Friday, October 14, 2011Friday Five: Scattered!

Revkjarla has posted an ‘all over the place’ FF for us. Since this fits my personality type and the adult-onset ADD that one therapist said I had, this type of FF is right down my alley.



So, I don't know about you, but I have had quite the scattered week. Sometimes, life is that way, right?


In the spirit of Scattered-ness, I offer you a scattery kind of Friday Five:



1. I lose my keys all of the time. Even if they are in my hand, I still am looking for them. Sigh!

What is something you chronically looking for, if anything?

It is just part of life. I am constantly looking for stuff: keys, billfold, shoes, phone, glasses. I try to plan a bit of extra time before I have to do anything to allow for lost essentials. But I can’t tell you how many times I have truly lost stuff.

2. What movie are you looking forward to watching sometime in the future? (me, the new Footloose!)

I am not much of a movie fan—except Harry Potter. But I generally want to see stuff with Julia Roberts, Helen Mirrin, Judy Dench.

3. What is one of your favorite comfort foods? (me, pizza. hands down).

Pizza isn’t a comfort food—it was generally Sunday night fare because I was too tired to cook. Pot roast in the winter. Chicken salad with grapes and walnuts during the summer. Iced tea, year round—after all I AM a Texan! (but I drink it unsweetened) Potato and leek soup either hot or cold. And PASTA at any time. I spent too much time in Mafia country to not love ‘Sunday gravy’!

4. Story time. Tell us a story of one your favorite people that has touched, blessed your life.

My last parish was a small Lutheran congregation in the country. I loved that bunch but their cultural background was quite different from mine. They had never heard of a rhetorical question and would simply answer the questions from their pews. So I finally realized that my sermons would be ‘dialog homilies’ whether I liked it or not.

I had a veterinarian in the parish—very smart but who was less likely to pick up on the allegories that I was trying to paint in my sermons. I was preaching on one of the healing stories. My mother in her last year could not see, hear, or speak but loved my touch and I was sharing how our touch, like Jesus’ touch is so important. I shared how my family was ‘stiff-upper lip British stock and hugging and holding hands was not part of our skill-set. But in the past years I had learned to be ‘touchier’ because of mom’s need.

I even said “our animals even need our touch, don’t they Dr._____?” She replied in true Germanic form: “Actually it is only the predator animals who like to be touched. Prey animals like sheep, cattle and horses find it difficult to be touched.” Well, that didn’t quite fit into my sermon so I tried to salvage my sermon by making a typical Anglican smart response—“I guess that would make us British stiff upper lip types prey, huh? Then one of the Swedes in the choir just chortled and said: “To us Vikings they are!” Here ended the lesson, I can assure you!

5. What do you do to focus or calm or center yourself? (please, I need ideas!!!)

There are several things: One is mental, centering prayer—a repetitive chant or phrase that I can use until I can calm. Big breaths—sighs that allow me to get enough air to calm down, a phrase that I can chant or run through my scattered brain. I found that meditative prayer was the vehicle that could allow me to attend to anxious moments in ministry without being overwhelmed by them. My natural tendency is scattered too so learning ways to control my anxiety or defuse it has been very important. Sometimes I had to walk away (especially in angry moments) in order to regroup, calm myself so I could re-enter the conversation.

BONUS: Share the first thing (or second thing) that comes to your mind after your read this!



When I read this I said “Ah, revkjarla is an ENFP just like me.”  (see below)There are a lot of us in this business but there aren’t too many of us in the pews. Just remember being scattered means that we can also multi-task. Scattered is when we are anxious—Multi-tasking is what we are able to do when we aren’t anxious because we can think of many different things at the same time. We are awesome!