I didn’t know better. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

I was seven and fascinated by my friend Kasey. She was a redhead, and she’d just gotten a perm. I thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. I told no one. I figured we were simply special friends. I didn’t know better.

The sidewalks in West Philadelphia are notoriously uneven. Cracks splinter across a cement landscape of protruding roots and gnarled knots, a battleground of nature’s rebellion against the cages built by mankind. Litter adorns small patches of grass like jewelry, reflecting the sun’s rays as it pierces through thin layers of clouds.

Praying during the first grief-soaked month following my father’s death felt rote to me. Awkward. I had taken on the obligation of saying the Mourner’s Kaddish every day for at least a month before realizing I had forgotten how to pray. A professor in college who gave me a C on a paper about James Joyce’s Ulysses said I was like a blind woman trying to describe a painting in front of her. That’s how it felt saying the Kaddish.

I am seven years old. It’s time for communion in my United Methodist Church in a small town in mid-Michigan. After watching communion by intinction happen for so many years from the sidelines, I am excited when my mom tells me it is okay for me to line up in the center aisle with her and slowly shuffle forward, waiting for my time to tear a piece of bread off the soft, white loaf and dip it in the grape juice.

Last year - I came out of a chaplaincy year that wrecked my idea of what I thought I wanted for my ministry.

But what do they say – make plans and God laughs.

God laughs and I get whiplash.

I am Clergy. My name isn’t on a roster for it anywhere; there’s no organizing body that ordained me and all my fellow clergy; I didn’t attend a seminary school. Still, I am Clergy.

We’d never had a woman pastor before.

When the United Methodist Church in my small, rural, mostly Mennonite town found out that the Bishop assigned us a female pastor, the conversation around town was in full force.

Don’t you want that baby doll?

            She’s pretty and you could dress her and feed her.

            How else will you learn to be a good mommy?

Girls wear dresses, not pants. Those are for boys.

            You’re not a little boy.

About two weeks ago, I officiated the wedding of two good friends, both Christian ministers. The prospect of officiating a ceremony where pastors were not only a fair part of the audience but also the main participants was daunting to say the least, but in some ways not as daunting as the text they had picked for my homily.