Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

Baptismal advice for parents

Baptismal advice for parents

Baptismal advice
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, read to your children and provide them with quality children’s literature.  There is no substitute for stories and the life of the imagination for a child’s developing mind.  Children need to be able to encounter on their own terms (not in a preprogrammed “entertainment” format) stories that are subtle and challenging enough to become part of their ongoing imaginative life. Start with Grimm’s Fairy Tales and anything by Tomie DePaola, and from age 4 or 5 onward, give them C. S. Lewis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Winnie the Pooh, E. Nesbit, Lloyd Alexander, The Wind in the Willows, Brian Jacques, Madeleine L’Engle, Susan Cooper, Joan Aiken, Arthur Ransome, The Phantom Tollbooth, Watership Down, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula LeGuin, and whatever else seems good at the public library.  (Harry Potter and The Hunger Games won’t hurt them, but won’t do much all by themselves, either.)  The three Christian virtues are faith, hope and charity:  to believe in the invisible, to go forward when all seems lost, and to love the unlovable.  A child nurtured on good kids’ books will know these three virtues intuitively, in his or her bones.  Nothing on TV comes close.”

DISAGREE About Hunger Games and Harry Potter (hello Hallows not Horcruxes anyone?) but the reading advice is right on (note what percent is fantasy?)

Would add Andrew Lang and my Fairy Tale list https://katyandtheword.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/fairy-tale-addendum/

Book Review: “Dead Ever After” by Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse Series)

In honor of this being the last book in the series, I did what I always do with good series, I reread the entire series before starting on the final book…(I’m a rereader)

(Note, trying to avoid spoilers)

The ending is good–there is still a lot of mystery-type-plot…a lot of loose ends are tied up and there is a definite progression of characters (esp. Sookie Stackhouse). Here is the deal though, I don’t think of books individually (esp if they are about the same character)…they are just HUGE chapters to the ongoing story.

As my husband says, the ending is key…because it reflects on the WHOLE (not because it is an important piece)..see I do book reviews like I do my theology (w)holistically,

ps wholistically should totally have a w on it, it helps the meaning…

Anyway…Here is what I think what makes the Sookie Stackhouse series so good.

1. It explains why so many deaths happen in a dinky little town…my mom says she likes mysteries but after a while its hard to buy that so many murders are happening in the middle of nowhere, vampires, werewolves and shapshifters help

2. It struggles with the questions of humanity (what does it mean to be human? Why am I here?) through the contrast and comparison with the supernatural

3. It deals with Bigotry–big time… it deals with real and perceived differences, prejudices and how even other groups can be bigots (homophobic shapeshifters anyone?)

4. It shows growth…again I know I said this, but the only way you can sustain an ongoing series is to have the characters grow–now Sookie Stackhouse sleeps around a little too much for my taste, but I think that she is sleeping around because she is searching for some self-definition, and in the end, she has learned a lot, not just about guys but relationships, friendships and herself. There is a little bit of obsessing about looks, manners, appearances etc. but I think that is the reality of Sookie’s life (some of it being the culture of a small town, etc)…and she doesn’t frustrate me too much with these hang ups….

I recommend as a fantasy and mystery fan and as a feminist

Series List

Better Off Dead, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead, Dead to the World, Dead as a Doornail, Definitely Dead, All Together Dead, From Dead to Worse, Dead and one, Dead in the Family, Dead Reckoning, Deadlocked, Dead Ever After

Another Vampire Review Here

Theology of Vampire Here

(PS I did watch the first couple of seasons of True Blood, but it was a little too drug obsessed for my taste, not to say that it wasn’t good the focus just seemed to be different…………..)

1 Year Later: “…

1 Year Later: “On the 15th of May in the Jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool. He was splashing…enjoying the jungle’s great joys when Horton the elephant heard a small noise…”

Last year on Horton hears a who day, Katy-who put forth her first “Yop” in the form of a post on WordPress. I wanted a place to talk about my practical theology, I wanted a place to think through (in my verbal-processor way) my deep and not so deep thoughts on life, the universe and everything. My topics tend to express my life as it is–covering theology, parenting, technology, fantasy, love and money. It doesn’t (yet) cover my deep need to engage more with the arts, it doesn’t discuss self-care or yoga or cute stories from my children (my parenting thoughts have been more philosophical). So there is room to grow, there is more to me than I’ve been letting myself do. But so far my 171 posts in 365 days (some of them being reblogs from other wise people) have had 2, 228 views and 92 followers. That is a post every 2 to 3 days, approx 13 views per post, and about 1 follower for every post I’ve made…

What else is to say but thank you. Thank you for journeying with me…..
Each contribution you have made–whether it was a read or a like, has helped!
For After All
“A person’s a person no matter how small!”

15th of May

Batman and Baptism

Baptism Message: You are beautiful and loved and perfect as a newborn naked baby, the more “Naked” you can be with God, the more you can share in the glory of Christ’s love (both reviewed in Skinny Dipping and Embodied Spirituality and Nakedness)…
Reality…Always be yourself, unless you can be Batman, then always be batman. This morning a batman costume helped to relieve any nerves during baptism….yep today I baptized batman..

Money, money, money

 

This is a conversation I had with my sister earlier today….

Izzy: I don’t want to be a grownup anymore
Me: I’ll be a grown up as long as I don’t have to worry about money all the time anymore.
Izzy: Ok, deal…

Student Debt (“According to the federal Reserve Bank of New York, almost 13 percent of student-loan borrowers of all ages owe more than $50,000, and nearly 4 percent owe more than $100,000. These debts are beyond students’ ability to repay, (especially in our nearly jobless recovery” read more in the link)

Student Debt is a national issue–if you don’t have crippling debt, chances are your child or grandchild does. I recently got told by an older pastor that she just “couldn’t relate” to my debt issues even though her daughter was stuck in the position I was describing…

You know the situation where you are working as hard as you can (usually not even in your field) and you are receiving neither self fulfillment, nor enough money to pay your bills….

I’ll say what I’ve said many times before–almost everyone I know is looking for work. Either they are looking for a better paying job, or they are looking for another job on top of the one they are already doing.

Look, if I knew I was at least on my way to paying down my/our family debts…I would be ok with this whole adulthood thing…but until I can, I feel like a failure as an adult–and if that’s how I feel how does the rest of the millennials deal?

Nakedness

A synopsis of Sunday’s Sermon

Naked Babies are beautiful–I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that naked babies are beautiful. Maybe this was why baptisms used to be done naked because (although a little dangerous) what is cuter than a naked baby?

God made us, as all good mothers, God made space for us and then formed us as a part of her lives…God made us naked babies, beautiful and perfect, and then Jesus offers us the spring of life.

God knows our own mother’s are not perfect, but there is great comfort in knowing that God fills in the gaps–God is the perfect parent, able to be both mother and father to us….

God thinks we’re beautiful…and invites us to baptism, to spirituality to swim fully in the glory of God.

And of course that means nakedness….

Removing all those loads and pieces of clothing that separate us from God. Fully claiming ourselves and our bodies in Christ (for more on this see my post on Skinny Dipping).

And when we get naked, we start to notice that our bodies are imperfect, there are scars, we have fat and wrinkles and everything doesn’t work right….so maybe we can only put our feet in, but whatever we can do to get some spirituality allows us to be loved. How can we participate in the River of Life.

I have a rule–every baby I see is the most beautiful baby in the world …And its true, every baby is a miracle, every baby is beautiful and so I know, for a fact that every baby is the most beautiful baby in the world.

We are God’s Babies. We are the most beautiful people in the universe, and that beauty comes from God! God’s glory and love is in us, and since Christ is in God we are in God’s glory (John 17). And God, as a good mother, doesn’t love us in spite of our faults, but including them. Seeing all our flaws, faults and cracks. God loves us, because we are the most beautiful children in the world–and we need to affirm that to one another. To look at one another and say–you are beautiful, just like naked babies are!

Ode to Cimorene

One of my favorit-ist series EVER

Lady Bee's avatarDisrupting Dinner Parties

***NOTE: this post will be a little bit of a spoiler for the book Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede. The post will discuss the first two chapters. SO if you do not mind a very little spoilage, read on! ****

Throughout most of my youth and young adulthood, I was a reading fanatic. Any fantasy, sci-fi or fiction book I could get my hands on were devoured by my need to escape into another world and for a little bit of time, become a character on a space ship or a detective on the streets of London. My favorite books had female protagonists and authors such as Tamara Pierce, Robin McKinley, Diane Duane, Phillip Pullman, Holly Black, and many others, were the ones who introduced me to the basis of my feminist belief that women are as kickass, powerful, and moving as men. One particular book whose character…

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Embodied Spirituality: (w)holistic faith and what it means

Good Examples of Embodied Spirituality tend to be as follows

yoga

monks working

liturgical dance

and Mr. Rogers (because he’s the Presbyterian Superhero of faith 🙂

Here is the Spiritual but not religious issue in sum:

Christianity–more and more abstracted and spiritualized religion, emphasizing the moral lessons of the Bible, essentializing Jesus as love and pursuing faith. Like good Augustine-type-people we have more and more distanced ourselves from the body, turning communion into a remembering of Christ. Barb Hedges-Goettl concludes that we have moved away from the reality of the broken, embodied Divinity present in Jesus Christ. A particular example of this can be found in how communion is celebrated (more about this below/in the thesis)

Hence Christianity is about being “spiritual” and has almost nothing to do with our bodies

If anything we should deny our bodily needs, giving quick and easy solutions to issues of 1. addiction: denial, proof that worldly wants are addictive and evil 2. homosexuality: denial its just a bodily impulse and the body is evil 3. Health Issues: If you are truly pure your body will be healed, otherwise better luck in heaven. These are broad generalizations, but you get the idea.

Hence we have an entire generation of the spiritual not religious, because if Jesus is only love, and we should deny the body, why do we need to gather and/or embody Christ through the church? The church doesn’t embody Christ, in fact, it doesn’t even consider embodiment important, so bodies are–literally–gone from the church. Spiritual but not religious people can do all that from home. So that’s it, they’ll be Spiritual, they don’t need to be religious.

If what we eat, how we care for our bodies, where we are present and how we are active are spiritual activities, then spirituality very quickly turns religious….

Barb Hedges-Goettl suggests to us that a vital piece is missing, and that is the living body of Christ. My question is : If we say Christ’s body is both present in communion and embodied by the church, what does this do to our faith: God is NOT JUST present when we see love, God is calling us to presently embody love as a corporate (ie enfleshed/embodied/living-flesh-corpse) of Christ that is out in the community….I find this especially interesting in a digital world, where embodiment is finding new expression–and yet still nothing beats a face to face meeting (you can’t hug on skype)

“In my dissertation I wrote that faith is about meeting God and God acting upon us. God is the life-changing agent/subject, not the object of belief. The living resurrected Christ changes us; he is not just an example to emulate or the purveyor of an ethic or value”–Barb Hedges-Goettl Photo

Dr. Barb Hedges-Goettl ‘s thesis is : The Body is Missing: Eucharistic Theology of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Conversation with Zwingli, Calvin, and Nevin” (10107), has been submitted to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in preparation for posting on ProQuest)

PS Shepherd is the best fictional clergy, EVER

Open Sourcing and Laziness

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/me-generation-time/65054/#.UY1b8PWkpOo.facebook My response to the ME generation argument…

katyandtheword's avatarkatyandtheword

Image

Ok, so what if this open source movement which started with the music companies and the digital downloading (actually it started with the record button on VCRs but I’m too youngImage to remember that). Was a cultural shift today? If you look at communities sharing businesses, etc. this generation is into open source

Examples include Relayrides, carsharing, CSA, community gardens, couchsurfing, firefox, anything Wiki and of course probably the most famous and one of the first Linux

Opensource means sharing information freely so that the community benefits. Granted making money by sharing your car isn’t a direct example of open source, but the free sharing of when you use and don’t use your car helps to free it up so others can use it (see what I mean). It also can hint at laziness because your are using someone else’s work/resources to get information. You didn’t do the work yet…

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