Hi all, it’s taken a while to collect as many of the photos as I could from our friends (still hoping for one more set). Also, it was a busy week, as we prepared, at church, for this weekend’s Pride Parade, and the inauguration of our Would Jesus Discriminate campaign.
Any, a collection of the photos from our wedding are available for your viewing pleasure by clicking here.
Sigh… I let far too much time pass since my last post. No excuses, really. I started several in that time, mostly journaling assignments from my CLM class… problem was that they led into aspects of life that I’m not comfortable sharing with a larger community. So they never got posted!
During this same period, Scott and I’ve been planning and preparing for a wedding. Those of you who’ve read for years… in fact, since most of my readers are also close friends or family and are therefore intimately knowledgeable of my life… know that this was actually number 3! But this one was special in ways that the previous 2 were not.
First of all, our Holy Union in 1997 which is what Scott and I consider to be our marriage before God, if not in the eyes of society/government, was only attended by our friends from church. And many of those friends are gone now, either have left our church for another and are hence out of our life or have passed to their eternal home. Very little of our family knew about me, though those who did and were able were present.
Our marriage in 2007 in Canada was wonderful for us. For the first time we felt as though the greater society was part of our actions… but there were no long term friends or family in attendance. It was a civil/religious ceremony that we felt was essential. There IS something special bestowed on a relationship that words cannot convey when not only church but state as well recognizes a couple’s relationship. It’s impalpable, inexplicable, but it’s there. And there we would have been content to leave it.
Now, here we are in 2009. Iowa legalizes same-sex marriages. We’re absolutely blown away. Others anticipated this. I was caught totally by surprise! Previous posts, however, tell why we made the decision to get married this past weekend. Go read them!
I am now Mr. Eric Hays-Strom!
Saturday night was, well, spectacular! Saturday dawned rainy and overcast. Scott and I had several errands to run and so we started off relatively early to get them done. We got wet… well, damp really… a couple of times. We began to be a bit concerned about what the evening would be like. Our chosen site, Castle Unicorn in/near Pacific Junction, Iowa (which in turn is near Glenwood, IA) is an outdoor venue. There was shelter, but it’s far enough from the spot we chose for the ceremony itself, that had the skies opened on us during the ceremony, we’d have been quite wet by the time we got to shelter.
We needn’t have worried. As we drove down to Castle Unicorn, the grey skies lifted and we were left with a stunningly beautiful blue sky with white and dark grey clouds scudding (I like that word) along. The green of the trees and grass, with the red brick of the castle itself, and then the Missouri River Valley stretching out below to the west and south was just amazing, forming a “fairy tale-esque” backdrop to the ceremony itself.
We are so blessed, Scott and I, to have royalty amongst our friends. Or, should I say royaldy? Royal D. Bush, that is (fortunately no relationship to those other Bushes). Anyhow, Royal D and his wonderful husband Jonathan asked us early in the planning stages to please call on them for anything we might need. Well, two weeks before our wedding, we attended two other friends big Bash! They were each celebrating their birthday AND their anniversary… and Royal and Jon put on the reception for that party. They did such a wonderful job of it, that Scott and I approached them about doing OUR reception. Oh.My.Gosh. Our reception was incredible! I’ll try to get pictures of it as soon as possible!
Another friend, Linda, baked us a beautiful cake! I could have eaten the whole thing myself!
And other friends, Ray Page and our ‘sister’ Karla, took our cameras and became our photographers. We’re still sorting through the photos, so you’ll have to check back later for those.
And of course, our friend, and our Pastor, Tom Emmett performed the ceremony, and took care of all those little and big details. And he certainly made this moment in time the best experience we’ve had.
But what wedding is without it’s moments… those “little” things that go wrong? The groom tripping over a step, or someone stepping on the bridal veil causing the poor bride’s dress to rip? No, the groom didn’t trip, and no, the bride didn’t wear a dress or have one torn…. then again, there wasn’t a bride, per se! No, our little embarrassing moment came well in to the ceremony as we approached the vows. My tuxedo pants… which fit SO well at the fitting on Thursday night… now were too loose. WAY too loose. I felt them sliding down my hips. I finally had to do a MAJOR adjustment as they were just seconds from dropping to my ankles! While that would have been just utterly horrible, it was embarrassing enough. My white tuxedo coat provided, I’m sure, a fantastic contrast to the color of my face at that moment, matching in intensity the burgundy of the vest and tie, as I grabbed by pants and hitched them to where they belonged.
Warning to those preparing for a wedding… AFTER getting fitted for your tux is NOT a good time to take up jogging! Nor is eating a large meal BEFORE the final fitting. These things cause “wardrobe malfunctions” in the most embarrassing of ways! Now, I’ve not lost tremendous amounts of weight. I’ve not dropped a size or more in the waist in the past 2 weeks. But, the jogging has, in very short order, tightened up the tummy a little. Now add to this a filling dinner, but spicy, well, this bloated me up a bit. Then, Saturday Scott and I were so busy that we really didn’t eat much at all! So my tum-tum didn’t bloat to an appropriate level to keep the pants up!
In attendance at our event were some of our oldest and newest friends from MCC Omaha. There were three present who were at our Holy Union in 1997. It really made Scott’s and my day just to see all these MCC’ers show up.
But on top of them, my Uncle Lyle, Missy & Jim, David & Sylvia, and Dan (Cassie’s husband) were all present. My mom’s cousin Ron & Diane were all there (and thank goodness for that, as they told me an absolutely terrifying story that occurred just 2 weeks prior to their departure… a story about how Ron and their dog Riley were walking and were hit by a car, throwing Ron over the hood of the car, and sending both Ron & Riley to the hospital… and neither were seriously injured! Praise God for keeping these two in God’s palm that day!)
And probably the most important dignitary in attendance Saturday was my father. Even now, just thinking about Dad’s presence there makes me feel teary-eyed.
Life, I’ve always imagined, is like a series of circles, or spirals perhaps. The year seems to flow for me as a circle. Events seem to occur as a big circle, coming back on themselves to complete something that might have started ages ago. Dad’s presence at our wedding was the “coming full circle” of one of those cycles. In March 1996 I “came out” to Mom & Dad. I won’t go into what a horrid experience that was for all three of us. I’ll just relate their statement “Your boyfriends or lovers or whatever will never be welcome in our home.” After Mom & Dad moved back to Iowa in 2003, that claim seemed to be a distant memory to them. Or perhaps they just were not able to get connected to the fact that Scott was my “boyfriend, lover or whatever”. But there was no doubt that Dad knows precisely the nature of Scott and my relationship now. And so, for Dad to actually instigate our wedding plans and to be in attendance was definitely the close of that circle of events for me.
I do wish Mom could have been there Saturday as well. And in truth I believe she was. Her spirit was certainly with me that night, and I could feel her pride in what we were doing. As I know God was present, and Sophia, God’s Holy Spirit, too was present, blowing in the gentle breezes that night… my friend the breeze was there as well.
I told everyone present how important it was to me for Dad to be present. That was my speech… that Dad has always been the living example of love for me, the epitome of marital love, and that through Dad’s example of love, I mirrored my own relationship with Scott. And it made Dad cry. Why do we late until it’s too late, or perhaps almost too late, to tell those we love the importance they’ve had in our lives? That they are roll models and examples of all that is good and holy in life?
For love is holy. It is without doubt the most powerful force in the universe. It is God, and where there is love, God is always there. Scott and I know this in our lives and in our relationship. The power of love casts out all fear and the power of love makes our lives and our relationship just so right.
In just two short weeks (plus a couple of days) Scott and I will be getting married. What started out to be a SMALL event, just a handful of people – most of whom would be my Dad and his side of the family – were expected to be invited, the anticipated size has grown to close to 50! I was utterly stunned to receive an email from my Mom’s cousin Ron and his wife Diane saying that they were revising their summer plans in order to be in the area for the wedding!
The past couple of weeks we’ve made appointments with our pastor, arranged for a location… Castle Unicorn near Glenwood, Iowa, designed and printed invitations, and arranged for a cake. This weekend, Scott and I will be picking out our wardrobe. At this point, we’re planning on going the whole route and renting tuxedos… one of us will wear black, the other black pants with white coat. Or so we think as of right now! We still have to figure out the details of the reception itself (no champagne, bubbly cider instead.)
We are so excited by what’s about to happen. We are getting married, as millions/billions of couples have for thousands of years. But we’re also on the cusp of history. We’re part of the MAKING of history. That’s not lost on either of us.
But our joy is tempered today. Yesterday, the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition H8. I fully expected them to. On the face of it, a court whose purpose is to interpret constitutional law, not impose it’s own will, had no other choice than to uphold this h8ful amendment to the constitution of California. I am so happy that in doing so, the same court upheld the legitimacy of those 18,000 marriages performed prior to 11/4/2008.
What concerns me about this is the precedent set. This proposition has permitted a small majority to relegate millions of people to second class status. However you spin it, 4% is a small margin. Frankly, in my opinion, far from protecting marriage from some imaginary threat, Proposition H8 diminishes marriage for all people, gay and straight alike. It removes from the marital equation the concept of love, and limits the importance of marriage to mere biological breeding.
And I’d be less than truthful if I didn’t admit that the passing of Proposition H8 and it’s upholding by the CSS creates for me the spectre of what might occur in Iowa. We now have legal same-sex marriage in this state. So did California one year ago. In Iowa, we know we have a minimum of three years before this right could face the vote of the people.
I have mixed emotions about that. On the one hand, I do not believe my rights should ever hinge upon the will of a small majority of misguided people. On the other hand, I also do not wish to prevent the people from addressing this situation. The next three years must be, for us and for our allies, a time to educate everyone we know. We can not afford to be silent.
It’s been a… different… couple of weeks.
First of all, shortly after I posted my last entry here, I learned that my hoped for job with OPS had gone to someone else. They chose to hire from within… being a bureaucracy, they assign points for various aspects of your application, and one of those is added points if you already work for them. It was those points that put the other candidate over the top. So, I’m better qualified, but the other individual got the job by virtue of already being employed in a different position within the district. And that’s simply life.
I continue to hunt though right now I’m a little nervous because I’m not seeing any SQL jobs open in the area. What SHALL I do!?
This past weekend, our church hosted a Regional Cluster conference. First some background. MCC Church is a congregationally governed denomination. Final authority resides with the local congregation. We elect lay delegates who meet every 3 years (beginning with 2007) in a General Conference. The General Conference has workshops and opportunities to gather and meet with representatives of our churches worldwide. In business meetings, we meet to discuss and vote on issues confronting our denomination. When we are not meeting in General Conference, our Board of Elders and Board of Administration run the day to day business of the denomination. The denomination is divided into 7 Regions, each of which is, at least in theory, guided by an Elder. During the years that General Conference is not held, Regional Conferences are held. But, I’ll share a little secret… there’s somewhat of a financial crisis facing the world, and as hard as it may be to understand, the denomination is feeling some of that crisis. Because of this, it became impractical from a financial perspective to expect local churches to finance sending their people to expensive conference sites (the 2009 conference for my region was originally expected to be held in Puerto Vallarta.)
In addition, due to cost cutting efforts by the denomination, specifically by the Board of Elders, there are currently only 4 Elders to provide coverage for the 7 regions, and so their duties have multiplied while they took significant pay cuts and budgetary cuts. So, our Elder, a bright young woman (so, she’s older than I… I’m young, so she is too!) developed a clustered core system. She broke the churches in her region into I believe 7 clusters with a representative from each appointed by her to form a sort of committee to assist her in maintaining contact with all the churches in her region. Now, all churches in each cluster were invited to a “Regional cluster conference”. Our cluster is all churches in Colorado and Nebraska. The conference was held here in Omaha.
As a Lay Delegate for my own congregation, MCC Omaha, I have been involved with the planning and coordination efforts surrounding our conference. This conference concluded yesterday afternoon, following our 1100 worship service. After months of planning (more than I think we anticipated) and then meeting weekly for the past 2 weeks, Friday morning, I was at church performing my assigned tasks. One of the “gifts” I can provide the church is, I’m willing to clean the bathrooms! Bathroom cleaning seems to be a chore that folks really don’t like. I don’t mind it. There are two reasons for this. The first one is something my mother told me years ago. She acknowledged that cleaning toilets is not a very glamorous job, but she reminded herself that when you love your family, cleaning up after them is not a problem. I think she put it more eloquently than that, but it always stuck with me! The other reason has to do with Travis, my White German Shepherd dog. Travis had epilepsy. When he was having a seizure, he’d inadvertently pee or poop or vomit or expel his anal glands. Quite frequently, these would occur while I was holding him, so after his seizure was over, I’d need to clean up after him and then shower because so much would get on me. One quickly becomes immune to the “ickiness” of that.
My congregation, my church, is my family, and I love them dearly. That love extends beyond the confines of my local congregation. Fortunately, this job is rarely “gross”! But even when it is, I remember the lessons taught me by Travis, and the lesson from Mom. And I recall the love I have for my congregation and for my denomination. I remember an experience I had several years ago when I was called upon to preach. Here, let me digress for a little bit. During a time when we had no pastor, it fell upon many of us in leadership to take on the role of Pastor… to preach, to care, to guide. My gift, if anything, at that time was to be in charge of Worship, and to preach occasionally. On one occasion, I spent several weeks preparing a sermon… I don’t even recall what it was about. But just 2 days before the day I was to preach, I threw out the entire sermon. I knew that was not what I was to preach on. God wanted me to preach about God’s love. Part of the sermon went like this:
…the Amazon River is the world’s SECOND longest river, but at any one point in time has the highest amount of water flowing down it? In fact, no other river in the world even comes close. […] I know this too. If a [] gardener decides to water his daisies, then gets called away, leaving the water to run and run and run, the daisies will get too much water, and they’ll drown! But when God waters us with his love, it’s like the whole of the Amazon River flowing down to water one little daisy. Can you imagine that kind of love?
It was as I was delivering this line in my sermon that I had my experience. I looked out on my congregation, the friendly faces of my friends looking back with smiles… and the not so friendly faces frowning back at me (our church was in great conflict at this time), faces of those I felt some animosity towards and knew they felt the same regarding me. I looked out, and I didn’t see these faces from my own eyes. It was as if I was seeing them from someone else’s eyes, someone who had great love. I looked out and saw my congregation with the eyes of God… and I could feel my heart being crushed in my chest, as wave after wave of love washed over me. For one brief moment, I sensed some degree of the love God felt for my congregation… those smiling faces and those frowning faces… and knew as well that if I could look upon all the people of this world, that I’d still feel the same degree of love. In that brief moment, I could not breathe, my heart could not beat, and I thought, no I knew, that surely if this continued I could not continue to live. No human is capable of feeling that degree of love, it would kill them! I wish I could say that I’ve always remembered that experience, but I’m just too flawed. There are times I look at people, and it isn’t God’ love I feel for them, but something quite different!
Back to our conference…
Then there were the hours of hospitality, manning the registration tables, chatting with our visitors from Colorado, and some from Kansas who came just to be here as a sign of support. And there was the responsibilities of attending the business meeting, or the various workshops, or taking my roles in worship. Friday I was at church from before 9 a.m. until after 10 p.m. Saturday, we were there by 7:30 a.m., and until after 9 p.m. Sunday we arrived at 8. The conference ended at 12:30
Saturday, we had a plenary session, during which we heard about "When God Comes to Church: Assessing the Culture of the Local Church for Spiritual Growth". After lunch, we broke up into workshops. I attended one about revitalizing the role of Lay Delegate. One thing we’ve all noticed is that, during the past 15 years, this position has become less and less important, and many churches began to minimize the importance of it. As a result, lay delegates to conference often were unprepared to address their church’s concerns to the denomination. Important decisions were made based not on what the local congregation wanted, but on what the Lay Delegate wanted. This was the result of the local congregation not being well informed. For instance, in some churches, the Lay Delegate would address the congregation, but before (s)he could inform the congregation about what was going to happen at the conference the church would abrogate it’s responsibility to send an informed delegate by telling him/her “Just vote your conscience”.
After that, we held “Holy Conversations”. There were 3 of these. The idea is to enter in to conversations recognizing the diversity of culture, the diversity of opinion and the inherent value of each in discussions of importance to the body meeting. We discussed diverse theologies present in the denomination, the structure, overall, of the denomination, and certain changes required by our interim structures due to the reduction in Elders.
Finally, we held worship Saturday evening in which we learned what we already knew, namely our church is predominantly made up of 40 – 65 year olds; then we began discussing what it was like for a young person to enter our worship or our congregational life, and how we absolutely MUST reach out to these younger people, incorporate them, and in fact turn over our future to them now, while they are young and vibrant. The sermon was conversational in nature between our Elder who is over 50, and the youngest clergy in our region, a 28 year old. What are we doing right? (very little) and what are we doing wrong? (a lot)
Many of us left church yesterday very, very tired.
Now, I throw myself in to planning our wedding! We’ve picked, tentatively, our location… a place called Castle Unicorn. I have SO much to do!
One of the things I’ve heard over and over… and it’s generally a truism… is that we shouldn’t let what others think of us worry us.
And yet, I think it’s pretty obvious that is easier said than done! For better or worse, unless one is willing to completely disengage from the world, what others think about us does influence us and does impact us. This came home to me this week as part of our latest assignments in “Creating a Life that Matters”, the class that Scott and I are taking through our Church.
As part of the homework last week, we were asked to consider every person in our class, and to write down two words for each of them. The first word was to be an emotion that the individual invokes in us when we see them. The second word was to be an essence or quality that the individual brings to our community or our church.
In class last night, we wrote these words down on a sticky note, and then attached that sticky to a sheet of paper for each individual so that they could see these words… though not necessarily who put those words down. And so, I got to see what others think of me. In a way, it was an eye opener!
Now first of all, some of the emotion “words” aren’t really “emotions”, as such. But they are all feeling words.
The emotions I elicit in others are: confidence, tranquility, good, friendship/family/love, awakened, knowledge joy, happy, serious & gentle. In addition, two individuals said hesitance, hesitation. Those last two really threw me off! To be quite honest, they effected me enough that I was unable to complete the remainder of the exercise! But I think it’s probably true. There are times I arrive at church, and my “shields” are completely down, I’m approachable, and outgoing. Other times, those “shields” are at maximum… a proton torpedo could never penetrate! I’m not really sure what to do about that. Some days I feel in a very friendly, outgoing, even “pranksterish” mood. Other days, I’m serious and withdrawn. My own emotions are pretty much a badge on my sleeve. People can see very much where I am. But folks might not really “see” that badge until we actually interact. The fact of the matter is, when I’m in the "outgoing” mood, I welcome people to jump in and join with me! And even more important, when I’m in the serious/withdrawn mood, what I really would welcome is for people NOT to honor that mood, but to just challenge me on my behavior… again, I know that’s easier said than done!
The qualities that people feel I bring to our church and community really kind of surprised me, but for some reason, I really don’t have any problem “owning” them! I may disagree with some, but I can see how/why others might see these in me. Spirituality (3 people), intelligence (2), knowledge (2), strength, listening, faith, authenticity, enlightenment. I wonder if the “authenticity” isn’t tied in with the “hesitancy” issue. I seldom, if ever, hide myself from others. When I’m in a bad mood, I don’t hide it! I feel no desire at church to pretend to be what someone else thinks I should be as a Christian or as anything else. I am, ultimately, who I am. Others need to accept that or get out of my way! When I feel something, when I experience something, I will express that. Sometimes, later, I’ll come back and apologize for that… if I truly feel an apology is warranted. Though, I do think I have learned, by and large, to try to avoid hurting others in my “in-your-face-ness”. Sometimes, I just don’t succeed!
There’s a lot of good in those qualities. And in fact, there’s a lot of good in the emotions I elicit in others. I think, as I evaluate them all, I can “own” all of them! And, knowing the two “negatives”, if negative they are, and to the degree that they ARE negative, is good, too. Without sacrificing my “authenticity”, I can strive to help others feel less “hesitant”.
At least, I hope I can!
Scott and I have set the date for our Iowa wedding!
We had hoped to hold our celebration on August 9, but it turns out that 3 of the more important participants, namely the Pastor, Scott and I, will not be anywhere near Iowa on that date. As we perused the various dates this summer, it turned out that just about every weekend for one reason or another just won’t work for us!
So, we have settled on June 13, 2009, at 5 p.m. for the big day! Location hasn’t yet been determined, but it will be within 30 miles of Council Bluffs, in order to make it easier on everyone.
We’ve already been blown away by the interest of family of friends. In addition to Dad (whose interest instigated these plans), my Uncle Lyle, and cousins Missy & Jim, Dave and Sylvia, and Cassie & Dan have all expressed interest and indicated they plan to be there. It’ll definitely be good to have family present! We also anticipate numerous of our friends from MCC Omaha will be present!
Guess that’s pretty much all for THIS post. I’ll likely have another post today or tomorrow on other topics!
Hey there! Been a bit of a busy week, with nothing to report… until today, that is.
As some may know, beginning tomorrow, same-sex couples will be allowed to apply for marriage licenses in Iowa. And on Thursday, after a 3 day waiting period, they will be able to get married.
Local television stations in Omaha, were at church today, and filmed most of our service. They interviewed our pastor and Scott and I. I’m a TV star! Okay, a bit of an overstatement. I’ve seen one of the stories, the one from KMTV. KETV and KPTM will be on later tonight.
In the KMTV spot, Scott came across as intelligent and erudite… I like that word. Is it redundant? Anyhow, he shines! I, well, not so much. And the guy they got from “the other side”… those opposed to same-sex marriage… just priceless. I quote: “Adam and Eve created the world… so we should stick with that”.
For the KMTV spot go to: http://www.kmtv.com/global/story.asp?s=10252135, and click on the Featured Video link.
I’ll post links to the others after 10 tonight. KPTM is FOX, so we’re not too sure what to expect.
UPDATE: KPTM at 9 last night had this story: http://www.kptm.com/Global/story.asp?S=10253127&nav=menu606_2 See the video.
And here’s the link to KETV, Channel 7: http://www.ketv.com/news/19297473/detail.html
This is my “homework” for week two of “Rediscovering Relationship with Self”.
Reflect and Journal about an experience when you worked in a spiritual gift area that is one of your LOWEST scored areas. What did it feel like to work in that arena? Was it frustrating to try to arrive at a successful outcome?
Last week, part of our assignment was to take a “Spirituality Inventory”, which addressed 25 “spiritual gifts”. The highest score possible for a gift was a 15. The lowest possible score was a big fat 0. On eight of the gifts, I scored a 6 or less. The lowest scoring gifts for me were celibacy and tongues which each scored ZERO. I got a 2 in healing, and a 4 in hospitality. Other areas in which I received low scores are: Apostle, Mercy, Multi-Cultural Ministry, and Prophetic Teaching.
So… I’m trying to remember EVER working in one of those areas!
I suppose I can recall two experiences/jobs working in areas for which I had a low score. But as I address these here, I have to begin with the observation that there are numerous things that impact these spirituality inventories. I’ve been taking them for over 20 years. Spiritual Gifts change. Or at least some of them do. Some gifts may remain high throughout our life; some gifts may be given us by God at a particular time to accomplish a particular thing. For everything there is a season… Furthermore, moods that we are in can impact our answers. As can emotional states. And, frankly, most questions in these inventories have an implied answer if one knows where to look.
For instance, twenty years ago, taking one of these inventories I would have answered that celibacy was relatively high in the scorings. I wanted to be accepted to seminary; I wanted to be a priest; I wanted to run/hide from my own knowledge of who and what I am; and I believed what I was told about being Gay being hated by God.
And so, I spent two years “working in a spiritual gift area” that was, at the time scoring high, but in reality, looking back over my life, about as low scoring as you can get! Was it frustrating? Oh, yeah! It was just plain wrong of me to work in that area. It felt horrible!
Perhaps a slightly better example was when I worked for a semester in Hospital Ministry. I don’t recall what my "healing/mercy” scores were back at that time. Today they’re pretty low. I ASKED to work in Hospital Ministry. I thought it would be a good experience. I was wrong. It was my job to go to the rooms of patients, and, well, minister to them. I think all in all it was a good experience for me, stretched my horizons, as I hoped it would. And the experience taught me that hospital ministry was just not the place for me. It was so hard to go into those rooms, talking to people I didn’t know, people suffering and frightened. Far from putting them at ease, they or their families, often had to put ME at ease! I honestly don’t know who was more frightened! Fortunately for me, my supervisor soon picked up on my weakness. She assigned me to one particular patient, a young man with AIDS, a young man who could not make the trip in to the hospital, and so I would go to his house. We got along fine, I wasn’t frightened, I enjoyed the experience, and to be honest, was ministered to far more than I ministered.
Journal about an experience when you worked in a spiritual gift area that is one of your HIGHEST scored areas. What was that like? How did it feel to work within and succeed in that area?
My highest scores (12 and above – none received a 15) from highest to lowest are in Giving, Knowledge, Martyrdom, Wisdom and Teaching. About that Martyrdom, go figure!
When it comes to teaching, I can’t really figure that one out, any more than I can figure out why I score so high in Martyrdom. I’m an impatient teacher, at best. To the extent that teaching involves public speaking, I’m horrible! And when it comes to hands on teaching, well, I’m not too good at that, either. Knowledge and wisdom, in this context have to do with things of a spiritual nature. I’m not sure I could say I’ve ever actually worked in these areas!
But giving, while “working in this area” is somewhat problematic, it is an undeniable gift for Scott and I both. We firmly believe that all our income is a gift from God, and as such is not to be horded. About five years ago, Scott and I made a conscious decision that we would “work towards” giving a tithe, and in short order had rearranged our living to accommodate this. We gladly give 10% of all income that comes our way… a little more in fact. On top of that, we’ve been able to see needs at church and meet those needs… gifts above and beyond our weekly giving. Sometimes well beyond. A total look at tax time at our levels of giving show that combined we give closer to 15% of our gross to our church. I’m a bit less charitable towards non-church related causes.
I truly enjoy being blessed enough to give at the levels that I do. I know that in doing so, I enable our church to more fully reach out to the needs of our community. Our gifts, together with many other peoples, enables our church to reach out and minister not only to the spiritual needs, but the physical as well, of people living with HIV and AIDS, to the homeless, and to the many disenfranchised members of our society. It feels good!
This is a current area that maximizes my use of my strongest gift. Even with my own sense of connectedness to our church and indeed to God, I continue to work in this area. It feeds my soul, it strengthens my faith. It builds me up even while benefiting and building up the church. I’m pleased beyond measure that Scott and I while not lessening our giving by 1 cent, are no longer even close to being the only significant supporters of our church, and I can pray and praise God that others find joy, partly through our example, partly through a competitive desire, have found joy and blessing in abundant giving to God through MCC Omaha.
