Talk With the Preacher

. . . from Elizabeth Strout’s sad and deeply true book Abide With Me.

This novel is the story of Tyler Caskey, a young New England minister in West Annett, Maine, struggling to find his calling and his balance again after suffering the death of his young wife. Set in the late 1950s, the story contains some very insightful reflections on “what it’s really like”.

The other day I was shaken into the reality of my own inability to see clearly.

Again.

In a moment of weakness I’d promised offspring Sammy I’d go with his class on a field trip visit to National Geographic headquarters. I’d been traveling earlier in the week and had conveniently forgotten my offer . . . only to return home to a very excited 8-year-old who informed me he’d been sleeping with his National Geographic t-shirt since I’d left just so he would be sure to remember to wear it when we went together on Friday.

And this is how it was that I found myself, not just quietly accompanying my son on a day at the museum, but slapped with a big nametag reading, “MRS. BUTLER” and assigned a rather unruly group of 6 kids, for which I was responsible to ferry down to the Metro station, on the Metro, off the Metro and down a busy DC street to the National Geographic headquarters.

Is it any wonder I am not a professional child educator? We hadn’t even made it on the 6-block walk from school to the Metro stop by the time I was ready to throw in the towel.

Nevertheless, we persevered and spent two torturous hours in the museum trying to keep little hands from breaking things, then successfully navigated our way through lunch. Whew! The teacher told the parent chaperones we had a choice: for the 10 minutes remaining we could either take the kids to the National Geographic bookstore, or let them run around in the courtyard.

Needless to say I did not think too long about this question, and off I herded them toward the courtyard, desperately threatening pretty much anything I could think of to try to keep them together.

This was the moment that my own blindness, my complete inability to see the world as God sees it, hit me smack in the face. And it felt like a big bucket of cold water.

I noticed a homeless woman smoking on a bench, right in the path we were taking to the courtyard. I herded the kids away from her because I just wasn’t sure if she might talk to them or they might talk to her . . . actually, I don’t know what I was afraid of; I just instinctively steered them away and then followed the kids.

I’d just passed the woman, veering the kids away and sort of walking between them and her, when I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye.

Ski hat pulled down over her head; big jacket covering her small frame; huge eyes taking everything in. I walked by and I realized: “I know her!”

I know her.

And by “know” I do not mean she looked familiar. Normally I see her in church (every single Sunday), not out on the streets. She and I worship together.

I turned around and called out her name in surprise and she smiled, like she’d been patiently waiting for me to notice her. “Hey Pastor Amy!” she said. “I thought that was you, but I usually see you in a long robe. I wasn’t sure when you walked right by me!”

I went right over to her, hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.

As I turned back to the kids one of them said to me with a mixture of horror and surprise, “Who was THAT?” and as I tried to explain I could feel my face burning with shame.

When I had my “Harried Parent Volunteer” hat on, she was just another faceless homeless person from whom I needed to protect the kids. But the minute I recognized her, my “Pastor” hat came out and I felt, not annoyed or concerned, but genuinely happy to see her.

It was in Mark 8 that Jesus lost his temper with his dense and unseeing disciples. In that moment in the National Geographic headquarters courtyard I swear I could hear his words ringing in my ears, a strident, impatient and, honestly, disappointed voice, the message at the moment just for me:

“Open your eyes!” Jesus yelled at the crowd (at me)

. . . for once, just look at what is right in front of you, instead of muddling your way through life so sure you have it figured out. Open your eyes, or you’re going to keep walking into trees . . . and tripping over roots . . . and ending up in places you never intended to go.

Open your eyes.

Oh, for eyes that could see the world with the open possibilities Jesus eyes did. Some days I’m sure I finally have them . . . and then something like this happens and it seems to me that even after years of following Jesus I am still tripping and stumbling through this human life with my eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Kyrie elaison, Kyrie elaison, Kyrie elaison.
Christe elaison, Christe elaison, Christe elaison.
Kyrie elaison, Kyrie elaison, Kyrie elaison.

The folks over at the John Leland Center invited me to come speak to a class today about what it is like to be a pastor.

In twenty minutes.

Frankly, there is no way this is possible.

But I did my best. I told my story, which is all I know anyway, and shared a list I made of some important things I’ve learned.

I also shared with the class that there has been no life experience that has tested my faith as much as pastoral ministry. To survive, here’s what I try to do. Join in and add to the list . . . .

There’s a new man in my life.

And not unlike the other men in my life, he seems to exist solely for the purpose of telling me what to do.

Well, where to go, actually.

But he does it with such a nice British accent. It makes steer-wheel-pounding frustration in South East DC seem almost . . . well, civilized.

For Mother’s Day Hannah and three of the other “men” (do you count as a man when you’re 8?) in my life gave me a GPS tracking system for my car. They did this because I am always and forever getting lost (this is a confusing city, I tell you), and if GPS was invented for anyone, let me tell you that I am up toward the front of that line.

It didn’t take too long to learn how to use it. (As part of my learning process I came to the realization that it’s best to program the unit BEFORE you start driving. Please note: I’ve earned two Master’s degrees.) Just a few learning curves (ha!) here and there and I seem to be “off to the races” with my new British driving companion.

And friends, I tell you, GPS makes MapQuest look like a primitive tool of prehistoric man (. . . er, woman).

I know I’ll miss calling Mark when I’m completely and totally lost, then having him bail me out by walking me through directions one more time.

But I think I’m over it.

After all, Mark doesn’t have a British accent and thus I’ve never picked up the telephone and mistaken his voice for Colin Firth’s.

And (for those of you who know Mark this may shock you), for all his endearing qualities, Mark never stays politely silent when my decision to take another route that “feels right” doesn’t quite pan out the way I’d hoped. Clive (too obvious to outright NAME him Colin) just silently self-corrects and we pick up where we left off.

Such a nice guy!

I’m not quite sure but I think this new experience could very well change my life. It could be that, with this one gift, I:

1. Never get lost again.
2. Go on a lot of road trips with a very proper sounding man.
3. Manage to stay married to my own lovable (yet mocking) real-life man.
   

It’s only been a few days so we’ll have to drive together a little more before I know for sure how things will turn out.

In the meantime, Clive and I are off on another trip . . . down the motorway!

There are days when I feel absolutely certain I have the weirdest job on the planet. Okay, I know that is probably not technically true, but you do have to admit that I have some pretty strange experiences at work.

Yesterday was no exception.

I was preaching, as I usually do on Sunday mornings. And I have to say that this was one sermon I really liked; I felt like I’d really wrestled with the text this week and that the text spoke to me in a fresh and illuminating way.

(FYI: this does not happen every week.)

The text is about healing, but not so much like healing in the dramatic, miraculous sense of the word. The story is about wanting to be healed, and how that’s so very different than waiting for God to serve up whatever it is we want on a silver platter.

So engaging was my experience with the text this week that I decided (well, I hoped, actually) that the congregation, on the off-chance that they also would find the text engaging, might need an actual, physical way to respond to the message. So I planned an anointing–with oil–for those who felt they’d like to respond at the end of the service.

If you are in professional ministry, you might know exactly what this means: if you plan a strange ritual in worship you need to have a few “plants”–that is, people who know what you are doing and will eagerly participate so others will know what to do.

So, being the worry-wart that I am, I told a few reliable folks in worship that I had something special planned for end of the sermon and to please go ahead and participate in the ritual so others would know what to do.

I’d give clear instructions at the appropriate time, I assured them.

So worship began. The music was beautiful; the scripture inspiring; the prayers deeply heart-felt. And . . . I was really feeling it during the sermon. I mean, I felt like the congregation was engaged; I felt like the text was speaking; I felt like we could, as a group, respond to the call of God for our community.

(And, at the end of the day, isn’t that an essential part of genuine worship?)

It was right toward the end of the sermon (I preach from a manuscript, so I know when the end is imminent, even if the listening congregation doesn’t . . . ), when, just as I said the word, “Jesus . . .”

. . . the fire alarm went off.

Let me explain that, in our 150-year-old sanctuary, the fire alarm is really, really loud.

Loud.

I didn’t know what to do. Really. I mean, with the experience I’ve had I’ve learned about such things as: leaking baptisteries; arrests in worship; broken copiers; . . . but we’ve never (as long as I’ve been here, anyway) had a fire drill . . . during worship.

As we gathered outside on the sidewalk in front of the church waiting for the fire department to arrive, I started to be alarmed at how many said things like, “Well, we never know WHAT you’re going to do, so we weren’t sure at first if you had planned this . . . ?”

(I responded with: “Yes. I am SICK and TIRED of people falling asleep during my sermons . . . “!)

We never got to finish worship . . . in the sanctuary, that is.

But the grace of yesterday was: everyone got out safely and there was no fire after all (just some of our kids who pulled the fire alarm); the weather was heart-achingly beautiful (70s and bright sun) so when we all finally got outside it seemed like a party; we spent at least 30 minutes milling around on the sidewalk, letting our neighborhood know that this big, stately old church IS alive; and we got some great time to chat with our visitors.

I thought, all in all, it was the essence of healing . . . healing of community. It seemed to me that everyone left buoyed by the experience.

Everyone, that is, except me.

Instead, I was alarmed . . . deeply alarmed . . . at the prospect of explaining to our church administrator why we didn’t get around to collecting the offering . . . !

The last few weeks in worship we’ve been reading those beautiful passages from Revelation 7 and Revelation 21, passages that talk about God wiping tears from human eyes. We know the historical context in which those words were written, a context that included extreme persecution and the knowledge that to be a Christ-follower meant you very well could be saying goodbye to people you loved (not to mention putting your own neck on the line).

But there’s something so . . . well . . . human about those references to tears.

While most Christ-followers I know live persecution-free (DC metro traffic is not persecution, people), I don’t know anyone who has managed to avoid at least a few tears. I don’t know about you, but I’ve cried my share. The image of God reaching down to wipe them away just gets me right there, you know what I mean?

We were discussing these passages in my lectionary group Monday when super pastor and friend extraordinaire, Jim Somerville, reminded me of a passage from Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful book, Gilead.

Personally, I don’t know how he remembers these things, but he mentioned a quote, right near the end of the book, where the narrator, John Ames, speaks of those teary Revelation passages:

“Augustine says the Lord loves each one of us as an only child, and that has to be true. ‘He will wipe the tears from all faces.’ It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.”

And isn’t that the kicker? For God to wipe the tears, we’re going to have to cry them.

All those times I’ve read those passages in worship or recited them at funerals . . . the obvious never crossed my mind.

God wipes the tears. But we cry them.

All this makes me think of an experience I had when I worked at a shelter for homeless women in New Orleans. Every morning residents and staff would gather for a short, optional devotional time. That morning the reading was Psalm 56, not one of those Psalms I knew by heart.

After the devotional time we walked outside to the yard and my colleague, who was working as housemother and trying desperately to climb her own way out of homelessness and drug addiction, turned to me and told me she had never, ever in her whole life, heard such a beautiful reading from the Bible.

I looked at her with some puzzlement . . . I didn’t know what she meant. So she explained.

“All those nights I stood on street corners in desperation or woke up in the scariest places not sure how I got there . . . and I cried and cried? Can you imagine a God who cares so much about us that he catches our tears and keeps them–saves them– in a bottle?”

No I couldn’t, but then I did.

God saves tears . . . hers and even mine.

Thanks be to God.

Homework adventures lately include the memorization of Robert Frost’s poem, Mowing.

For days we’ve been watching and listening as our 13-year old, baseball-crazy son paces around the house mumbling poetry under his breath.

Apparently, he’s been assigned to memorize the poem and recite it in front of his English class.

Last night before he went to bed I inquired about his progress. Hayden assured me all was well and, not because I doubt him or anything, I challenged him to recite the poem for his Dad and me.

I was shocked, I tell you, to hear those beautiful words come rolling out of the mouth of my baby, who now inhabits a large, almost-adult-sized body topped with very long, unruly hair (A hairstyle that is so not cool, but he and I don’t share that opinion, sadly. Choose your battles, choose your battles . . . !).

As he recited, Hayden had the rhythm and cadence of the poem down; I couldn’t believe it. Rather than sounding like rote memorization forcefully imposed on his poor, discriminated self (which is how I know he feels), the beauty and the power of the words just came right out as he said them.

I looked up at him in amazement as he finished. Grinning he said, “Didn’t think I could do it, did you?”

“No, I thought you could do it. I just wasn’t expecting such a polished performance. I tell you, child, keep that up and you’ll slay the girls.”

Looking at me with disgust he said, “For your information, Mom, girls don’t like poems anymore. That’s so old fashioned.”