Gender Pronouns And The Challenges of These Days

      My congregation worshiped this last Sunday with three other congregations.  During this pandemic time my congregation has done our worship through YouTube, while many others have been worshipping through Zoom.  So this Sunday, in what was a great change for my congregation, we joined the others through a Zoom worship time.  Several of my parishioners noticed that many of the members and pastors of the other churches had their pronouns listed after their names, "Joe Smith, (he/him)"  "Jane Doe (they/them)" for example.  So at our regular Zoom coffee hour the question came up.  "Why were they doing this?"  "What does it mean?"  "How can an individual be 'they/them' which I've always understood to be plural?"

    Oh, boy.  Good, light, fun coffee hour conversation for the day.

    So I did my best to explain. After all, one of my own children now chooses "they/them" pronouns to self-identify.  If the church cannot get behind them and support them in their self-understanding and self-identification, the church will lose a really good, committed, wise human being.  And probably their siblings as well.  It was past time to have the conversation.  

    So we talked.  I shared about what it meant to be transgender, non-conforming, non-binary, fluid, etc.: that some people simply don't fit into the categories of male and female as we understand them.  Some of this is genetic: folk with XXY or XYY genders aren't going to be "female" or "male" as we understand them.  But as I'm learning from my child, this goes far beyond that.  For my child, there is a problem with being identified primarily by gender before any other identification occurs.  They are not first seen as "person", they are first seen as "female" and they no longer want that.  They want to be freed from gender ideas and gender categories to just simply be who they want to be, who they are, as a unique individual, a person, a human.

    I will be honest and name that this one has been a challenge for me.  At first, I worried that we were taking a step backwards.  The first wave of feminists fought hard for women to get the vote.  The second wave fought hard to allow women to work and to be in roles that previously had been restricted to men alone.  My generation wanted women to be accepted as being whoever and whatever we wanted to be, still as women.  And I was afraid that when my child said they no longer wanted to be identified as female because it felt restrictive, that we were reverting and going back to a time when "female" was so specific and so regulated that women could no longer be whatever and whoever they wanted except to declare themselves NOT female.  My child and I went around and around on this.  Was all our work in trying to say we could be women and still be and do anything we wanted  - was all of that for nothing?  

    I also struggled because this, my eldest child, is so very feminine in so many ways.  They usually wear long, flowy dresses. Their hair is very long and they like to put it in new and artistic styles.  They wear necklaces always, and love pretty things.  They are so much more classically female than I ever was, and yet they no longer want to be identified primarily as female.  I struggled to understand this.

    But I have done the work.  I have had the conversations.  My child is articulate, and smart.  They are wise and clear.  And I have finally heard them and come to understand that this is the next step.  This is the next frontier in allowing people to be who they are, in seeing them in their individuality and uniqueness.  

    Still, it was because of my own struggle that I understood the struggles my congregants were having with this.  I found myself remembering that as a young person, when Lesbian/Gay rights first came into focus, that some of my own grandparents said, "This is too much.  I cannot make this change.  I am being pushed too far this time."  They'd struggled to accept racial equalities, the movement towards more gender equality.  They'd struggled but had understood.  But this next one, pushing to accept that people had different sexual orientations, and that this was okay - this felt too hard.  For me and my peers, acceptance of same-gender relationships had not been an issue.  It was a no-brainer to see that who a person loved didn't matter, as long as the relationship was mutual and consensual.  Why should a person be limited on who they love by gender?  I frankly didn't begin to understand why people were having issues with this at all.  In what way does it negatively impact anyone for someone to love someone else?  In what ways am I affected at all by the choices people make in their partners except that I am blessed by seeing another happy, in-love couple?  Of course we need to push for acceptance of their rights to love whomever they are called and invited to love!

    But I also had enough wisdom to wonder what the next frontier, then, would be.  Where will I be challenged?  Where would be the edges that would confront me?  At what point will I say, "I am too old to change on this one."  And "I can't take this next step."  

    I've written before that I believe life is about challenge, is about growing, is about becoming the most whole we can be, and that includes being able to see others as the unique individuals they are.  It means learning to support and love one another across our differences, across the "walls" that we have put up.  We put things in categories to make sense of the world.  But the work of being an adult, a person on-the-way, a person called to love all of our neighbors as ourselves, is the work of then breaking down the very categories we have created so that we can see each other as the unique children of God that each of us is.  

    And so, while I heard my grandparents say "I am too old to change on this," that is a phrase I never, ever want to utter for myself.  I know challenges will continue to come.  That is the nature of being a human being in the 21st century.  But those challenges are what life is about: they give us the chance to grow, to deepen, to become more fully and wholly the people we are called to be.

    I also heard my grandparents say, "This may divide us even further."  "This may break us apart as a country."  Well, we are already broken apart as a country.  We are.  And it will only divide us further as we choose to let it do so.  To deny people rights because we are afraid it will upset some people is not a good justification to me.  It never has been.  It never will be.  In this case, to not listen, to not move on this, to refuse to allow people to choose their own identities is to deny people the right to self-identify, to figure out who they are and to claim it for themselves.  

    My child, along with all of those who do not choose to self-identify in terms of gender (or anything else for that matter) as we would first have them do, is still a beautiful, deeply loved child of God.  And we are called to love them as we love ourselves.  That's the bottom line.  Always.  That's our call from God at every step of the way.  To love them as I love myself means to allow them their own journey, to support them in their own walk, and to take on myself the burden of seeing them for who they are claiming they are, not as I would want to see them for my own comfort.  

    I found myself reminded of the Kahlil Gibran writing "On Children" (The Prophet. New York: Alfred A Knopf. 1995, p 17)

    "Your children are not your children.

    They are the sons and daughter’s of Life’s longing for itself.

    They come through you but not from you,

    And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

    You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

    For they have their own thoughts.

    You may house their bodies but not their souls,

    For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

    You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

    For life goes not backward nor tarries from yesterday.

    You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

    The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

    Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

    For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

    This is not about me.  This is about them and their ability to walk their own path towards wholeness.  The only question I have to ask myself is will I support this person in their journey or will I choose judgment and rejection instead?  And once again, this is a no-brainer.  I love my child more than my own life.  And I will do whatever is necessary to support them in being whole, being full, being themself.  I know that I will benefit from that choice as well, as I learn to let go of judgment, pre-conceptions, and the needs to categorize, box and label others.  As I let go of judgment of others, I also release more self-judgment and that can only be a good thing.  

    I know this isn't an easy step for folk.  And people will find ways to justify their resistance.  Some will claim it is against God's will (which is not at all biblical, by the way.  That's for another conversation, however).  Some will claim it is against nature.  People usually do try to find justifications for their own inability to be open, to change.  But again, I cannot choose that for myself.  I have to choose love.  It is what God calls us to do.  And in this case, that starts very much at home.

The Cycles of Life

         There is much wisdom in those who say that life is not really linear, but rather is more like a spiral: cycling in and around the same issues again and again.  I find this in my own life in many ways: the things that challenge me seem to come back repeatedly until I really get a handle on them and then they stop appearing.  The problems that I've faced repeat until I get them "right".
         I find this fascinating at several levels.  There is a popular song, Breathe, by Anna Nalick with the words,
"'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl,
So cradle your head in you hands
And breathe, just breathe."

        There have been many times when I have related to those words and find myself wishing, hoping, praying that there were some way I could go back and do things differently.... my son missed his SAT test last week, for example, when I was gone and that is one of those stupid mistakes that has haunted me... "If I'd only remembered to call and wake him up that morning... if I'd only hounded him...."  But I can't fix it and it bothers me.  

         But what is interesting as I reflect on the big picture is that while I cannot go back and fix these instances, fix these mistakes in the specific circumstances, through the course of my life I am coming to see that I will have another opportunity to "get it right" or rather, a situation similar to this will happen again.  It will.  And perhaps I will have learned from the past mistakes and do better.  Anna Nalick wrote the song when she was 17.  She hadn't been given the experience yet of life cycling.  But I have no doubt that if she lives long enough, she will.  We can't go back, but we can go forward, and we will have the chance to learn from those mistakes and respond to similar situations differently in the future.

         But the other way in which I experience this cycling as true is that we also have the opportunities to learn that when something feels similar to a time in the past, it is an invitation to look at it with the eyes of someone who has survived and hopefully thrived through those earlier experiences.  We can then see those situations with the gift of the hindsight that we gained then and apply it to the situation now.

         I've found myself reflecting on a time when my body was telling me that a situation was the same as a nightmare I had experienced a decade before.  It felt the same: I couldn't sleep, wasn't eating right, and had become very sick.  I was anxious all the time.  I couldn't figure out what was going on.  Why did this feel absolutely the same as what I had gone through before?  Why was I in so much pain and wanting desperately to run away just like I had felt before?  But through the wisdom of an amazing person in my life I was able to hear and see that my body was telling me that this was the same situation as what I had gone through before.  Yes, the specifics were very different.  The people involved were different and in very different roles in my life than those who were the players before.  For those on the outside, they would have seen nothing similar at all in the two situations.  But many of the important key stressors were the same: lies, secrets, abuse, a situation that felt completely unsafe in which I did not know where or when the next hit would come; only that it would come.  My body was telling me that I had ridden this ride before.  And as a result, I had the gift of being able to choose what to do with that information.  What worked for me last time to navigate these waters?  What didn't?  How would I choose to move through this in this instance that was not "doing the same thing over and over and insanely expecting different results"?  What built relationships?  What severed relationships?  Which relationships were important to boost up and which ones should I have let go of much, much sooner?  These were all questions that I needed to navigate again as I steered through them the first time.  I didn't like it at the time, but I was given  the gift of the past to help me make better choices, informed choices and to move forward with eyes open this second time.  My body let me know I was back in the cycle, with another chance to learn, to grow and to navigate the waters differently.  

            I would not wish on anyone that we would have to repeat painful things.  I don't like that when we haven't learned all that we need to from a situation we are given the "opportunity" to learn it better a second time round.  But this is the life we've been given.  Each of us has been given opportunities to learn specific lessons.  And we will keep being given these chances until we get the lessons learned.  It's a gift, it's a curse - it's life.  

Reformation Sunday - 10/27/19

Job 42:1-17

Mark 10:46-52

Today is Reformation Sunday, the day we celebrate that because the Catholic Church at the time was going through a period of being stuck, many people chose to leave that church and begin their own to continue to find life, indeed to continue to find God in their sanctuaries.  Reformation Sunday is the day we celebrate change, the day we honor movement, the day we raise up a banner and say, “yes, we truly are the church reformed and always reforming (our reformation motto) despite how challenging that is for each and every one of us at different times and in different ways.”

Change.  As both the reformation and today’s scriptures show us, God calls us into change.  God doesn’t and won’t just leave us comfortable. God doesn’t call us to be “comfortable”.  In order to understand this more fully, I want to take a moment to look more deeply into the book of Job.  Does anyone remember how the book begins?  It begins with a deal made between God and Satan to “test” Job.  That test involved taking everything away from Job, little by little, to see how he’d react.  

Putting that beginning aside for a moment, let’s look at it from Job’s perspective.  Job believed that if he was good, if he had integrity, if he was righteous that his life would be rewarded.  His friends thought the same.  They all thought that living right equaled riches and prosperity in this life., and visa versa – that having riches and prosperity was a sign that you were blessed by God.  And so, even when things were not going well, Job believed that if he continued to not argue with God, not confront God, that he would again be rewarded.  But as we know, and as we see in this story, this is wong.  Yes, many people whom we call “prosperity Christians” continue to believe that God is Santa Claus, rewarding the good and punishing the bad.  But this is not an accurate reflection, at all, of what scripture tells us, starting here with the story of Job and continuing throughout scripture.  God did not leave Job comfortable.  Instead, Job faced hardships beyond his imagining.  He lost almost everything, he suffered, despite his “righteousness”.  Eventually, God called him to change, to move, to see things in a different way.  God challenged him to act differently.  And as we know from the story of Job, he did act differently.  Rather than being quiet and just accepting, he yelled out, he hollered out at God, and was rewarded by God’s showing up and showing Job a new vision of who God was. 

The Catholic Church also thought that if they just continued on the same path, that they would continue to be powerful and “pleasing” to God.  But as we know, everything changes.  And if we aren’t actively changing, transforming, striving to become more godly, more loving and more compassionate to the needs of others, of all of God’s people, then we are changing for the worse.  Martin Luther challenged what was happening in the church.  He had no intention of starting his own church in doing so.  He simply called the Catholic Church to change the ways in which it was hurting people and failing to take into account the current needs of God’s people.  He called them to task.  But they could not change at that time.  And because of that, they lost a huge number of their people to the Protestant Reformation as people discovered that if they were not going to be able to change their church into a place where they could again find God, they would have to start something new instead.

While all of our churches have changed much since that period of time, we also know that at some level all of our churches also continue to struggle with being stuck.  Seven years ago a columnist I follow named Regina Brett, a very faithful Catholic, wrote an article calling the Catholic Church to reformation again.  Some of what she wrote includes, “most Catholics have already voted with their feet.  They have left or become “C and E Catholics.”  I confess I’ve been tempted to quit for good.  I’m not alone.”  She continues, “The pope has called for a year of faith”…”how about opening our minds to what else God might want to do with us and with this church?...God is still speaking.  Is anyone … listening?”

It is because of this refusal to listen to God, to God’s people, and to be open to change that we had the Protestant reformation.  Diana Butler Bass says, “Luther and his associates were protesters rather than reformers—they stood up against the religious conventions of the day, arguing on behalf of those suffering under religious, social, and economic oppression. …In the United States, Protestantism has often been torn between the impulse to protest (the abolition movement, women’s rights movements, the Civil Rights movement) and the complacency of content by virtue of being the majority religion. After all, if you are the largest religious group in society—if you shape the culture—what do you protest?  Yourself?”

Bruce Epperly put it this way, “Reformation faith is forward, rather than backward-looking, evolving rather than static, at home in this world, rather than in a previous age or a heavenly realm.”

But the unfortunate truth is that Protestant Churches, those who claim to be reformative, are “stuck” as well.  Change is hard.  And we are not keeping “at home in this world rather than a previous age” with a great deal of success.  As a result, there is a new movement “out” of the Protestant Church just as in the Protestant reformation there was a large movement out of the Catholic Church.  While Protestants used to be 2/3^rd of this country, as of 2012, they were at 48%.  That number continues to decrease and one article I read said with all the growing “nones” and “dones” the percentage is now closer to 35%.  Many people are simply leaving the Christian church altogether, but others are just leaving denominationalism, especially Protestant churches.  They are fed up with many of what they call “archaic” practices, and in some cases the archaic theology, in our worship.  They are seeking something new.  And while we could point out the problems with “feel good” worship and with “entertainment” worship, the churches that are not stepping forward into the future are simply not stepping into a future at all.  As I’ve mentioned before, the number of churches that are closing in our country is astounding.  To put it in perspective, 9 Presbyterian churches a week are closing.  That is just the Presbyterian Church.  Other protestant denominations are all experiencing the same thing as our younger members especially leave for more “progressive” worship styles or leave the faith entirely.

God calls all of us to continue to move forward.  Therefore God’s answer to Job, and Jesus’ answer to Bartimaeus did not just leave them where they were or call them to a life of ease and comfort.  Even as God restored Job’s fortunes, God still did not leave Job comfortable.  Job was a righteous man, beyond what we are, beyond what we do.  His integrity was beyond question (even to himself), but Walter Brueggemann points beyond "integrity" and "goodness" to a life of praise centered on God's own goodness. "Yes, hang on to your integrity, Job, for it is never questioned," Brueggemann writes: "But learn a second language. Learn to speak praise and yielding which let you cherish your virtue less tightly" (("A Bilingual Life" in The Threat of Life)).  Job had thought that his happiness, his well-being was dependent on his actions, and on his commitment to living with integrity.  But our identity, worth, and well-being is not determined by our successes and failures, by our actions, by our virtuous living, even, but by God's gift alone.  And so eventually Job was given the sight to see that his “virtue” and “righteousness” was not actually what mattered.  Instead, it was his relationship with God that mattered.  It was not following the rules to a tee.  That is not how he would find meaning and purpose or be “rewarded” with riches or goods.  He had to think beyond the riches and goods of this life to the real gifts of God.  Those real gifts of God begin with relationship with God.  That is the gift.  A gift deeply worth celebrating, and more, worth cultivating.

Bartimaeus, too, was not allowed to just celebrate his new sight.  He was called to radical change as well.  He answered that call by following Jesus after he gained his sight.

I have to say, I realize there is grief involved in change.  Always.  And I need to acknowledge that reality.  Carl Denis wrote a poem called Editing Job that I think describes that loss well.  He wrote:

I'd cut the prologue, where God agrees

To let his opponent, Satan,

Torment our hero merely to prove

What omniscience must know already:

That Job's devotion isn't dependent

On his prosperity. And how foolish of God

If he supposes that Satan, once proven wrong,

Will agree to forego his spite against creation

For even a minute.

I'd keep the part where Job disdains

His friends' assumption that somehow

He must be to blame for his suffering,

And the part where he makes a moving appeal

To God for an explanation.

I'd drop God's irrelevant, angry tirade

About might and majesty versus weakness.

The issue is justice. Is our hero

Impertinent for expecting his god

To practice justice as well as preach it,

For assuming the definition of justice

That holds on earth holds as well above?

Abraham isn't reproved in Genesis

For asking, when God decides to burn Sodom,

If it's fair to lump the good with the wicked.

Let Job be allowed to complain

About his treatment as long as he wants to,

For months, for decades,

And in this way secure his place forever

In the hearts of all who believe

That suffering shouldn't be silent,

That grievances ought to be aired completely,

Whether heard or not.

As for the end, if it's meant to suggest

That patience will be rewarded, I'd cut it too.

Or else I suggest at least adding a passage

Where God, after replenishing Job's possessions,

Comes to the tent where the man sits grieving

To ask his pardon. How foolish of majesty

To have assumed that Job's new family,

New wife and children and servants,

Would be an ample substitute for the old.

           

Change involves loss.  It leads to grief.  But still, the question is, always, when we come to see who Jesus is, are we willing to go through some grief in order to change our lives into those God calls us to live?  Are we willing to change what feels “comfortable and easy”?  Are we willing to let go of what we think we want, what we think will make us happy, and instead to be open to the path Jesus wants us to go, to follow in the way, in the path of a man who ends up dead before he ends up resurrected?  Does our faith, does our encounter with the living Christ make a difference for us?  The question on Reformation Sunday is, again: are we willing to give up what is comfortable and easy as a church to follow Jesus?  Are we willing to step out to hear what the people of God, God’s children, all of God’s people really need to experience God’s love, God’s grace and God’s presence in this place at this time?

            That is the question that we are constantly called to ask as we continue to seek to be a church that is reformed and always reforming.  Amen.

Are things improving?

          I had bronchitis a couple weeks ago, which really knocked me flat for a few days.  So I was at home during the day (a rarity for me) and I was flipping through TV channels.  I came across an old Andy Griffith show rerun, one of the early ones.  My memory is of enjoying these "wholesome" programs when I was a child, so I thought, "well, this should be fun!" But the first thing I noticed, not surprising since it is still often an issue, was that every character in the story was white as snow. Then we get into the story line. In this particular episode, there was a young woman (meant to be 16 or 17) working her father's farm.  Andy's girlfriend got it in her head that this young woman would much prefer to exchange her work clothes and base look for dresses and make-up and a stylish hair cut, so she troops out to the farm to give the girl some of these items.  The girl's father rejects the gift for the girl, saying he needs her help on the farm.  So Andy, Barney and Andy's girlfriend, after a conversation in which they accuse the father of being abusive for not allowing his girl to have these "girly" things, basically kidnap the girl ("arrest" her?), dress her up, give her a hair cut, make her up and then bring her back to present her to the girl's father.  He admits that she looks very nice, but then explains that it really is just the two of them and he needs her to now get back into her work clothes (dresses are not helpful for the work that must be done on a farm) and help him with the farm. At this point, Andy takes the girl by the hand, leads her over to some boys who just happen to be working nearby (on the next farm over?) for them to ogle her, and then returns to the father.  Andy explains to the father that he is not "using" his girl to the best of her abilities.  Surely, he explains, it would be better for the father to have a male helper than this useless girl.  So he could use her better by allowing her to attract a male who can then work the farm with the father.  The father agrees and they all live happily ever after (?!).
          Needless to say, I was absolutely appalled. And I don't think I even need to list all the things wrong with this.  I don't need to list them because it is obvious that this devalues women's work, women's worth, women's person-hood.  It is obvious that the girl in this story never had a voice and was never able to express what she wanted.  It is obvious that she was just a resource for the father, as either a helper or as a person to attract a "better" helper (ie a male).  It is obvious that gender roles were so fixed in this scenario that there was no possibility of seeing her for anything other than a second class citizen. It was very disturbing.
         But I also found myself reflecting on the fact that things actually have changed and moved over the last 50+ years.  Not everywhere.  And there is a long way to go still towards recognizing women's humanity.  We still don't pay women equal wages for equal work, we still treat them as sex objects, we still value their appearance over their talents, we still abuse and use women. There are still fields of work and study that are restricted by gender (women cannot be priests in the Catholic church, for example), we still treat them as second class citizens. But, at least here in my community, I know that the large majority of people here would be equally appalled by this TV episode, and that shows movement, that shows growth in our understanding, in our vision, in our appreciation for who women are, what we can do, and what our best gifts are.  I am not, in any way, the only person who would watch this episode and wonder what the girl (who remained voiceless in the episode) would say for herself.
        This episode gave me perspective.  It has been hard to not fall into despair when I read about the racism, the sexism, the rejection of other people, the increase in poverty and in the huge gap between rich and poor in our culture, the cruelty towards immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, the abuse of others and of our earth that seems to have escalated in the last couple years.  It is hard to not fall into a sense that everything is moving backwards in terms of our understanding of one another as siblings, as family, as connected to each of us in a way that makes it absolutely necessary that we care for and love one another.  I am blessed by the wisdom and perspective of people who are older, who have lived through other troubled and dark times, who remind me that "this too will pass".  But their words don't always drive away the growing sense of a damage done that may not be reversible.  To see this episode, though, reminded me that in the midst of all of this, there is movement still.  At the time that episode was written and aired, my grandmother was working our family ranch by herself.  No one questioned that.  Not one person felt she was less than competent to do so.  But still, the episode aired.  While it was aired again a few weeks back, it is a rerun shown.  I don't know of any new programs that could get away with a horrible message like this.  And that is good news.  If our art reflects life, we are moving, we are growing.  And that gives me hope, indeed.
        I'm also attaching a link here to a commercial that I think also shows this movement.  Granted, this is a New Zealand ad.  Also, the language may be a little much for some.  I apologize for that.  Still, I love the message here.  Hope you enjoy it.

A new season

1.  I've been worrying about the changes in church demographics... worried that I would have trouble supporting my family in the difficult career I have chosen.  I've also been missing AFDA - the Academy for Dramatic Arts program that was my dream and vision and that we began in Ohio.  I'd found myself thinking that I wanted to start something like that here, and that if I did, maybe on church campus, things might change either for the church or for myself.  But I didn't know any drama people, any directors, that I could really work with to put something like that together.  And then last week, a director called me, out of the blue, to ask about how he might start a similar program in this area...
2.  I've had a dream about a co-housing situation in which people might all live in houses in a compound: each would have their own individual places, but we'd also have common places and common times.  We could share some meals, create community, be there for one another in a more concrete, less individual way.  This has become more real as I've found myself talking with six different individuals who are in challenging housing situations and could really benefit from something like that, from cheaper housing supplemented by a large community center, and I found myself thinking about tiny houses and a big/main house.  What if I had a house on a plot of land that was big enough to add tiny houses as we needed them for folk who need a place to stay, either for a while or permanently?  I shared this with a friend and found that they were really excited about the idea as well.  I'm putting it out there to the Universe to see what we might do, but I see possibilities in this.
3.  I had put work on my book down for awhile: too hard, too intense to face all of our story again.  Yesterday, despite the fear, I picked it up and began editing.  I need a real editor, so if someone is interested, let me know.  It's a book about justice, and it's our story as well.  Not easy. But the work has started again.
4.  Today we had new people come to our adult ed at church.  We've had other new people showing up at church and at other events as well.
5.  And now, just a few minutes ago, I found a set of keys I had lost over the summer.  As odd as it sounds, it felt like a sign: the tide is turning, things are changing for the better, new life is on the way. We've all been going through a tough time.  Even when each step seems a little better, there have also been backwards steps and pain and frustration, but it feels like the season is changing.  And I am seeing glimpses of the spring.

On that note, dear friends, keep calendars cleared for the week after Christmas next year... more info to follow.

"It's the end of the Church as we know it, and I feel..."

      I had the great privilege of spending a day and a half with some of my fellow clergy folk over the weekend. We were on a retreat together that for me was very helpful and centering.  But while we were focused on spiritual practices, what I want to write about is more the recurrent themes that I heard throughout the retreat of frustration, depression, and feelings of discouragement.  I want to talk about the pervasive feelings of many (most?) pastors these days of insecurity, of being in a wilderness that seems to have no end, of not knowing the path, of feeling a bit lost in a turbulent and changing sea. As I've mentioned to my congregations both present and past on more than one occasion, the national Church is dying.  Conservative estimates are that within 10-20 years the Church as we know it (across denominations, and even across different faiths in the United States) will no longer exist.  20 churches a day closed in 2013, and that number is on the rise. The estimate was that over 10,000 churches closed in 2015.  In terms of members, 1.2 million people stopped going to church in 2015 alone.  The reasons for this are numerous, and if you are a pastor, you know that there is another article written every day about why and who and how to reverse this trend, what successful churches look like, what the dying ones are doing wrong, what has worked and failed to work.  Article after article and seminar after seminar tell us how to do it differently, what someone believes is the thing that will change this all around.  AND, the reality is, none of it is working.  What might work for one congregation seldom works for another.  We have seen attempts to slow down the decline that have bumped attendance at particular individual congregations for a while, only for a dramatic loss to follow a few years later.  Most successful churches currently center on a charismatic personality, until that person moves on, is caught in a scandal of some kind, or dies, at which point their church usually collapses.  The reality is that our congregations are all aging.  Church is not a priority for our younger families at all, if it is even on their radar.  Church has become very suspect, in large part because the ultra conservative churches are the loudest and espouse an exclusive, judgmental world view that is a real turn off for most of us. Fighting among different faith beliefs and religions doesn't help.  The bad things churches have done shout from our history books, the good we have done is often forgotten. Liberal churches don't believe in evangelizing so we allow the term "Christian" to be co-opted and we don't speak out about who we are. Progressives are afraid to ruffle feathers so we keep quiet, and often become irrelevant: country clubs rather than places that actually do the work of God.  Or we do the work (feeding, housing, advocating, caring for the poor and oppressed), but again, quietly, without fanfare, and so go unnoticed and un-noted.  But even without this, other priorities have taken our time and attention. Spirituality seems to be more individual and less rooted in community at the moment.
     About every 500 years there is a reformation of sorts: things change, dramatically, as far as the religious scene. The Protestant Reformation began exactly 500 years ago this October, so we are due for another one. The clergy I talk to see this. We recognize that God will be doing a new thing, that we can't see it yet, but there will come a time when we know what that is, and that death is just a step towards a new life that looks different; that times in the wilderness often precede very fertile growth and change. It won't be the same.  There is comfort in that, in the belief and hope that a new thing is coming.
      When I can step outside of myself and sit in meditation or delight in the beauty of the creation that God has made; when I can look at my children and hear their ideas and hopes and dreams for the future, when I can do all of that, I am more than okay with where we are heading.  I can be excited to see what is coming next, not seeing a new thing as a judgment on an old thing but as a step into something different for a different time.  I can see the mistakes we've made and make, and I can hope that the new thing coming will be more loving, more giving, more true to what I believe is the intention towards Love and connection and community. The future of faith can look radically different and I am okay with that.  I want a kinder, more understanding, gentler world where we do stand up for the hungry, for the poor, for the underprivileged.  I want a world where people understand that we are all truly connected and that therefore it is in our best interest to make sure everyone has what they need: food, shelter, community, kindness, respect. I can and do hope for a more inclusive, uplifting, empowering sisterhood and brotherhood of love, hope and practice. I am okay with anything that moves us in that direction. I know it will be different, and I look towards the beauty in that.
      But for those of us who have made this our career, I have to be honest and tell you that however faithful we are, however hopeful and trusting and convicted of resurrection we may be, that there is fear that accompanies all of this. From a practical place, finding hope and joy is more challenging. First of all, people need someone to blame and the clergy are the obvious scapegoats for the anger felt by those who are losing their communities as churches close down and can no longer afford to continue. While there are arrogant clergy, most of the good folk I know err on the side of taking on more than is their due.  We take it in, a sense of failure, a sense of not being good enough, and we take that in deeply. Depression is a very common experience among clergy these days as we work harder than ever, longer hours, lonelier hours, with less result, less return, less sense of accomplishment, community, growth. In the world outside of the church there is a huge mistrust of clergy.  To have the constant experience of meeting others, and in conversation sharing what we do for a living only to see the walls come down and the judgments descend, to experience the distancing response of those around us, is disheartening at the least.  We feel like pariahs, too often, and can end up isolated within our declining churches. Along with the depression comes anxiety as we face the questions of our own futures. I need to be able to work another 20 years at least.  I am the sole support for three children.  And not a week goes by now when I don't wonder how I will be able to get them to independence before my career is defunct, along with my ability to support them.  I have had the experience of applying for different work, only to find that the distrust of clergy makes stepping into another career as difficult as remaining in this one. Some of you may say that sounds unfaithful. But my experience is that God gives us freewill, does not micromanage our lives.  Bad things happen to good people, and yes, people are given more than they can handle on a regular basis. (Look at the folk around the world struggling with famine, lack of clean water, war, deportment, exile, and then tell me it is unfaithful to fear bad things coming.  As scripture itself tells us, "the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.")
      Fear can be a gift.  It can motivate and move us to look ahead, to start the wondering, "what if..." and to try to plan accordingly. But in a world where the future is increasingly unclear, where each day brings new uncertainties and new concerns, the future that we fear is very dim.  The "what ifs" are unreal glimpses at what is very cloudy.  We stand at the entrance to a cave.  What is beyond is anyone's guess, and the way through is not marked.
      So we wait.  And we watch.  And we listen.  And we try to hold each other up as we walk forward, reminding one another that we are beloved children of a gracious Divinity.  We search our dreams and our meditations for meaning and direction.  We study and read and attend conferences. We pray.  But we see what is coming.  It is the end of the Church as we know it.  And we feel all sorts of things in response to that: hope, joy, excitement; also fear, anxiety, depression and worry.
       Each day is a gift.  And I rest in that reality as well.  It helps to know we do not walk this alone, even as we often feel alone in our individual faith communities.  And it helps to trust that we have been called to the places we currently serve.  We are called here for now.  This time in the desert is meaningful. We will wait and look for the next summons, the next beckoning forward.  And until then we will be faithful in our work, striving to do what God would have us do, striving to serve as the people call us to serve, stepping forward on the journey even as we wait for the next turn in the road to come.