The second half of 2003 was the hardest year of my ordained life, which has now spanned more than three decades. The hardest year, of course, until 2020.
I want to be clear that I celebrated, then and today, the good news that came out of St. Paul's Church in Concord, New Hampshire on June 7, 2003, when the Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of New Hampshire was elected to serve as their Bishop-elect. That election made the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson the first openly gay bishop in The Episcopal Church.
The reactions in the suburban parish I was serving at the time were mixed. Some (even most) rejoiced. Some were confused. A few were angry. And a subset of that angry group were livid. Those folks made my life difficult for a while. Most of them either went back to the Roman Catholic or evangelical congregations that had shaped their theologies; or they eventually found their way to a breakaway denomination, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA.) But not before they kicked me a few times on their way out. And of course, they took their pledges with them, which left some challenges for the rest of us.
It is not my intent here to relitigate the past or nurse old wounds. It is not my desire to demonize the people who were mean to me; I gave that up for Lent many years ago. Leaders always take some hits in anxious times and this came less than two years after 9/11, don't forget. We all did the best that we could. Here is the point I do want to make: I almost left parish ministry then. If I could have found a way to do so, I would have. I was exhausted from the financial woes and weary from the theological "debates." I had never imagined myself as a parish priest in the first place anyway. So my first thought was to apply to graduate schools and find a way to teach for the rest of my life. The "ivory tower" seemed to offer such green pastures! I could have done that and might have done that, but it would not have been easy with our home being a rectory and having no savings and having two sons, ages 13 and 9. Even so, it was a possibility that I seriously considered.
What saved me was that I got invited to go to a program called CREDO, a clergy wellness program of the Episcopal Church. These gatherings are offered all over the country but I was invited to attend in San Francisco. That CREDO conference reframed things for me and I realized that I was not alone, even if I felt isolated. The foundations of the whole church were shaking, even in places where this was a non-issue. It impacted diocesan and national and global budgets and relationships. And the only way through it was to wait for the dust to settle and then move forward, one step at a time.
Oddly and in a way that I experienced as encouragement, that reframing helped me to see that it would not always be this way. We would get to a new place. There was no going back, but as Bishop Robinson would later say in videos made for LGBTQ youth, "it will get better." And it did get better. The parish I served grew stronger and more inclusive in showing the love of God for all of God's children. Some people did leave, but quite frankly others came - and stayed. And I became a more mature priest, wiser for the experience.
The past year has been exponentially worse. But in my more reflective moments I think back to that experience, and I think that at least some of the lessons learned are still relevant. I remember feeling so weary in 2003. Not just tired as in needing a good night's sleep. But bone tired, like those dry bones in Ezekiel's vision. I wasn't sure if those old bones could live again. But they did...
This is different in many ways. Interestingly, and in part I think because of how transformative that experience was for me, I currently serve as a faculty member on a CREDO team. In my day job as Canon to the Ordinary, I know that so many of my colleagues who could use a CREDO conference right now. Unfortunately, we are still a ways off before those in-person gatherings. We are all waiting: sometimes expectantly, often anxiously. We are all doing our best to hold on and to trust that things will get better.
As a priest who is now almost twenty years older, I have some perspective. I worry about my colleagues, though, especially the younger ones in rectories with kids who may feel like their options are limited. I know (as they do) that we will not "get back to normal." The new thing God is up to will take courageous and imaginative and energetic leaders who are looking ahead. I still believe that Easter life is ahead, as we move forward in faith. That's made more difficult since the tanks are on empty. Fortunately, though, the empty tomb is not about what we do but about what God does.
I spend a lot of time thinking about clergy. But I worry that the even bigger danger is that lay leaders are in short supply right now. When people spend their whole day as educators or nurses or businesspeople or parents or restaurant owners - all of them trying to find ways to do their jobs - they have little time left to support the Church. Yet the single greatest gift I received (along with CREDO) in 2003 was having gifted, wise lay leaders who could encourage me when I was down. Recently a colleague of mine ran into some opposition in his congregation. That's not unusual. But what he said to me, with some pathos, was that "no one else spoke up. They just listened. Passively."
I write these words almost halfway into the holy season of Lent. It's been Lent for a year. We've all given up too much. But the journey through Lent is really a journey toward Pascha. Easter is not about a resuscitated corpse. It's about resurrection. It's about the promise of new and abundant life, beyond death. Not "some day" in heaven, but in all the ways the New Testament testifies to it happening in Acts. And not just about what happens to Jesus' Body, but what happens to the Body of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Peter finds his voice. Paul changes his mind. The Ethiopian eunuch asks, "what is to prevent me from being baptized?" Easter is not one day but fifty days leading to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit allows for women and men to do infinitely more than they had asked or imagined.
Come, Holy Spirit!
No comments:
Post a Comment