The Mosher Pit

The Hopeline, 1-800-SUICIDE, is fighting to survive, itself, right now. They have an appeal out that a friend of mine helped produce, and I was privileged to be allowed to see an early draft of the video and offer feedback. The end result makes the case very plain, and here is a collaborative effort between the founder of 1-800-SUICIDE and the founder of Post Secret, which has received anonymous, creative thank-you cards that credit 1-800-SUICIDE with helping them go on, forward and up.

In 1998, I hit my own nadir and realized I’d been in a struggle against mental illness for the better part of my adolescent and young adult life. It was the beginning of the journey out for me too, and I don’t remember who I called that tear-stained night I hit bottom, but whoever you were, you lifted me up.

There’s a lot of people who think that “saving” people should be job one when it comes to doing God’s work in the world. But a person who is hovering on the thin end of a wire, struggling to come up with a reason to cope with another miserable tomorrow, and nothing but more miserable tomorrows on the horizon, often can’t make a connection with God, or if they do, it’s resentful. See, that’s the whole point of despair–you’ve lost everything, even your faith.

One of my favorite taglines about my journey back to faith is that I had spent my life placing faith in people, and kept finding my world falling apart when those people let me down. But I’m glad I didn’t stop believing in people just the same. Yes, it probably would have been easier. God knows I still have flashes of grief when I think about the graphic novel that Bram and I will never collaborate on, and wistful pangs to know that Greg, my fellow insomniac from freshman year at MWC, is the one classmate I will never reconnect with. And incredible feelings of joy that a younger me managed to work through her issues so that I could grow up and be strong, witty, fun, intelligent, talented, and oh-so self-effacing.

Keep the Hopeline going. Please donate.

Posted in Life, Link of the Day, Memories, Reflections by: Helen
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When last I actually talked about my weight loss, I believe it was shortly before Easter, and I had crossed the threshold past the 200-lb. mark to 199. I’m still there, for no other reason than the insane work and conference schedule I’ve been keeping these past few weeks has made it impossible for me to work out or eat as mindfully, so I’ve been working on some other things, like weaning myself off soda again and doing a series of stretches every morning. Twice in as many weeks I’ve succumbed to marathon sleep sessions, and my house looks like a tornado ran through it–something I shouldn’t joke about given how close one came to tearing up my parents’ house last week. (And I, being so swamped, didn’t actually find out about it til this weekend.)

In 10 days, I attended Podcamp DC, the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds expo, and an Alban Institute-hosted focus group on social media and congregational development. Amid all this, at work, I developed a new blog for their use, mapped out the June issue, and started training the new managing editor. I had houseguests last Saturday–local neighbors I’d met through Twitter (and how awesome they are, let me tell you!) and my brother and his new girlfriend came up on Sunday. I just really found myself hopelessly slammed.

Nearly gone nova
So it’s probably a good thing that Dean and I postponed our wedding last December; had I actually been getting married tomorrow as we had originally planned, I think I would have become a singularity in my own right and the universe would have caved in around me, gradually sucking all known matter into this Front Royal hillside.

Couple of things that have come out of this weekend: First, I’m writing an exploratory syllabus to formulate a course on social media for congregational leaders. Secondly, we’ve set a new date, September 1, and in so doing we’re already getting the “are we invited?” questions from several fronts. We’d love to have a wedding, but after the financial insanity of this past winter it’s just not financially viable. The ceremony itself will be private. However, we intend to have one hell of a party, probably a few weeks later as the fall colors set in out here in the Shenandoah, and we’ll make it a BYO/DIY-reception (an unreception?) with as many amenities as we can afford. Details to be announced, and if you would like an invitation, email me your address. (helenmosher at the gmail.)

So anyway, the weight loss. In about two weeks, I resume my more normal schedule of telecommuting regularly and having every other Friday off. I’m looking forward to returning to less harried relationship with food and being able to spend lunch hours with Jennifer Kries again, and let’s see if I can knock the next 20 pounds off. If I can do that in the same six weeks I did the first 20, I’ll be totally on track to lose a total of 60 pounds by August. That may be overly optimistic, but as long as I’m getting healthier, that’s what matters.

Posted in Faith, Life, Wedding, Weight Loss, Wellness by: Helen
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The funny thing about being tagged in a “what are you reading” meme (as I was by Jamie Notter) is that I do much of my reading through audiobooks, so the book I’m currently reading doesn’t have a page number, although I could dig up the physical copy of the book if I looked around enough, that’s not true of most audiobooks I “read.” See, I have a long commute, and what makes it bearable is Fairfax County library’s extensive collection of CD audiobooks. Granted, I am an NPR fangirl (we’ve dug up the evidence from the 2004 archives and will migrate it here soon), but I love being read to.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if it’s the result of getting burnt out on reading as a result of doing my senior thesis at Temple U. in 2004 on Virginia Woolf. Other times I know it’s a matter of the fact that I do more reading of online content than media-with-turnable-pages these days. And other times still it’s because the kinds of books I most like to read are hipster slipstream novels that libraries tend to avoid carrying, much less on audiobook.

Right now I’m rereading the Harry Potter series via audiobook, though. Jim Dale is a gifted storyteller, and I must admit I love the series more with each reading, and audio is adding a dimension to the books that’s helping me override the visuals imposed by the movies. I love nerding out on certain editing gaffes that happened because the books were rushed to print, and I love how the series was held up by fundamentalist Christians as antiGod when its good vs. evil rivals the Narnia series in terms of Christian allegory. I’m on Book IV (Goblet of Fire) and intend to listen to the entire series

For work right now I’m reading Wikis for Dummies because I’m planning to build some documentation for our workplace environment that I believe Wikis will facilitate, and Meatball Sundae a little bit although I find reading many of these books is like reading a digest of blogs I read six months ago, and I often wind up thinking to myself “dood, why didn’t i think to propose this book?”
I love Dummies books in particular because I can flip through the pieces I already know but always discover things I don’t know.

On the faith front, I’m not reading anything per se other than a devotional book one of my EfM colleagues passed along last week, and my second year EfM textbook. Have too many faith-related feeds I monitor for the Episcopal Cafe to be able to pick up a book. I have “read” several audio
books on the Reformation and Renaissance recently.

I used to be a bookstore manager and it’s a secret dream of mine to own my own book/coffee shop, with my own mixes spinning on the muzak and a bookstore cat winding about my ankles as I’m shelving. I love used-bookshops, too, and the evidence is mostly in storage at the Annandale house. I love reading kids books, too; I’m too saddled with Disney versions of children’s stories and being a touch of a folklorist with a couple of YA novels in my head, studying up on the real Mary Poppins and the real Peter Pan has been helping me cultivate and discern my own storytelling voice for the post-millennial generation to come–my grandchildren.

So I think there are five books in there somewhere. But I’d much rather be writing them.

Tagging? I’m still cultivating readers, but I think I need recommendations from the faith blogcircle right now, because I’ve been neglecting my gallycat readers since the migration. So I’m tagging:

Ann Fontaine

Nick Knisely

ePisco Sours

Kirstin Paisley

Progressive Pragmatist

Posted in Books, Faith, Memery by: Helen
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Wittenburg Door obliges us with a post-St. Patrick interview with Peter Rollins, complete with Python quips-backs at intellectually demanding discourses. But as it turns out, the Belfast philosopher  is the founder of the Ikon collective, which heavily blurs the region between skeptic and seeker, according to the article’s preamble

Once we shift into Ikon’s typical stomping ground, however, Rollins expounds on the nature of God as not being something or someone we can understand  so much as something or someone we can experience, and as such:

DOOR: Moving on to that whole putting-theory-into-practice thingie, how do Ikon’s services put into practice your belief that the truth in Christianity is not described but experiential?

ROLLINS: In a sense I would not even want to say that the truth of Christianity is experiential in so much as the truth of Christianity is life and life is not experienced. Rather life is what allows us to experience. Just as one does not see sight but it is sight that enables one to see. In other words I don’t think we experience the truth of Christianity but the truth of Christianity is hinted at in the renewed way we experience everything else. In this way the truth of faith is not one thing among other things but rather is that which brings us into new relationship with all things. The way we explore this within Ikon is by attempting to create a gathering in which Christianity is not fundamentally about an understanding or experience but rather a way of being and interacting in the world.

DOOR: Why do you have your services in a bar?

ROLLINS: Whenever Ikon started meeting in bar, it was the least important place. I liked this bar and I asked the bartender if I could do it. As time went on, I almost reversed completely. You hear talk about different types of space, intimate space between a couple, personal space, social space, and public space. Church often feels like intimate space between you and God. So we’re exploring doing this in social space where secular and social begin to get blurred. We’re tying to inhabit that social space and live out our fractured lives in public. I don’t know many groups who are experimenting with this.

DOOR: Most of the US religious leaders who act out in public tend to get arrested.

DOOR: When we’re having services in a bar, you get people smoking blow, heckling, things like that. It’s really scary. But it also created this wonderful dynamic. Some people who could never go near a church find they can go into this bar and explore their faith. After a year or two of going to Ikon, they could go to a church again. Our most committed regulars are workers at the bar. If we ever have elders at Ikon they’ll be bar staff. Our bartender is in prison at the moment, but he could put the fear of God in anybody that heckled us. At first he never engaged with us, he was suspicious of who we were. One day we brought some Catholic workers in and at that moment his attitude changed. There was a moment when we had a member of Ikon go to light a cigarette. He stopped and offered to light her cigarette. That was a real breakthrough moment when he crossed over and he joined us.

Elders = bar staff. I love it.

More here.

Posted in Church of Beer, Religion by: Helen
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Christ Announces Hiring Of Associate Christ | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

“Overwhelmed by prayers,”  Jesus Christ is urging folks to enlist the services of a customer service rep from Tacoma, Washington, who has promised the same level of service as people have come to expect from the Son of God himself, according to the Onion.

Posted in Humor, LOLZ!, Link of the Day, Religion by: Helen
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Ran across this in a blog that’s an outreach of the Diocese of Central NY that seems to be a proponent of the church of beer. (They have an open spirituality discussion that meets monthly at Empire Brewing Company, in Armory Square in Syracuse.) This essay talks about the implications of marriage in the afterlife, but I had one of those eye-pop out of your head moments when I read the latter portion of it:

Ironically, the emphasis today on marriage and family values has contributed to the loss of community. Isolated and without adequate social support, families are forced to rely on their own resources. The day to day stress on families has increased significantly as both parents are pressured to work more hours than their parents. Children hardly get to be children these days, passed as they are from one activity to the next, one parent to the next. The pressures and tensions are just too much for individual households to bear and literally pits family members against each other.

So beware of political candidates who claim to support family values, it actually demonstrates a lack of vision, an inability to imagine a better basis for our society.

Marriage cannot serve as the foundation of any society. Like Atlas trying to shoulder the weight of the world, marriage is crumbling under a burden it cannot possibly bear. Attempts to artificially reinforce it as the basis of society only make it a rigid and oppressive structure. And worse, insisting on this false foundation deprives us of the firmer ground we so desperately need.

Does this mean we shouldn’t get married? No, but marriage needs to be grounded in the larger context of a human community founded on compassion rather than oppression. If we remember to view marriage as a fragile relationship rather than an institution, we are much more likely to honor the humanity of the people involved.

The emphasis is mine, because it hits very close to home on a couple of points. Many gen-x-ers don’t trust institutions, and that includes both marriage and the church. Maybe that’s why the church of beer, as I call it, is what it is. Hanging out with friends over tea/coffee or a couple of pints and allowing conversation to flow freely may seem anarchic or subversive as a way of practicing faith in community to some folks. But for others, it’s freeing. Similarly, as DFH and I wrestle with what it means to be married, his distrust of the institution is clear even though I plead for us to approach it as a way of personally affirming our lifelong commitment to one another.

Anyhow, No Outcasts is a nifty blog, with a liberal dose of illustrations for those of us that think words are just the things that come between the pictures. You can check out the essay — and find the rest of the blog, which seems to be updated monthly — here.

Posted in Church of Beer, Family, Link of the Day, Religion by: Helen
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Clergy and lay delegates at the annual council, faced with a slashed budget for Shrine Mont camp scholarship budgets, were strident in their call to have the funding restored.

But of course, when you restore something in one line, you must cut it somewhere else, right?

So it was put to the council: how many of you would be willing to give $100 now, to restore this funding?

Hands around the room shot up. Tellers went around to do a count, and instead got checks and cash donations, on the spot. The estimated return to the program was $19,000.

Bishop Lee, noting this unusual development, said, “Can you imagine Congress doing this?”

Discussion that followed underscored the importance of taking this back to your congregations.

GIVE!

Posted in Diocese of Virginia by: Helen
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I’m at the press table, although if any of you are here you’re not likely to be reading this since you’re at Eucharist.

But I will probably be here tomorrow, too, so please find me!!

Posted in Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal Church by: Helen
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[Backdated post — will likely show up in feeds in February.]

On the Cafe today, I picked up a church-of-beer story that’s a little bit backwards, as a decommissioned church is being eyed as a possible site for a brewpub.

It bears noting that such a place, in my mind, would be the perfect gathering place for getting the church-of-beer practitioners more comfortable inside a church, as the whole premise of my little idea is to get spiritual people who like to socialize over a couple of pints engaged in talking about faith in a small gathering place. Sure, it’s a little backwards to drink the bread (beer) and eat the wine (fruit), but this is all about turning convention on its head to draw people in.

Posted in Church of Beer by: Helen
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Wah. I am starting to sound like a one-note flute sometimes, I guess, when I defend the fringes. But there is one place I’m hard and fast on when it comes to tradition, and that’s church music.

I love hymns and anthems, and I really should be in the choir, but EfM takes precedence right now and I’ve been too peripatetic in the past. I have a good chunk of the 1940 hymnal memorized because most of my churchness was before 1982. When your mom is the choir director, it becomes second nature.

But I find myself just… totally, BLEAH over so-called praise music. I love gospel music, stained-glass bluegrass, orchestral music, international songs of faith, spirituals, secular-music-brought-over, and, most of all, traditional hymns from the 18th and 19th century.

But I went to a church service not too long ago with a creative liturgy, adapted from the one we all know and love, and really enjoyed it. Except for the praise music.

Just wanted to let all my traditionalist friends-in-faith know that I’m not completely outside the box.

Posted in Episcopal Church, Music by: Helen
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