day for a wweek using the Daily Office online from Mission St. Clare. http://www.missionstclare.com/english/ So, the mobile site that I use on my ipod is a Lot easier to use, but I guess that means I should do some investigating of the desktop version as well. Maybe I'll learn something.
As far as the table blessing aspect goes, I thanked God for everyone that had anything to do with the preparing of what I ate for breakfast. PB&J and a bananna. Not elegent, but there ya go.
So as I started to think about Lent as a whole I stumbled upon something awesome last week. In the newsletter that the Diocese puts out every two weeks by email, there was a link called 'Monastic Internships'.
My first reaction was "Oh wow, that's awesome!" I find it important that what actually got me considering the priesthood in the first-place was a TLC Documentary series called The Monastery where five ordinary guys went to live in a Monestary for 40 days.
So when I saw the link, I immediately felt this urge to learn everything I could about it. So while investigating the site, I found that even though it's a Monastery that consists of men, they're offering the monastic internship experience to women as well. So I was like, "oh yeah, gotta check this out."
The more I read, the stronger my urge became to give it a try. My gut reaction was to fill out the application right there and then. But cooler heads prevailed and I waited. I sent the email to my spiritual director and told him about it and my feelings on it and asked if we could talk about it.
Some of the things drawing me to it are the sense of community where the main focus is their developing a deeper relationship with God, the ability to learn more about the Anglican tradition (I figure if I'm considering being a priest in a church that I don't know much about, I can't really make the best decisions), the structured way of living, and the opportunities to participate in their ministries.
So I talked to Roy about it and I emailed Charlie about it and they both thought it was a great idea, so I filled out the application. Interestingly I ran into a bit of a good problem while filling out the application. They wanted two references, one a clergy-person that knew me very well. Therein lies the problem. The number of clergy I have surrounded myself with could have easily been four or five. So, what I decided to do was to put Roy down as my reference and my best friend Wes as another. I figured with our conversations on lots of things and Roy's understanding of why I found this internship opportunity beneficial would hopefully go a long way.
As with last year when I was applying for Episcopal Service Corps internships, a good reference may not get you into the internship. So I remain gardedly optimistic.
So, back to Lent.
I mentioned the internship because looking at the monastery's website, it gave me an idea. I need structure. In fact, I feel like I'm yearning for some sort of structure. So using their daily schedule as a model, I created my own with a couple goals in mind.
To make space for God every day, to spend quiet time with God.
To give myself a little bit of freedom within the structure. Having choices for things to do helps a lot.
If I'm going to continue on in higher education, I need the GRE. It's all paid for, I just have to take it, I have no more excuses, other than I've been Really lazy. So, I have study time set out to either study the GRE or read some books that I've gathered on spirituality and such.
Other than that, I think just seeing the schedule will make sense.
7:30 Morning Prayer
8:00 Breakfast/ shower
9:00 Quiet time/ walking dogs
10:00-12:30 Study
Housework
Free time
Etc.
12:30 Lunch and clean up
1:30-5:00 Study
Housework
Free time
Etc.
5:00 Feed Dogs/Evening Prayer
5:30-8:00 Dinnertime
8:00 Family time
10:00 Compline/Quiet time
So, I wanted to create a routine that could flex if it needed to. Dinner time in-particular is not a static thing. Especially with my parents working, it could be as late as 9 o'clock.
I've been trying out various aspects of this since Monday. My schedule may change a bit here and there bases on how things are going, but for now I'm going to stick with this basic template.
So now my friends who read my blog, I'm curious, what are your plans for Lent? Don't feel bad if you don't have any, I'm the only one in my house who does.
Blessings to you all.
Leave a Comment with what you're thinking for Lent.
Nancy
Monday, March 7, 2011
Couldn't wait until Wednesday, at least not for this part
Hi guys,
So I decided this year I'm going to make Lent a time that I'm going to be very intentional about my faith. I've been plagued with feelings of inadequacy again in-particular when it comes to knowing scripture. I know bits and pieces and want to know more.
One way to do this is by doing the Daily Office each day. I think I needed to know that someone cared that I was doing it. Father Rob challenged me to do both Morning and Evening Prayer. He wanted me to start using mission St. Claire online and in a week, we'll see about using the BCP. That may not work for me, we shall see.
On Wednesday Evening, I'll blog more about the rest of my plans for Lent. Maybe this year I can make it work.
Much love and prayers for you all.
Nancy
So I decided this year I'm going to make Lent a time that I'm going to be very intentional about my faith. I've been plagued with feelings of inadequacy again in-particular when it comes to knowing scripture. I know bits and pieces and want to know more.
One way to do this is by doing the Daily Office each day. I think I needed to know that someone cared that I was doing it. Father Rob challenged me to do both Morning and Evening Prayer. He wanted me to start using mission St. Claire online and in a week, we'll see about using the BCP. That may not work for me, we shall see.
On Wednesday Evening, I'll blog more about the rest of my plans for Lent. Maybe this year I can make it work.
Much love and prayers for you all.
Nancy
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