Love, interrupted

 

 

 

Come down, O Love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

There are so many people at the gym.  Older folks, married couples, kids, teenagers crowding near the weight racks, chatting by the circuit machines, stretching and planking and doing box jumps on one foot.

I'm not used to hanging out at the Y on a Sunday morning.  For decades, ever since I was in college, Sunday mornings were all about worship. That's what clergy do, isn't it? And I am. Clergy, that is. Mostly a journalist, but also a pastor, when called on.

“I love Jesus, but can’t stand the church,” I told a priest friend months ago, well before all hell broke loose. “You and every other millennial,” he said teasingly.  

Interestingly, it’s millennials who are heading for the doors, leading the shift away from organized religion.

I grew up in a much more devout time.  But now this very geriatric millennial isn’t sure she can tolerate sitting in a pew, let alone standing in the pulpit or behind the altar.  

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

While a student at an upstate New York college, I had fallen hard and fast in love with the Anglican tradition.  Introduced to the 17^th-century poet-divines in a class on Renaissance poetry, I found in John Donne’s spiritual struggles, his frank delight in human carnality, and embrace of the science of his time a way of unifying experience that seemed genuine and reasonable.

Back then, I believed that churches were as advertised: places where believing got you a bit of an edge in living a more authentic, God-centered life.

It wasn’t long before I, a Jewish young adult from Brooklyn, was baptized in the village Episcopal Church, going on retreats at a local convent, a regular at the campus student fellowship.

Was I enamored more of faith or of poetry and mystery and tradition?  I never thought to ask myself that question then.  

Now I’m asking some fundamental questions.

More than 20 years ago, I’d lost my temper on a parish trip I’d organized to West Virginia.  To be honest, I’d forgotten much about that traumatic time, but apparently there was more, according to a lay leader I consulted who had been in the room where the rector asked me to leave.  It included arguments with people on our mission committee, a tense staff relationship, and a subpar report on my sabbatical leave. (Incidentally, this man and I long ago forgave one another, and have remained friends).

After graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary a number of years before that, I’d been bi-vocational, both a pastor and a religion beat journalist.  Amid the turmoil that was my life when I was dismissed, writing about other people’s suffering became, in some ways, another way of remaining faithful to my call to be a voice for those without them.

As my kids grew older, and the former rector departed, I returned to worship in this congregation. I still loved the quirky, against the grain blend of young and old, moderate and conservative, praise-band and traditional.  There are some remarkable people in those pews on Sunday morning. I’d conducted baptisms and funerals alongside them, listened to them share their faith in sermon and in song, dined in their homes and taught classes in their classrooms. Some of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life had taken place while giving out communion at the altar rail.

 O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

 I had little desire to return to full-time parish work. But as time went on, however, and a new rector took the helm, I started assisting him now and then.

In leaving parish ministry to focus on writing, I’d learned a lot about myself.  I’d also grown in two decades, curbing my temper and serving other churches in ways that were truly unremarkable.

When his former associate retired, and it wasn’t clear one was on the horizon, I asked the priest heading the parish if he needed temporary help.

It was this same priest who, on a chilly December day, asked me to come into his office. He told me apologetically that the vestry advised him not to hire me, even for a few months.  Stunned, the tears cascaded down my cheeks.

He (and I) didn’t realize that there was a group of people at one service, who hadn’t forgiven, hadn’t forgotten, and hadn’t moved on.

This past January, I met with one of the lay leaders of the congregation, to “process the vestry decision” as he said in his email.

What if, I asked him, trying to manage the tremor in my voice – what if we just went back to the way things had been before the vestry told me I wasn’t wanted?

I would merely help administer communion, conduct the seven-thirty Eucharist now and then, occasionally take an Ash Wednesday service and lend a hand during the holidays, I offered – just as I’d been doing for years. All without, so far as I was aware, a whisper of controversy.

I still believed that forgiveness and reconciliation were more than pretty Bible words honored more in the breach than the observance.  After all, I had interviewed Amish parents who had forgiven their children’s killers (though in oppressed or minority communities, the topic of forgiveness can be complicated and controversial. It is still often practiced).

The cold outside the local YMCA where we had met up was beginning to numb my gloved hands.  His answer? Negative.

 He advised me not to have the rector bring such a recommendation to him and other vestry members. “It would only cause you more pain, Elizabeth.”

Then he asked: “Can I pray for you”?

Like so many women before me, I stood there, mute.  When the tall man strode away, I staggered to the car and leaned against it, starting blindly at the athletic fields in front of me.

Wait.  He told me a group of people in leadership positions in the church thought I was unworthy to serve as a priest in his parish – and then he asked to pray for me?

Was this year where years of training, of obedience, of bedsides tended, joys shared, teaching and sermons and worship had brought me?

There’s nothing to keep me from serving as an interim or a supply priest in another congregation.  I’ve done many such stints. Maybe, someday, a congregation will need me enough to lure me back. Bruised and broken – but at least damn it, honest about it – and willing to offer others in similar situations empathy, courage, and yes, faith in a God who knows what suffering means.

As churchgoers flee congregations, or do the classic American church-hopping routine, maybe leaders should pay more attention to a woman known only as Mandie in this fivethirtyeight.com analysis of why millennials are leaving the faith. “She told us she’s not convinced a religious upbringing is what she’ll choose for her one-year-old child. “My own upbringing was religious, but I’ve come to believe you can get important moral teachings outside religion,” she said. “And in some ways, I think many religious organizations are not good models for those teachings.”

It's always striking to me how pragmatic clergy and lay leaders are about church politics.  It’s almost like placating parishioners is the cost of doing business.

“Can I pray for you”?  asked this man, a person I knew mostly a model of evangelical rectitude. Perhaps it was the best he could do.  Perhaps it was the only thing he knew how to do -because forgiveness, and reconciliation, and the real work of making people whole, was one bridge way too far.

And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till Love create a place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.  

(Hymn: Come down oh love divine Hymn Tune:  Down Ampney)

I hung my head, stared at the pavement in the parking lot, and waited for him to finish. All I wanted was for it to be over.

 

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