Daily Archives: February 27, 2020

7 Quick Takes: Booted Edition

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Explaining the title. I sprained my foot and then proceeded to be my peripatetic self for two weeks until it got excruciatingly painful to put weight on it. So… I went to Urgent Care last Friday, got an x-ray done, and they put me in a walking boot. I asked if they couldn’t just show me how to tape it up, and the provider looked at me like I was crazy. (I am, but that’s not the point.)

So… I’ve been in the boot for about a week now and it’s helping me to not make it worse. It has also led to my priest calling me “Stumpy” (no, I didn’t kick him), one of my choir members teasing me about fighting him for the last pancake on Tuesday (I didn’t), and my evil twin commenting that I got “booted” for having unpaid parking tickets. Hmph.

My boot.

— 2 —

Dress funnies. I woke up at 9:02 on Tuesday and had to be at the clinic for my appointment at 9:20. I hurriedly tossed on a dress and my fitness leggings, put a sock on my booted foot, shoved my foot into the boot, limped downstairs, put a dress shoe on my non-booted foot, and managed to make it out of the house by 9:10. I arrived at the clinic with coffee at 9:17. 😀 (My former mother-in-law used to joke that I could go from “zero to car” in 4 minutes… which is kind of accurate.)

However, I stunned my parents by wearing a dress on a day other than Sunday, and one of my co-tutors barked at me for wearing a dress on a day when I wasn’t on campus. I am now required to provide 24 hours notice to her if I plan to wear a dress so she can witness this. (I did send her a picture.)

My dress from Tuesday.

— 3 —

Forsythia. My grandmother used to bring forsythia from her garden to church during this time of year before Lent started, so I brought some last Sunday in her memory. Mom picked it and forced it along toward opening. Those who knew Grandma and Grandpa loved it.

Forsythia.

— 4 —

Facing my fears. Before worship yesterday, I asked our musician (who normally sings tenor in the choir) if he needed help with music during Communion. He said that he’d be happy to have me sing with him because it meant that I could sing in English and he could sing simultaneously in Spanish… which is how I ended up cantoring “I Am the Bread of Life” with him and inadvertently facing my fear of singing by myself in public. I now have no excuse not to take my own cantoring part in the Great Litany on Sunday… maybe.

My #ashtag.

— 5 —

Elizabeth Warren. She appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and the videos are hysterically funny. It’s so good to see a candidate with a sense of humor. I’m sure she wouldn’t boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner like 45 has.

— 6 —

WTAF?!?!?!? This just infuriates me.

— 7 —

Kelly’s Lent. Girlfriend is crazy. Her Lenten list is here.

For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.

Kneeling

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Most of my readership is devoutly Catholic, so kneeling in church is normal for y’all. It is, however, not for a lot of Christians, and it can make me a bit self-conscious to be the only one kneeling on occasion.

When I came to faith as a teenager, it was normal in my church, so I honestly didn’t think anything of it. Then, I spent time in a bunch of ELCA and AALC parishes where anything remotely Catholic was weird. (This is not a denomination-wide thing, at least in the ELCA. It’s a matter of congregational culture.) When I was pregnant with Daniel and afterward, I did a lot of sitting due to fatigue and sometimes back pain, so I got out of the habit of kneeling.

In 2014, I went back to the Episcopal Church and it was put on my heart to kneel for the confession of sin. My parish at the time had the choir leading music from the back and we were in chairs, not pews, and our chairs did not give us a place to kneel in front. I would self-consciously take a knee in the style of Colin Kaepernick or I would walk to one of the chairs in the back and kneel there. My self-conscious feelings changed when I was helping with contemporary worship one month when one of the guitarists and his wife also went to one of the chairs in the back and knelt with me.

Another thing that impacted me during this time was watching the fathers of young kids in the congregation (some of whom were my age) go to the kneelers in front of the bank of candles and kneel there with their kids. I’m normally a people watcher, and I will admit that it warmed my heart to see this, especially as I could tell it was having an effect on the kids. It definitely lowered my feelings of self-consciousness.

At my current parish, the people I sit with normally are totally used to it and are totally fine when I tell them that I’m about to drop the kneeler. They’re so used to it, in fact, that they put it down for me. 🙂 I find that it is actually really helpful for my faith to have different prayer positions, and I am really happy to be part of a church who is completely respectful of me doing what works best for me.