Syttende My Ordination

Yeah, OK, the title of this post is an extremely bad pun.  Today is Syttende Mai, or Norwegian Constitution Day.  I am Norwegian on my mom's side, but we didn't acknowledge this day in any way growing up, and I really didn't know much about it until I set my ordination date for May 17 and got inundated by comments from Norwegian friends.  Today is the 5th anniversary of my ordination.  Because the BSF is awesome, and because I had a shoe thing even then, she took this picture on the day of my ordination:

 

I was doing some kind of foot twirly thing.  Who knows why.  I love that skirt.  I can't remember whose feet are next to mine in the black sandals.  It was an awesome day, but a lot of it is a bit of a blur.

 

Now for the other part of this day.  Here are some Norwegian-inspired, Norwegian-adjacent, and maybe even actual Norwegian shoes.  Or not.

 



 

Anniversary

Sunday marked the 45th anniversary of the ordination of women in the predecessor churches of what became the Evangelical Church in America.  My Facebook timeline was full of stories celebrating this anniversary, including this cover from the Lutheran:

That picture was often placed alongside this, more recent, cover:

This is the first female presiding bishop of the ELCA, elected a couple of years ago.  At least it didn't take 50 years to happen?

So, what kind of red ordination shoes were around for the 1970s pastor?  Let's take a look!

I don't fully hate these, but I'm definitely not fond of the pattern.

These, on the other hand, I'm quite fond of.

These, too.  These are vintage 70s shoes evoking the style of vintage 20s shoes?

I feel like I should hate this more than I do.  It wouldn't be my first choice for an ordination shoe, though, that's for sure.

Whoa.  These certainly make a statement of some kind.  I have no idea what that statement is, though.

These are very similar to the 2nd pair, but in addition to being red t-straps, they are also suede and peep toe.  I'm thinking these are my choice for my imaginary 1970 ordination shoes.

It was fun on Sunday to see all of the posts on Facebook, but I didn't post anything myself, nor did I post here, because I had majorly mixed emotions.  I absolutely celebrate the women who forged the path for others to follow to become ordained.  I thank them for their work and their commitment.  But on a personal level I felt weird because they fought to give me the right to be ordained and now I'm not ordained any longer.  I'm still having a hard time putting my feelings into words, beyond the word "weird."  I feel weird.  Thank goodness SKD came over to  make snowmen or I probably would have spent the whole day crying instead of just part of the morning.  Overall, though, I am happy we have women pastors, so I will just focus on the amazing women I know who are pastors, thank the ones who helped to form my faith life, and be happy the anniversary gave me a chance to look up red shoes from the 70s.

Annivesary

Today is my ordination anniversary.  On May 17, 2008 I was ordained as a pastor in the Lutheran church.  Usually I don't think a lot about it.  I acknowledge it, usually have a Facebook status about it, maybe blog about it, but I don't usually celebrate it in any formal way.  This year is different, though, and I'm struggling a bit with this day.  Today marks 6 years of my being an ordained pastor, but I haven't actually been doing "pastor-y" things in over 3 months.  I'm still ordained, yes, but I'm not currently at a church, I'm not even currently going to church, and all of my pastor stuff is packed up in boxes in the spare room (which I really need to organize so my sister and brother-in-law have a place to sleep when they get here).  I know I'm still a pastor, but today feels like a weird limbo place, and it's put me into kind of a strange mood.  The hubby may need to entertain himself today as I am total mood swing girl, going from grumpy to pensive to annoyed to whatever, all in the space of a few minutes.  Good times!  So...weird day.  Let's look at some shoes and maybe I'll feel better.

These are the actual shoes I wore for my ordination.  I still have them.  They might be the shortest pair of heels I currently own.

Here are my shoes in motion (weird motion, but still).  My mom made that skirt, and my clerical shirt that is also red and which you can't see in this picture.

And now some red shoes that I liked and thought I'd share.

 

By this point, you can probably pretty much guess what I would say about each shoe, so I'll leave you to your own shoe-thoughts today.

Today is also Syttende Mai, so go do something Norwegian-y.  I would recommend eating lefse or krumkake or rosettes, but that's just me.

Easter Shoes (Even Though it's Nowhere Near Easter)

Many days I have no idea what I'm going to write about on here.  Today is one of them.  The calendar shoe is fine, but I don't feel like writing about it.  I searched a few options, and nothing jumped out at me, either.  Then I started going through the shoe folder in my pictures file to see if there was anything I hadn't used yet and I found these:

 

 

They're from Easter several years ago.  2007, maybe?  I was home, so I think it must have been pre-ordination.  Which just goes to shoe I've been photographing my shoes for awhile now.  I'm not even sure when it started.  The top picture is me and Flower and the bottom is me and my sister.  My shoes were really comfortable and even had a matching purse that went with them.  I no longer have them, though.  They were the victims of one of my many pre-moving purges.  My shoe collection is pretty much in constant rotation, which is why I only ever buy fairly inexpensive shoes.  Except for my day-to-day shoes where I want really good arch support, I never spend much on shoes so that I can a.) buy more, and b.) not feel terribly guilty when I give them to Goodwill after several years.

 

PS--I love that Flower is holding her dress up in her picture...just to make sure we can see her shoes!





Cute Auntie Shoes Day 2

I finally unpacked my suitcase on Sunday, which is the reason I'm finally wearing the shoes that the auntie gave me while I was in Montana.  Here is today's selection:

They're Keens, which I love.  They're Mary Janes, which I also love.  And they're brown, which is good because I need cute brown work shoes for summer.  So yay!  Then I went looking for more Keen Mary Janes, and holy shoegasm, Batman!  I give them without comment since mine would all involve exclamation points and variations on the squeee! sound.

 

Maybe I will only wear Mary Janes from Keens from here on out.  There were so many more that I had to stop myself from inundating you with every darn picture on the internet.  Squee indeed.

In other news today is the 8th anniversary of my ordination, which is really weird because I'm no longer ordained.  Last year on May 17th I was, and this year I'm not.  And I'm not sure if I will be again?  But it still happened, so I can still celebrate the occasion, right?  It's so confusing, and I'm trying not to let the weirdness infuse my whole day.  Thankfully I have plenty to be getting on with at work these days, so it helped to take my mind off of the weirdness for at least part of the day.  I still want to stuff my face with chocolate, though.  Sigh.

Moving on.

Memory Lane: 2013 (celebrating!). 2014 (Oh look, more weirdness about the day). 2015 (never mind, I didn't even post, so we can skip last year's angst).

Pentecost

Today is Pentecost in the church calendar.  It's the day we celebrate the "birthday" of the church.  It's the day, 50 days after Easter (hence the penta), that the Holy Spirit came to the disciples, and to us.  Last year I set the baptismal fount on fire.  Don't worry, it was on purpose!  And it was awesome.

 

With my Swiss Cheese brain, I totally forgot I did it until this morning.  Not that I necessarily would have repeated it, but I can't believe I spaced it out.

 

Anyway, the color of Pentecost, as you can see above, is red.   Which means I get to break out my ordination shoes for the occasion.  I asked the acolyte (also the Sr. Pastor's daughter) to take a picture.

 



 

I love it.  She set the camera right smack on the floor for the shot.  Cracks me up.

 

 

The Sr. Pastor is no fun and won't let us buy him red, shiny shoes for Pentecost, but at least he wore fun red socks.

 

Even the shoe calendar got into the spirit today.

 

 

I'm sure it's just coincidence, but I like that they are red.  They are from Europe, around 1850, which is cool.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go research mid-19th Century outfits to go with these boots, and then maybe find something to set on fire.



 

Reformation Sunday

Today is the day in the Lutheran church when we celebrate Martin Luther and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.  At St. Someone's it also means we are encouraged to wear red and that after church we eat bratwursts and jello.  One of the choir ladies looked at my shoes after 2nd service and, sounding all disappointed, wondered where my fancy shoes were.

 

 

Granted, they aren't my fanciest shoes ever, but come on!  They are shiny red patent leather with cute straps!  I also have a soft place in my heart for these shoes as they are the ones I wore for my ordination.  I wasn't the only one wearing cute read shoes this morning.  I snapped this during lunch after church:

 

 

The wearer is 3 and thought it was absolutely hilarious that I took a picture of her shoes.  She then climbed me like a jungle gym.  She might have had a bit too much sugar.  I think these are adorable.  Not fancy, either, but really cute.  Especially since she was wearing them with a red Elmo shirt.

 

And, just to be thorough for you, o readers, here are some Elmo shoes:

 

 

As  you can imagine, there are a million more out there if you need more of an Elmo fix.  So there you go:  From Martin Luther to Elmo.  Just a typical day here at Shoetopia.

 

 

Party Shoes

Mondays are my day off, which means I'm not at church today.  My shoe calendar lives in my church office, so no picture of today's selection.

 

Instead, here are some pictures from my last day at my last call.  For my going away party everyone was asked to wear their favorite pair of shoes.  The tables were even decorated with vintage shoes from some of the older women's collections.  It was awesome.  A friend of mine then went around and took pictures of people's feet.  Here are some of the pictures:

 

You probably already figured out from the cross tattoo that mine are the red shoes with the double straps.  These were my favorite shoes at the time.  I bought them for my ordination.  I still like them very much, but I tend to be fickle and have moved on to new favorites.

 

Cute flats!  Something I'm not always good at.

 

More cute flats.  The photographer is wearing the pink shoes to the right of mine.

 

I love this one!  The red are a friend of mine, the boots are her son.  I love that he wore corduroy pants and green rain boots with faces on them to my party!