October is the month that celebrates many things: Ministerial Appreciation, breast cancer awareness, bullying prevention, domestic violence awareness month and many many more that I can't even remember at this point (ranking means nothing - it's just how things popped in my head). That doesn't count all of the days that are added to it - World Communion Sunday, Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, National Coming Out Day, etc, etc. It's overwhelming to me lately. I'm not sure why but this month, my life in particular, seems to be more busy. I'm living by calendars and schedules like never before. Plotting and planning seems to be constantly going on. What I've decided that it's all become busy work - ways to both intentionally and unintentionally avoid being aware to myself and others. But it's myself that I'm going to focus on. I've been avoiding dealing with my higher Self - the divine self who wants to come in and love me. It's easy to be distracted and let all of the other smaller pieces of my regular self take charge and to dominate how I order my life and day. In essence, I'm not taking time to find ways to live a more balanced life. I write this as I have the laundry going and I'm also running scans on my laptop and syncing my I-Pod. Multi-tasking - sure, paying attention - no. I think I'm going to spend the rest of October in Self-Awareness month. Living more intentionally for my higher Self. That doesn't mean that I won't participate in events or support causes I love. It just means I'm approaching it in a different way.
As a minister I have the honor of performing rites and ceremonies for people at a variety of stages of life: baptisms, blessings, marriages, funerals, etc. I usually enjoy planning and leading these events. But lately I've had a rash of folks shocked that as a minister, I would have a fee to do some of these services. So lets talk about why I have fees. To start with, if you are a member of my congregation you do get my services as a part of my contract with the congregation as long as they are spelled out in the contract. Generally if you're a member of the congregation I serve, it is expected that I will preform baptisms, blessings, funerals, weddings, etc for you because I want to remind you of God's continuous blessing in your life and especially at important moments in your life. However some folks are shocked that there would be an honorarium suggested for the minister. The reality is that these blessings, weddings, funerals, etc. are extra work in our wee...
Comments
Post a Comment