Popsicles, Wool Sweaters, and Ordinations (Andrea)

I was ordained at my home church in West St. Paul, MN on March 1. This day was long in coming - for years, I didn't think I wanted to be a pastor; once I realized that I did, I wasn't sure I could stand to be. My candidacy process was filled with joy, heartache, questions, discernment, frustration, discovery, and the support of more amazing people than I could possibly hope to count. This day was a celebration - dear friends and family gathered from all over the country, both in person and in spirit, as we celebrated the work that God is doing in the world.

This day was a day for me to set out on the path of who I am and who I am to become as a pastor. I decided to forgo the sanctuary in favor of the fellowship hall. In the sanctuary, we sit like we do on a school bus, everyone facing in the same direction. In the fellowship hall, we could sit in a circle; we could gather as a community, and God knows I need a community supporting me in this endeavor. I had theological questions about the ordination liturgy, and so Barbara Lundblad (my seminary advisor) and I worked with the bishop to make it more inclusive - for me, for God, and for everyone who gathered - and more authentically representative of what we believed was happening that day.

This was a day that, in the end, made me feel as though I had made the right decision. I was afraid of feeling more cramped afterward; of feeling that I was now expected to fit into a box that didn't fit me. Instead, I felt free. I felt like the parts of me that don't fit into the box had been validated, and that the box, in turn, had gotten a little bigger. I would bet that it also had something to do with the charge that Janet Walton, my seminary mentor, offered to me during the service:

Lurking around the edges of ordained ministry is a notion of perfection. Be ye perfect, you know the rest. Perfection is a very tightly wrapped expectation with very little wiggle room. I urge you instead, Andrea, to accept the open-ended challenges of imperfection. Unlike perfection, it has no bounds. Imperfection makes space for mercy, embraces doubts as necessary steps of human development, and imperfection calls us more often to compassion.

Blessed are those who accept the norm of imperfection; they will have more need of God and of one another.

On Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the ordination service for the first 3 women to be ordained in the Lutheran Church in Mexico: María Elena Ortega Mora, Sofía Deyanira Tenorio May, and Ángela del Consuelo Trejo Haager. This day was long in coming for them, it was a celebration, and it was also the day for them to set out on the paths of who they are and who they are to become as pastoras.

Theirs is the only ordination service I've been to besides my own. Despite all these similarities, it felt very different. We sat as we would on a school bus, and the three women stood the entire time, facing away from the people. The service lasted 2 and a half hours. "It must feel lonely to be the first women ordained," I thought. "There you stand, and the only people talking at you are men." To be fair, much of these differences are cultural. But I couldn't help thinking about the struggles that lay ahead for these women, and I couldn't help thinking about how grateful I am for the women who went before me in my own church, whose struggles have freed me to take on different struggles of my own.

A few months ago, I heard a lecture on Solidarity Economics by a woman named Elba Flores. Solidarity Economics involves supplying something that's actually needed, rather than supplying something that isn't, only to create an artificial need. She told us about a group of women who, in order to improve their economic situation, decided to create a co-op to sell goods. One woman knew how to make really good popsicles, so they decided to sell those. The only problem was that they lived high up in the mountains, where it's very cold. No one in their village actually needed popsicles. What the people needed, they realized, was warm clothing. They needed wool sweaters. The only problem with this was that none of the women knew how to spin wool, or how to knit sweaters.

So they learned. These women set out to address an authentic need in their own communities, even though it took more work on their part. They set aside the status quo in order to address the situation around them. That, to me, is what vocation is all about. Vocation is about figuring out where our gifts meet our neighbors' needs, and going from there.

I hope their ordination was a day that, in the end, made María Elena, Sofía, and Ángela feel like they had made the right decision. I hope they find the courage to make wool sweaters. I hope I find the courage to make wool sweaters. The world has enough popsicles already.