Peg Kerr's Journal

Our bishop Jen Nagel has now been formally installed. It was a splendid and joyful service, held at Central Lutheran in downtown Minneapolis.

I am curious to see how her term as Bishop will unfold. I do like her very much.

The text at the top of the collage is from one of the readings at the service.

Image description: Background: a magnificent church interior (Central Lutheran, Minneapolis). Center: two women stand behind a prie-dieu. The woman on the right is dressed in a red bishop's chasuble and holds a bishop's crozier. Behind them is a metal screen with lit red votive candles. Lower right corner: communion trays. Top in white text: "Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

Installation



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

This week, both theme-wise and visually, is a follow up to last week's card, Arthritis. As I've been doing physical therapy on my hand, I've also been thinking a lot about the aging of my body in general. My foot has been hurting, where I broke my toe and had arthritis flare last summer. My joints in general feel stiff and tight, and I KNOW I should be doing weight-lifting. Frankly, I hate it, and it's hard to make myself do it.

As the same time, work is going through a weird time. We have a new bishop-elect, but she hasn't started yet. A couple of my coworkers have already found new jobs and it is very probable that more will follow. We had lunch with the bishop-elect, and to our relief, she said she isn't going to be making staff changes immediately. But I know changes are coming. I have to think about what I want (and will learn what is possible) with the knowledge that my 65th birthday is coming up next year. What about retirement? I have to research Social Security, which is extra complicated by the fact that my work situation could unexpectedly change, and I'm already drawing social security benefits. Figuring this all out, with factors outside my control, will be tricky. But I can't ignore the situation. My life is going to change, whether I like it or not, and that will be uncomfortable.

In the middle of thinking about all of this, I ran across a video by a motivational speaker that I'm been pondering ever since. He was saying that discomfort is something that you need to learn to tolerate and even embrace, because when you are uncomfortable, that is when you make the most life-satisfying changes.

I've been thinking about that, and I've realized it is true. I got a black belt in karate because I was willing to go to class and do a million slow kicks and sweat and work hard. I even got a concussion from sparring. At our final black belt exam, our instructor told us, "Think back to your first white belt class, and how many other people were there. Think of how many of them have fallen away for one reason or another. You are the few, the very few, who stuck it out. And you are the ones who will be getting a black belt today."

Writing a novel is like that, too. I am not one of the ones for whom writing is effortless. I have to tolerate discomfort of the uncertainty, the blundering about trying to figure out a plot, the hours spent in front of a keyboard. But I have two novels published, and I'm about to pass 40,000 words on my third.

I will have to ramp up the exercise program again. Do the mobility stuff, do the weight lifting stuff. I have to figure out what my work life will be like under all of these changes, and if that isn't meant to be, what my retirement will be like. It is ironic that as a species, we are wired to seek comfort. We want to be warm, and fed, and to cuddle with our mates and to have no troubles or worries. But that is not what is best for us.

Boats are safest anchored in sheltered harbors. But that is not what boats are for.

I initially thought to start the image with a bed of nails, but I couldn't find an image like that in the public domain, and so I decided to make it a bed of brambles instead.

Image description: Bottom of the card: dry, cracked earth overlaid with brambles with sharp thorns. Card center: a bronze statue of a woman lying on her side. Behind and above her is a lush flower garden.

Uncomfortable



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

I wrote in my holiday letter at the end of last year that I know that 2024 will include a lot of changes.

Fiona will be starting her plumber's apprenticeship program and getting married.

Delia will be graduating from college and moving from Wisconsin to find a job in Minnesota.

As for me, I know that my job will be changing. I work in the office of the Bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Her second and final term will end this year and a new bishop will be elected the first weekend of May.

The bishop's staff serves at the pleasure of the bishop, and so we all have to tender our resignations and then wait to find out whether the new bishop (and at this point, we have no idea who it will be) will hire us back.

Since we work for a church-based organization, if we DON'T get hired back, we get no unemployment. I guess that the custom is that we would get three months of severance. But that's it.

What's more, the synod is struggling financially--we get the money for our budget from what people put into their offering plates in our congregations on Sunday mornings, and between the pandemic and inflation, that number has dropped substantially. I have a hunch that while the staff is being shaken up anyway, it might look like it would make the most financial sense to combine my position with one of the Assistant to the Bishop positions. So my job is looking increasingly precarious.

I have been trying to gear myself up for the changes to come. Even if I get to stay in my job, I fully expect that I will be losing my boss (the bishop) and my supervisor, someone with whom I work very well.

At the Epiphany service at my church, we followed the custom we've been doing the past couple of years: everyone was offered a sticker with a word on it, something to contemplate in the coming year.

My word was "Acceptance."

I have often joked that I am a Gryffindor but with high-security needs. Brave, when I need to be (and I have needed to be, especially since losing Rob), but change is still hard.

In fact, I did a Hard Thing in the week that this collage covers to try to get ready for that change. It didn't work out (Peg says vaguely) but I will keep trying.

Change is a-coming. And I will have to accept it when it does.

I do rather like the way this collage turned out. When thinking about 'change' and acceptance,' I was thinking about some of the principles of Zen Buddhism, about balancing stones. Stones may seem changeless and immovable, but the sea will polish them away and tumble them over, and as they grow smaller, you can pick them up and carry them around. I think the curves in the outline of the phoenix are mimicked by the shape of the stone heart, and the slant of the fiery bird is echoed in the slant of the words.

The bird, of course, is a phoenix, the mythical creature that dies and is reborn in fire.

I can feel the sparks starting to stir under my own breastbone.
I know they will get hotter.

Image description: background: semi-transparent picture of a rocks that have been smoothed by the ocean. Lower right corner: three rocks piled one atop the other, with an open bloom tucked in at the side. An old-fashioned key rests on the top one. Lower center: the word 'Acceptance' is written. Center/left: a bird made of fire (a phoenix) with wings outspread. Upper right corner: a heart shaped from smooth pebbles. The word 'Change' is overlaid over the heart.

Change and Acceptance



Click here to see the 2024 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I decided to get a rush ticket to see a play at the Guthrie Theater: "Born With Teeth," a two-man production hypothesizing about the relationship between William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe.

It was an impulsive decision, and I was almost startled by how much I enjoyed it.

I had to show up a couple of hours early to snag a rush ticket, but I managed to do so. The Guthrie is a mere two blocks away from my former law firm employer. I hadn't been back since the day I packed up my stuff and left after they let me go in 2016. I plucked up my courage and took the elevator up to the fourth floor, where I was greeted by a woman who had no idea who I was. "I worked here for twenty-three years," I informed her dryly. "And I just stopped by to see if there were still any familiar faces."

There was one familiar person available who came out to see me, and we chatted for a few minutes. The old place has changed a lot, given the pandemic. Most people now work from home--there were only five people in the office that day--and every attorney I had worked for has since left the firm. Still, I was glad that I stopped by. It gave me the chance to remind myself that I'm really better off having moved on, and I definitely laid some ghosts to rest.

Then I stopped at a Thai restaurant for a bowl of pad thai and then went to see the play. Hugely enjoyable. I stopped in the gift shop and bought a copy, as well as another Jane Austen mug to match the one I already have (I figured that Eric and I can have matching mugs for when he comes over for coffee on Saturday mornings). Finally, I walked three blocks to the Stone Arch Bridge and walked across it, as I did for mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks for exercise for years when I worked at my former job.

A day well spent. I need to do more things to really get out and enjoy the amenities of the city that the pandemic has made me rather forget.

Alternate collage ideas this week not used:

Dreams
Change

Image description: Background: an image of the Guthrie theater. Against this background, two men in punk/Elizabethan dress (actors in the Guthrie production "Born With Teeth") face each other, one sitting (Will) and one crouching (Kit). Kit has his hand under Will's chin. The logo for the Guthrie is behind Will's head. Lower left: sign for Mill Ruins Park/Stone Arch Bridge. Lower right: a Jane Austen mug. Upper left: logo for Peg's former employer. Upper right: logo for Kin Dee (a Thai restaurant).

Guthrie



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

It was my turn to do devotions at work (again, I work in the office of the ELCA Lutheran Bishop for the Minneapolis Area Synod). The text was the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Instead of doing a Bible study or exposition, I read aloud for twenty minutes from chapter 4 of The Wild Swans, the chapter that has that biblical text as an epigraph. It's the scene where Elias and Sean met and Sean rescues him from the streets.

No one threw tomatoes. A few murmured afterward that they liked it.

I've read aloud at conventions and book clubs. Very unnerving to read aloud from my own stuff at my workplace.

I brought chocolate bread pudding. Maybe that kept the tomatoes at bay.

Edited to add: One of my coworkers stopped me in the kitchen the next day to tell me that she really liked it. She was very impressed by both the writing and my reading, she enjoyed it as a different thing to do for devotions, and she thought it was both very appropriate for the text and thought-provoking. And she recognized that it was a brave thing for me to do. It spoke to her deeply since she divorced her first husband for alcoholism and he spent decades on the streets before he died.

The feedback was immensely reassuring. It’s a relief to get confirmation that I didn’t make a total fool of myself.

When you get home three hours late from work, whimpering, make homemade butterscotch pudding for dinner because nothing else will do, and prepare to go to bed early. Hoping that the nightmares don't come back.

I had no intention of pulling out my soulcollage materials tonight.

My backbrain, however, insisted.

This card is related to several other cards in my deck: the Bearer of Burdens card, the Time card, the Dementor card, and The Woman Who Listens to Ravens card. I also think it's the card about what can happen if you resist crossing the Hidden Passage.

Cog in the Machine - Committee Suit I am the One who feels trapped by duty and necessity into doing work without desire. I have hidden my authentic self behind masks for so long that I am deadened to everything. I am effective for other people's profit, but never for myself. I am a slave to routine, helpless to change my own fate.

Obviously, this has been much on my mind lately.

Not sure how I feel about this card. It's something I've certainly been thinking about lately, which makes it powerful, but I don't think it's one of my more sophisticated cards, artistically.

Got this from Fiona:

Check out this link: "One night we came in late and walled off 11 senior offices just for fun." [not my workplace, btw, more's the pity]:

I've been asked to stay late tonight. Again. I don't know how late, but this is the team of attorneys that frequently ask people to work all night. And I don't mind, actually, because I can really use the overtime.

But . . . I missed karate Tuesday because I had to work late. And I missed last night because we had a parents' meeting at Fiona's school.

And missing tonight . . .

I just really need to kick somebody. Oh, not because I'm mad any anyone, you understand. I just miss it.

I have truly become a karate geek.