Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

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I am working out of my home office these days and in that privacy, trying some new things. At my desk, I sit on one those large rubber exercise balls that became popular a few years back. I have to keep adjusting and rebalancing my body. It is a little unsettling because you don’t ever completely forget your body working like this. The movement can distract me as well—it is tempting to bounce a bit, just because it is fun to do. And I keep wondering how my core muscles are being strengthened, if my posture will improve. Will I get so used to this that it will become as natural as sitting on a regular office chair?

I come from a family that valued routine, the safety of how things had always been. I laughingly explain that I don’t ever remember any furniture being changed around in my childhood home. It was more than a little stunning, after my husband and I married, to realize that I could expect him to get in a furniture-moving jag with some regularity. I can’t even begin to explain how uncomfortable that made me. “But I liked the sofa where it was. The aesthetics of the room said something about me. I was careful when I put things where I did and I chose the very best spots for them”. My spouse-man would laugh and tease while I pouted.

Our roles have switched somewhat in our middle years. I’ve been the one pushing recently to move the furniture around in the house, trying new arrangements and uses for the different spaces. It was great when we recently moved around our bedroom furniture. After moving the bed, I get to look at our room from a completely new perspective. And I am the one trying very new ways of being a clergy person in the church—still doing work in the parish setting and also working with ECF on our new Vital Teams program.

I see the challenges of ministry from a totally new angle these days and it is both exhilarating and daunting. It fills me with hope and I wonder some days about our church. I have to use new vocational muscles and I have to work a little harder to stay focused. I will not feel settled for a good long while, I suspect, and that is not so bad. In fact, I might best serve the church if I never get too comfortable and settled again. I wonder, even in jobs we end up holding for years and years, if there are ways to make sure we don’t get too comfortable even if the place we made for ourselves is so perfect we don’t want one little thing to change?