Food, Faith and Fabric: Morning Musing

31 December 2015

Morning Musing

NOVELS AT BREAKFAST

I read novels at breakfast: happy novels. There is something about morning that precludes a too-soon reality. I can believe that people can be silly and warm and dear in the morning. I can believe in their sadness, but in the morning I know their sadness will fade as the twilight fades into darkness. And I know that all will be cozy and sheltered by nightfall. No one will be lost in the forest, no one will hunger, no one will thirst, and no one will have a vast untapped longing for something by nightfall. The novel’s day encompasses me during the day and leaves spaces for reality to leak in slowly. Like oil sliding down over pebbles in a jar, reality gradually forms itself around the pebbles of my day, coating everything with its film of gentleness, never quite as rude as it could be if I were novel-free.

In the morning I know that crimes can be solved; straying sheep found, and bags of ill-gotten gains returned to their original owners. I rest in that knowledge after Morning Prayer, when I have sometimes considered all the tangles humans get themselves in (including my own tangles), and find I can bear it more easily and gracefully.

A morning prayer:

O God, this is a new day you have created. Help me to remember that with you all things are possible, even those thing I can imagine only in my wildest dreams. Let me be a blessing in your Name this day and every day. AMEN.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Nicolette Papanek was born in San Francisco, California and raised on the east and west coasts and in Canada. She has also lived in northern Germany. Her undergraduate degree is in Human Resources Design, a multi-disciplinary degree with majors in Communication, Design, Behavioral Science, and Business Management. She is a graduate with a Masters in Divinity from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and was ordained priest in 2002.

Nicolette is called to the specialized ministry of transitions (interim ministry). After a twenty-six year business career in Communications, she has spent her ordained years practicing, studying, and exploring how human beings intersect creatively with new ideas and ministries. Her belief is that the Holy Spirit speaks to us and calls us to discover anew the incarnational ministries to which lay and ordained are called. She believes churches are a mystery to enter into and explore rather than a problem to be solved.

In addition to her ministry in the church she serves, Nicolette is a certified clergy coach, peaching coach, spiritual director, search consultant, and works with lay and ordained leadership in dreaming dreams for the future and making plans to fulfill those dreams in God's name. She calls her work "Holy Meddling." Her personal mission is to bring out God's best in others with love, laughter, and lunch. She is passionate about providing places where individuals and groups can become who God intends them to be, even during times of uncertainty and change.

So far her ministry has taken her on adventures in eleven churches, not counting the ones where she has done consulting (holy meddling), seven dioceses and she has served with what will soon be ten different bishops. Beginning 15 September 2018, she is the Interim Dean at Grace Cathedral in Topeka, Kansas, USA.

Nicolette plays well with others and in her alone time she writes, reads, sleeps, cooks, eats, and creates quilted art works. Although she loves good food, she makes herself do Pilates three times a week to thrive physically and spiritually. Her blog contains sermons, occasional musings, quilted fiber art, and recipes.