my niche

Consider this definition:

niche |ni ch |
noun
a shallow recess, esp. one in a wall to display a statue or other ornament.
• ( one's niche) a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment : he is now a partner at a leading law firm and feels he has found his niche.
• a specialized but profitable corner of the market : [as adj. ] important new niche markets.
• Ecology a position or role taken by a kind of organism within its community. Such a position may be occupied by different organisms in different localities, e.g., antelopes in Africa and kangaroos in Australia.
verb [ trans. ]
place or position (something) in a niche.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from French, literally ‘recess,’ from nicher ‘make a nest,’ based on Latin nidus ‘nest.’


Jubilee Fellows is my niche. Ministry is my niche. It is proof that I am my father's daughter (and in other ways, more truly, my Father's daughter). Church-y, spiritual-y kinds of things are where I thrive.

I like the definition of niche (from the Oxford English dictionary on my Mac), and while I don't know how accurate "comfortable" is for describing a niche in ministry, "suitable" would apply to me. Even more than the specific definition for a job/vocation, I like the version about Ecology better:
A position or role taken by a kind of organism within its community

Yes. Ministry is obviously a position or role in its community. But it's also true that it requires "a kind of organism" that is designed for its role. And that's the wonderful part about Jubilee Fellows-- we are all a common organism in our community, with similar goals and drives and passions to serve in a unique way. We have the privilege of bringing together people of all walks of life to examine their walks IN life, to consciously bring together the physical and spiritual.

I have found my niche. :)

Restless--

Having finished Dakota (Kathleen Norris) I've picked up where I left off with Thomas Merton's autobiography Seven Storey Mountain. As with other mentors, literary or physical, I often recieve gifts of insight long before I hear the whole of their stories. Same with Merton-- I had long pored over No Man is an Island and felt it was time that I sat down and heard his whole story. It's a long story--over 450 pages--but I'm sad to have set it aside for so long.

And, as is the case with other mentors, I'm naively astonished to discover that Thomas Merton, this great hero of the faith, was more messed up in his twenties than I am now. I suppose it's a bit of a relief (there's hope for me!) but I'm also intrigued, mystified by how he's gotten from point A to point B.

I know what Merton means when he talks about the disgust he looked at himself with at the end of his ventures into the world. I agree with this statement he makes--

I thought I was going to ransack and rob of all [the world's] pleasures and satisfactions. I had done what I intended, and now I found that it was I who was emptied and robbed and gutted. What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear. (181)

Paradoxial, yes. And true. But I don't end it there, and neither does Merton. That last quote is near the end of Part I. Part II, however, opens with a very different tone, and I rejoice with what he says here--

What is "grace"? It is God's own life, shared by us. God's life is Love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are able to share in the infinitely self-less love of Him Who is such pure actuality that He needs nothing and therefore cannot conceivably exploit anything for selfish ends...

When a ray of light strikes a crystal, it gives a new quality to the crystal. And when God's infinitely diinterested love plays upon a human soul, the same kind of thing takes place. And that is the life called sanctifying grace. (186)


Like Merton, and like Lauren Winner, Kathleen Norris, and like so many others whose stories I've absorbed, I feel an irrisistable pull to the Church. I can't keep myself away. Faith literature remains my favorite genre. I am fascinated by the study of Spiritual Disciplines, even though there is something very deep and resistant in my heart towards all of this. I'm not sure what exactly that resistance is, or even how to fight it, but thank God that His grace is persistent. Thank God that His life can make my human potential into more than I could ever be on my own.


Betsy

Addendum to the New Years Resolutions...

If I may, I think I'll make another New Year's Resolution, if it's not too late to ;) It's to actually make Sunday a day of rest... so that means doing my homework before then. Unfortunately I'll be scheduled to work on Sundays, but that's no so bad, I can still go to church in the evenings (or LOFT! handy) and it makes a big difference if I don't have homework to do. Instead, I would love to plug away at my pleasure reading list (also found at the bottom of this webpage). Right now I'm finishing up Dakota by Kathleen Norris, and I need to finish Seven Storey Mountain by T.Merton. These people are my literary mentors, and I don't spend enough time with them as it is :)


I'm thoroughly enjoying this Sunday, and it is truly a day of rest. I got to hear my brother Zach preach, which was pretty cool, and then we (Mom, Jessey, Z&J&J and I) went to the restaurant 'Real Food' (Alger/Eastern--highly recommended!) and had a very good breakfast there. Julia was being adorable, too. She's 6 months next week! Wow! She's wonderful. (And I'm a very proud auntie!)

If you haven't heard, I've got a tenative placement for my Jubilee Fellows internship. They'd like to send me to Bellflower, California! It's in the LA area. I had told Kary that I would love to be in a big city, and that I would also love to be in Southern California or Colorado since I have family in those states. (Let's just say my siblings have good taste in location!) I'd be working at Rosewood CRC (Bellflower is another one of those Dutch pockets in SoCal!) but it seems like a pretty diverse congregation. My mentor would be the Family ministries director, which is cool since I'd really like to work with whole families, not just kids (I want to be more than a Youth Pastor)... so I hope it works out! :D (Plus one of my good friends will also be in the LA area, so I'd have a buddy to go be a tourist with. Fun!) I can't believe it's just a few months away now. :)

Well, I've already mentioned that I have some reading to catch up on, and my dear friend Mary is coming over later today so I'm going to take some time to myself. Hope you all have a lovely weekend! I'm definitely going to be making the most of today and tomorrow before classes start up on Tuesday!

Bets

[Edit: Later....]

Another reason I should read more is that I write more. And I write more thoughtful things, too. I don't know why, really, but I'm particularly drawn to spiritual memoirs. I suppose it connects for me the life that is lived with the spiritual life and shows how interconnected they really are. In reading Dakota I find that her truth is often my truth; and it's said that all truth is God's truth. One thing I just read stuck me as very true and clarified something for me that I didn't even realize needed it. She says, on pages 131-132,

Conversion means starting with who we are, not who we wish we were. It means knowing where we come from.... Conversion doesn't offer a form of knowledge that can be bought and sold, quantified, or neatly packaged. It is best learned slowly in the community

Truth is new light shed on old situations. For me, this quote from K.Norris highlights for me both what I longed for in confession and the reasons why I was disappointed. It was my conversion experience if I've ever had one; and if that was conversion, it lacked the redemptive community response I had hoped for. Then again, K.N. is still right: conversions are never neatly packaged.

One revelation after another: Reading brings revelations and those revelations keep me reading. It's an ongoing cycle between my literary mentors (Christian and non-, as I discovered with Salman Rushdie a couple of years ago) and the promptings of the Spirit. It's deeply spiritual for me, and if I may consider it a spiritual discipline (and I would) I think this kind of reading is what CS Lewis is talking about when he says

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion that the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. [On Theology and Devotion]

Love. Peace. Joy. {Such beautiful words with profound meaning! I wish them for you.}
Bets

A very fun night :) A story in pictures :)

Project 1: Dinner
This is a recipe I found in a Rachael Ray magazine...
Before--

After--
It was a complete success and tasted delicious. :)


Project 2: Josh Kuiper's Birthday Cake
Step 1-- Bake the cake and frost the middle part

Step 2--Put the second layer on and frost that.

Step 3--Decorate with the rest of Debbi's chocolate frosting.


Later... Party at T.G.I.Fridays with... well, everyone Josh knows.


After bowling, we went back to Josh's apartment and made him blow out candles. As you can clearly see, he loves the cake. And it is, in fact, a gorgeous cake. And tasted perfect, too!

And God said....

"You'll be okay."


I have been amazed by the emails and comments from that last post. It seems everyone has found their way to it and, unbelievably, can relate somehow. I've been really blessed by that. God has used it to prompt me to rethink some things, and it has also given me courage to keep trying. If I don't have the strength, others will be strong for me.

So, thank you for that. :)

As hard as the last post was to write, it was also brutally honest (as you noticed, obviously) and it was a kind of purging. Once I had written that post and gone to bed, the next morning I felt better, changed even. It's a lot like how I used to write poems about dealing with my dad's cancer. I hated writing the poems, because they were "too honest" and showed things about life that I didn't really want to acknowledge, but once I had released that anger onto paper I didn't have to feel it in my heart. So yes. That last post was like that. I was tempted to remove it, but as I re-read it, the truth was still there, whether or not it was eating away at me or not.

I mentioned in the last post that it was hard to think about anything else. Well, the next morning, I was able to start thinking about other things-- about Jubilee Fellows (church ministry internship for next summer, the class starts in less than 2 weeks!) and about how much I respect my dad for his efforts at Ebenezer. I've been able to talk to some people (like my lovely and wise mentor Heidi!) about where I'm at and also where I want to be. I've met some people and re-established some other friendships, which I should focus on some more.

I can't believe I have less than two years before I graduate (Dec 09!) and that one of those semesters will be student teaching. Time flies. I'm maturing in ways I'd never imagined, and I can't believe that I'm nearly 20.5 years old (Feb 7!) and that life is already happening. Talking to my mom today, we lamented how we wish my dad were here to see Zach preach and me do the internship this summer and all the rest--I know he'd be proud of us all, my mom included-- but at the same time, it's so good that we're in the here-and-now, that my mom IS married to Jessey, and that the triplets are in our lives and so much more--such blessings!

And so, taking the advice of all my family and friends, I take a step forward. It might be a half a step, or a baby step, but at least it's a step forward. And I smile. I haven't completely lost joy--after all, it'll always be my middle name ;)

Thanks again, for all your encouragement and support.

Betsy

hi, friends.

It feels like it has been a while.

I've been pretty out of it lately, unsettled. I'm trying to find my words again-- literally, but also as a metaphor for my life. I told Sharon the other day that I've lost myself and don't really like who I'm walking around in lately.

I have my good days in with the bad days, but I'm mostly just exhausted in general from having to explain myself (in varying degrees) and constantly confront what I thought I'd let go of. It doesn't seem right, really, with this whole theological concept of confession and forgiveness and then have to live with it more after the fact than before. I'm actually rather convinced that our churches and communities have a false pretense of having mastered such disciplines--in reality, they all (we all? myself included) have absolutely no idea how to respond to confession and forgiveness in sociological terms. I've been disappointed in more ways than one, brokenhearted in more ways than one-- for my own story and longings, for the Calvin community's, for the ecumenical Church.

But besides that, I wish I had more to say. I realized this the other day, this wanting more to talk about than just what's in front of me at present. Because there are a lot of things, but none of them tug my heart or draw me to them. I suddenly have an awkward social life. I spend a lot of time doing nothing. I sleep--a lot. I cry a lot. I miss people, I miss my dad, I miss last semester. I stay up late watching dumb movies or watch the latest on politics (probably the most constructive thing I do). Mostly I just want to let go and move on and just stop having to deal with this when I wanted it to be over months ago.

I feel claustrophobic inside of my own life. Restless and antsy and probably mildly depressed. Even now, when the last thing I want is to talk about "this," I can't help it--because there's nothing else. I'm haunted by it. I dread everything-- the next meeting, the next person to be told, the next requirement, the next way it negatively effects my friendships and relationships with others, it kills me again. I say it again: I felt freed and forgiven for barely 24 hours. But then everything else, everyone else, turned me into what I had done. I'm not really a person anymore, and that's probably why I don't like myself. I'm only what I'd done--and what's terrible, is that I actually confessed it, I was actually forgiven of it, but I still can't escape it. I've been turned into what I'd done. The only difference now is that everyone knows about it.

I probably shouldn't be saying this, but I do regret it. Telling anyone, I mean. It didn't help. Things could have been different, and it would have been a truly honestly beautiful thing if it had been different. I don't know that I would have the heart to encourage anyone else to confess in the way that I did. I don't think I have the strength to keep going. I know I don't have the strength to keep going. I'm a failure. I feel more terrible about myself than I did before.

I just want to forget everything.


Betsy Joy-is-spent.


PS. Except that it's not true, because I desperately want it to have meaning, and I love ministry and the church and people and want to do that with my life. I just don't know what that looks like or what it means anymore.

Well, life has changed, and thankfully it's a bit less of a whirlwind than the last couple weeks.

Right now I'm eating cheese and drinking hot chocolate, sitting on the couch in my new apartment, and watching the presidential debate. Earlier I was feeling pretty low, which has been the general feeling for a while now, but I'm surviving. It's a trick to figure out what to do with my social life (or lack thereof) but I interviewed for a job today at the Prince Coference center which I hope to get early next week.

If you're reading this, and you're confused: no, I'm not on the Barnabas Team anymore. Just so you know. (Long story.)


Betsy

[Insert adjective here] New Year.... 2008.

Never have I faced the New Year with such a, well, I don't know what to call this attitude.

It's not a "bad" attitude: I welcome and appreciate each year and look forward to its blessings-- but this year just hurts, in so many places, and in so many ways.

It seems fitting, considering that I have written blog entries harolding the new year for quite some time now, to reflect for a moment and at least acknowledge that I'm facing change in a real way. It's quite easy to ignore the facts, and I've been able to for a couple of weeks. But if I don't accept certain things now, it'll only make it harder when others know those facts, too.

I know this is all terribly vague, and it's intended to be so, for reasons mostly out of my control at this point. It's just that I can easily list a dozen things that I have to do/will happen in the next four days that are going to hurt deeply and will likely hurt others deeply. Yep, pretty much rips my heart out to think about it. I almost feel sorry for the year 2008; what a dismal way to begin.

And, yet, Jesus is the Author of my salvation. I cling to that truth, however mystified I am about where the future is headed. Sigh. Has anyone read about Much-Afraid in Hind's Feet on High Places? It was exactly the story I needed at this point in time (and I read it in one sitting on the airplane) and so often I just wanted to cry, because I can see myself through those pages and I realize how many facts I need to face in my spirituality, too. Ouch again.

Oh Lord, Plant the seed of Love in my heart. Teach me Acceptance-with-Joy and Bearing-the-Cost. Make my feet like the deers'. I sacrifice my will on these feeble altars. Be my Savior, and I will follow you wherever you go.


Pray for me as I walk hand in hand with both Sorrow and Suffering,

Blessings in the new year

Betsy