Dylan's Grace Notes

Sarah Dylan Breuer, nominee for Executive Council

Sarah Dylan Breuer ("Dylan" to friends) has been nominated as a layperson for the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. Dylan is:

A seasoned leader:

• Served as editor of The Witness magazine
• Past president of Gathering the Next Generation, TEC’s “Generation X” network, and steering committee member of The Consultation (www.theconsultation.org), a coalition of justice movements in TEC.
• Member of the Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, charged in the 2003-2006 triennium with preparing GC to respond to the Windsor Report
• Served on the 20/20 Task Force’s New Congregations team, 2000 - 2003 triennium
• Grassroots organizer with the Gamaliel Foundation, the Climate Project, and two successful union recognition campaigns.

Mission-minded, biblically grounded:

• Member of the Network of Ministry Innovators (NOMI), forming strategy for and support of creative and effective evangelism for the 21st century
• Author of “God’s Justice: A biblical perspective,” Chapter 1 of The Justice Project, ed. Brian McLaren, et al. (Baker Books, Sept. 2009)
• Ph.D. candidate in biblical studies; writer on Exodus, Luke, 1 Corinthians, Romans, and Philippians in Reflections for Daily Prayer (Church House Publishing, UK, Advent 2008 and Easter 2009)
• Served as a short-term missionary in Kenya.

Effectively communicating creative, fresh perspectives:

• Founder and author of SarahLaughed.net, a website providing resources on preaching and formation for over 18,000 faith leaders each week
• Creator of the U2charist, launched with Kathleen Capcara and the Rev. Ken Phelps in the Diocese of Maryland in 2004
• Author with the Rev. John de Beer of the Klesis Project, an innovative series of formation curricula made freely available online in ‘open source’ format for congregations from Alaska to Australia
• Active in the ‘emerging church’ movement and fluent in digital media and networking as well as in print and other traditional media.

Plays well with others!

• Contributor to the Covenant-Communion website as well as The Consultation’s ISSUES newsletter
• Commited to seek justice for all God’s children AND deepen relationships across the Communion to the furtherance of God’s mission.

Sarah Dylan Breuer lives with her partner, Karen, a high school teacher, in Boston. She loves playing guitar and ukulele, cooking, and hanging out with her two cats.

Want to support Dylan's campaign for Executive Council?

I'm deeply grateful for all the support of SarahLaughed readers over the years. I'm particularly grateful at present to those of you who have written asking how you can support my campaign for Executive Council. Accepting nomination meant that I had to go to General Convention in Anaheim, and at my own expense. Nominees also need to come up with flyers and buttons (many do other kinds of swag as well). And my job at Guitar Center provides no paid leave.

Fortunately, y'all are a generous bunch! For those have asked how you can help, here are some ways:

1. Donate to SarahLaughed.net via PayPal. You can do this via credit card, though a small percentage fee is deducted if you donate that way, or you can send money via your PayPal account if you have one.

2. Send a check. If you'd like to do this, please address it to Sarah Dylan Breuer, SarahLaughed Ministries, 99 Brattle St., Cambridge, MA 02138.

3. Make your Amazon.com purchases after getting to Amazon.com via any link on SarahLaughed.net. I get a commission (usually 6%) from purchases made that way, whether I've linked to the specific product(s) purchased or not.

4. You can get SarahLaughed.net "swag with a mission" -- t-shirts, tote bags, and whatnot -- at the SarahLaughed Cafe Press store. My main reason for having a Cafe Press store was so people could get fun stuff that maybe -- just maybe could also do some non-obnoxious witnessing to what God is up to in the world, so I've kept prices there low, and for the most part I only make a dollar or two from each purchase. But every bit helps, and it's also generally a boon to me when people let their friends, colleagues, and others know about SarahLaughed.net.

Thanks again, and blessings!

Dylan

need anything musical or for your church sound system?

I'm just catching my breath after the initial rush of demands from starting a job. Yes, as some of you have seen on Facebook and Twitter, I'm now working full-time for Guitar Center. Work in retail is tiring in some ways, but it hits the spot for my extroverted side, and it also uses some of my skills in listening (people talk -- verbally and with non-verbal cues -- about what they like, want, and need, and I reflect it back to them in a way that helps them recognize that), teaching (helping people make INFORMED decisions), and communication.

And I really needed the job. The economy's woes have hit everywhere, including nonprofits, and I just wasn't getting the hours I needed with IMPACT Boston to make ends meet. For example, I had no hours at all assigned for November.

Furthermore, The Episcopal Church's General Convention is coming up in July. I need to be there, for reasons that will become clear soon, and I very much want to be there, offering the kind of take on convention that I offered via The Witness when it was still being published, and also raising my voice when I can and it's appropriate around important pieces of legislation. But airfare and two weeks of staying in a hotel -- even the über-cheap one I've managed to find and reserve a room for, and even when one cooks a lot of meals in a toaster oven or microwave, as I plan to do -- isn't cheap, and after paying seminary tuition for two years, I know I'm going to have to scramble hard between now and June to get through convention without an insane credit card balance. So full-time work was needed at least until I could cover convention expenses.

I also needed a job where working harder and doing better immediately generated immediate rewards. We had problems with dampness in our basement that needed remediation, and that isn't cheap -- plus I needed to make up in a hurry for the months in which I had budgeted expecting work from IMPACT that, due to no fault of theirs, didn't materialize. At Guitar Center, if I can sell more gear, then the rewards are immediate.

But I didn't want a job that had nothing to do with anything I loved, and I did want a job where I felt I was helping people like the readers of this blog in their work and in balancing work with other things that bring joy. Working with Guitar Center to connect people with what they need to make music, have their sermons, soloists, and Christmas pageants heard, and achieve excellence in liturgical sound and light seems like a pretty good way to go.

So I'm hoping that you and I -- and others that you and/or I know -- can help each other out, and that you'll pardon an announcement here that's at least in part commercial. If you're in the U.S. and you need or want anything of the sort Guitar Center or Musician's Friend carries -- or even some musical or sound-related things they don't carry -- I'm authorized to make absolutely sure that you get THE lowest price available anywhere in the country on it (indeed, if you find a cheaper price anywhere else within 30 days after purchase, you get a refund of 110% of the difference!). So the websites are great places to browse, but give me a call before you buy, as I very well might be able to do even better by you.

Thinking about giving a musical instrument, an amplifier, equipment to record music or a podcast, or even a game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band for Christmas? Please feel free to give me a shout.

Need anything related to light and/or sound for your congregation?  Microphones? Affordable and professional-sounding ways to record sermons, podcasts, and services? A portable P.A. you can use in the parish hall or at the church picnic? Instruments, from tamborines and djembes to guitars and keyboards? Music software? Please feel free to give me a shout.

Is there a guitar, bass, keyboard, or other piece of musical gear you've had your eye on? Please talk to me.

Whatever you need, I'll be very glad to give you a no-hassle, no-pressure, no-sales-fib way to get any of it, and to get it more cheaply than you could anywhere else -- and one of the advantages of working for a behemoth like Guitar Center is that there's a good chance I can get ahold of what you need and a 100% chance that it will be the most affordable way to get it.

Just drop me an email with your phone number, a couple of good times to call, and a bit of information about what you need (whatever you know about it -- I'll help you figure it out if you're getting a gift for someone else or aren't quite sure what gear will accomplish what you want), and we'll talk. You'd be doing me a huge favor, and I wouldn't be putting this out there if I didn't think I that I could help you out considerably in return.

And please tell your friends, colleagues, mail carriers ... I'd really like to do General Convention -- and to produce even more of the stuff you've found helpful from me -- without breaking the bank, and I think this sound/light equipment thing just might be the "tentmaking" trade that will make the other work I do sustainable.

 

And with that, I'll return to our regular assortment of catblogging, observations about music and life, in and out of the church, and other things you've come to expect from me. I do hope that you haven't found this post obnoxiously commercial, and please accept my apologies if you have. I'm just trying to figure out how to do the rather unconventional work I do as a "paradigm planter" and freelance theologian for God's reign, and to pay the bills at the same time. Sometimes, it's rather strange territory!

Blessings,

Dylan

the return of cat blogging!

The weeks since the death of my beloved Foster were very sad ones. A writer's day can be a challenge for an extrovert such as I am, and I didn't fully realize how much during the day I depended on the household cats for touch, companionship, and healthy, playful distraction until, for the first time in roughly seventeen years, there weren't any feline companions around the house. The emptiness of the house was a burden added to that of missing Foster.

I still miss Foster, of course, but there are some furpeople I think you should meet:

Clio and Clare!

We found Clio and Clare in the Massachusetts PCA shelter. They're sisters who had been adopted from that same shelter when they were kittens, but left at the shelter again at age four when the person who adopted them moved into an apartment that didn't allow pets.

Everybody adores cute, tiny kittens, so shelter staff often have a difficult time finding homes for the adult cats. But these cuties were so adorable and affectionate that we knew they belonged with us.

Clio (on her hind feet leaning against the window) is the instigator of much mischief in the house. Every object she sees becomes a cat toy to her, and she especially likes chewing through the bags in which we store potatoes and onions. Her favorite occupations include napping and punching thousands of holes in boxes with her teeth -- sort of like the love-child of a vampire and a termite. But she is adorable, and is not at all shy about asking for affection when she wants it -- which is roughly 80% of the time she's awake.

Oh, and Clio was named for the muse of history. I figured that if having the very muse of history on my lap didn't help me garner enough enthusiasm to finish my Ph.D. dissertation, nothing would.

And do meet Clare,  sitting on the window sill. She has claimed my study as her own, and she's clearly a writer. One of her favorite pasttimes is jumping up to the keyboard when I'm writing and contributing text of her own. She's a bit mellower than Clio -- the source of her name, after St. Clare, the contemplative -- but loves to play games of tag, contests to see who can knock the most things over racing around the house, and engage in mutual grooming with her sister. She also loves napping -- preferably curled up with Clio like a dappled yin-yang symbol.

I do love these girls, and I hope you'll enjoy seeing them for Friday catblogging in the weeks to come!

the decline (and fall?) of epiScope and ENS

I'm posting this here and on Anglicana, as I'm really scratching my head here, and would be grateful for any sensible explanation of what's gone wrong and when and how it will be remedied.

I have two questions:

1) What happened to epiScope?

You remember epiScope -- the brilliant blog that kept us on top of news from around the world of interest to Anglicans, and that served as a valuable and amazingly timely corrective to errors made by the secular press (understandable errors -- the Anglican world is a complicated one requiring much nuancing to negotiate and communicate) in their coverage of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

Well, epiScope seems to be gone. I assumed at first it was because all of the resources of the Episcopal News Services (ENS) were concentrated on Lambeth, but that clearly isn't a good explanation because:

a) some of ENS's best and most senior reporters were not at Lambeth at all, and provided no coverage of it; and

b) the quality of epiScope has, if anything, continued to nose-dive after Lambeth.

I've stopped reading epiScope, as skimming its RSS feed, when I've bothered to do it (pretty easy to do, since it's not being updated anywhere near as frequently), has shown it mostly to be a regurgitation of ENS bulletins. That brings me to my next question:

2) What on earth has happened to the Episcopal News Service?

I have often joked that, much as certain flavored substances must, since they don't contain enough of the real thing, call themselves "cheese-food" or a syrup "full of chocolatey goodness," there are some television shows and paper publications that ought to call themselves "news-food" that is "full of newsy goodness."

ENS has, I'm surprised and sorry to say, become of late "news-food." Where's the news? Where's the analysis?

I've pretty much stopped reading ENS as well. I deeply respect Solange de Santis, whom I got to know a bit at General Convention in 2006. I wish her well in her new position. And I hope she can do something to revitalize ENS, which, to my eyes, took a sharp dive in quality just prior to Lambeth and has yet to recover. I hope she's embarking on a major course correction that would allow it to recover.

And while I'm thinking of it, that leads to a third question:

3) Where's the accountability?

I'm not even remotely close to the first person who has noticed these things. Was our Standing Commission on Communications consulted through or about whatever it is that's impeding ENS's effectiveness? Were a cross-section of Episcopal Communicators asked for feedback? What's been the feedback from secular media about the Church Center's effectiveness in helping them to cover accurately matters related to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion? Or has their feedback been sought?

How are decisions made regarding The Episcopal Church's communications, and where do the opinions of these people, and of ordinary Episcopalians, enter into such processes?

amateur headshot II: the grey strikes back

The last time I produced a headshot photo, it was because I got a telephone call that woke me up on a Saturday morning saying one was needed for the brochure for a conference where I was presenting a workshop -- and they needed the photo within two hours. I didn't have one, so I rolled out of bed, put on a shirt and some mascara, stood in my hallway, and held up my digital camera in front of me until I managed to get a photo that actually included my face. I've been using it as my headshot ever since:

That was in 2001, I think, and the years intervening have left their mark on me such that I now look like this:

or this:

These were taken by my honey in the back yard this morning, because I need to submit a headshot to one of my publishers tomorrow. I think I'll end up sending the second one. I like the glint of mischief in the first one, but the neighbor's cinderblocks in the background, while adding a note of realism, probably aren't headshot material.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ...

back to blogging and a request for help

Dear All,

I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged! As you might have guessed, things have been insanely busy. We bought a house (which I love!), moved into it (always a crazy process), painted and patched and plumbered, adopted two lovely cats (whom you'll meet soon), and wrote like crazy (among other things, I have now completed two projects on my mind for a while -- some writing on 2 Corinthians for Church House Publishing in the UK and a chapter for the next Emergent Manifesto book with Baker Publications). And then there are some other exciting things I'll be posting about later.

But now I'm surfacing for breath and find that it's been months since I've posted to SarahLaughed.net. Wow. Quite a long break after over three years of continuous bloggins! It's good to be back.

I'd like to share one of the exciting things in the pipeline with you now. In response to the phenomenal success of An Inconvenient Truth and as further means to building an effective, grass-roots movement to increase awareness of the crisis our planet's climate is in, Al Gore and The Climate Project has invited 150 leaders from faith communities to join them for training as presenters who can take the message as volunteers around the world. I'm among those invited.

The Climate Project is providing partial subsidy of accommodations for the training, so the hotel will only cost me $80. It looks like a flight to Nashville and incidentals (getting to and from the airport and whatnot) will cost something like $300 - $350.

I've just taken leave of absence from the Episcopal Divinity School due to hefty tuition bills, and as rewarding personally as my recent writing and work for IMPACT Boston has been, it hasn't left a lot of room to pay for travel, and presenters for The Climate Project are strictly volunteers; we're not allowed to collect honoraria or other payment aside from reimbursement for expenses. In other words, this isn't a career move or a financial boost for me; it is, however, an opportunity to make a difference with respect to an issue that I'm passionate about, that affects all living things on this world, and that has disproportionate, devastating, unjust, and growing effect on the world's poorest.

Can y'all help get me to Tennessee for this training? If so, please consider donating toward the cost of my participation, and, if you feel so moved, lending your voice to the effort on your own blogs and social networks.

Thank you for your support -- both with respect to this and with all of the kind and encouraging notes and constructive feedback you've offered me. They all mean a great deal to me.

Blessings,

Dylan

seminary headline for the times

From the BBC comes this headline:

EDS shares up on HP buyout report

The snippet of the article in my RSS reader says:

"Shares in EDS rise by 28% on reports that it is close to being taken over by Hewlett-Packard."

And you know, I actually did a double-take before I realized it wasn't about my seminary.

Now I'm picturing seminary alumnae having to sew patches on their albs, stoles, and chasubles advertising the corporations that bought out their alma mater, and perhaps a little ticker-tape below webcam broadcasts from the chapel: "Hebrew bible reading brought to you courtesy of Staples, Inc. -- keeping parish offices together since 1974."

But no -- seminaries are too small a market for the likes of HP and Staples, I'd guess.

goodbye, Foster

In 1993, when our cat, Foster, came to live with me, she was small enough to make a baseball cap look like a full-sized jacuzzi in comparison (as this photo, taken on the day she came to live with me, demonstrates). She was my baby. I fed her with a bottle, and set up a little stairway of pillows and such so she could climb into bed with me, as she invariably did -- she liked to keep her head or neck pressed up right against a pulse point on my neck as often as she could. Indeed, she often rode around the house on my shoulder like a pirate's parrot while I washed dishes or cooked, so she could stay pressed up against my pulse, and occasionally hide in or chew my hair (the latter of which remained one of her favorite activities as recently as last night).

Foster never grew all that big, and she never lost her kittenish ways. She was a truly excellent mouser throughout her life, and I think she was somewhat disappointed that our apartment at seminary afforded her no opportunities to hunt anything more challenging than dust bunnies. She was a bundle of mischief, and even in her twilight years, a bundle of energy, through a bundle slightly dwindled over the years. When my partner came to live with me, Foster gamely (if somewhat grumpily) navigated the new family dynamics, and especially as our other two cats passed away, Foster settled on a few favorite activities: chewing on my hair and kneading my chest, licking my partner's face (my partner got a nightly bath from Foster quite regularly over the last few months), and most of all, positioning herself so that she was touching both of us, whether on the couch or in bed. I think it was within the last couple of days that I turned toward Karen in bed to say with a chuckle (for the thousandth time at least), "I have a feeling that someone has come between us," as Foster curled up and settled for the night with half of her on each of our pillows.

But Foster's kidneys had been failing for quite some time, and we suspected the nightly doses of subcutaneous fluids and vitamins were less and less able to compensate for what her kidneys couldn't do. Today Foster clearly wasn't herself, and by afternoon her breathing was rapid and shallow, and not even her favorite ear-rub could raise a purr. We took her to the hospital, and clearly the time had come for her to leave us. She died this afternoon at about 4:15, I think, with me rubbing her ear and Karen petting her as the drugs took effect. I keep seeing a shape on the sofa behind me or a shadow in the hall and thinking it's her, and it's hard to imagine going to bed without her jumping up to join us, demanding attention and affection and then settling down, touching both of us if possible. I miss her like crazy already.

Goodbye, Foster.

Photo: Foster on March 9, 2008

Grace Notes catblog archives of Foster and friends (great and small)

the Hancock UCC U2charist - televised!

As y'all know, on Tuesday evening I played lead guitar and did the vocals alongside drummer Elisa Lucozzi and bassist Roseanne Hebert at Hancock UCC in Lexington for a U2charist with entirely live music.

I didn't know until shortly before the start of the prelude, though, that the service was to be televised (on local cable) and recorded to DVD. *Gulp!* And on my first public outing as a lead guitarist too -- which I was trying to do while also doing lead vocals!

There were some additional challenges as well. Various technical issues meant that I didn't have a vocal monitor as such; we were using our monitors as a P.A. system to project the vocals and drums into the congregation. Even my guitar amps were angled primarily for the congregation to hear; the direct sound out from the amp hit me at about knee level. Guitar cut out during "Sunday Bloody Sunday." My microphone cut out during "Walk On." I missed a chord or two, I'm pretty sure.

In other words, it was rock and roll! I reminded the perfectionist part of me that U2 themselves often have things go awry, and sometimes (e.g., Bono's unplanned and very lengthy plunge into the audience during "Bad" at the original Live Aid concert at Wembley) the Spirit's worked powerfully through it.

I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to watch the DVD. I'd rather judge the evening by what I saw of the congregation's experience of it than by a recording. And by what I saw in the congregation, it was a very, very good night. A packed house pledged their voices to the ONE campaign and gave generously to Oxfam for relief of extreme poverty, and by the end of the evening, I don't think there was a single person in the congregation who wasn't on their feet and singing their heart out.

I'll be posting more about the experience and what I learned from it (yes, I've been doing U2charists for almost five years now, and I'm still learning!) at the U2charist resources page.