Thinkin' 'Bout ....being a minister and a ministeree

A few weeks after our son died, my brother announced that he and his wife were going to find a church. (In their Catholic-Presby-Methodist household down in the ~ uh ~ more conservative and very evangelical ~ part of the state, the progress has been slow.) He was stunned by the outpouring of care that he had seen in our home in those first days, and realized that the two of them were utterly without spiritual community.

He was equally stunned when I mentioned casually last week that I really hadn't heard from my pastors (we have a senior pastor and an associate pastor) in . . . months.

Miscellaneous and unformed thoughts . . .

a blogger (source forgotten) commenting that once he started seminary, his pastor called him every single week for three years . . .

me, wondering out loud to my field ed class: What do you do? Do you keep an ongoing list of names and set aside time to phone or email or write to everyone on the list every week? Or make sure that someone else does? . . .

my brother, telling me that he's just hired a relationship consultant for his investment firm in which 2.5 people try to meet the needs of 180 clients, and wondering how two pastors could possibly meet the needs of 500 parishoners, and me saying that in my world we would call a relationship consultant an associate for pastoral care and yes, we need one . . .

two-thirds of my session and some other folks, too, showing up for my candidacy meeting at Presbytery, an hour from home one summer evening, and both pastors showing up when another member and I graduated from our spiritual direction program in August ~ yes, we do the special and unusual extremely well . . .

the occasional surprising and lovely letter or gift that has appeared over the past year from members of my church . . .

the couple of times I have made remarks intended to leave the door wide open for further conversation but no pastor has stepped through . . .

and mostly, the silence.

I'm pretty much over it. I get it ~ our church has amazing preaching, music, liturgies, educational programming, leadership development, mission involvement, and social justice commitments. It is, truly, a wonderful church, and two of us are planning to guide a weeklong prayer retreat there in Lent, for which we've received great support.

No one institution can do everything.

But my personal experience of loss and its aftermath is a huge factor in my discernment process for next year.

I think I would summarize it as follows: much of the foundation for the spiritual experience of grief was, indeed, laid by the church as worshipping community, as educational institution, as gathering of fellow seekers and hopers and learners and people of God. But an equal part of that foundation and 99% of the care that has followed came from the very individual attention of a couple of people, people not connected with my own church at all.

Interesting that, as I have been mulling this over for weeks, my spiritual director just preached a homily on the significance of one person caring whether someone sinks or rises.

But one person cannot be that one person for an entire congregation.

So what do you do? What do we do?

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

I purchased this robe today.

I had been thinking about buying a robe because now I participate in worship leadership most Sundays and the seating arrangements require that I exercise great decorum in my posture. A little more cover would give me a little more leeway. But I have wondered whether such attire would be presumptuous. Some of my friends wear robes all the time when they preach; some never. I wasn't sure.

But ~ my best friend at seminary wanted me to help her look at the robes on sale in the bookstore, and we had just been in class discussing Calvin and preaching, and it seemed like it might be all right to try one on.

I was startled when I looked at myself in the mirror. "That is not me," I said. I have no idea who I am anymore, but I was pretty sure that I was looking at someone else.

"That is EXACTLY you," said my friend.

"The style is called Anna," I mused. "That might be me. I feel like a very old woman, and Anna would be a good model. I wonder what the design on the sleeves and hem means."

The saleswoman found the Womenspirit catalogue for me, from whence comes the photo, and my friend and I read it out loud:

"Anna has an inset of our beautiful Crossroads embroidery around the hem and the sleeves. The Crossroads has much symbolism in Christianity and in the myths of many cultures. The cross has four extremities. The four points symbolize the four corners of the earth or the four winds-North, South, East and West. The center is the "Here", that place in which all things meet, and from which all things are possible. The inner circle behind the cross is the earth and the outer circle symbolizes eternity. "

"I told you," said my friend. "That robe is exactly you."

"It's perfect," said the other two women in the store.

My friend tried on several possibilites and, as we walked back to the main building after making our purchases, she told me that she, too, had wondered about her presumption in buying a stole in Israel two years ago, only a few months after we had begun seminary. One of our professors assured her that her purchase was a sign of conviction and hope.

I haven't felt much in the way of conviction or hope in a very long time.

I had just been talking in class about what it is like to move forward in response to God's invitation when belief and feelings are light years apart ~ something that I am sure most pastors experience somewhere in their ministerial lives, although probably not usually at the beginning. Most pastoral careers are not immediately preceded by catastrophe.

And now I have a robe, a robe named for an old woman who had seen almost everything and then, finally, saw and proclaimed what she had been waiting for. A woman of conviction and hope.

Who is that woman in the mirror? I wonder.

God as Irony

As most of you know, through a series of those ironical twists of life which I am coming to see as the places in which God dwells most deeply, a couple of Jesuits have played huge roles in my landing where I am now.

I did the graduate work necessary to retain my teaching license at the local Jesuit university. At first, my reasons had to do with convenience of location and ease of registration; later, they had to do with my pursuit of what I called my "stealth religious studies degree." Needing work in literature and history which I could justify to my licensing board, I took courses that met my real interests in the other arena of my life. Since I taught world history, it was easy to get approval for graduate work in Islamic history and philosophy, in Renaissance art, in medieval church history. Since I taught English, I managed the same for the courses I took in spirituality and autobiography and spirituality and literature.

And when the "official" requirements were behind me, I got started on a course in Ignatian spirituality, asked the professor to guide me through the Spiritual Exercises, and found myself applying to seminaries.

Two interesting pieces of writing have popped up on my computer in the past few days. One was a comment on an old post from someone who sees the Exercises as a one-way street toward a specific destination and urged me to avail myself of resources which, had he skimmed this blog, he would know that I have been immersed in for years. The other led me to a reflection on Father Tom King, a Georgetown Jesuit who died a few months ago, written by another Jesuit who had first encountered him as a student. Here's the part that caught my attention:

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"I asked him why he had focused so much of his career on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - a Jesuit paleontologist, philosopher and theologian whose work had for a long time been considered suspect by the Vatican. I asked Father King if it made him nervous to be associated with someone who had for a while been silenced by the Church because of his work.

First, he gave me a long discourse on the nature of time. ...

Then he said something that was for a me a moment of grace, a signal moment in the gradual emergence of my own vocation. He laid out for me his understanding that in the Church, as in any organization, someone has to be willing to be ahead of the curve, even though that can be an uncomfortable and even treacherous place to be. If no one is willing to do that, he said, then progress will stall, growth will be stunted. That would be bad for the Church. Someone has to be willing to lean into the future, to take the risks associated with asking "What if?" That's why the Church has Jesuits, he said. "

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I've had two Jesuit spiritual directors over the past now-going-on-five years. One of them helped me through the long process of discernment that led me to seminary and, although he himself is now elsewhere, has remained as an eloquently supportive presence in my life during this past horrific year since the death of our son. The other has seen me through the questioning and anguish that, while it changes, doesn't end, and has been a consistent presence, guide, companion, and friend through a time of relentless turmoil.

Neither of them has ever indicated any kind of idea that the Exercises or the prayer life that emerges out of them is limited to a particular kind of person or a rigid focus. The process is always one of growth in relationship with God through Jesus in their Spirit, but how that works itself out remains to be seen and lived, not controlled.

When I read the reflection about Tom King, and his insistence that someone has to be willing to ask, "What if?" I thought ~ that's it. That's what lies at the foundation of spiritual direction, at least as I have experienced it and now try to make it available to others: that willingness to ask, "What if?"

What if I help this woman who has wandered into my class make the Exercises ~ to what might that lead?

What if I accompany this woman through overwhelming and immobilizing grief ~ how might that reality be transformed into another?

I have thought for a long time now that the foundational attitude of an effective spiritual director is one of hope, and I am sure that I have challenged the hopes of both of these men. But "What if?" is a question of hope.

It remains a baffling irony to me that my journey has taken me from a teaching experience in an Orthodox Jewish school along the path of Ignatian spirituality and into a Presbyterian seminary education. (And that's only the last ten years!)

I am extremely grateful to have run into Jesuits who are willing to ask "What if?" and to lean into an indecipherable future.

Musing About Calling

The other day, about to expire from boredom during a lecture on material I have covered repeatedly during nearly each of my various stages of life, I began to play around with the question of call.

I tend to think of the possibilities in terms of three major areas:

Solo pastor of a small or smallish church, a likely venture for a THIRD career woman in (okay, past) midlife. A call in which I could play a major role in shaping and communicating vision and mission, building community, caring for people. A call in which I would do most of the preaching and much of the teaching. A call which might, depending on the resources of the church, be some version of part-time which, while I know part-time does not exist, would provide me with the contractual freedom to teach a college class once or twice a year and set aside a small chunk of time in which to do spiritual direction.

Associate pastor of a larger program-sized church. Another likely venture for my stage in life. Much less of a role in the vision and mission and the preaching (unless it were one of those apparently few-and-far between churches like my home church, in which the senior and associate pastors enjoy a truly collaborative relationship). Perhaps some specialized role in teaching or pastoral care or some combinatuion thereof. And again, perhaps a version of part-time that would allow for other work not specific to the church's mission.

Chaplaincy. A less likely possibility, simply because of the economy and other factors beyond my control, in the setting of my dreams: multicultural, multifaith, acute care Famous Giant Hospital. More likely in a nursing home or hospice setting, or perhaps on one of the smaller campuses of FGH. Only occasional preaching and far less teaching. Perhaps an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the development of the role of spiritual care to patients and staff in a clinical setting; perhaps not. Definitely a role in providing one-on-one and small group pastoral care; perhaps a place for spiritual direction. Probably time to teach that occasional college course. The ability to retain connection and involvement with my home church.

I made myself a little chart: three columns for the above across the top of the page, and a list down the side of things I deem important to ministy, assigned points across the page with respect to how each form of ministry coincided with the areas that seem to matter, and added up each column. I thought about it awhile, and then decided to circle those aspects of ministry of particular importance to me and re-calculate my columns.

Where is God in all this? I wondered to myself. The results were interesting but not surprising; what was surprising was how much more distinct the choices became when I limited my points to those parts of ministry which call out most profoundly to me.

I'm going to save that sheet of paper and try it again as this final year of seminary draws to a close. In the meantime, I think where God was in all this for yesterday was in a lunchtime conversation I had with a pastor from my presbytery who has showed up here for a continuing ed program this week. A little more clarity, a little more understanding about how questions to ask and how to find out the real answers (or something close enough), and a lot of encouragement.

I wonder every few minutes whether I should stay in seminary for the next few. Maybe the fact that I am drawing charts and quantifying things which cannot be quantified and seeking out advice from wise people means that the answer is: So far, yes.

Future in Ministry: Two or Three Things

The novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once made the point that every novelist has two or three things to say, which he or she repeats in various forms throughout a lifetime of writing.

At the time I encountered that statement, I was a college student reading through most of his work, and young enough that most things were still fresh and new. The idea that the essence of a person's thought, experiences, approach to life, might be boiled down to two or three ideas, was one of those fresh and new things, and one of the few I never forgot.

Many years later, as I was become an aficionado of the sermon genre, it became apparent that the same statement could be made of preachers. Preachers, like novelists, reveal themselves through words that dance around and through a couple of major themes, the difference being that preachers' themes tend to emerge from the kaleidescopic lens of the Bible.

And then, my first year in seminary, one of my professors mentioned this same reality. And many of the students, not much older than I had been in college, found his words to be as fresh and new as I had Scott Fitzgerald's.

Fresh and new or fresh and old ~ it doesn't matter. I think that we all have ways of focusing, of narrowing in, on our lives and work characteristic of who we are in our deepest, richest, most authentic selves and, if God so graces us, we are permitted to express those selves to others in our work as well as in our kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms.

With my formal training in spiritual direction behind me and one year of seminary left, I have started to think about what my own Two or Three Things might be. I have no idea to what work I will be invited when this second academic portion of my life comes to a conclusion; like an adolescent, I imagine one thing one day and another the next. I probably have, if I remain healthy, fifteen or so years of very active ministry ahead of me, and then, I hope, many years beyond that of perhaps spiritual direction and writing. (You don't have to remind me, of course, that prediction is a futile activity. But one needs to think in general terms, at least.)

I don't know what my activities might entail, but a sense of what my calling is has begin to bubble up. That sense ~ my Two or Three Things, the ones that matter so much to me that I might test each proposed act or potential word (or flow of words!) against them ~ is merely at the beginning stage of a work in progress at the moment.

I wish I had thought of this when I was twenty ~ of trying to boil down to two or three the things that most mattered to me about how to live my life and contribute my gifts to the vast river of lives and gifts that creates the human community. Now, with fewer years ahead of me than behind, it has become an essential task.

And so, my first vague try. Three Things, without (much) elaboration at this point:

"My work is loving the world." (Messenger, by Mary Oliver)

Our narratives are called into life by God our Creator and blend into the narrative of Jesus through the Spirit. It is essential that we tell and live our stories in order that we as God's most beloved may be transformed into whom God calls us to be. (My personal summary of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.)

"Be gentle, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden." Philo of Alexandria. Those of us who have crouched down and wailed into the dry desert wind need to share that story and and open our eyes against the blinding grains of sand, so that we see more clearly and can share more willingly the weight others carry, freeing them to share and live their stories as well. (A sort of subchapter of my Second Thing, bourne out of the past year of my life.)

What about you? Have you thought about what your Two or Three Things are? Do you consciously try to live them out? Are you able to dispense with those things no longer at the core of your being, and center yourself on those that are?

Approaching Church

This morning I will worship for the first time in a church new to me, the church at which I will spend ten or so hours a week in the coming year to meet my field education requirement. It's a very old and historic church in the heart of the city, with a magnificent sanctuary, many outreach ministries, a dwindling congregation, and a new pastor.

A couple of years ago in my home church, we talked about what it might be like for a newcomer to experience one of our worship services. We are a vibrant suburban congregation with a long history of social justice work in the local and broader community, a senior pastor who has been there for 20 years and an associate for five, a sophisticated and diverse music program, a multi-generational and enthusiastic congregation. I have friends from other cities who tell me that if they could find a church like ours they would go, and friends at seminary who express surprise at the breadth of our educational offerings and the openness and eagerness of our members to learning and discussion. And yet we do not grow.

When we had that conversation some time back, we talked about how many roadblocks a new visitor with little or no experience of church, or even just of a Presby church, might find in a first visit. Even the bulletin, intended to be helpful, contained words like processional, confession, pardon, assurance, commission ~ I counted once and found 22 words that someone unfamiliar with our service might not understand in our context. (I just looked at last week's bulletin and see that in this past year in which I have been mostly absent, many of those words have been excised in favor of more familiar ones and/or short explanations. Very interesting.) There is a visually appealing brochure in the pews which tells about the history and internal activities and outreach of the congregation, but there is not, to my knowledge, anything which explains the design and purpose of the sanctuary. If you were to visit, I think that you would feel most welcome, but I'm not sure that you would have much of an idea of that to which you were being introduced.

As many readers know, I have often attended Catholic mass this past year, in an effort to worship quietly and anonymously. Even though I was somewhat familiar with the mass, it took a number of visits for me to feel comfortable. I have gone to mass in four different places and, with the exception of the Jesuit retreat house earlier this month, there has never been anything in place to clue a visitor in to what goes on. No welcoming announcement except, in two of them, an announcement of who the presider is and, in the case of the retreat house, the homilist, as that is usually someone else. No bulletin. No one in the pews or seats who talks to you. These services have suited my purposes, but they are clearly designed for those who already know what happens and what its significance is.

So, in a couple of hours: a new place, which no doubt will strike me as glorious in some ways and nudge me with doubts in others. It's a dark and dreary day outside. I have not slept well in nearly a year and last night was no different. In other words, there is nothing outside or inside to foster the openness of spirit I need for this morning, nothing except the Spirit herself who has led me to a new place in spite of myself, and the longing for a God who has remained mostly hidden for a very long time. A new kind of new beginning.

Color Where There Is No Place to Put It

A couple of nights ago I stayed over at church as one of the hosts for an IHN week. If your community has an Interfaith Hospitality Network, then you know it's a program designed to offer a tiny bit of a homelike atmosphere to homeless families. Shelters are usually segregated by gender, which tends to split up spouses and divide parents from children. Through IHN, families stay overnight, in their own rooms as much as possible, in participating churches and synagogues for a week at a time. They spend their days at the IHN center, from which children are delivered to school and where parents find phone banks and other resources for housing and job searches.

Most religious communities host IHN families about four separate weeks each year. It's a high people-intensive committment: volunteers are needed to set up and take down, welcome and say good-bye, provide breakfasts and dinners, act as hosts during the early evening hours - mostly to supervise the younger children so the parents can have some privacy, and stay overnight. I figured I could about manage an overnight, with the minimal interaction it would require with either the families or my co-overnighter.

I didn't miss the irony that I was spending the evening with four families who have no homes at present at the same time that I was writing about extravagant home decorating ideas. An odd thing has happened recently in that several possibilities for serving the homeless have suddenly materialized in my life. A friend and former colleague is taking me with her next week to a huge men's shelter where she does poetry workshops. A man is my spiritual direction program is planning his internship around offering spiritual companionship to the homeless. This Saturday I'll be spending some time at the church where I'll be doing my internship this year, on a day when lunch is provided to the homeless. And if I get my act in gear and send an email today, there may be an opportunity for me involving spiritual direction and the homeless in the city in which I attend seminary.

In the very dark days of last winter, my own former spiritual director, working in another city these days, sent me without commentary a short article about Jean Vanier and L'Arche, the communities Vanier founded in which those who are developmentally disabled and those who are not share homes together. Why did you send me this? I asked. I don't know, he answered. I thought about writing something, but I decided to let it take its own course. I can't say that I felt suddenly inspired to anything beyond my own survival, but it did occur to me then in a vague kind of way that perhaps he was trying to tell me that my own life having crashed and burned did not mean that I was forever lost and precluded from helping others.

It's probably premature even to speculate about this turn of events, since all that has happened is that a few seeds have been scattered into my life. But it does make me wonder whether I am moving in a completely unexpected direction. I have a roof over my head and a loving family living in it with me, and yet in some ways as a consequence of the past year I feel completely adrift and homeless. New qualifications, perhaps.

I Think These Would Have Been Good Questions

(See the previous two posts for an explanation).

How have your family, childhood, and adolescent experiences influenced your life of faith and call to ministry?

You've worked in two other fields. How do your previous experiences affect your understanding and practice of ministry? Is there anything you would like to share about work in the "secular world" which might be helpful to those of us who have spent our entire adult lives in ministry?

What's it been like to go to seminary as a second (OK, third) career student? What have been your favorite courses? Where have you learned the most? Have you had any internship or volunteer experiences you'd like to tell us about?

Could you explain what the term "spiritual direction" means and what your training as a spiritual director has involved?

What did you find enriching about CPE? Do you think it's a worthwhile training ground for future pastors?

What can you share with us about pastoral care in light of your experience since the death of your son? What have you learned about suicide? About parental loss?

What passages of Scripture have been especially meaningful in your life?

What interests you so much about interfaith dialogue? How do you imagine incorporating that priority into your ministry in the church?

I kind of like my questions . . . . If I were questioning me at this stage in the process, these are the sorts of things I'd like to know something about if I were limited to questions about call, life, experience, etc. and precluded from asking about theological matters.

Note to self for any similar future scenarios: Organize what you'd like to communicate about yourself very carefully in your mind so that you have access to it and can speak about it regardless of how the questions are framed.

A learning experience . . . .

Moments at the Hairdresser's

I pretty much hate going to salons. If I get my hair trimmed twice a year, I've really made an effort, and the thought of a manicure or pedicure makes my skin crawl. So when I say that I just went to a new place and had several inches of hair cut off, that represents a big deal for me.

The stylist asked me if I were going out tonight. I chuckled and said "No," going out not being something I do these days. But then, thinking that he might have plans, I said that I hoped that the dreary weather would clear up and asked if he were going anywhere.

He's going to the Gay Pride Parade, so he, too, hopes it clears up.

For the first time in the past two years, I found myself hoping I wouldn't be asked what I do. For the first time ever, I felt a strong desire to distance myself from a public role in connection with my faith, because I did not want the young man cutting my hair to associate me with anti-gay rhetoric or views.

As it turned out he did ask me, and then told me a little about his religious upbringing by his Catholic and Baptist parents, and so we had a bit of an interesting conversation.

I did discover, however, that there is one area of unbridgeable distance between us.

I asked him whether he had always wanted to do hair. "Oh, yes," he said. "My mother used to take me to the salon with her all the time, and I thought it was so wonderful and glittery and glamorous!"

Postlude:

The Lovely Daughter and a friend are headed out for the evening and tell us that they're going to Pride. I mention my morning conversation. "Half the groups in the Pride Parade are church groups," offers her friend.