Don't it always seem to go ...

I've had the song Big Yellow Taxi going through my head today. I'm old enough to remember Joni Mitchell's original recording of this song but young enough to give props to Counting Crows for their respectable cover of it. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

I lost a fellow sojourner in the faith this week. The Rev. Mary Pat Ashby was well beloved in the Diocese of Maryland and certainly there were many who knew her better than I did; however, she graced me with time and care, especially in my call to serve as a priest.

I met Mary Pat+ at Diocesan Center in the summer of 1996. I had been selected to be part of a five woman delegation to the Diocese of Tokyo to discuss women's ordination to the priesthood which had been considered by their national synod convention the prior year. The vote was split with the House of Deputies (lay persons, deacons and priests) voting in favor of full ordination for women and the House of Bishops voting against. There was discouragement among the people, especially those women who felt called to the priesthood and had to continue waiting.

That September, the five of us journeyed to Tokyo for a whirlwind 12 day trip. I say whirlwind not just because of the pace of all our visits and presentations (and there were many panel discussions with lots of question and answer sessions), but also because Typhoon Violet made an appearance that first Sunday we were to visit our sister congregations! We all made it to our various churches in spite of wind, downed trees and flooded streets. We were all greeted most warmly and shown amazing hospitality.

Midway through the trip, we went into the Japanese Alps (yes, they have serious mountains there!). There we spent two days with women and men in retreat where we were housed in a dormitory style setting. Mary Pat+ and I went walking early the first morning we were there ... and found ourselves locked out of the building. No matter, there was an open window and with a boost, up Mary Pat+ went and scrambled through the window. We had a hard time stifling our laughter so as not to wake our companions.

After the retreat, Mary Pat+ and I were slated to go on to Nagoya for a Sunday service and to speak at "St. Matthew's Church" while the rest of our group went to Osaka. Our guide was Yoko Tachikawa - a very short Japanese woman who spoke no English. We figured we stood out in a crowd, so English or no English, Yoko would be able to find us if we got separated. We boarded the train to Gifu City where Yoko's husband Paul+ was the priest at the local Anglican church. Paul+ spoke a little English and drove us from the train station to our hotel. As Paul+ sped along the narrow road, he got just a bit too close to the railing on the right side of the car and BAM! off went the side mirror! Mary Pat+ and I about jumped out of our skin but Paul+ seemed rather nonplussed about the whole thing ... which made us politely stifle our laughter until we got into our hotel room. I swear we laughed until it hurt!

In hindsight, that trip, and our misadventures on it, inched me closer to ordination to the priesthood. Mary Pat+ quietly supported me and gave me encouragement. As a former transitional ministries officer, she helped review my resume and my CDO profile with helpful suggestions. She knew how difficult my first year of ordained ministry was. Closing a church is never on a new priest's radar and to find myself on Good Friday saying good-bye to the members of that church and knowing I had nowhere to go on Easter Sunday was just devastating. My first Easter as a priest ... all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Last year, Mary Pat+ retired from Grace Episcopal in New Market. She called me before she left and basically set me up to be the supply priest for a few months while the congregation took the time to call an interim. It was the first Easter where I was the chief celebrant at the Eucharist. Yes, I had assisted in other congregations in prior years, but it wasn't quite the same. Mary Pat+ made sure I would be chief celebrant at Grace on the holiest day of the Christian year - and for that I will always be grateful.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? I will miss Mary Pat+ and will wait with patient expectation for the day when we will see each other again.

How'd you get into the business?

In his book Have a Little Faith: A True Story, Mitch Albom asks his rabbi Albert Lewis this question: "How'd you get into the business?" How indeed? Tweaking this question a bit, how did we get to this point in our life and faith journey?

I don't have some kind of Pauline Damascus Road story of conversion. I was baptized as an infant and I've never known a time when I was not part of the Church - and that's the "capital C" Church universal. I certainly had my time of straying away in late high school and my college years. But in 1988, I moved to Maryland to be with my beloved husband. On the morning when I left my home and my parents, amid many tears, my mother said, "Find yourself a good church when you get to Maryland. The church will be your family when we are far apart." No truer or wiser words could have been said in that moment.

I joined All Saints Episcopal in Frederick when I arrived in Maryland. I'll be honest - the reason I chose them was because of the size of their ad in the Yellow Pages (remember, web sites weren't around then!). Having come from California where the churches are all large, this was the milieu in which I was most comfortable. I had a morbid fear that if I joined a small church, I'd be asked to run for vestry the minute I darkened the door. Yes, an unfounded prejudice, but I was only 24 years old so chalk it up to inexperience.

I spent 13 years at All Saints and in that time my husband was baptized and confirmed, I gave birth to two daughters (both of whom were baptized there), I served as an usher, assisted the altar guild, taught Sunday School (for middle schoolers, no less) and served a three year term on the vestry. But with the arrival of our daughters and a move west of the city, our lives changed and All Saints was no longer a fit with our schedules.

About that time, we started looking at other churches. OK, in fairness, we only looked at one - St. Mark's Lappans. After our second visit, our oldest daughter asked if we were "going to stay here forever." I told her forever was a long time, and she replied, "Well can we at least come back next week? We're in the Sunday School program." I thought that any church which could make room for my kids that quickly was where we needed to be. Case closed!

It was during my time at St. Mark's, a church much smaller than any I had ever attended, that God's call to priestly ministry became unavoidable. I had wrestled off and on with this call since I was 12, back when women could not even serve at the altar, let alone be ordained. In the end, God persisted and I surrendered. I had no idea how God would make this work ... I could not see a way forward.

Well, long story short ... God did make the way. It was the roundabout way which seems to be God's preference (Deuteronomy 2). I was ordained a deacon in June 2007 and a priest in February 2008. But ministry was roundabout too. My first call resulted in shepherding a congregation to a healthy closure, followed by an uncertain period of semi-employment as a supply priest, a short stint as an interim in an inner-city church, a year as a part-time visitation minister at Calvary United Methodist in Frederick, part-time assistant at St. Mark's, Lappans and then almost two years as a hospice chaplain ... before landing in my current call at Grace Episcopal in Brunswick, Maryland.

So, how'd I get into the business? God called and I questioned. God called and I reminded God of my inadequacy. God called and I tried a few lame excuses. God called and I said ... "OK, you got me."

And other duties as may become necessary from time to time

"To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God? It is like a recycling operation ..."

Admittedly, this isn't in the Bible, but perhaps it should be. There is no waste in the Kingdom of God. The economy of God finds use for all things, all people, and all skills - regardless of whatever judgments we might put on those things, people, and skills.

Case in point, when I was a high school student (and yes, my daughters, I can still remember back that far), I took algebra. I shared Fran Lebowitz's sentiment: "In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra." I went through the exercises of solving for x - although I could not for the life of me understand why x couldn't solve his own problems. No matter ... what I did learn was an obscure form of division called "modulo division." This form of division allowed you find a remainder as in 12 divided by 5 equals 10 remainder 2. Modulo division would give you the answer of 2 (the remainder). In the moment, I could not for the life of me see why I was learning this.

Fast forward 20 years to when I owned an IT training and consulting firm. One of the services we offered was custom database design. I had a client who needed to track employee training. In their system, 8 hours of training converted to 1 training day. But, if you went to a 10 hour training, that converted into 2 training days. I needed to convert hours to days ... but this was not simple division with rounding up to the next number. I had to program in a division process that would look to see if there was a remainder ... and then add 1 to the number of training days. 20 years after learning about modulo division, I actually used the darned thing! And it worked beautifully.

Yes, I'll admit to being more geeky than the average priest. I've stepped away from arithmetic work and canons do not allow me to touch money or finances in any way in the parish (be thankful for that). But, occasionally, duty calls me to use a skill in my new call that I had not counted upon using ... at least in the Church. Remember, no waste in God's economy!

Our boiler was acting up and we had a rather chilly worship experience a couple of weeks ago at Grace. When the service technician came out to check, he found that the thermostat was not working as programmed. Admittedly, this was a very old programmable thermostat - my first clue was having to know Morse code to program it (one step above the "smoke signals model"). Anyway, it was time to consolidate the two thermostats we had (one for the boiler, one for the heat pump/AC) into one. When I received the estimate from our technician of $235 to install a basic programmable thermostat, my frugal self about fainted. I knew I could do better at the Home Depot.

The result? For $125 and a little bit of time and geeky research, I installed this 3M Filtrete WIFI enabled thermostat:

And yes, it is in the pulpit! Odd location, I know, but mounting it on a stone wall wasn't the best solution. Besides, when those "hellfire and brimstone" sermons need to be preached, the congregation can get a Sensurround experience. Only kidding ... really.

The best part is if I have a lapse of memory (which is getting more common than I want to admit) and I forget to set the thermostat for a special program only to realize I forgot after driving home, I can use my Android phone app to set the thermostat remotely. Coolness factor - about 10 I'd say.

I'm always amazed how God can find interesting, and often unexpected, ways to use our gifts and graces for the welfare of God's people.