Thirsty, and You Gave Me Drink

One of the two sermons I wrote for Thirsty, and You Gave Me Drink: Homilies and Reflections for Cycle C is bookended by homilies written by Jesuit superstars James Martin and Greg Boyle. The other is right next to one from Richard Rohr. This is pretty rarified spiritual air and it was an honor to be invited to contribute to this collection.

Even better, is that all the proceeds from this book go to support ministries that promote access to clean drinking water. I love this project, part of an ongoing series from Clear Faith Publishing called Homilists for the Homeless. All of the participants donate their submissions so that book sales help feed and support those in need here at home and around the world.

So...buy a copy or five! They make great Christmas gifts and provide inspiration throughout the coming year to complement the cycle of Sunday lectionary readings.

I'm grateful to Fran Szpylczyn for asking me to participate in this project. How do I know Fran? From Twitter, of course. See? Good things can come from the morass of social media!

Here are the four charities your purchase of Thirsty will support:

Thirst Project
Thirst Project is a non-profit organization that exists to end the global water crisis and the fact that over 785 million people on the planet do not have access to safe, clean water. They travel across the world to educate individuals about the global water crisis and challenge them to fundraise to build freshwater wells in developing nations and impoverished communities. They guarantee that 100% of all public donations go directly toward their well projects. Over the last decade, Thirst Project has raised more than $11 million, which has given over 500,000 people in thirteen countries safe, clean water for life. 

Water For People
Water For People envisions a world where every person has access to reliable and safe water and sanitation services. Water For People exists to promote the development of high-quality drinking water and sanitation services, accessible to all, and sustained by strong communities, businesses, and governments. They have impacted 1.54 million people with their sanitation services and created 2,436 permanent jobs through their work. 

charity: water
charity: water believes that sustainable work is locally led. Along with implementing community-owned water projects, their local partners help facilitate comprehensive water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programming to protect everyone’s long-term health. During the past fifteen years, they have funded over 79,000 water projects in 29 countries. 

Clean Water Fund
Clean Water Fund's mission is to develop strong grassroots environmental leadership and to bring together diverse constituencies to work cooperatively for changes that improve their lives, focused on health, consumer, environmental and community problems. Based in Washington, DC, Clean Water Fund operates locally staffed environmental and health protection programs serving communities in more than fifteen US states.

Upcoming Sabbatical!

As you may know, I'm taking a four-month sabbatical from March through June. Which means I'll be hitting the pause button on parish ministry six weeks from now. I'm excited about this upcoming time of spiritual renewal and thought I'd share a bit about what I'll be doing while I'm away -- especially since many of you will be subjected to the ensuing social media posts. 

What is a clergy sabbatical?
Unless you're in a profession that routinely offers sabbaticals (and I wish every industry did), you may not know why clergy are offered the opportunity to take time away. Here in the Diocese of Massachusetts, our bishops recommend full-time clergy take sabbaticals every five years. They view them as "an opportunity for a time of sabbath [hence the word sabbatical], for a renewal of spirit and a reaffirmation of life with God." Being a priest requires full engagement with heart, mind, body, and soul and renewal is critical to effective and long-term ministry. At various points in his own ministry, even Jesus took time away for prayer and reflection. He returned with renewed energy and perspective and that is the hope for a clergy sabbatical.

When did you last take one?

It's been a decade since I last took one. I was rector of All Saints' Church in Briarcliff Manor, New York (20 miles up the Hudson from New York City) at the time. It was for two and a half months and I referred to it as my "sabbatical on training wheels." We had young kids at home and when people would ask, "Where are you going on sabbatical?" I'd answer, "Um, where exactly would I go? And who would tell Bryna I left?" Basically I spent the time at Coffee Labs Roasters in Tarrytown, drinking coffee and writing my first book What Size Are God's Shoes: Kids, Chaos, and the Spiritual Life. It was helpful to have a short break and I think it's healthy for both priest and congregation to spend some time apart occasionally. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

Who's paying for this?
For my upcoming sabbatical, I applied for, and received, a coveted Lilly Clergy Renewal Grant to help fund some of my time away. In addition to the monetary award, the lengthy application process demanded that I give some serious, prayerful, and intentional thought to how I would structure my sabbatical. The question at the core of the application encourages applicants to ask the question, "What makes your heart sing?" Thus, in planning my time away, I focused on three of my passions: faith, family, and coffee. The first two were rather obvious. I will tie in the third through another passion of mine: writing.

What will you be doing?
Maybe some people can spend several months navel gazing or star gazing, but I need a project to focus on. So I'll be writing a book on the intersection of faith and coffee titled, naturally, Holy Grounds. This project, a mixture of coffee history (it was discovered by 9th century Ethiopian Muslims and used to fuel their night prayers!) and personal narrative, will be published by Fortress Press in early 2019.

In support of this, I will be traveling to coffee farms in Nicaragua and El Salvador during harvest
season, spending time soaking in coffee culture in Seattle (and catching up with a childhood friend whose lived there for 25 years), and visiting an Orthodox monastery in Pennsylvania where the monks roast and sell their own coffee under the name Burning Bush Coffee.

I'm particularly excited to visit a coffee farm for the first time -- it feels very much like planning a pilgrimage to a sacred site. My guide will be Mike Love, the owner of Coffee Labs (see above) who's a pretty big deal himself in the coffee industry. I reached out to Mike and his wife (and business parter) Alicia asking if they knew of any farms I could visit and they invited me to tag along with Mike on one of his regular visits to Central America. I'm still amazed this will actually happen!

The family portion is important to me as this often gets sacrificed in parish ministry. I will be spending some time with both my boys individually (including a trip to Florida for Spring Training with Ben and a jaunt to Chicago to attend a gaming convention with Zak), with just Bryna, and then we will be taking a 10-day family trip to Europe in June. We'll be going to Rome (touring religious and historical sites) and Amsterdam (pursuing Schenck family history) and soaking in European coffee culture.

For all of these mini-trips, I will be spending the majority of my time in Hingham writing, reflecting, playing, praying, and (obviously) drinking coffee.

What about Lent Madness?
Oh, relax, Lent Madness fans. There is no such thing as a sabbatical from Lent Madness -- the penitential show must go on. With Easter falling on April 1, my sabbatical will overlap with the season of Lent for about a month. It may be challenging to run the world's most popular online Lenten devotion while slogging around the mountains of El Salvador but we'll figure it out. 

So that's the deal. I'm excited about this and immensely grateful to everyone who has and will help make this sabbatical happen. This is a unique opportunity and I'm still, frankly, stunned that this is actually happening. And while it will be hard to be away from people I love, I will look forward to returning with renewed passion for ministry at St. John's and a rekindled and caffeinated relationship with our Lord. 

Dust Bunnies in the Basket

Gearing up for Ash Wednesday? Here's the title chapter from my new book Dust Bunnies in the Basket: Finding God in Lent and Easter. Illustrated by the incomparable priest-cartoonist, Jay Sidebotham, it serves as the companion guide to Dog in the Manger: Finding God in Christmas Chaos (also illustrated by Jay).

If you're looking for a fun guide for your Lenten journey (I mean, besides Lent Madness), I hope you'll pick up a copy. It also has discussion questions at the end of each session if you have a book group or just seek further individual reflection.

Somehow both of these books slipped through the cracks at Forward Movement, where my archnemesis, Scott Gunn, is the executive director. He was probably lulled into submission by the awesomeness of the accompanying illustrations.


He has also informed me that for a LIMITED TIME ONLY, the book (already dirt cheap at $10) is available at 30% off through Forward Movement. Use code LENT15E2 at checkout to receive the discount.

Dust Bunnies

I don’t like dust and I especially don’t like dust bunnies. You know those mysterious furry things that lurk behind your bedroom door, or in your closet, or under your bed. Who knows how they got there? Who wants to know how they got there? But they’re there, and I don’t like them, especially when they move around. You’ve probably seen them do this: you open a door, look behind it, and the dust bunny catches just enough air that it seems to start hopping away. 

Cleanliness may or may not be next to godliness but dust bunnies show up whether or not we’re compulsive dusters. Even Mr. Clean himself occasionally sees dust bunnies in his pantry closet—and his clean- shaven, earring-wearing self is horrified. 

So, it’s not the most comforting thought in the world on Ash Wednesday when we receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Fortunately, this doesn’t turn us into walking, talking dust bunnies. God’s not going to sweep us away with a giant feather duster. But the words of the Ash Wednesday service remind us that there is something greater out there, greater than what we can see with the naked eye, greater than our hopes, fears, and dreams. And that something is God. It’s not that we’re as insignificant,  useless, and annoying as dust bunnies; it’s just that the world doesn’t revolve around dust, and it doesn’t revolve around us. God is the center of all life and creation, which doesn’t mean we’re useless; we’re just not in control. 

Think about dust for a moment. There are two ways to create it, through inactivity and activity. If you go downstairs into the part of the basement that rarely gets used, the part where you store old boxes full of books or that pair of cross-country skis you’ve long since outgrown, you encounter dust. Run your finger along those skis and you get a tangible reminder that they haven’t been used in ages. Your finger is suddenly covered with dust, and you might even sneeze once or twice. 

Then there’s the other way dust is created, through activity. That’s how those dust bunnies in your bedroom came to be. Through the everyday activity of life, you create dust. It comes in on your shoes or your clothes, or on the kids’ backpacks. If we’re not kicking up some dust, we’re not really living. 

Jesus encourages us to kick up some dust every now and then, to roll up our sleeves and get involved with the world and the people around us. We might get dirty every once in a while, but that’s okay. Through our relationship with Jesus we are cleansed, renewed, and dusted off time and time again. 

All of this is why I like to hold a children’s Ash Wednesday service every year. Not many churches do this because there’s a natural inclination to shield our kids from concepts like mortality and human sin. And the idea of dumping ashes on the heads of young children and telling them they’ll eventually die gives some clergy the willies. But ignoring an important and integral part of life isn’t the answer. You certainly don’t have to spook children to make the point—though I do know a woman who went to Catholic school and for years was convinced that the ashes themselves came from the bones of dead nuns. 

I simply like to make age-appropriate connections for children that hopefully lead to further questions. On Shrove Tuesday (aka Mardi Gras), we burn the palms from the previous Palm Sunday. At the next day’s Ash Wednesday service, I invite the children to sit with me as I use a mortar and pestle to create the ashes. As I grind the burnt palms and strain out the larger pieces, I talk about life, death, and resurrection. Then I administer the ashes on their foreheads. Rather than removing the mystery, I find this process draws them deeper into the story and makes the entrance into the season of Lent that much more tangible. 

Of course, one year I had just imposed ashes at the children’s service with the words “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” when a little girl looked up and asked, “Pixie dust?” Sure. Why not? 

Top 10 Reasons the Magi were Late

As an Epiphany gift to you, loyal reader, I thought I'd post a brief seasonal excerpt from my new book Father Tim's Church Survival Guide. 

Enjoy. Then buy the book. Then be the first person to post a review on Amazon. Then help yourself to some stale Christmas cookies.

The Top Reasons the Magi were Late

As everyone knows, we celebrate the arrival of the Magi to the manger on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. Well, unless your only contact with the Christmas story is an annual pageant in which case you believe they arrived right after the shepherds on Christmas Eve. 

Don’t get me started on the way we jumble the story at pageants (the shepherds and wise men never meet!). But I sure won’t be the one to tell the pageant director (and the parents) that there won’t be any frankincense this year.

The reality is that, according to Scripture, the Magi arrived twelve days later. Perhaps by then Jesus was sleeping through the night (let’s face it, that first night might have been holy but, as any parent knows, there was surely nothing “silent” about it).

Anyway, this got me wondering about what kept the three kings from making an on-time arrival. I scoured many sources at the Vatican library and came up with the following possibilities:

• Balthazar took forever doing his hair while Caspar and Melchior sat on their camels and stewed.

• The holiday traffic on the way into Bethlehem was dreadful.

• Four words: goats in the road.

• The Star of Bethlehem (the original GPS) kept saying “recalculating” and they found themselves in a sketchy part of town.

• Caspar drank way too much water at the first oasis which meant an extra long stop at the Molly Pitcher rest stop.

• Untying fancy sandals to go through the TSA checkpoint took a long time. Retying them took forever.

• Due to poor behavior on the part of the other two kings, Melchior had to pull over more than once to yell, “If you don’t stop fighting I’m going to turn this caravan right around!”

• Stopping at the Holiday Inn slowed them down because, in a precursor to today’s “culture wars,” Balthazar kept insisting the name should be changed to “Christmas Inn.”

• “I told you that stop at Herod’s house was a waste of time.”

• They took a vote and decided to take their sweet time getting to the manger so they would have a day all to themselves on the Church calendar.

"I Will Survive!"

"So, what's your new book about?" a friend asked me the other day. Authors are supposed to reel off the ubiquitous "elevator speech" whenever they get this question. As in "Set in Victorian England, the novel highlights the troubled relationship between the demure Angela and the ambitious young Franklin blah, blah, blah..." 

Steven Covey, or whoever invented the "elevator speech," would have chastised me for my unpolished answer: "It's basically a bunch of Episcopal Church humor."

It's true though. The eponymous Father Tim's Church Survival Guide is a collection of humorous tactics and (mostly) tongue-in-cheek methods for surviving church life. From pompous clergy to interminable meetings to avoiding stewardship there's plenty of satire and snark to go around.

Maybe it's best to turn to those who blurbed the book (and, yes, using "blurb" as a verb is a very hip, pretentious, authorly thing to do). The Rev. Laurie Brock (priest, author, blogger, friend) put it this way:

Tim Schenck nails his theses of humor directly on the ubiquitous red door of The

Episcopal Church . . . and no one is safe. This book is a wonderful reminder that while Episcopalians take our faith very seriously, we are also invited to laugh at ourselves (and especially priests and bishops). If you enjoy the holiness that humor brings to the Church and to life, and you think laugher is one of God's favorite prayers, this book is for you. If not, put it down and step away now. You've been warned.

And the Very Rev. Gary Hall (Dean of Washington National Cathedral) wrote:

Written with both humor and wisdom, Tim Schenck's book will appeal to all of us who both love The Episcopal Church and are driven nuts by some of its (unofficial) rituals. Father Tim's Church Survival Guide turns the kind of satiric eye on the church that can only be cast by one who is deeply faithful. I recommend it to everyone who wants to know—and survive—the church as it is in hopes of making it the church that it can be.

Curious? In the coming days I'll share an excerpt or two. In the meantime, you can order it through Church Publishing or Amazon. And if you're into instant gratification and have a Kindle, you're in luck.

But beware. As I write in the Introduction:

My take on church life isn’t for everyone—clergy who take themselves too seriously will hate it. But know that it all comes out of a place of deep love for God and the Church. There are inevitably things that drive us nuts about such an imperfect (i.e., human) institution. Yet if we can’t observe and comment on our own foibles, we’re left without much hope. And anyway if God doesn’t have a sense of humor, I’m hosed.

I'm pretty sure there's nothing in it that will get me defrocked. Though I invite you (and my bishop) to be the judge.

Did I mention this book would make the perfect Epiphany gift for every Episcopalian you've ever met? I meant to.

The Next Book...

As you may (but probably not) have noticed, I haven't been blogging as often the last few months. It's not writer's block and I haven't dropped my laptop into Hingham Harbor. Rather, I've been finishing up the manuscript for my next book. Thus any spare creative energy and/or time has gone into this project.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective), I just shipped off the final manuscript to Nancy Bryan, the editor at Church Publishing. It's been a fun little project as I've pulled together a bunch of Episcopal Church humor that's been burning a hole in my brain, yearning to be set free.

The result is the forthcoming Father Tim's Church Survival Guide. The book will be part of Church Publishing's spring 2015 list so you can look for it early next year.

It's a collection of vaguely irreverent (shocking, I know) short pieces with a dose of snark, plenty of references to coffee, and my generally off-kilter take on a variety of church situations as I tweak an institution that I dearly love -- that "wonderful and sacred mystery" that is the Church.

I'm telling you right now that pompous clergy, the easily offended, and the humorless will hate it. Seriously. So if that applies to you -- and if you read my blog on a semi-regular basis I can't imagine that it does -- please just walk past it when you see it on a bookshelf.

Here's a picture of the draft cover. Yes, that's a picture of me. No, I don't own a safari hat -- Photoshop does wonders in the hands of a creative designer.

And if you don't feel like reading it when it comes out, you can always wait until it's made into a major motion picture. Definitely hold your breath on that one.

An Unexpected Epistle

As part of my Lenten discipline, I've been cleaning things out around the house. There's a practical side to it, of course, and it was Bryna who suggested it. Frankly, her "encouragement" preceded Lent by some weeks and had nothing to do with a holy season in the Church year. But as I thought about it, I've come to embrace the idea of lightening the material load and there's a spiritual aspect to this as well. Stripping away some of the stuff you accumulate over the years is freeing. So I'm trying to do a little work every day.

Not surprisingly, I got stuck on books. Some of these things I've been hauling around the country since college. I mean, you never know when you might need to brush up on the tobacco culture of the antebellum South. Anyway, I was sorting through some books when I came across a slim volume without any markings on the spine titled Siloama: The Church of the Healing Spring. Published by the Hawaiian Board of Missions in 1948, it was part of a series of books meant to capture "The story of certain almost forgotten Protestant churches."

This particular book tells the story of the Protestant church in Siloama on the island of Molokai. Many people know the story of how the island became a leper colony in the 1800's and of the heroic and faithful ministry of Father Damien who died on the island of the disease. What people don't know is that there was a Protestant church on the island that predated Father Damien's ministry.

Anyway, I have this book because my great-grandfather on my father's side, the Rev. Norman Schenck, was a Congregationalist missionary who lived out his life in Hawaii. He served as General Secretary of the Board of Hawaiian Missions. I don't know too much about him other than what's been passed down by my family -- that he was a beloved figure who was dedicated, passionate, and effective in his vocation.

But what truly amazed me was an old type-written letter I found tucked inside the book. Dated December 14, 1941, it was a pastoral letter sent to the Japanese congregations under his care in the immediate aftermath of the bombing at Pearl Harbor. It astounded me.

I thought I'd retype and share this unexpected epistle.  Here it is:

Statement by Norman C. Schenck read to the congregations
of Makiki and Nuuanu Churches -- Sunday, Dec. 14, 1941

To the Pastor, Members and Friends of the ---------- Church:

As General Secretary of the Board of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association it is my privilege and honor to bring you this morning, - Christian greetings.

All of us in the Hawaiin Islands are now under a strange and new order of things for our beloved Islands of Paradise.

We are, through no choice of our own, in a state of war.

The implications of this state of war were dramatically revealed to us on Sunday, December 7, 1941 when an attack was made upon our Islands. This caused immediate loss of life in the personnel of our armed forces and among our fellow residents. As a result, martial law has been declared.

All of us have spent this past week in one form of activity or another, seeking to do our part along the lines required by the emergency which faces us.

Every resident of our Islands is under a dual obligation.

First, he must do his part in the great program of national defense. This is not only a duty. It is a privilege. Hawaii is our home. Every Christian citizen will rise up to defend his home with all the courage and devotion of which he is capable. Already the calm and efficient manner in which our people of many racial ancestries have done this, has been commended by those in charge of our public and private welfare. Let us continue to work together with calm and patient and determined purpose.

Second, there is need for all of us to keep up the high levels of morale among our people. This deals with the sources by which men and women live. It is vital to our physical, moral and spiritual health.

In this realm, the Christian Church has  solemn responsibility.

I speak to you this morning not as a Japanese church, - but as a Christian church. We are "one in Christ Jesus." We are bound together in love, - not to be divided by hatred.

The Christian Church is not afraid of suffering. Its only fear is disloyalty on the part of any Christian to our Lord and Master. And, of course, loyalty to Christ inspires loyalty to each other and to the government under which we live.

May I, therefore, urge upon the pastor and the members of this congregation to minister in every way to the spiritual needs of people and to intensify the Christian work of calling in the homes, of providing for the children and youth, and of holding high the Christian standard of conduct in thought, word and deed.

The Christian Church is needed for moral defense. It is also needed for light in a darkened world.

May God be with you, and with your spirits.

The Rev. Norman C. Schenck

Grammatically Incorrect Slogans

I've always been both fascinated and righteously indignant about grammatically incorrect advertising. I'm not a grammar fascist -- frankly, my grammar's just not good enough to qualify and I still have flashbacks to trying to learn how to diagram sentences in Mr. Grimes' sixth grade English class at Gilman School in Baltimore. But overt linguistic fouls annoy me. Maybe it stems from having two English majors as parents who always insisted on speaking and writing correctly. It's not like they slapped me with a ruler if I used "good" instead of "well," but if I delved into the realm of lousy grammar at home I generally heard about it.

Now, I'm not as bad as my mother who would often call over a poor, unsuspecting waiter to complain about a typo or grammatical sin on the menu. It didn't matter if it was a fancy French restaurant or a truck stop. This usually had to do with a missing or extraneous accent mark, though even I had to agree when "Chicken Franchise" showed up on a menu in the Poconos when what they meant was "Chicken Francaise."

I also remember my dad talking about grammatically incorrect advertising slogans like the old cigarette tagline "Winstons taste good, like a cigarette should." Of course it should have been "Winstons taste good, as a cigarette should." 

This got me thinking about current or recent advertising that plays fast and loose withe the rules of grammar. I'm sure you can think of others but here are a few along with how they should read.

Eggo Waffles: Leggo my Eggo -- Let go of my Eggo

Milk: Got Milk? -- Do you have milk?

Subway: Subway, eat fresh -- Subway, eat freshly

Apple: Think Different -- Think differently

McDonald's: I'm lovin' it -- I am loving it

Staples: We got that. -- We have that.

What others can you think of? (and yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition).

The "Dog" has Landed

While my own copies are "in the mail," my new book Dog in the Manger: Finding God in Christmas Chaos is now available! Below is the press release which includes a nice quote from my archnemesis, Forward Movement Executive Director Scott Gunn. If the kind words shock you, just imagine him saying them though gritted teeth. I may or may not have said something complimentary in the Acknowledgments section -- you'll just have to buy the book to find out (and that, my friends, is what we call a "teaser").

If for no other reason, I suggest you pick up a copy for the accompanying cartoons alone. Priest and cartoonist Jay Sidebotham is at his whimsical best, capturing the essence of each essay and conveying the inherent humor -- scroll down to see a couple that appear in the book. As I've said before, I'm hoping people will buy the book because they think it's one of Jay's now famous annual church calendars. A brilliantly diabolical marketing scheme by the folks at Forward Movement!

The book makes a great, cheap ($10) last-minute Advent or Christmas gift. As I think about it, it would be perfect to give to friends and family for St. Nicholas Day on December 6th since it's the ideal size to jam into a shoe.

Also, for clergy friends, you can use it for a fun, interactive Advent series -- there are reflection questions following each section. I'm personally using it as a two-part series on Advent spirituality for parents but it's appropriate conversation fodder for adults of any age.

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy it. It was fun to pull these essays together and it kept me off the streets during the Lent Madness offseason.

Peace,

Tim+

New Advent & Christmas Book from Forward Movement

Forward Movement is pleased to announce the publication of Dog in the Manger: Finding God in Christmas Chaos, written by the Rev. Tim Schenck and illustrated by the Rev. Jay Sidebotham.

“Our faith is a gift, but it isn’t a perfectly wrapped present with exact folds and a precisely tied bow. Fortunately faith isn’t about being neat and tidy,” writes Schenck.  “You may burn the Christmas roast, Santa may not bring your child exactly what she wanted, you might even get sick and miss out on the best party of the year. But through it all, God remains.”

With its laugh-out-loud humor anchored by spiritual truths, Dog in the Manger helps us maintain our spiritual sanity through the often-frenetic chaos of Advent and Christmas.

“My heart weeps when I see people so frazzled in the weeks leading up to December twenty-fifth that it sucks the joy out of Christmas,” laments Schenck. “We all struggle to remain spiritually centered amid the frenzy of the holidays. Hopefully this book will make you laugh, nod your head in recognition, and help you keep both faith and perspective at the center of your celebration."

Illustrated by popular cartoonist Jay Sidebotham, Dog in the Manger also explores the major characters of the season in new ways, including John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph – and of course, Jesus. Thoughtful questions following each section make Dog in the Manger ideal for personal reflection, seasonal book groups, or a last-minute Christmas gift.

“Creating illustrations for Tim's engaging stories was a lot of fun,” Jay Sidebotham reveals. “I know readers will savor his insights into the joys and challenges we all face in navigating the holidays. I hope that my drawings, prompted by Tim's fine text, add to that experience, and that the book will become one more way that we prepare, faithfully, for Christmas.”

Richelle Thompson, managing editor at Forward Movement, raves, “As a reader, a mom, a wife, and occasional perfectionist, Tim's hilarious essays help me rediscover the joy of the Christmas chaos. These reflections encourage all of us to ensure Christ is at the center of the frenzy, from getting the family photo to wrapping unwieldy gifts to the inevitable post-Christmas blues.”

“Tim deftly uses humor to show us how we can find God even when Christmas Eve doesn't end up looking like the postcard we had in our minds.” observes The Rev. Scott Gunn, Executive Director of Forward Movement, and co-conspirator with Schenck on Lent Madness. “With laughter and wisdom in good measure, we can succeed in discovering the true joy of Christmas even in chaos.”

The Rev. Tim Schenck is rector of the Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist in Hingham, Massachusetts, and the creator of Lent Madness. He is the author of What Size Are God’s Shoes: Kids, Chaos, and the Spiritual Life (Morehouse 2008) and writes a monthly syndicated column for Gatehouse Media titled “In Good Faith.” When he’s not tending to his parish, drinking coffee, or blogging at Clergy Family Confidential, he’s likely hanging out with his family.

The Rev. Jay Sidebotham is well-known for his cartoons about church life and his animation work on the television cartoon Schoolhouse Rock! He is the director of RenewalWorks, a ministry of Forward Movement. He served for many years as rector of Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest, Illinois, and has served congregations in New York City, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and Rhode Island.

To order Dog in the Manger: Finding God in Christmas Chaos, click here.

Forward Movement works to nurture discipleship and encourage evangelism by providing print and digital resources to all who wish to deepen their spiritual engagement. Based in Cincinnati, OH since its inception in 1935, Forward Movement is widely known for Forward Day by Day. Forward Movement is a ministry of The Episcopal Church.

Guest Blogger: My Mother!

While most people blame their mothers for everything that's wrong with them (paging Dr. Freud), today I'm thanking my mother for something she shared with me: a passion for writing. Despite a fruitful career in residential real estate -- she always said that two people working in the non-profit world was one too many -- she's a writer at heart.

She did, in fact, author a terrific cook book in 1987 called The Desperate Gourmet. Yes, there were recipes but it was really a philosophy of life. With a symphony conductor for a husband, two children, and a thriving career the book was borne of necessity -- if you like great food but don't have time to prepare it you have no choice but to become a "desperate gourmet." I'm particularly proud that my cheesecake recipe ("Tim's Best of Show") made it in since that's really the only thing I can make that doesn't involve a grill.

What I find interesting is that the older I get the more similarities I see in our writing styles. This became even clearer the other day when she sent me a piece she had written about 30 years ago. She never did anything with it and I'd never even seen it before. But I think it's a great little piece of writing and told her I wanted to share it on my blog. It doesn't have a title since she never got that far but I hope you'll enjoy it.

Guest Blogger -- Lois Schenck

In 1975, a reporter was kind enough to write a very complimentary article about how I manage to be a conductor’s wife, mother of two young children, professional writer and Realtor, all at the same time. What is closer to the truth, however, is that my life is a variation of that old nursery rhyme that goes, “when it is good it is very, very good, and when it doesn’t work, it is horrid.”

There are times when I feel exactly like a New Yorker cartoon I laughed at years ago before it became my logo. It showed two pictures side by side. In the first, an impeccably well-heeled lady was revealed. In the second, the boudoir itself was revealed: a clothing jungle in which no article was left inside a single drawer or closet.

In all fairness to me, the reason for my own jungle is not so much that I hate housekeeping or consider it beneath me, but more a question of priorities. If you are going to care about your husband and his career, yourself and your career, your children as people and yourselves as a family, something’s gotta go! When you are trying to choose a dress for your husband’s concert while a pair of jelly-tipped fingers is tugging at you, while you are trying to remember where the maestro put the cufflinks that are supposed to be in the box in his top drawer but aren’t, while a real estate client wants you on the phone and while you are trying to answer some ponderous question like “Mommy, where does my food go after I eat it?” your boudoir is likely to wear the scars for a year!

Whenever I complain about this to my mother she cheerfully reminds me that I didn’t have to have either children or a career, both of which are only true in theory.  But she’s right about one thing. I do lead this crazy existence of mine by choice and, if the truth be known, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One of the funniest examples of the kind of people, place and juggling that goes on around here happened about 4:30 on an afternoon when I had just gotten home. Andrew called from the concert hall to say that the soloist for his upcoming concert had just arrived and invited us out to dinner. I knew I couldn’t get a babysitter at that late hour, so joining them was out of the question. But I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity because spending time with guest artists is one of the pleasures of our existence.

Could we invite the soloist to our house for dinner? It was already 4:30, a definite minus. I happened to have a pork tenderloin sitting in a lovely Chinese marinade, a definite plus. I also had something in the freezer I could pull out for hors d’oeuvres. Fine.

I decided that if I started right then, I might just be able to set the table, organize the dinner, get the house picked up (forget clean), get the kids fed (forget bathed) and put to bed without feeling rushed to the slaughter, and come out like a reasonable facsimile of a human being.

By some miracle, we had a delightful dinner. So delightful, in fact, that the festivities lasted until 1:00 am, which is fine and dandy until  a very few hours later, breakfast for the nursery school set comes crashing in without even knocking.

As I said before, when it works, those fleeting moments when I feel I might have succeeded in being all things to all people, life is wonderful. But when it doesn’t, when I go flying off to a real estate closing without the termite certificate, without which there can be no closing, or when the baby sitter calls in sick half an hour before we have to leave for a concert, or when any number of things happen to make my much too saturated solution break down.

At moments like this, it is hard to think positive about the joys of multi-tasking, but it does make the pleasures all the more enjoyable. Before Matthew was in nursery school, I used to love to keep Timothy home for the day so I could take both boys to one of their father’s children’s concerts. Quite apart from their obvious pleasure in watching their father conduct, my compensation for trying to keep track of two little Indians in a concert was watching them experience some things most children never get a chance to do: climb on an opera prop, bang on the timpani, or take flowers to a star in her dressing room.

Times like these really make me appreciate the specialness of my life, but it’s funny. People invariable envy you for the wrong reasons. Everyone assumes my general state of happiness comes from the excitement of living with someone in the public eye. Actually, the public Andrew Schenck and all the “glamour” that surrounds him excites me far less than the person he is. Among other things, the thrill of being recognized in public brings with it the mixed blessing of being seen in places where you would rather be anonymous like  when the symphony gossip mongers see him in the grocery where he appears on rare occasions and report to their cronies that Andrew Schenck’s mean wife makes him do the grocery shopping!

If anyone is going to envy me, let it for the right reasons. Most of all, the relationship I have with my husband in which the happiness of one is directly related to the happiness of the other.

So many people ask me how I manage the number of roles I juggle that one day I tried to figure it out and came to the single conclusion that I am that rare breed of woman in today’s world: liberated, and very much in love.

I am the 1.37%

It's not everyday that you write a book. Well, unless you're James Patterson and you have a staff of 50 writers working for you. Alas, I have a staff of one.

You may not be aware that I recently wrote a book. Technically I co-authored it with a bunch of other people. And technically I only wrote 1.37% of it. But I was proud enough of it to give my free author's copy to my mother for a (no-cost-to-me-but-it-looked-like-I-spent-at-least-$15) Christmas gift.

Walking With God Day By Day is a series of 365 brief meditations for the whole year. I wrote five of them which means that if you'd like me to personally sign your copy I can only, in good faith, write 1.37% of my name. In the spirit of giving, I guess I could round up and give you the whole "T." (At the bottom of this post you'll find one of the five).

Even though the New Year has already begun, you don't have to feel bad about getting a late start since my first meditation doesn't appear until sometime in March. In fact, the publisher has offered readers of Clergy Family Confidential a 25% discount! Yes, my archnemesis, Scott Gunn, at Forward Movement has extended this generous offer. Act now and he'll throw in a gratuitous blog post about the book as well.

Seriously,  if you click on the book title link above and enter code AUTH25 you'll get a 25% discount on the printed book. You can also use the code if you call to place your order at 800-543-1813. There's one trick on the website according to Scott, "Alas, our antediluvian website won't show the discount right when they order, but we'll take it off when we process the order."

It's also available for Kindle and Nook. No discount but it's already cheap there.

There are a number of great authors who participated in this project including Lent Madness "Celebrity Bloggers" Heidi Shott and Penny Nash (stay tuned for Lent Madness 2012). Scott wrote a few reflections as did a bunch of talented writers I've never heard of (I'm sure the feeling is mutual).

If you do order it, I know you'll enjoy it and get a lot out of it. And if not, complain to Scott.