Work…

I know, I know…I’m always busy, but this is different. I have gone back to work…without pay…but it’s a good thing! Here is the deal. I recognized a long time ago, that I am not physically able to hold down a full time job anymore. The Interim Director job at UCM almost killed me, literally. But what I have also learned over the years is that I also need meaningful work. I think we all do. This is one of the reasons that on those occasions when I have run across someone who is truly unemployed because they are having a hard time finding a job (vs the person who is unemployed because they would rather sit on their ass and draw unemployment or whine…I see quite a few of those) I have always encouraged them to find a regular place to volunteer. Number 1 it keeps you from sitting home and whining, number 2, we NEED volunteers in this society, and number 3, you often make meaningful contacts that lead to gainful employment.

When Bruce was alive, between serving on a couple of boards, doing church and committee work, and taking care of him, I had plenty of work to do. But since he has been gone and life has been in such chaos, despite all my committee and church work in general, I have felt a lack of some kind of continuity of work. So, I have known for awhile that we have a crisis of workload in our Presbytery office. Once again…just for the fun of it, I will explain briefly. Presbyterian Churches (USA) are connectional churches. Our Pastors are actually called Ministers of Word and Sacrament…we also have Elders and Deacons, all of which are ordained to service for life, unless you renounce your call or are booted out for cause. Churches are run by a Board of Elders called The Session…actually, in this last General Assembly, one of the things that was voted on, was to go back to calling those serving on the Session at any given time, Ruling Elders. Our ministers of Word and Sacrament, which I will call Pastors to make it easier, do not belong to the church they serve, but they are members of a larger ruling body called the Presbytery. The Presbytery is run by committees made up equally of Elders and Pastors, and everything is voted on at general meetings of the Presbytery held a minimum of 3 times per year and some Presbyteries meet more often. Each meeting, committees submit things for votes, they are discussed (and often argued about…sometimes not so civilly, although we in this presbytery are doing much better at that!) and they are voted on by the pastors and at least one Elder commissioner from each church (when you can get one to show up) Each Presbytery has a General Presbyter…who’s job it is to keep General order. He has a lot of implied power, but in reality, very little real power. He has a single vote at a Presbytery meeting, but no vote in committees. Some large Presbyteries have an Associate General Presbyter…and usually there is a full time administrative assistant, a paid stated Clerk (the person who holds us to something like Roberts rules of Order) a bookkeeper, since the Presbytery is often a waylay station of money from churches or to other larger bodies, plus supporters of various missions and retreat centers and such, and a resource librarian, as the Presbytery should maintain a resource library for the use of all churches in that Presbytery. So, now you know way more, once again, how the Presbyterian church is organized…actually, it goes farther than that, all the way up to a national level, but I’m not dealing with that at the moment, so I won’t bother.

Anyway, for various reasons, one of them being money, and one of them being that we somehow ended up with a true nut job for an administrative assistant for a year, we have currently employed by our Presbytery, a General Presbyter, a part-time bookkeeper and an unpaid stated clerk. So, when they fired the nut job, our General Presbyters wife, who is retired with 30 years of service to our larger ruling body called the Synod, decided to come in and get a few things straight and help her husband hire someone who was not a nut job. That is when we found out that she had been a bigger nut job than we realized. They found checks sent to the Presbytery from various churches and organizations stuffed in backs of drawers…not just 1-2 but I think eventually they counted about 40, and I found 2 more the other day. They found checks that had been written by the former bookkeeper, who quit because of the nut job, stuffed in drawers and filing cabinets and files. We found reports that the Presbytery accused churches of not filing…sometimes more than once…in various assorted files and lots of crazy stuff on the computers! Anyway, the decision was made not to hire another AA until we had the mess straightened out, and definitely not before our October Presbytery meeting, since the last several have been really fucked up and we just can’t have ONE MORE that messed up. So, I volunteered to come in and work with Kitty (the GP’s wife) to try and work out the mess. I have experience as a Presbyterian Church Secretary and Presbytery is not that different. So, that has turned into me working everyday from 9:00 until 3-4-5-6-7, Monday – Thursday. And doing everything else I generally do. As in meetings, moderating a session, and filling in for others that need things done that they can’t do. I can keep this schedule up until Oct 9, which is our next Presbytery meeting, but after that, I can’t keep this kind of schedule and I’m well aware of that.

BUT…what I have learned is that I LIKE being part of a regular day to day job. I like eating lunch with people. I like having meaningful work to do. I like starting a project and finishing it, and knowing that it is well done. I like having people telling me I’m doing a good job at something…another words, I LIKE working. I just can’t do it full time…and I can’t even do it part time and draw disability…and I can’t make enough money part time to live on. So, I had a long talk with the General Presbyter and we are going to hire a part time AA, and we are not going to replace the resource person who retired (amazingly enough…she decided to retire suddenly during the tenure of nut job) partly because there is far less use of the resource library than there used to be, and partly because of money and I am going to continue to volunteer regularly, 2 days per week, with the knowledge that there will occasionally be times when I manage to over do, when I won’t be able to come in for a few days, or if I want to travel, I will and not worry about it. But, I will have meaningful work to do, projects to work on that I enjoy and the camaraderie that comes from working in an office of people I like. And the nice thing? If I ever can’t do it, or really don’t enjoy it anymore, I can quit and not have to worry about the money thing.

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span style=”font-size: medium; “>I think keeping both my brain and my body engaged are important to my long-term health and well being, so this seems like a really good plan for me and I’m happy about it. It also makes me feel good to be giving back to the "bigger picture" of serving God. And in some ways, I think it makes me more aware of not taking on too much…because this is always the priority. 

And they gave me my own office, my own key, my own pass code to the computer. And they LIKE me, they really LIKE me!

So, this is what I’ve been doing with my time and why you haven’t heard from me. This is also one more way of moving on…. and building my new "normal".

Oh, and I’m also taking a theology class on Sunday afternoons for 2 1/2 hours for 35 weeks. With lots of reading and homework.

AND THE NEW SEASON OF GLEE HAS STARTED!!!!