How to Save $2000

A couple months ago I started thinking that I'd like to transition to some sort of electronic organizer/ PDA kind of gadget. I think I might have been meditating on my 8.5x11 denomination-issue calendar when the thought hit me; it's always scuzzy by midyear, but the added abuse by Juliette's insistence upon using it has a coloring book hasn't helped. I hesitate to spring it from my purse in polite company.

I soon found out that PDAs are all but obsolete these days, overtaken by smartphones.

Hmm. Smartphones. As someone who winces at twenty-five cent text messages and subscribes to the ascetic cell phone plan they pretend doesn't exist until you begin the process of quitting the network, the added cost of a data plan doesn't really appeal to me.

Of course, every time I've grilled an iPhone user lately, they all get the same glazed over look in their eyes as they profess their undying appreciation for how much it has improved their lives. I have no doubt that I would feel the same way, but again: Mint estimates that the total cost for an iPhone with a two-year contract is $2,206.92. Yowzer.

So I'm thinking... if only I could have the iPhone organizational apps minus the iPhone data plan... aha! That's called an iPod Touch. Sure, you have to carry two devices, and no, you don't have constant web access. Fine by me. I played with one the other day at the new MacMall by our house, and I think we could make beautiful music together. And the smallest memory version sells for under $200. That would be approximately $2000 less than the alternative.

(And yes, I know, I'm playing fast and furious with the math. I still have to take into consideration that we will continue to have some sort of budget cell phone plan. This is called JUSTIFICATION, people.)

Buy Yourself a Birthday Present For Me

In a recent letter, Linford Detweiler of my favorite and best band, Over the Rhine, wrote:

"We have some big news.

For the first time ever, this coming May 17, Karin and I are planning to travel to the West Coast to make an Over the Rhine record. We are going to work with producer Joe Henry and an amazing cast of characters. We are going to make a record that we can't quite imagine. Hopefully it will be a little bit strange and a little bit wonderful.

Hopefully we will, "Blow the seams out of the songs..." (JH)

One thing for sure: We are going to be surprised.

There are at least three reasons why we still want to make music:

One: We believe making music has something to do with what we were put on this earth to do. If we leave our songs alone, they call to us until we come back to where we belong. When we live in the sweet spot of that calling, it gives others (you?) permission to discover the sweet spot of your own calling and live there.

Two: Both Karin and I have had occasion to bury loved ones. When we put loved ones in the ground, we find that we lose interest in acquiring stuff. We know we can't take it with us when we go. No, it's not about acquiring, rather it's about what we are able to leave behind. That's what gives life meaning: doing work that you can leave behind, your personal token of gratitude to the world in return for the gift of getting to be alive in it. (We believe the opportunity to make this record with Mr. Henry has everything to do with what we will leave behind.)

Three: Presence. There is a beautiful passage of scripture that made an impact on me as a child that I have never forgotten. Jesus said that if you help someone in need, someone hungry or naked or thirsty or imprisoned, if you are able to be present with them and soothe them in some way, it's the same as if God was hungry or naked or thirsty or imprisoned and you found a way to help God.

There is so much need in this beautiful broken world it can be overwhelming. Maybe the most profoundly satisfying thing about making music for the last 20 years is we have watched people invite our music to be part of the big moments of their lives - a slow dance in the kitchen with someone who changed everything, a walk down the aisle at a wedding, a child being born... Unfortunately, big moments also occur during seasons when it feels like everything is going horribly wrong. We all need music during those dark times too - I know I do. It's always humbling and amazing to learn that our music can be present in those too-difficult-too-imagine times. In some small way, through our music, it feels like we get to be present too, even when that is physically impossible. We get to be there in spirit.

That's enough to keep us coming back.

That and all the sex and drugs...

I'm just kiddin'."

In order to make the record they want to make but stay independent, they've kicked off a good old-fashioned stewardship campaign. You can kick in $10,000 and get a private concert, or you can just prepay $15 for your copy of the album. Impressive goodies are available at every level (who wants to be credited as an Executive Producer?).

I've already kicked in my share (with a little help from my parents), but I wanted to encourage others to participate as well. You can tell yourself you're buying Katherine a thirtieth birthday gift. The music of Over the Rhine is... well, if you know me by now, you can fill in the blank. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a patron of their artistry.

Linford's complete letter is here. It's as long as it is lovely.

And the link to donate is here.

Let me know if you decide to buy yourself a birthday present for me. :)

Countdown to Thirty, Part II

My blog-friend Erin just posted a great recap of her twenties. Like me, she's counting down to the big 3-0. She only has until May; I'm still twentysomething until July.

(Is it bad form to gloat about being in my twenties a little bit longer? I'll refrain.)

Back in September I confessed to thinking about turning thirty more than I thought I would. I don't think I've thought about turning a particular age so much since I turned seventeen; I vividly remember sitting by the water at Sunset Beach in North Carolina being profoundly aware of the ramifications of turning seventeen.

Then as now, I don't harbor negative feelings about my age. I'm just... aware. And was made That Much More Aware yesterday, when I found and hastily plucked my first very real gray hair. I even plucked a not-gray-hair to have a proper rubric against which to judge it. Definitely gray. And wiry.

The fact of the matter is this: I'm really happy right now. I'm in the process of completing a genuinely wonderful first ministry. I'll preach my first sermon in my new congregation on the last Sunday before I turn thirty. I have a daughter I love so much I can hardly articulate how I feel about her (though I'm trying, in that blessed book under contract). I cherish that red-headed husband I've known since I was nineteen. And physically... well, lets just say the arrival of that gym membership at this particular juncture was super serendipitous. I'm stronger and healthier and calmer than I would be if I wasn't spending thirty minutes tearing it up on the Elliptical five days a week, grasping at the shreds of my twentysomething metabolism.

All in all, my twenties have been really good to me. So here's that recap. Don't worry, it's not comprehensive.

At twenty...
Hmm. Not such a great year. Though I did discover Over the Rhine, and wrote a lot of poetry.

At twenty one...
I turned twenty-one in Mexico. The host family I was living with threw me a lovely little dinner party for my friends from the language school.

A couple weeks later I received a letter from Ben: yellow paper, pencil. I knew I would marry him if I went out with him. I went out with him the week I returned to Kent. Three months later, we were engaged.

I lived with Lisa and Andrea in a nondescript apartment adjacent to Kent State. Lisa forgave me for never doing the dishes.

I wrote a manuscript of poetry about the summer in Mexico that has never been and likely never will be published. The best poem has been rejected from Poetry and the Christian Century, though it did become a finalist in a GoodReads poetry competition.

At twenty-two...
I married Ben on my twenty-second birthday. Three weeks later, we packed up his Ford Ranger and drove to California, so I could go to seminary.

I met Lara, Julie, Rosamond, Nadja, Andrea, Christine, Ellen. Among others.

At twenty three...
I spent the summer I turned twenty-three trying to figure out what it meant to have a dual calling as a pastor and writer, thanks to a little help from The Fund for Theological Education. We spent a week at the Fine Arts Work Center with our friends Maj and Paul. That fall, I started working as a ministry intern at FCC Pomona.

At twenty four...
I started this blog. I learned to knit. I graduated from seminary. I was called to be the solo pastor of this little church by the beach, even though we had originally intended to head back to the Midwest.

At twenty five...
We were barely settled into the parsonage when we adopted Deacon, our pit mix. He was at my feet when I wrote my first sermon for this congregation.

At twenty six...
I officiated my first wedding and first funeral in the same twenty-four hour period.

In September, someone asked me if I was pregnant. I wasn't. I went home upset that I was so out of shape that someone would think I was pregnant, and found out that Deacon was sick.

Three weeks later, Deacon was gone.

I lost weight.

After a couple months of being incredibly sad, we decided to go to take a vacation to Europe in February. Eleven mostly fantastic days in France, Switzerland, Germany.

In May, we found out we were having a baby.

At twenty-seven...
I pretty much didn't think about anything but being pregnant. And then I had a baby, and didn't think about anything but having a baby.

I grew tomatoes for the first time, and started baking bread.

At twenty-eight...
Twenty-eight was a particularly difficult and significant year. There was extensive questioning and struggling that ultimately pointed toward reconciliation and a renewed sense of vocation - in a lot of areas of my life.

I opted out of a book project that I really believed in because of a decision I couldn't stomach.

I went to the Collegeville Institute and spent a week learning from Eugene Peterson.

At twenty-nine...
I got a book contract.

I got the job.

Juliette went to bed without Mama-milk one night - of her own volition - and that was that. Couldn't have been a better weaning experience.

I preached, and wrote, and packed, and mothered, and loved, and cooked, and otherwise earned that gray hair and every other gray hair to come.

Thirty, here I come.

Discernment

Part of the interview process for my new congregation involved leading a worship service for the search committee. I was spinning my wheels about what to do until three ideas arrived to save the day.

The first was from a friend who encouraged me to use the daily lectionary instead of picking a scripture on my own. That was insanely good advice, as the daily lectionary text ended up being perfect - though one I would have never selected of my own volition.

The second idea was to write an original hymn, which I did, to the tune of Come, Thou Fount.

Hymn of Discernment
Congregations are the vessels where Christ’s presence can be known.
Here the gift of incarnation perseveres in flesh and bone.
We together are his body, head and shoulders, knees and toes.
Laughing, loving, always serving, praising God, forgiving foes.

In the church, you call forth servants to be preachers of the Word.
Ordinary souls responding to the still small voice they heard,
Saying, Go, and serve my people. Tend their wounds and help them see
that the love of God is endless as the vast and salty sea.

Holy Spirit, we have gathered in this place to find our way.
Telling stories, casting visions, seeking guidance as we pray.
Calm our nerves, dispel our worries, send us forth in clarity.
Let our practice of discernment be imbued with charity.


Hymn of Discernment by Katherine Willis Pershey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The third idea was to take the entire manuscript of the service - prayers, scriptures, hymn, etc., and create a Wordle image to use as cover art for the bulletins. The larger the word, the more commonly it was used in the text.

It took me awhile to make the Wordle work correctly, and in the meantime, I spent a lot of time unintentionally meditating on the words included.

All of this contributed to the discernment process, in which the operative word was:

YES.

Passion for Fashion

Juliette is turning into quite the fashionista.

Lily's skirt became a cutting edge hat, eh?
Tank top, stocking cap, one glove. This girl's got styling skills.
And a smile to match.
Her first visit to the salon went relatively well. She didn't like the water spritz.
She looks concerned about the haircut. I think I look like this in the salon chair sometimes, too.
Doesn't she seem terribly grown up??
Okay, so maybe her parents were responsible for this outfit. It's her Lola costume, skirt (and various hand-me-downs) courtesy of the Dillow girls.
I went through a bunch of baby clothes recently, and Juliette insisted on wearing a NEWBORN t-shirt she nabbed from the pile. I think Heidi Klum would question her taste level.
I didn't manage to take a good Easter portrait this year, but here's a clip from the all-church shot. She picked out her own dress, thankyouverymuch. I was showing her a black, white, and yellow bumblebee dress when she saw this pink number perched high on the Kohl's display. "That one," she said.
My sweet Juliette, pretty in pink.

Return to Racquetball

Ben was also able to join up at the local gym, thanks to the transferability of those golden tickets - Lara kindly sent hers along instead of claiming the $12. After dropping Juliette off at school we hightailed it to the racquetball court. It was interesting to learn what does and doesn't stick after a three+ year hiatus from my favorite sport.

Doesn't Stick

• the rules - it took us 20 minutes just to remember the basics
• the skills - gone are my mad backhand and corner shot skills

Sticks

• my inability to control the grunts and hollers that are involuntarily expelled from my being when trying to return a volley
• my tendency to fling myself into the air and subsequently onto the ground when trying to return a volley

So basically I was a loud person thrashing around the court with no skills or strategy - but having loads of fun. I did manage to catch up toward the end; after all, it's been three years for Ben, too. He squeaked past for the win.

I guess I'm making meatballs for dinner.

Ten on Tuesday

1. Tonight we went out for an early dinner at Buca de Beppo, armed with a $10 off coupon. (I always think of my friend Robyn when I see BdBs; we drove past one in high school, and she started shouting BUCA DE BEPPO!!!! repeatedly. I'd never heard of it before and thus thought she was having some sort of hysterical fit. She just really loves family style Italian.) We ordered chicken pesto pizza, which totally breaks one of my hard and fast food rules: chicken does not belong on pizza (another being mayonnaise doesn't belong on hamburgers). It was tasty. Our salad order got botched up and was pretty late, so they comped it. It ended up being an extremely cheap dinner.

2. After church on Sunday...
Ben to Juliette: Are you ready, Toots?
Juliette to Ben: Ready, Toots!

3. I did not manage to memorize the entire Mary Magdalene monologue for Easter Sunday, but I made discreet notecards and managed to not use them very much. The part I hadn't memorized was a prayer, so I conveniently bowed my head and was able to read less conspicuously.

4. Last week a Facebook friend mentioned she was reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. I've been reading and liking his blog lately, so I stopped at the bookstore on the way to church that very morning and picked up a copy (how's that for viral marketing?). I couldn't put it down. The whole premise is sort of inverted, and I kept thinking it would fall apart in the thinner places, but it never did. I can think of a lot of people who would really like this book, but perhaps especially scrapbookers and preachers, because they are all about telling stories.

5. I've learned something about fashion from the ladies at church. Many of them have been wearing the same clothes for as long as 20 years. And they invariably look fantastic. Much of what they wear is either timeless enough that it never goes out of style, or so specific to their personal sense of style that it's irrelevant whether or not it's in style. Lessons: buy decent clothes that look good on you and will last, take good care of them... and take good care of yourself. You can't wear the same thing for 20 years if you aren't the same size. The dresses two sisters from FCC Pomona gave me for my graduation and ordination are the perfect test case for my new fashion goals. I wore one on Palm Sunday; will I still be wearing them in 2025? (Incidentally, a gruff but ever sweet gentleman stopped me during coffee hour and said, "You're wearing a beautiful dress." :)

6. I am slowly but surely packing up our stuff. The stash of boxes is growing.

7. My friend Erica, whom I first met online through The Young Clergywoman Project and then at the two preaching conferences, is one of our new "neighbors" in the western suburbs of Chicago. She and her husband are taking us to a Cubs game this summer. I'm so excited to experience my first Chicago sporting event! I've noted that there's some serious trash-talking betwixt staff members at my new congregation related to the Cubs and the White Sox. I'm afraid this early invitation to see a Cubs game is going to land me on the Cubs side of the scuffle.

8. The good news is that I get to return to Collegeville this summer for a much-needed weeklong writing retreat, and that some friends will also be there.

9. The bad news is that poor Juliette has to have surgery to insert ear tubes and remove her adenoids. She hasn't been well for two months, and has had this recurring ear infection since the beginning of March. We're anxious about it - especially with Ben's history of hearing loss related to infections - but we've heard good things about the ENT surgeon and the procedure itself. We'll find out tomorrow when the surgery will be.

10. We did not feel the earthquake on Sunday, though it seems nearly everyone else did. I thought that I was just unsteady on my feet from having woken up at 4:30am for the Sunrise Service. I'm really hopeful that it's the last earthquake for awhile now, and am considering tracking down one of those cheesy shirts from the Signals catalog that says STOP PLATE TECTONICS.

The Vindication of a Pillowcase

That Target. Always zeroing in on my demographic with such precision I'm sure they've been reading my diary.

Like a lot of the ladies, I've been pining for all that gorgeous Liberty of London for Target stuff that's scattered throughout the store. Much of it has already been snapped up. It's just so darn cute.

Like these boots. How fun would puddle-splashing be in these?
And this canister. It makes me want to bake snickerdoodles (in my spare time...).
If this weren't polyester, I'd be all over it.
Oooh, cute quilt.
Take a closer look...
And that's when I start thinking these patterns seem very familiar.

Ah, yes. Right under my nose. The "ugly" pillowcase I snatched from my parents' linen closet when I left for my freshman year of college. (It's only right that I should be the one to inherit the random pillowcases; I'd bet good money that I'm the only Willis girl whose sheets don't presently match her pillowcases and blankets.)
And my ugly pillowcase is hereby completely vindicated. I even checked the label to make sure it wasn't vintage Liberty of London - nope. I googled the brand and immediately came up with a pink version on sale at Etsy for $8.75. Turns out we are just as hip as my parents were in the 1970s!