Last Saturday and Sunday this article was sent to me via text, email, facebook messages and posted on my wall. I Will be Your Mother Most people that sent it said nothing--just sent it. I kept receiving it but because I was in the midst of my role as mother of a basketball playing son, I had not had a chance to read it. I had no idea what it was about. Then in the gym I received a text from one of my very best friends with the words, "You are my mother." I love this man so incredibly much that I knew I had to read the article. So on the way home from the tournament I opened it and read it.
I read it through a lens. I read it through the lens of an assistant who had just resigned and was leaving a congregation and people I love dearly. That lens told me, "you too can continue relationships with those you love, with those who you have learned from, with those whom you have traveled spiritual and social roads." And so I read it with hope, and I read it with my focus on the beauty of mutual ministry, mutual affection, mutual relationship between clergy and lay--something I hold very dear. And if I'm honest because of my friend's text "you are my mother" I read it with a little bit of pride. (Okay a lot of pride...) And so I re posted it on my facebook wall with this status:
This article has been sent to me almost a dozen times over the last 48 hours via text, email, and facebook. Most people don't tell me why they are sending it to me but I feel like I have to say something about it. This is the congregation I have served and loved for almost 3 years and will leave in January. I know many of the people in the story and know of others. I know the story although not the particulars.
What I do know all too well is the hurt that can happen in churches--often unintentionally but it still hurts. My hope is that I can be a "mother" for others through their joys and pain. Rhonda's coffee cup sits on my desk....
I did begin to hear rumblings that not all were happy about the article, but no one said anything to me specifically. And again to be honest, I had a conversation with a fellow staff member who also saw the beauty in the article (and has been a parishioner for many many years) so I was able to silence in my head the other--until....
I got home from work yesterday and there was a response to my post from a dear parishioner and a dear friend. In fact one of those parishioners whom I thought of when I read the article. A person from whom I had learned a great deal, loved a great deal and I believe loves me back. His response was very articulate and very passionate and very counter to mine. So I re read the article through the lens he identified. The lens of someone who had been there during this time and had loved Ned unconditionally. The lens of someone who now felt betrayed. I read the article that way and I saw exactly why he was hurt. And I picked up the phone...
My Bishop told me after ordination, "There will be times you anger or hurt people. Times you will disappoint people and that is going to be hard for you. You like to please people all the time and you won't be able to. Sometimes you won't even be able to defend yourself. Learn to live with that discomfort." (Did I mention I have a very wise Bishop who knows me well?) I suspect this wasn't the first time someone has been upset with me, but it's the first time it hurt so deeply and it was the first time I felt so terrible about my role in his hurt. I was so grateful that this was not one of those times I couldn't speak up, and so I called him. My hands shook, my voice probably cracked (for the record I didn't cry until after talking to him) and we talked. We shared our lenses and I hope I honored his because I really do understand it. More importantly I pray our relationship hasn't been fractured beyond repair but that is for time to tell. And possibly one of the most important things I learned is that we all have lenses through which we view the world and through which we hear and read things, and because of that misunderstandings and pain, deep anguished pain, often unintentionally result. I have written before about the power of words Sticks and Stones and The Power of Words (and probably some others) but this time I was knocked flat.
Even after our phone conversation I couldn't let it go; I was desperate to understand to be able to fix this for everyone and so I began re reading the article from every lens I could imagine. I reread it from the lens of the priest in the parish (keeping in mind we don't actually know what really happened in that office). I remembered the spring of 2009 when I was interning at St. Mark's, my parents were going through a divorce, I was in my first semester of seminary and both our boys were in and out of the hospital with severe asthma. In and out of the hospital via ambulance, PICU--serious stuff. I wouldn't leave them except to go to class because I was and am still haunted by the time I left Caroline and she wound up well-- that's another story and irrational but it's why I wouldn't leave. I would sit on the floor in the hall outside of their rooms until very late at night and very early in the morning reading and writing papers so I didn't get behind. I was exhausted but I refused to let anything go. One day when neither was in the hospital I was sitting in my office at St Marks when Charles came in and knelt down beside me. "Sometimes," he said with tears in his eyes, "Not often but sometimes as priests we have to take a more firm role--almost a parental role. And this is one of those times. I think you need to talk to the Bishop and to Isaac and withdraw from CPE this summer. (CPE is an intense three months of hospital chaplaincy and I had just learned I was accepted to my first choice.) You are emotionally and physically exhausted and you need to just be with your family. Go to the beach for the whole summer and just be." Oh I was furious!!! What right did he have to tell me what I should do? I was in control; I was succeeding--I had good grades and I wasn't letting my family down. Laundry and ironing were done, meals were on the table, I made sure the children got to every activity they had, and I was at every ballet performance, basketball game. I was FINE; my family was FINE! (Oh that pride thing again) Charles left the office and I know I called people and let them know how rude he was, how angry I was, how I wasn't going to let him tell me what to do. I probably found people who agreed with me, told me it was none of his business--I can't remember that; I was too tired.
Just three weeks later I was sitting in our apartment (did I mention we also discovered the boys were allergic to our house so we had to move within 48 hours? And we moved into seminary housing 900 square feet for a family of six.), Chris was out of town, and the school called. William had again stopped breathing and was on his way to Kosair. I jumped in the car and I can tell you exactly where I was, what I was wearing and what song was on the radio when I called Charles sobbing and said, "Please get me out of CPE. Please, please I can't take anymore." He's never told me how he "got me out of it" but he did. He didn't make it my responsibility. He took care of me; I was deferred for a year. I arrived at the hospital and shortly thereafter Charles walked in. He took me in his arms and let me cry. He never said, "I told you so." He never spoke of it again; he was and is my priest and my friend.
I suppose that lens I read through was both the lens of the priest as well as the lens of someone who it seems that like Ned was angered and hurt by the church. (Again I don't know what really happened just what I've read.) But through that lens I also saw the compassion and love the priest in the article was showing to Ned. And I saw how hard that conversation must have been for both. And I know that Charles and I are still in relationship so even though difficult conversations sometimes have to happen, I know, I have seen, there is power in love and in honest loving mutual relationships.
I go back to my original post and I believe it is even more clear. People hurt one another; they deeply wound one another sometimes in ways that in this world may not be able to be reconciled. No one is free of the ability to hurt--to unintentionally hurt. We can hurt others even when we believe we are acting in love, even when we believe we are showing God's love, even when there is nothing within us that would ever want to hurt others. And I think hurt that comes through the church is the most painful hurt out there. I know I have been hurt and I know I have hurt others. It pains me deeply--I haven't found the ability to live with the discomfort. I'm not sure I ever will.
I don't know what other fallout there may be from this article. I don't know who else has been hurt or who else has been uplifted by the article But I believe in God's powerful redeeming and reconciling love. And I believe ultimately love wins.
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