Franken Oliver

So, I haven’t updated this blog in awhile. I’ve been busy. This summer, I dreamed the dream that I would blog every day about my internship but that hasn’t happened. By the time I get home in the evening, and Oliver is put to sleep, the dishes are done, and late night emails are responded to, I’m already past my bed time. My forgetful parent brain has already melded with my sleep-deprived brain. It’s hilarious.

With Frankenstorm moved to more Canadian pastures, we’re trying to get back to our lives even though cabin fever has set it. The buses were filled with non-bus people today which made the already strange and crowded moving metal sardine cans (since the subways were down) even more annoying. We’re still trying to learn when lower Manhattan will receive power. And through all of this, Oliver handled it like a champ. He’s been his usual, sometimes annoying, self. It’s like he has no idea that a hurricane went through the area. He’s still his normal, fat, fussy, smily self.

So, tonight, he woke up from a short nap, and decided to lose his lid for no reason. This isn’t abnormal so I went through our normal routine. I held him, carried him around the apartment, harassed his mom pretending that the voice she was hearing was really Oliver’s, etc. When that didn’t work, I gave him some Gripe water and changed his diaper. And when that didn’t soothe him, I put on some iTunes and we had a dance party. I held him close and we rocked out for forty five minutes before he fell asleep. While I held him and danced around, I couldn’t think that there isn’t a sermon in this experience – especially with the fact that a huge part of my city is suffering, in mourning, and waiting for light and heat to re-enter their lives. He fussed, cried, shed tears – but I didn’t let go. In this time of suffering, that’s what we’re suppose to do. And I hope this is what happens – because the effects of the storm will not end in a week, or a month, or a year. But it’ll last for a long, long, time. And we’ll need to keep holding onto each other for as long as it takes. It’s what the church is called to do.

Oliver finally passed out and I put him down to sleep…which he did for a whopping thirty minutes. He woke up, fussing, crying, and angry. I hate waking up sometimes too little buddy. And…well..here’s your mother. Let’s see if she can calm you down this time.

What I like to tell my son on Sundays

This is what I told my son today.

1. May the Lord bless you and keep you everyday of your life, little buddy.

2. Oh Mother of God! (during a diaper change)

3. Don’t worry buddy. You’re gonna be 12 feet tall, 8,000 tons, and you won’t have to worry about being tackled cuz you’re gonna be a dinosaur on the football field. A real dinosaur! ROAR.

I’m working my way up to being this kind of dad. I’m getting there.

Adventures in Vicaring: being an authority among German pastors

On the first Saturday of every month, my internship site runs a food pantry. Volunteers gather at 9:30 in the morning to sort groceries, place them in bags, and distribute around 120 bags of groceries to people in need. I typically do not participate in the Food Pantry but decided to this month. I arrived at 9:30 am to see about 75 people already lined up outside the church.

I was one of first volunteers (besides the head of this ministry) to show up and we got to work. I watched and mimicked my colleagues. I met some new people. I got to make faces at a baby who is only one day older than Oliver (and born at the same hospital no-less!). Food distribution began in earnest at 10:30 am. I helped record people who came into the door (we keeps tabs on who comes for statistics reporting – we do not require ID nor do we require people to prove their need but it is fascinating to see people who have been using this pantry for years, and since we record the dates they come, we can see when they are more financially stable and when they are not). It was a lot of fun.

About halfway through the distribution, a German tourist descended the stairwell and entered our fellowship hall. He chatted with our ministry director and it seemed he had a group of people who wanted to watch what we were doing. He kept naming dropped a name I didn’t know and said that this person told them to come “see what Advent is doing.” About a dozen people came downstairs, stood to the side, and watched. They asked questions. They all spoke in German. And they soon let us know that they were all German pastors from the Frankfurt area. Their numbers grew from a dozen to twenty. They seemed to be fans that we had a bathroom for anyone to use. We finished our food distribution, made some counts, and tried to hold off the questions from the pastors as graciously as we could. They were asking questions that our volunteers didn’t know the answer to but they were quickly introduced to me and I took them aside, once my work was done, to be grilled by these German pastors.

So – there I was – in the fellowship hall at my internship site, discussing our food ministry programs with twenty pastors from Germany. They were all much older than me but most listened to me as one in authority (there were a few who looked like they’d rather be visiting Times Square but that’s fine – who could blame them?) They spoke perfect English, asked good questions, were curious about our partnerships with local government and other congregations/synagogues in the areas, and were very concerned about the people who entered our doors. They asked if I visited them (we don’t really). They seemed partially concerned that there were no pastors (just vicars) helping with the distribution. They asked if I tried to witness their living conditions and see if I can improve them (in a perfect world, we could do that but, again, as an institution, we have limited resources – they only thing we could do, and that we do do, is direct people to other charities and government sources of help). That last question, they repeated several times. That seemed to be the hardest question to answer for them. They spoke as committed individuals to the cause of social justice. None mentioned God, or Jesus, or spoke in any faith-based language. They were concerned about knowing people, forming relationships, and having resources to help change the living situations of the people in the neighborhood. I admired that.

But it came off as very…I dunno. Their language and mannerisms seemed to suppose that my congregation should have access to financial and institutional resources that we really don’t. They kept asking about food donations from supermarkets (which we accept) but didn’t seem to understand how unreliable such a system is for us and how we use grants (or our own funds) to support our food programs. When I threw out the few financial numbers I knew (and that I might have made up based on some educated guesses), the numbers surprised them. They didn’t seem to speak, or think, in a language of dollars and cents. Rather, they assumed an environment of institutional cooperation that allowed mutual enhancement of mission. The problem is that this doesn’t exist, all that much, in the United States. We have to think in dollars and cents or else social ministry just doesn’t get done.

The group of pastors thanked me for my time and they were very nice. They were inquisitive, always asking questions, and in their questions, pointing towards institutional relationships that we might be interested in working on. But institutional relationships are hard to maintain. Right now, from my experience with our neighborhood ecumenical groups, it is individual relationships between leaders that sustain these relationships. If that one-on-one relationship is lost, or broken, the institutional relationship dissolves. That’s probably something we should work on as group – but how to change that, I do not know.

Oh. And one more thing. They kept taking pictures of ME as I spoke. That made me really self-conscious. I just wish I knew they were going to be coming. I would have dressed up. I would have put on a collar. I would have made sure that they weren’t experiencing a vicar who attended a food pantry wearing a t-shirt with a hotdog, in an eye patch, holding a smoking gun. Darn it.

Vicar thought of the day: Divorce

I wonder if the reason why Spark curriculum series decided to talk about Genesis 2 on Sunday rather than Mark 10 because Genesis 2 is a lot more fun and easy to turn into games and color leaflets. I don’t blame them for that – I’ve been wracking my brain all week to think if there’s a way to talk about divorce, and Jesus’s harshness, in a Sunday School setting. I really can’t think of one that is healthy and easy to condense into a 45 minute teaching moment. So, Genesis 2 it is then. Of course, Genesis 2 isn’t easy either, especially for those of us who find “complementary” theology ridiculous and serve in a denominational body that allows women pastors and leaders, mostly because of the history around the use of Genesis 2 can be troubling and hard to examine. But I still wonder – can there not be a space, in church, to talk about divorce? There should be. I just don’t know how to do it yet.

I am bad at the blogging

You know, I thought that, during my internship, I’d have time to blog all the time. But…I…yeah..that’s not happening. Everything is going great. I’m writing Sunday School lessons, visiting folks in hospital, and sending out 200 emails a day. It has been a blast. But, well, when I come home, I see these two, and I just can’t find the time to write about the day.

I’m enjoying be a vicaring dad.

Things they don’t tell you about urban ministry

Today was our first confirmation class of the season. It went well. We had a large class, the kids were in the right spirit, and it went really well. I was happy with the whole thing.

But there is something they don’t tell you about urban ministry that they really should. My internship site tries to keep its doors open as much as possible. It is a rarity in urban ministry to have a church with open doors. So, as the entire class sat in the front of the sanctuary, teaching, learning, and growing, several gentlemen and women from the neighborhood, or who were just passing through, entered the sanctuary. They would sit, pray, spend the time they need with their thoughts and with God, and then go about their way. This is normal at my internship site. A gentlemen came in like every other. He sat in the very back pew, next to a parent of one of the confirmation kids who came early. He sat there for maybe thirty minutes. As we neared the end of confirmation, wrapping up our talk about the first commandment and a nice derail about whether God is a hypocrite for being a jealous God, seven uniformed policemen walk through the door.

My internship supervisor quickly got up and met the officers. The officers approached the gentlemen in the back row and questioned him. It took only a moment. They confirmed what they need to and escort him out of the building to arrest him. The cops told my supervisor that the guy appears to have stole an iPhone and they tracked him through the GPS on the phone to the church. The parent of the confirmation kid tells my supervisor that the gentlemen was sitting and waiting to talk to the pastor (though my supervisor never saw this gentlemen before). The kids, of course, were curious and everyone was watching and going “what’s going on?” It was wild. As the gentlemen was escorted out of the building, one of our students saw the undercover cops who also showed up randomly to help out. She turned to me and said “okay, this is now my high for the week.”

Yes it was kid. Yes it was.

New Vicar Shadow Bag Blues

I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time blogging as I run through my internship. The combination of working full time, with my wife back to work part time, and Oliver (who is staring and cooing at me as I type this), is exhausting. And I have a great kid! I sleep through the night! But, still, I’m exhausted. When I come home at the end of the day, all I want to do is bounce him on a ball and veg out. The million blog posts that I have swirling in my head are just going to have to stay there for awhile.

However, I would like share this one quote from some of the pastors at my church. Last Sunday (not yesterday) as I robed up in the Sacristy for the second service, I was assigned several liturgical parts to play in the service. Besides my usual singing and dancing (jazz hands), I was told to lead the congregation through the confession.

Pastor One: “I’ve always felt it appropriate that the vicars lead the confession…”
Pastor Two: “…since they have way more sins than we do.”

Lord, let us pray. I ask, if I ever have my own intern to supervise, that the dryness of my humor grows so that it brings joy to all that hear it. I’m definitely thankful for what I’m getting at my internship so far.

Deity, meet Oliver. Oliver, cry at Deity.

At today’s 9/11 Unity Walk in New York City (I’ll hopefully write more about the event latter), Oliver was a champ. He cried and freaked out like the best of them. I picked him up from home, wore him on the subway while wearing my collar (and reading Rad Dad), and we arrived in Washington’s Square park only 15 minutes after the event started! As we caught up with the group, we began our walk through lower Manhattan, arriving in one sacred space after another, listening to speakers from all sorts of faith backgrounds, and moving throughout the city. Oliver slept through most of the walk. That didn’t faze him. But it seemed that sacred spaces were just a little too much today.

One of the venues was in Soho. We found an unmarked door next to a restaurant being renovated. The door was opened and a staircase confronted us. After two long flights up, an opened door and a young woman welcomed me to enter a lovely room full of windows. But there was a catch – my shoes had to come off. I flipped off my red chucks, bent down with Oliver strapped to my chest (cuz I’m a pro), and found a lovely light blue shelf to put them on. I entered the room, looked around, and thought I was in a yoga studio. I mean…it just felt like it. It seemed a tad too…relaxed…to be in the middle of NYC, you know? It was beautiful with a lovely kitchen, lots of shoes, and it looked incredibly open, spacious, peaceful, with a large center piece decoration that was golden but not ornate. Then I noticed it. We weren’t just in a yoga studio – we were in an active hindu temple and before us wasn’t just a decoration, it was an actual deity. And as the group gathered, our speaker began to speak. And Oliver decided to lose his mind.

I know – I know. He was hot, hungry, and he woke up to discover himself face-to-face with the evil that is polyester blend clergy shirts. I would have lost my mind too. So, I stood in the back, and tried to soothe him. I got close. People didn’t mind. After the speaker finished, everyone said they were happy that Oliver was there. Some folks even took my picture (even though Oliver was cranky). But feeding him wasn’t working so I decided to change his diaper. I waited in line for the restroom and he kept melting down. Finally, once we were in the bathroom, and I began to change his diaper on the floor (and I’m still terrible at taking the Ergo off by myself and putting it back on), he howled. I mean, he howled. And it echoed throughout the temple. While I got him changed and rehooked on, I dreaded what I would see when I came out of the restroom. Would they all be staring at me? Would they think I’m a terrible father? Would my internship supervisor disown me? Luckily, everyone left the building, heading to a new place. It was just me, a screaming baby, a temple servant, and the deity. That deity. Staring at me. And Oliver kept howling. We left, and following standard protocal, he was quiet by the time I reached the fourth step down the stairwell. Whether Oliver was voicing a theological concern or just being a baby, I’ll never know. But that deity got to experience the meltdown that is Oliver. Welcome to the club big guy – welcome to the club.

Everyday I’m Vicaring

On Sunday, September 2, I started my full year internship at Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan. I’ve been the field ed/seminarian intern for the last two years but I’m now full time. I don’t have time for a full write up of what’s been happening but I’d like to share some highlights.

  • After my sermon on Sunday, I ate pancakes full of cookie dough. My teeth hurt just writing that.
  • While wearing my collar on Sunday, and leaving the subway station, I passed by a man begging for money on the street. After he insulted a young couple in front of me (who were ignoring him – the proper NYC response), he saw me, grabbed his throat, and kept saying “father! father!” while locked in a death stare. It was a very weird experience that I didn’t know how to react to.
  • I have my own voice mail box now. I’m fancy.
  • I’m consider going to a rock show with fellow parishioners to support a member of my congregation rocking out as the drummer in Hannah vs the many as part of my ministry.
  • On the ride into the office on my first day, it was very strange to be actually commuting to work with everyone else.
  • It’s still weird turning away people who randomly walk into the church and ask for money (which we don’t give out to walk-ins). I had to turn down a family yesterday (while directing them to other local charities and resources that are available to them).
  • There’s been a big pile of Dum-dum lollipops that I have been devouring all week.
  • Being away from Oliver has been tough.
  • I’ve forgotten something vital at home every day this week. Today, I left my coffee on the kitchen counter. WHYYYYY.
  • Being a part of bible studies is one of my favorite things about the church.
  • The new vicar at Trinity 100th street seems nice.
  • And I started out my vicarship with a cold that the whole family is now enjoying. Oliver’s coughs and sneezes are adorable, and sad, at the same time.

This is going to be fun.