Transfer complete, at long last

Preparing to meet the MFC

A quick self-portrait snapped in our hotel room before we drove to Eliot & Pickett House

Nearly seven years after David Pettee warned me that “the process tends to move slowly,” the transfer of my ministerial credentials from the PC(USA) to the UUA is complete.

For nearly seven years, I have carried the live coal of vocation with me; now I have a place where I can set it down, and let it catch fire.

In the biblical numerology of my childhood, seven was the number of completion, and that feels about right.

I am so grateful for all of you who sustained and supported me during this long process–– helping me remember my true self, suggesting connections in my new religious home, giving me swift kicks whenever self-doubt had me dragging my feet.

If I haven’t thanked you personally, chalk it up to my MFC-addled brain. I remember you with gratitude in odd moments, when I’m away from a phone, when I’m walking the dog, as my head hits the pillow at night. Thank you.

Some of you have asked about my next steps. I’ve been “cleared for search,” which kind of means “hurry up and wait.”  For now, my main tasks are reading the Settlement Handbook, and preparing the packet of information that I will share with congregations. As the Transitions Office begins posting available positions, I’ll start imagining life in those new places. Even if everything moves at lightning speed, the earliest we would leave Alaska would be late summer, 2013. Given the glacial pace of the last seven years, I have no illusions.

So the next steps are still almost completely unknown, and yet I feel a new sense of security, knowing that whatever direction the path takes, I’m walking “in fellowship” with my new community of faith, together with a new community of colleagues.

Serendipity and the Interdependent Web

Sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about something–or just meant to.  The search box above was no help on this one.  My apologies if I’m repeating myself!

Call it the luck of the Irish.

Almost five months ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, I published a post here on nagoonberry that I called “The Ministry of Reading.”  I wrote:

We live in a time of information overload.  Some of us have that time and inclination to sift through that information, gathering up the parts that interest us, the pieces that seem valuable, important.  And that is a ministry, a ministry of reading.

My great-grandmother from County Cork must have sprinkled fairy dust on that post.

In that week’s Interdependent Web, Kenneth Sutton wrote, “Turns out Nagoonberry is a UU after my own heart.”  He also sent a Facebook message to me, asking, “Are you Nagoonberry?”

At that time, very few UUs knew that “nagoonberry” was Heather Christensen.  But I’d outed myself on the UU Growth Lab list of UU bloggers, and that’s how Kenneth found me.

UU World magazine was looking for a freelance editor for their blog of blogs, the Interdependent Web.  ”Your post about reading as a ministry made me think you might be a good fit,” Kenneth said.

Less than a month after St. Patrick’s Day, Kenneth introduced me online as the new editor of the Interdependent Web.

In one of our first conversations about editorial perspective, I told Kenneth that I bring an outsider’s perspective—relatively new to UUism, a member of a fellowship way up in Alaska, far, far away from Boston.  He said, “You’ll be surprised how soon that outsider status will go away.  People will start assuming that you’re in the inner circle.”

Last October when I met with the RSCC in San Francisco, one of the committee members asked how I planned to get to know UUism outside of Alaska.  I talked about reading blogs, and connecting on Facebook.  She didn’t look convinced.  Little did either of us know how strong these virtual connections would grow in less than a year.

Thank you, Kenneth, for paying attention, for extending a hand of possibility.  And thank you, too, to our wondrously mysterious universe–creative, serendipitous, and interdependent.

Grateful for Serendipity

Second-Act Aces – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com.

I’m posting this link to Timothy Egan’s column in the NYT today, grateful for the timing of its appearance.

I’ve spent today with six years of paperwork spread out on the massage table that doubles as an extra horizontal surface in our condo.

Six years of correspondence with the UUA’s Ministerial Credentialing Office.  Six years of status reports and required forms.  CPE evaluations.  Psych evals.  Life and vocation examined, and examined again.  A winding road that has begun to feel like a tightly-wound spiral staircase.  Commitment and despair, chasing each other’s tail.

Today was about commitment.  About asking for the help that will propel me forward.  About clarity, and the courage to see in myself the minister everyone else sees.

So I’m thankful for this celebration of second acts.  Here’s to believing that the promise I showed as a young Presbyterian minister will be fulfilled in greater depth and maturity as a 40-something UU minister, and beyond.

Lucky in Love

Coming to terms with spinal cord injury is a life-long endeavor.  Lately I’ve noticed that my partner is talking about it simply as being unlucky–no one to blame, no need to find a reason why it happened.  Just unlucky.

But we’ve also been talking lately about ways in which she’s been really lucky.

She was lucky that her mom is a disciplined, detail-oriented person who taught her the excellent self-care habits that have served her well through 30 years of paralysis.

She was lucky to meet a teacher who joined forces with her mother to fight the public school system for the things she needed as a student–things like making sure the sidewalks were plowed in the winter.  Her mother and this teacher were my partner’s most faithful cheerleaders, telling her repeatedly, “Yes, you can.”

And more recently she has been lucky enough to find a master aircraft mechanic who was able to imagine that someone with paraplegia might actually be an excellent mechanic, who decided to give her a chance, and who was willing to learn from her about what it’s like to live life in a chair.

This is her boss last Sunday.  He crawled into the laundry closet on top of the dryer, reaching down to the bottom of the dryer to attach the gas line, and up to the ceiling to attach the dryer vent.  I didn’t get a photo of him leaping out nimbly from behind the washer (before we stacked the dryer on top).

We also had heavy lifting help from a new neighbor who has become a very good friend.  My partner doesn’t feel comfortable with very many people–the result of a lifetime of being treated badly by people who can’t handle the chair.  But this new friend is someone she has trusted from the moment she met him, and he and his wife have become treasured friends.

Lucky in love, indeed.

I Am Not Invisible

Yesterday afternoon our dog Brady and I went on a short “taking care of business” walk.  Brady decided that the perfect pooping spot was right outside the building.  As I straightened from scooping the poop, a red, full-size pickup stopped next to us. A young guy (30s-40s) got out of the truck.

“Hi,” I said, poop-bag in hand.

“Hi,” he said.  ”I just wanted to say that I’ve lived here for three years, and no one picks up their dog’s poop.  But you do, every time.  Thank you.”

You could have blown me over with a feather.  It was a deeply meaningful experience of neighborliness.

Sometimes when you try to do what you think is the right thing, day in and day out, especially something as humbling as picking up after your dog, you feel like no one notices.   You wonder why you bother.

Then someone sees you.  And thanks you.

And it makes you want to keep on keeping on.