Friday Five

From the RevGalBlogPals site:

1. You have a busy week, pushing out all time for preparing worship/ Sunday School lessons/ being ready for an important meeting ( or whatever equivalent your profession demands)- how do you cope?

One thing at a time. Turn the TV off. Log off. Sit myself down in the chair and order pizza for dinner. Enough of it gets done, every time.

2. You have unexpected visitors, and need to provide them with a meal- what do you do?

Take-out from our favorite Mexican place. Or a pasta dish, if I have anything in the pantry. Lately I haven't had a lot of extra ingredients sitting around to whip something up...

Three discussion topics:

3. Thinking along the lines of this weeks advent theme; repentance is an important but often neglected aspect of advent preparations.....

Yes. Just....yes.

4. Some of the best experiences in life occur when you simply go with the flow.....

Thinking back to last Christmas Eve. I was given a non-Biblical reading by my colleague to share as a reflection. It wasn't working for me. At the last second, literally, I dumped it in favor of sharing a personal story with no notes (hard for me!). The Spirit came down, and it worked. I recently had someone retell the same story to me, and they remembered my point much better than I did. Gives me confidence to trust my instincts and not worry about preparation so much. There are other examples, involving children and laughter, but that one will do.

5. Details are everything, attention to the small things enables a plan to roll forward smoothly...

I sweat the details in planning for church things. Sometimes it pays off, and sometimes I realize I could have achieved my goal in half the time. Usually I put too much effort into showing, and not enough into telling. If I could remember what I tell my Godly Play Storytellers: "You already know this story...." Then just tell it without having to prove it with props or footnotes or a powerpoint....

Bonus if you dare- how well prepared are you for Christmas this year?

Moderately. Some of my big stuff had to be done by the first Sunday in Advent, so now I feel a little better. Will cross off gifts for nieces and nephews today. But these are all outside preparations. I would like to spend more time preparing myself and my children internally for Advent/Christmas. Our nightly wreath prayers at the dinner table are helping, when we are all together. Focusing on the candlelight helps. (Scroll down for a cool picture from my retreat last month.)