Farewell, WA...

originally published 10/7/2018

It’s done.  I’ve moved!  Been thinking about it for years, and this summer it finally seemed like the right time.  I now live in northern Idaho, near my immediate family.  In the coming week I will be transferring my vehicle registration, switching banks, registering to VOTE, and plastering this town with job applications.  I can’t wait to see how this chapter of life unfolds and what I can create. 

But that doesn’t mean leaving Washington was easy.  I absolutely LOVED my life on Bainbridge Island, and before that, at Rosewood Manor.  I wasn’t blogging for most of these 7 years (7!?!), but I’ve journaled since I was a teen.  There’s a clear record of how it’s been for me. 

About a week before the move, a dear group of friends took me out to dinner as a farewell.  We call ourselves “the bips,” as we all live on Bainbridge Island or the (Kitsap) peninsula.  All single ladies, from all over the world, making our lives meaningful.  After our feast, we strolled down to the Kingston Ale House, grabbed a board game, and just kept talking.  Lovely. 

On the way home, Pam driving and Dilyara in the backseat, Pam asked me, “so what has this chapter of your life meant?” 

Seven years flashed before my eyes, filtered for the strongest impressions and insights I could find, with my belly full of Greek dinner and chocolate cake.  What has this chapter come to mean? 

In answer, I rambled.  But as I was rambling, I realized, “this is it!  This is the farewell-to-WA blog post I’ve been trying to compose!” Sometimes a good question is what you need to unlock the wisdom.

I had the answer almost immediately, to what has this chapter of my life meant.  But I needed to ramble for it to make sense for them, and now, for you too. 

After college, I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life.  My BA in Social Sciences leaned heavily in the direction of “you keep going to school until they hire/absorb you into the faculty,” but I didn’t feel like more school just yet.  My greatest passion at the time, freshly fundamental, was Jesus and theology and sharing the good news - and humorously now, I see that I had no real clarity about what those meant, but damn plenty of certainty. 

So I worked at a coffee shop in the winter, paid cheap rent in a flop of a house (the pink house!) with a few college guys, and in the summer, whitewater rafting.  Thought about the Peace Corps, as a way to kill some time and hopefully gain direction.  After two interviews, though, I knew I was just interested in the passing-of-time aspect, and had no deep interest in their projects.  And I admitted that I was really just dragging my feet about the one thing I did know I was interested in pursuing: seminary. 

Wanting to drag feet just a bit longer, I joined the Urban Servant Corps and lived for a year in Denver, CO.  Volunteering programs always appeal to the zealous young (and they couldn’t hurt a resume, right?).  The USC is a volunteer organization rooted in the ELCA, very similar but distinct from the larger and widespread Lutheran Volunteer Corps.  I had a great year, great housemates who are still my friends, I struggled and learned a ton at my volunteering site, and I had the time I needed to wade into the seminary application process. 

Full honesty, I was never certain that I was called to become a pastor.  My gut, I have come to know, always knows.  But I was aware, and everyone around me seemed to agree, that most of the relevant factors pointed toward ministry.  And so, without realizing what a train would be set into motion, I spoke of my interest in seminary with my own pastor. 

In hindsight, I see what I really wanted was a theological education.  I wanted more than the milquetoast Bible studies in the fellowship hall, more than confirmation classes, more than the sappy devotionals at Christian bookstores.  I wanted the original languages and the iota of distinctions and the history and I wanted all of that because it mattered to me.  I wanted to understand worship and ritual because I knew that these words and actions done together formed us into a thick culture worthy to pass from generation to generation, an embodied story that could orient one through all of life and face death well.  I wanted all of that and more. 

I had been part of a campus ministry that taught biblical inerrancy and in general, taking scripture “literally.”  (At least in English, in the NIV, blah blah blah)  It was a great community but it had the constant temptations of legalism and works-righteousness.  Having grown up steeped in the grace, grace, grace of the 80’s and 90’s ELCA, being fresh from confirmation where I’d memorized long sections of a protest manifesto against church authorities, the strictness and certainty of that campus ministry gave me years of cognitive dissonance to resolve.  My 20s were consumed, consumed, by figuring out the distinctions of these varied church teachings, and how they developed historically, and what I could integrate for my own faith. 

What I really wanted from seminary was the coursework (nerd alert, I know), and I didn’t realize there were ways to do that, without punching a ticket on the Candidate for Ordination express. 

I can still picture that initial interview with my pastor, how I called him to talk about seminary, and by the time we met at his office, he’d gathered brochures and paperwork of various churchy sorts, and while it was meant as a very genuine and open conversation, I was… young and intimidated and said things I thought I should say, and held back my doubts because I didn’t want to be told “no.”  How silly, now, to think that an institution so desperate for survival would put up obstacles.  It was a collision of my deep naivete and the church’s overwhelming anxiety, both of which I hadn’t understood yet. 

The words, “maybe I could be a pastor?” popped out of my mouth and whooooosh, here’s the form to fill out to enter the candidacy process.  Don’t mind us as we notice that you are a non-threatening straight cys white lady cradle Lutheran, and we’ll just grease these tracks right up.  (Because hello, it’s been painfully obvious that my fellow candidates who identify otherwise, and anyone bold enough to criticize the church and its processes along the way, have NOT experienced this well-greased ordination track.) 

The train pulled away from the station, and I was on it, scholarship and all.  A pall of low-grade and ever-present anxiety fell over my life, the voice of my gut saying, hey wait a second.  Most of the trip felt so right - the excitement of moving to California, the friends I made, almost every class completely fascinated me, and a sense of real camaraderie as we all admitted in our own ways (usually over beers) we might be crazy to do this. 

And even though I had several classmates who were there to earn a degree but were not becoming pastors - I was blind to that possibility for myself.  I don't know why - wait I DO know exactly why.  Because I’ve always had the internal battle of believing I need to be awesome to be loved, and now that everyone I value thinks I’m doing this awesome thing of becoming a pastor, I can’t back away from that without losing their love.  Clearly. 

So in my naivete that all of us are so well-meaning, this has got to just work out ok in the long run, and in my fear that I cannot actually name and examine my need to achieve love, and in the institutional church’s enormous anxiety over its survival (an anxiety that makes genuine discernment of calls impossible), four years of seminary went by, I graduated, was approved for ordination, and sent to the Northwest Washington synod.  The train screeched to a halt and I shuffled along the platform, suddenly very alone. 

There were many adventures, seasons, and as the paperwork says, “other duties as assigned.”  I think my first call was a very challenging one, but I mean, to what, exactly, can you compare a first call?  It’s the first one! 

And remember that whole, I can’t be vulnerable or people won’t love me thing?  It has the effect of me waiting way too long to even realize I need help, and then I don’t ask for enough.  And the naivete?  I genuinely didn’t know what kinds of help it was OK to ask for.  (Like, may I please find stable housing and furniture?)  No kidding, sometime around 6-7 months in, a woman visited my office to ask if I was alright, because “for three Sundays in a row the bags under your eyes are worse.”  And I burst into tears because yes, about a month ago my air mattress had popped and I couldn’t replace it, and sleeping on the floor was not great.  Her family gave me a bed and mattress that I am grateful for to this day, and I bless them on nights I am especially weary and have a place to rest.  Another family, in less dramatic circumstances, gave me a table.  Thank you! 

As for who to ask about what to ask, I didn’t have colleagues alongside me on a regular basis for about two years - when I started, every congregation but one in my cluster was in a clergy transition, so I just looked around and thought, “oh, we fly solo?  I guess I will learn to fly solo.” 

Well I don’t know if you can call it flying, but I was managing some kind of forward movement.  But so lonely.  My seminary classmates scattered across the country, and very few friends from other seasons of my life were in the Seattle area.  My poor family, whenever I’d visit it was nonstop tears about how stressed I was.  When I later moved into a community-living house, my housemates then took the brunt of my rants.  Why, if I loved the faith so much, why, if preaching and teaching and crafting worship were SO rewarding, why was this job killing me? 

I slowly did get to know a few colleagues, and attended a regular gathering of my cluster (groups of ELCA clergy near each other within synods) once it got re-established.  I went to the twice-yearly Bishop’s Convocations, I dutifully attended my required First Call Theological Education events.  And at every. single. one.  Everysingleone.  As soon as we were past the surface-level “how are you?”s and able to really check in with intention, I collapsed in stressed-out-weeping.  Or shocked myself at the bitterness with which I would speak about ministry.  (And I also stressed over how I appeared to be the stereotype of unstable women leaders, and who it was alright to really speak the truth with… good times.)

I admit I can get worked up about it, to this day.  There is no doubt that a lot of my distress was MY distress, my not knowing how to deal with feelings of responsibility over things I couldn’t actually control (other people, a congregation, historic contextual shifts, etc).  And learning much too slowly, that feelings of responsibility do not actually mean I am responsible - some congregation’s problems are in fact their problems! 

There is no doubt that a lot of my distress was rooted in financial challenges and financial ignorance.  That is, after all, one of the reasons this blog exists.  It is hard to overstate the odds at which pastors and congregations are set, when salary is lower than expected, lower than needed, and yet the congregation is doing its best.  Anxiety and misunderstanding creep deeper and deeper into the relationship. 

There is also no doubt that a lot of my distress WASN’T just mine.  Several of my more experienced colleagues expressed many times that the challenges and issues coming up in my congregation would be difficult for any pastor, and that there should have been more discussion about them before it was considered an appropriate place for a first call.  

I want to own as much of my experience as I can, but their perspective is a healing balm that I have needed.  And.  Fucking anxious institutional church.  Eats its own young and thinks it’s had a good meal.  Well, you don’t get to chew on me anymore.  Dear Institutional Church, of Many Denominations, you don’t deserve us - all these clergy folx whether you deign to ordain us or not.  We’ll do our best to be willing to die for the Gospel but we will not be dying for your dysfunctional 501(c)3. 

Well that’s been a joy to re-live… back to the question “What has this chapter of your life meant?” 

The answer was and is, this chapter has come to mean: Your Life Is Yours.  Your life is yours - beware stepping on the well-greased tracks of Other People’s Plans or Other People’s Needs.  It happens, when you’re in a season of not knowing yourself and what you want.  And of course, at times the greatest gift you can give is the conscious choice to surrender your plans for the sake of someone else.  But it’s only a gift if it was truly a choice.  (And to other little naive souls: wake up, we are always choosing something!)  As the White Stripes say, “you don’t know what love is, you just do as you’re told.”  May this never be so for us. 

Your Life Is Yours, at least as I mean it, is like the call to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  Work it out - live it, as only you can.  It is going to look different than everyone else’s, and that is how it should be.  And with fear and trembling - awe and awareness that we’ve been created and set loose in a place where shit can really go badly, but that the cosmos is tilted toward a strange wholeness.  You’ll find companions, and you can walk together, and never forget that Their Life Is Theirs, too. 

What I’d lost and have regained is a sense of agency.  Trust that I’ll be able to deal with the risks inherent in living well.  And that I’d rather deal with my own consequences and failings, than give up what autonomy I have.  I am well aware I don’t have control, but I do have a lot of choice about what I commit to, what I don’t, and how I’ll live in a creation set in motion and affected by much More than me. 

I’m aware and able to admit that my resignation was done in anger, in self-preservation like a wounded and cornered animal, in protest.  It may not have been the only way to reclaim my sense of self.  But I needed to step away so I didn’t burn anyone to cinders with my rage - including myself.  I wasn’t going to gain the perspective I now have without some time and space.  (I was “on leave from call” for several months, but every time I checked out a congregation profile I had a panic attack.  So full resignation started to look very good.  And it has felt right and honest and good, it feels faithful, every single day since.) 

For the last two years, I’ve tempered.  I’m no longer prone to victim-rage, I'm finding my own life’s momentum.  I’ve worked on forgiving myself for things I just didn’t know about that would have been helpful.  I’ve worked on forgiving the church for not realizing first call pastors don’t know what they don’t know.  And I’ve worked on placing responsibility for the institution’s well-being (and its members’ contentment) precisely NOT on my shoulders.  But if you want to talk about  - better yet, if you want to walk through - death and resurrection, and fear and trembling, and the faith you find on your own path, I’m your girl. 

To new pathways!  Your Life is Yours.