This is beautifully written and what a powerful reminder to read, “No matter how you feel in a given moment, the psalms will assure you that someone else has felt that way, too. They’ll encourage you that it’s OK, even right and beautiful, to offer our whole selves—the good, the bad, and the ugly—to God.” Simply beautiful. Your post brought comfort to my heart this evening. Thank you.

I realise and told them that the first sun of the month is our tentative date, but they seemed saddened by this.

I just pulled up a copy of the 2009 parochial report form — ugh. It looks like something the IRS might have developed. Requiring people to do it during federal tax season ought to be classed as “cruel & unusual.”

Unfortunately, we all know counting of butts and dollars won’t end any time soon. It’s required by Canon I.6 and goes into calculating how much money flows from churches to dioceses to the National Church. Besides butts and dollars, the canon does actually allow for parochial reports to include “such other relevant information as is needed to secure an accurate view of the state of this Church” but only “as required by the approved form.”

I don’t think the measures that matter will ever appear on a data- gathering form used nationwide by an ecclesial bureaucracy.

Since the butts and dollars are the only measures we’re using, they tend to grab far more than their share of our attention. We need to supplement them with better measures we can focus on.

Maybe some forward-thinking parish could develop their own meaningful measures, use them, and share results with the wider church. Maybe they would be prophetic. Maybe they would inspire other churches to change how they measure. Maybe they could spark a change through the whole system, if enough people got on board.

Starry-eyed idealism? Undoubtedly. But even if no one else listened, that parish would have a way to measure, tend and celebrate their growth in terms of their own unique mission — and that would be worth it.

Here is a modified version prayer I keep in my wallet on this subject:

I am so weary of using myself as the measure of everything and everyone. For this day, and from this day forward, help me to find release from the old pattern of seeing the different-from-me as either less-than or more-than me. Instead grant that I may see everything and everybody in terms of how I want you to see me at the days end, from this day and forevermore. Amen.

What a perfect time to find words that have sat quietly on the internet for a year.