Jumping Ship and Joining In

All this talk of late regarding which societies and organizations I might belong to has gotten me thinking I might as well come clean.

I belong to as few of them as I can get away with. I don’t care for them. They add extra Rules & Time to my life—specifically time required keeping up with the Rules for each organization.

I was a member of the Wittenberg Trail for a while. It’s a good place to meet and talk. But I found I had to leave for the same reason I couldn’t comply with my daughter’s and granddaughter’s wishes to be on Facebook or put up a MySpace. It takes time away from other things I need to be doing. There are still some great books I want to read, and it takes me a long time to read. I still have teaching to do, and I can’t be spending a great deal of my home time on the computer instead of with my husband. There is a good reason why I’ve been able to blog to freely this week, the first week of school. So, I’m no longer a member of the WT.

My father taught me early not to join in with cliques. Looking back now that my son’s in the Army I can see how right he was. Army life is filled with cliques, from the Masons to any tiny sub-social group you can imagine. Johnny was in the Navy before he joined the Army. While on the now-decommissioned Belleau Wood, an LHA-3 “Gator Freighter”, he counted no less than five gangs. He’s not a joiner, either, and it’s done him well.

Of course, cliques and gangs are not organizations and associations. I do belong to a select few. I’m a member of the Concordia Deaconess Conference. The women of the CDC are very precious to me. I haven’t been able to attend the annual meetings in quite a long while, so they probably don’t realize that. Their schedule and mine scarcely seem to coincide. While they do have a set of Rules, it is in the form of a Code of Ethics. It’s still Law, but Law in which every Deaconess should be abiding anyway. It simply covers things like being faithful to the altar of Christ, remaining faithful to one's consecration vows, and wearing the Deaconess garb.

I’m also a rostered member of the LCMS because I am a deaconess commissioned in the LCMS. Ma MO considers me to be a Commissioned Minister. She can think what she wants of me, but I’m just a plain old deaconess/teacher. I’m no minister at all. I certainly wish my own Ma would think better of me than that!

The AAA is another membership I hold—don’t leave home without it. I don’t. They came out to the house to fix a tire last month after my granddaughter clipped a storm drain just around the corner and tore a tire. Nice folks.

The Libraries at CTSFW and CSL were both kind enough to give me cards. I’m hold one of CSL’s books hostage until I finish reading it. It’s a doozy!

I’m a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Brandon, Mississippi. The Rev. J. Richard Sawyer admits me to the altar there.

When the Augustana Ministerium opened up to laity, I became a member there. Their rules were easy.

I am listed as neither Republican nor Democrat, nor even Independent. I vote whichever way I chose. That may sound ridiculous, but these days even Independents are a block unto themselves.

This week I became a card-carrying member of a new group. After being implanted with this doohickey I’ll need to carry the card for it forever, and ever, and ever, amen.

I'm a member of the Body of Christ. Have been since August 3, 1950. That's why all other memberships are just plain skubalon compared to that (Phil 3:8).