Isn't it luminous, and humbling, when people say what you feel, and say it better than you could?

I've been thinking lately about the various platitudes that take up residence in our heads.

A big one for me is the statement,
"She's a pretty good [X], considering [Y]."
Usage: She's a pretty good minister, considering she's got a toddler at home and a husband who also has a demanding job.
Nobody has said that to me; I say it to myself. It rankles me to hear it, even though I'm hearing it in my own voice and I could just tell me to shut up.

I've always worked hard to be one of those people who is great at what she does, without the need for qualifiers. And that qualifier collides head-on with another platitude I grew up with, which is: "A woman must work twice as hard as a man to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult." Incidentally, it was my father who gave me the T-shirt with that quote emblazoned on it. (Aside: How about a shout out to the men who do their best to nurture their daughters' inner feminist?!)

On one level these platitudes seem to compete. The first one implies that if there were no toddler or husband with a demanding job, said minister would be a lot more effective than she is now. The second implies that if you don't work twice as hard, if you're just too damn tired or overwhelmed or lazy sometimes, then you're never going to get anywhere, and this journey of learning the ministry, normally a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing anyway, will be traveled one step forward, two steps back.

This isn't about climbing the career ladder, incidentally. It's about pursuing ministry with the soul of an artist, present to the world, awake to the transcendent moments, giving those moments names and inviting other people to make their acquaintance. Such a pursuit takes discipline, but I'd just as soon watch old West Wing reruns on Bravo, or watch my daughter spin around and around.

And what the hell's wrong with that? Nothing. I am learning to make friends with platitude #1, and re-orienting platitude #2 to create space for working not just at one's job, but at one's life, and when I say working, I mean playing, dreaming, creating, living, dying, rising.

So anyway, I'm thinking all this, and along comes Renita Weems--minister, professor, writer, and mother. This is from Listening for God: A Minister's Journey through Silence and Doubt (sorry I don't know how to indent yet):

I will never be the writer I would have been had I not become a mother. Nor will I be the minister or professor I could have been if I hadn't had to suffer the interruptions of a sulking child or the vibes of a brooding husband transmitted under the door of my study. I give up writing the book I might have written or the sermon I might have preached every time I wander out of my study and follow the smell of popcorn wafting in the air, follow it to the family room, where the rest of the family is watching The Lion King for the forty-second time. I'll never be able to recapture the fine sentences swirling in my head, or the fresh revelations that were about to lay hold of me. But for the joy of getting down on the cold hardwood floor and singing, Hakuna Matata, I'll settle for bits and pieces of revelation God sends my way, and see what, if anything, I can make of them when I can. Because today is today, and that's all I have.

That is IT.