Moving on

I can't find my phone charger. Chuck can't find his work uniforms.

We had decided we could move ourselves without help. Ha! By the third day of moving things--really, how could anyone have so much stuff!--the carefully executed, brilliantly organized move was a historic concept and we were just flinging boxes and that annoying junk that never packs easily into every corner of the house and garage.

But we managed to get in to the new house, at last, though I keep looking at the boxes and shuddering. Where is that stupid phone charger?

It must be some bizarre act of faith that, facing the prospect of not having a job when the four upstate New York UMC conferences merge, Chuck and I bought a house. What's also bizarre is that this is our third house, and its the third time we closed and moved in October/November. The two previous times we purchased a house, one of us lost our job within six months of the purchase.

Not that I'm worried or anything, but the patterns are interesting.

Of course, things ultimately work out. The company taking over the one Chuck had worked for in St. Louis not only hired him on, but helped pay for the continuation of our insurance since I was a stay-at-home-mom, seven months pregnant with our second kid at the time of the lay-off. That's not to say we accepted this transition calmly. No, there was quite a bit of sobbing panic and a deep sense of cold that often comes with emotional shock.

The second time we bought a house, which was in Minneapolis, the newspaper where I worked was sold just before Christmas and the new company laid 40 out of 180 people off. I was one of the 40.

This time, I was a little less panicked. I looked for a job, of course, but also took the time to unpack from the move three months earlier and get the house in order. Then, my mother had a heart attack and I was able to drive down to St. Louis to be with her, something that wouldn't have been possible if I'd been working for a newspaper.

When I finally got a job, it was one of the best jobs of my life and I learned things I needed to move on to the work I have ended up doing with the church. It's work I wouldn't trade for the world; I love what I do and am grateful that I can work for something I believe in deeply.

So, I firmly believe that things will work out. It dawned on me, as I talk with other staff facing the same future, that there is always room at God's table, but it might not be the table you expect to sit at.

And as the anxiety levels at the office rise and fall, we expect the church to behave differently than corporate America--which, as my husband pointed out, they have been, so far.

It's hard not to view what happens next without getting mired in what actions taken mean--if you aren't part of the new staff, are you being rejected because you lack skills? because you're not particularly easy to work with? because you're somehow lacking. The worst part may be knowing that you have to go through some kind of vetting process, again, and, of course, insecurities kick in and muddle your thinking.

How, then, do we look to the future of an institution AND whether we have a place in it or not? It's hard because you want instant answers, positive reassurance, things that do not exist. I keep coming back to the idea of following a pattern in sewing, something I wrote a column about once.

It's really exciting to plan on creating something new, even if it's just making something like a jacket or skirt. I lay out the pattern, cut the pieces, mark the fabric and begin to following the step-by-step instructions of the pattern and try to visualize what the instructions are telling me to do. Inevitably, when I get to a collar or sleeve part, the instructions become visually incomprehensible. I just can't see how doing steps a, b and c will result in d. So, I think, "there's got to be a mistake," and do what I think is right.

I end up ripping out a bunch of tightly sewn seams.

So, I try, again, and again, it comes out wrong. Again, I have to rip out seams. The fabric is starting to look a little frayed and I'm starting to feel the same.

Finally, when I stop beating my head against my "I know better than the pattern/they must have made a mistake" need to be in control, I give up and just do exactly what the pattern says, step-by-step, surrendering to trusting that what I do will produce the desired outcome.

And, darn, if it doesn't always turn out exactly right! At some point, after doing this often enough, you finally say, "Okay, I'm not even going to try to visualize how this will work; I'm just going to go along with the process." (Process is a big word in the church these days, by the way.)

In the meantime, I plan on enjoying our new home. There's lots of work to be done, the honey-do list is growing and we're blessed to be living in a gorgeous area in the mountains near a river.

Now, if I can only find my phone charger.

Giddy and hopeful

Yesterday, Chuck woke up and said he felt like a kid on Christmas Eve day. Today, we're both still reeling with excitement. So many people around me were pessimistic about the election and thought that victory would be snatched from Obama in the wee hours of the morning. I'm so glad, and so thrilled that the pessimists were disappointed.

I think, for the first time in a long time, I'm proud to be an American and I'm feeling hope about possibilities.

Just jumping in ...

Yesterday, my husband and I went to the local Obama/Biden headquarters to make phone calls urging people in Pennsylvania to vote. It's the first time I've worked for a political candidate since the ill-fated McGovern campaign years ago.

Because I cut my political teeth on that campaign and another--a California initiative called the "Clean Environment Act," which was Proposition 9 in 1972--it was very easy to get cynical. Not only had I felt that the Watergate break-in wasn't given the attention it deserved before the election, I was witness to a lot of unethical behavior prior to the vote on Proposition 9. For example, there were rolling brown and black outs throughout California during the week before the election--warning people that if the proposition passed, and a moratorium was put on nuclear power, Californians could expect more brown and black outs. There were ads threatening that yellow fever would return to California--it had really never been there in the first place--if DDT was banned, as Prop 9 called for. There was a strange and eerie silence from the press about activities in support of the proposition, things like a protest outside the anti-Prop 9 advertising headquarters by Ralph Nader, which I learned about because friends in the Midwest and East sent me clippings. There wasn't a word about it in California media. Working these political campaigns was a civic and media lesson all in itself.

Amazing, really, that I should still be shocked by the actions of those in power who use their positions not for the greater good but for their own self-interests. Is jaded naivete at all possible?

Nonetheless, it's exciting to see the response Obama is inspiring in so many people who might not have felt empowered or interested in being a part of the system. My daughter attended her first caucus this year simply to vote for Obama. That alone inspires me with hope!

But it's also been difficult to believe the racism that keeps popping up, people saying, "I wouldn't vote for a black person ..." (though often the word used isn't "black.") I knew racism was alive and well in this country, but I am appalled that such hateful, blatant racism is doing so well.

I pray and hope that the election Tuesday goes well, that people aren't disenfranchised, ballot boxes manipulated or the "Bradley effect" doesn't come into play. If so, I pray for this country in the aftermath.