Lost and Found

Today I led a memorial service for a woman who is very beloved. I'm getting to know her family at the church and they're all so kind; it's a huge loss. As I looked around at all of the people who had gathered to pay their respects it struck me at how well they knew her, and for how long. It takes a real human being to be known like that.



I'm married to that kind of person, a man who people don't forget. I want my kids to be people of substance who live paying attention to their kindness, curiosity, and generosity. Ministers are cautioned to keep private and public life separate, and many clergy lose their privacy altogether. Staying authentic to a public ministry while cherishing my private life is a tough thing to balance.



And this is what I am thinking in my time after the service. If it were not for the people who knew me when....and still love me now, I would be lost. But instead, I am continually found. I am found by my friend's daughter, by old teachers, by college friends in Colorado. These people who know such intimate details of my life keep me grounded and hopeful and, even though it was a strange thing for them to have a minister in their midst at first, their love makes it possible for me to keep reaching out.



So, kitchen witch, I wish you peace, and the next time I feel a little bit lost I will remember the feeling of amazing grace I felt today for the love in my own life.

A Woman's Place

I think that young women are better at trusting each other than my peer group was. When I was a young adult working in retail management it was always reinforced for me that it was hard to trust each other because we were all vying for the best locations and the next promotion. Whenever I bucked the system, (thank you, Karol, Melissa, Marilyn) it felt good but it was rare. That was only 20 years ago.

Why am I thinking about this now? I have been horrible regarding my comments about Sarah Palin, and my best friend's birthday is coming up, and a beloved church woman has died...I'm thinking about women and our struggles and that they should not be with each other. It seems that many young women already know what it has taken me twenty years to figure out--my sisters are not just the women who are my siblings--a sisterhood of choice can be blessed, too.

One of my nieces is the age now when I began that retail career, and the indoctrination of not trusting my fellow sisters. She is so much smarter--she loves her girlfriends, she has sorority sisters, she knows what it means to be a Kulesza woman. Life is hard enough without women being sexist. Quite some time ago I learned that women do not get lifted up by putting down men--I'm not that kind of feminist. But women of any generation can support each other better.

I still hate everything about Sarah Palin and it will take me some time to reconcile those feelings. I don't know if it's sexist to hold people up for idealization due to their humanity and their gender-- time will tell. I have high expectations of men and women in national or any leadership positions and she fell short in almost every area. But enough about her for this day.

Today I salute my BFF who takes care of people and dogs in spectacular fashion during the best and worst of times. And I am honored to be part of the mourning process for a kitchen witch, who by all accounts, took care of many friends, family, and strangers.

Meanwhile, in this calling where so many of my colleagues become my sister, I keep learning from them and from the young women around me (nieces, daughters of friends, youth group) about how to better support each other.

A woman's place is beside me.

A New Day

Last night, as the news reports showed that Barack Obama had won the bid for the Presidency, at the request of a neighboring pastor, I put one hand on the man next to me and the other hand on the woman in front of me, and I bowed my head and I cried with a profound relief that change has come to America. We prayed for courage and unity and for God's continued protection of our president-elect. A few moments after our prayer, the television silenced us all with John McCain's concession speech, during which the young man to my right, a man who has been living in Indiana working on the Obama campaign, broke open. He buried his face in his arms and let the hope, sleeplessness, dedication, relief, and joy engulf him in sobs that shook his body and, for me, epitomized in that moment how much work young people did for this election.

So this morning I woke up as my children ran in to our room and asked us who had won. Who is our next president? They are 5 and 8 and they don't comprehend the full magnitude of this country's election of an African American man, who is also quite young, but all I can think of is this: it will be very special for their liberal parents to watch them grow up alongside these particular first daughters.

And so I am...full of hope, kind of tired, proud of everybody from my congregation who worked on our electoral process, and just so happy to be alive in this period of history, even with the challenges we face.