But on an operational level, it is a busy day for me, at the most basic level. I answer phone calls. A lot of them. About what? About:

1. Is Ash Wednesday a holy day of obligation? (This question irritates me, but I do answer it: No)

2. When are your Masses? (at least that is a worship-related question, so I will allow it: 9 am and 5:30 pm this year).

3. Can I stop by and get my ashes? (longer explanation below)

This is a day of contradiction for me, every year. The ashes are a beautiful symbol of the juxtaposition of life and death, but the gospel reading every year for Ash Wednesday is about praying in secret and not making a show of your worship. For me, that always is a challenging message to take in as I walk around with ashes on my head.

It is also a day of demand for ashes. Catholics out there know (or should know) that ashes are a sacramental, not a sacrament. They are a symbol, a reminder, for us, but they aren’t meant to take on the meaning of something more than that. And they certainly aren’t supposed to take on a superstitious or even sacrilegious meaning that many ascribe to them.

Today a man was banging on the side door to the church. I happened to be near there, so I opened the door. He wanted his ashes. Right then. Administered by a priest. Or a deacon. But no one else.

I invited him to our worship service at 5:30, a full Mass. He declined to join us.

It reminded me of an incident last year, when another staff member was accosted by a family (most of whom was still in the car) who demanded ashes. Outside. At the car. They wanted a drive-by ashing. When the staff member told them they could join us for worship later that day, they instead elected to rub ashes off of the staff member’s head and administer them to the carload of people. Really.

It can be a day of frustration for me, because it brings out the worst in us Catholics, I think. The Ash Wednesday Mass is beautiful and meaningful if you let it be. But when you reduce it to needing to have a mark on your head so someone can see you are “holy,” then I’m pretty sure you’ve offended God.

Just say no to drive-by ashing.

Coming off of an exhausting and exhilarating Christmas celebration at Nativity, one might think that January is a time of laurel-resting. I’m not a big fan of resting anyway, but January has gotten the best of me this year.

In church Operations, it is a time of acknowledging gift-giving to Nativity, from sending personal notes to distributing tax statements. It a time of reviewing the end-of-year stewardship campaign and looking at trends and spreadsheets. It is a time to begin budgeting for the new fiscal year. And it is a time for moving ahead with the look and message of a new year while not letting the direct operational tasks fall off of the radar.

January is a time that requires a constant self-reminder of why I do what I do. What is behind that tedious spreadsheet? What (or who) is the reason for careful but purposeful stewardship? How is the staff doing with the headlong rush towards Easter?

In Operations, it is so very easy to get caught up in things, like Excel charts, QuickBook reports, and 1099s. When I’ve looked too long at numbers or names or addresses, it is time to return to the source.

I’ve put my Bible out on my desk again. To be honest, it was buried underneath the rubble of Operations. Out of sight, out of mind. Not good. It reminds me of the good tension that must exist between operations and ministry, a tension that is to be managed.

Good tension exists in science and in art. I am neither a scientist or an artist, but I am a knitter. Good tension is crucial to a well knitted piece. Neither needle can have too much pull or too much slack.

Those who attempt to eradicate good tension are doomed to fail, and they miss the point, I think. In church Operations, there is a natural, though not always easy, tension. Andy Stanley counsels in his leadership podcast about this: manage those tensions that are necessary and stop trying to kill them. They are there for a reason.

What areas of your life or work rely upon good tension?

Tagged: GTD, Leadership ]]> http://kathleendickleslie.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/good-tension/feed/ 1 kathleendickleslie photo http://kathleendickleslie.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/more-than-football/ http://kathleendickleslie.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/more-than-football/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:18:48 +0000 Kathleen Leslie http://kathleendickleslie.wordpress.com/?p=1407 ]]> Joe Paterno lies dying. I wrote recently that he was a hero of mine. And yet he is not a football coach to me. He is more than football.

He was more than football when I was at Penn State, and his method of mentoring young men was more than football. And the singular stain on his character is infinitely larger than football.

Today, most of Baltimore is attired in purple and black. Today I wear blue and white, and black. It is just a Penn Stater’s reminder that heroes can transcend their day jobs, and they can fall because of mistakes they make outside of their day jobs. It is a reminder that national obsessions can overtake the most important attributes of a person and mask a person’s human failings.

From his wheelchair a week ago, he told a Penn State student “I am not a victim. Remember the real victims.” In other words, this isn’t about an icon getting fired after 60 years. It is about people who suffered and lacked an advocate.

On this Playoff Sunday, we must all remember that there is more to a man than football.

Look past the eye black and find out who your heroes really are.

Image by 401K via Flickr

The Penn State tragedy has played out and continues to play out. It reminds me, and everyone else, of another sex abuse scandal not so very many years ago, which also continues to unfold. The parallels are there to be drawn and people smarter than me will comment on them for decades to come. I’ll let them do that, but I do want to make a few unscientific observations about how money is used, or not, at times like these.

First, I’ll state the obvious: Money always follows these terrible events. However, my particular opinion might not be so obvious: this truth is not always, or even often, a bad thing.

I’m not one of those defense attorneys who will tell you no plaintiff ever deserves a dime. That’s bull. Money is not medicine, but it can be used to deter future negligence. And it can pay for programs and services that heal.

One thing that infuriated me during the church abuse scandal was the number of Catholics who refused to give to their local church, where abuse was not a factor at all, because some of their money might, indirectly, be used to pay settlements in abuse cases. It was an odd blend of “I hate the larger Catholic Church for its sins” and “my money won’t go to pay the settlements,” which, of course, actually benefit the abused. I never understood it. They were so filled with hate for the larger church that they didn’t want to help “it” financially. Forget that there were hurt people who deserved something out of the tragedy. Forget that good people wanted to come in and repair a damaged institution.

I believe that often this attitude was an opportunity for people to avoid supporting their local church. It was really an act of stinginess, combined with directing anger and lack of mercy to the one institution, the local church, which still stood for healing and hope. Did some of that money trickle up to support a larger church dealing with institutional sin? Yes, of course. Did it pay for some settlements indirectly? I sure hope so. I hope some of my money ended up in the pocket of a family victimized by abusers.

But doesn’t being a “body” mean that some healthy parts must compensate for other ailing parts of the body? Otherwise, cancer grows and the whole body is polluted.

Though not all Penn Staters are Christians, they are sure acting like the Body of Christ. They are leveraging a skill for which the school is world-renowned, raising money for philanthropy, and using it for victims of abuse. Students and alumni have raised large sums towards this effort, and the university as an institution is doing the same generally, and is specifically committing future bowl revenues to the cause. Does that mean that every person still working at the university is without fault in this scandal? Well, I hope so, but maybe not. That unworthy employees might still be working at Penn State doesn’t mean Penn State and its worldwide family shouldn’t act like a body and try to heal the institution’s morally atrophied limbs.

Money won’t take away the act of abuse. But it is a gift God gives us–not to hoard in an effort to keep it away from any person or institution that might be unworthy of it. Goodness, that is all of us and every institution in the world. We none of us are worthy.

Don’t hold on to your money using the fallible logic that, potentially, less than perfect people or institutions may handle it. Use the infallible logic that letting go of your money to help heal the wrongs of others will heal everyone involved, including you.

Or so it seems.

Our oldest car died last week on I-83, in dramatic fashion. The mechanic advised us that it needed a new engine (which, who knew, is apparently a costly part of the car). Anyway, our “Simple Christmas” season then involved deciding what to do about our transportation conundrum.

The truth is, this process would have been more difficult if I had not simplified some Christmas activities this year. As a result, we were not too busy to deal with it properly. We prayed about it and then solved it in about a week. I can’t imagine trying to host a party or address dozens of Christmas cards during this week.

This was not a welcomed event. But it was solvable with relatively little stress and argument (I don’t know about you, but car purchases are one of the few causes for argument in my household).

The benefit to simplifying Christmas is multi-faceted. You are able to focus on the reason behind the celebration. We light a home advent candle each night at dinner to remind ourselves in the busyness of the season, there is a waiting, an anticipation that should be in our hearts. That anticipation carries over in my job, where we are busily preparing to welcome thousands to worship at the Cow Palace at the State Fairgrounds, many of whom are new to the experience or returned to worship after a long hiatus.

But another benefit is that, when life throws you curve balls, you can deal with them. Granted, a dead car is not a life altering event, but it is a metaphor for what can happen anytime your life is too busy. Things happen, big and small, and if you are too busy, you can’t properly deal with it.

And when I’m too busy, I’m generally too busy for God.

Cut back and wait for God to show up. Better yet, ask him to show up.

Recently my husband provided a simple solution to this problem:

Simple.

These hooks are right by our front door, and since we have had this inexpensive problem-solver, there have been no lost keys and no irritated family members on impromptu scavenger hunts.

My point is that there are simple solutions to complex and burdensome challenges.

At Nativity, we enter a busy season of the year but are concentrating on making things simple. Our current message series, Simply Christmas, will lead us in simplifying our lives this season, which leaves more margin for celebrating the focus of this blessed holiday. If you are someone who feels that your December has become increasingly complex and burdensome, I invite you to check out these messages at Nativity or online.

My personal Christmas will be simplified too. There are plenty of complex things going on in my life right now, so I actually need Christmas to be simple this year.

My husband and I made two decisions today: no Christmas cards and no cookie decorating party. Not forever, but for this year. These are two traditions we have done for years and we enjoy, but this year is the year to cut back on commitments.

Everyone has a different December. Some are dealing with job woes, family illnesses, and other problematic events. Some are crushed by the commercialism of Christmas and the conundrum of killing this in their kids.

What can you do more simply this year to focus on what is more eternal?

I’m entering the Christian church worker’s “tax season,” with Advent beginning this week and Christmas Eve at the Maryland State Fairgrounds right around the corner. There are new challenges this Advent, not the least of which are negotiating new contracts and, of course, implementing the New Roman Missal this weekend.

This past weekend, I added to the excitement by taking my daughter to a college campus visit at, yes, you guessed it, Penn State. The degree to which the mess at Penn State has effected me has been surprising. I am not a crazy football fan. Indeed, as I have written about, my admiration for Joe Paterno had nothing to do with wins and losses, and everything to do with character. Perhaps that is why the past few weeks have been so painful for me and others in the Penn State family.

I won’t pick sides in this post. I have my opinions, unformed though they may be given the trickle of recent information that seems to be available on the topic. But I, like nearly everyone who cares, is at the very least sorely disappointed in an institution I love.

What I would like an answer to, though, is this: why are there always such extreme reactions to news like this? Some people would not be happy unless certain people were hanged in the town square, and others can’t see past their Nittany Lion-colored glasses and admit that something really bad has happened and must be investigated. Why such unreasonable extremes? That usually happens, in my opinion, when God is noticably absent from the table.

In all of this, where is faith? What happened to God?

I personally have seen only one instance where God was summoned in this debacle.

Sports can matter.

May no act of ours bring shame, to one heart that loves thy name, May our lives but swell thy fame, Dear Old State, Dear Old State.

It is truly heartbreaking that we have failed in that goal.

I’m a Penn Stater, like millions of other people across the world. I spent 5 very happy years of my life there. I met my husband there. I swam for a coach at Penn State who embodied character and who taught me more about life and commitment than I can ever quantify.

I wrote recently about one of my heroes, Joe Paterno. He is still my hero. The question will be if that will remain so, or if I will need to retool my view. I don’t know.

I said in that recent post that a hero to me is someone who stands by what he believes  and admits his mistakes. I will wait to see if he made a mistake (my early thought is, yes, he did), and whether he will admit it (my early thought is, yes, he will).

Heroes fall, and, frankly, that sucks. But it happens, constantly. Noah fell. David fell. Peter fell. Greats of the Bible had their own flaws and they were big ones. These heroes were sinners.

If you think about it, the thing that made Judas so darn bad was that he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, admit and confess his mistake of giving up Jesus to his executioners. We all know what the outcome would have been for him had he confessed his sin to Jesus. He would have been forgiven.

But forgiveness is a far easier task for Jesus than me. He’s God, and I am surely not. I’m not feeling forgiving right now, and I sort of feel like a kid who finds out the truth about Santa Claus.

Because when it comes to heroes, we remain kids. We are often naive and awestruck. But I’m not a kid anymore, and I have to face the unpleasant truth.

Human heroes have feet of clay. They aren’t made of stone like we want to believe. But for some reason we continue to believe that they are. Despite this, heroes are important. We need them. And we need them to prove their hero status even more by admitting failures.

Say it ain’t so, Joe. But if it is, say that too.

Image via Wikipedia

I met with my Church Ops friends this week, and learned something interesting and new, though it is pretty intuitive as well. This is what I learned: when a church has pews, instead of chairs, people decide how much personal space they want, and they put things like purses and coats in the gap between them and the next person to draw the boundary lines. When you have chairs or theater-style seats,  personal space is defined for you. You might not want someone to sit next to you, but there isn’t much you can do about it.

This is really an obvious point, but it never occurred to me before. There is a fundamental problem with pews, at least insofar as the collision between human nature and corporate worship is concerned.

The human race fights spiritual intimacy. It is something we need, and yet even in the face of knowing that we need it, we fight it. Corporate worship is central to followers of the Father in the Old Testament and Christ in the New. It is stressed in Scripture as a necessary component to a full relationship with God, and yet at every turn we fight it.

Me too. If I walk into a church that has available seats, I would prefer to select my seat as if I am going to the movie theater. Where is a pocket of seats where no one else sitting? Can I have a seat on the end of a row? Now, even if a church has individual seats and not pews, you can still isolate yourself, assuming you don’t have a full house. So while the operational issue of whether seats are better than pews is relevant and worth discussing, the spiritual issue of wanting to isolate ourselves during corporate worship is even bigger.

Churches can (and I would argue, should) be designed to maximize corporate worship for the betterment of the people to grow in their relationships with God and each other. But people are geniuses at evading spiritual growth. We need to ask ourselves why we feel the desire to barricade ourselves from others when we pray.

Please weigh in: Pews or seats? Why?