Fog, Spider Web, and Baby Turnip Greens

Fall continues to creep into our lives, a small inch at a time on some days, with the dull roar of heavy rain others. Except for maybe twice this month, the mornings have been cool and damp. There have been a handful of days where a light sweater felt good. We aren’t crossing the 90 degree mark any longer, for which I am grateful. When we lived in Memphis, I developed a really bad allergy to Goldenrod in particular, enough that for a while I had to use an inhaler because I’d start wheezing. I held my breath last year waiting for the allergy to kick up and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t. This year—not so much. The Goldenrod is nearing its peak and I have had some epic sneeze and sniffles episodes. The body remembering, I suppose.

It is also October now. A month ago yesterday, I started at Ascension and already it seems like this is where I’ve been forever. Each day seems to bring another small reminder of why I love parish ministry—the ways ministry surprises me by what it asks me to do and be. For the first time, people are coming up to me, days, weeks, even months later, to tell me how something I said in a sermon stayed with them. I think I have a clearer voice now, one that is also more free. I have a boss who shares leadership generously and who has invited me to serve more as a partner than a subordinate who receives assignments to carry out. It is an honor and responsibility I don’t take lightly.

Early in the afternoon on Sunday, in the small chapel of our church, I celebrated the Eucharist in Spanish, gathered with only a handful of people. I don’t know if it meant as much those who were there as it did to me. But after more than a year without that kind of communal prayer and worship, I wanted to stand very still and let the beauty of my native language wash over me; another kind of Baptism, both fire and water.

Yesterday, I was cc’d on a church document that included the following:

>>The Upcoming Dates listed on the attached xxx Agenda highlighted the Welcome
>>Reception for The Rev. Rosa Lindahl as Ascension’s new Associate Rector.   (A
>>note for future historians: Rosa Lindahl is the first female priest on the clergy staff
>>at the Church of the Ascension.)

My heart is happy.