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 17th-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.
.
.
