...that scares you

You know how there's an old saying about how you should do something every now and then that scares you?

Well, a while back I agreed to do something that scares me a bit. Next week is Laity Sunday (no idea if that's just a DOC thing or if it's more widespread) and a little over a month ago, the minister was casting around for someone to deliver the sermon, and he asked me. And I agreed to.

I kind of said "that's Future Me's problem" at first, what with exam week and being gone for the holidays coming up, but I decided this long weekend (we get MLK, Jr. day off) was time to buckle down and try to actually do something.

(Well, I didn't REALLY make it Future Me's problem totally: I decided early on on the scripture to use and thought about different things I could say. For the record, I'm using I Corinthians 13 (Well, really starting with the last verse of 12, about it being "the more excellent way" or whatever depending on translation. Though I admit I like the phrasing "the more excellent way...")

I wrote out my various topic ideas and wrote out an outline this weekend, and spent a couple hours writing this afternoon. I have eight pages at 14 font type. I am going to have to practice it to get an idea of the time - I don't want to be done and out in 10 minutes, but I also don't want to run a whole hour! I do have a few things I could streamline if needed. I spent some time on how one possible weakness of English is that we have a single word for "love" that has to cover romantic love, family love, friend love, and all that. And I referenced the Two Great Commandments which relate, and then included just a TINY bit (and bits without any swears, I was careful of that!) from David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" which actually, the whole grocery-store scene and especially the part about seeing a woman in line who seems "horrible" to you and for all you know she is someone who sat up all the previous night caring for a loved one dying of a horrible cancer or she was the minor bureaucrat who actually helped your spouse clear up some kind of truly maddening DMV problem....and the whole idea of seeing people as PEOPLE and not seeing yourself as the center of the universe....and kind of circled back around to the idea that while we may not be called in our day to day life to be like the medical missionaries who go into difficult places and try to heal people with horrible diseases, we still have the choice in our day to day life how we treat (and also, how we react to) others....it's still imperfectly organized but having it down, I can rearrange and rewrite and remove infelicitous wordings that I will only hear when I actually read it.

People tell me they are "excited" to hear what I have to say and I admit this should be less scary than it could be, it is not like I am applying for a job to do this (I've realized that I could handle the "God stuff" of being a minister, the "people stuff" - which is a lot of the job - I'd have a lot more trouble with and not be able to handle graciously all the time). And anyway, the WORST that could happen if I do a poor job? I don't get asked to do it again. (But I don't think I will do a truly horrible job, and I'm going to see if I can go in Friday afternoon and actually practice in the pulpit - one of the reasons my one-and-only piano recital was so disastrous was that I didn't go and practice in the venue ahead of time and that added greatly to my nervousness).

So anyway. Spare a good thought for me next Sunday morning....