This I Believe

I remember about a dozen years ago, sitting in a counselor’s office, feeling lost and confused. I know now that I was in the middle of what might be called a mid-life crisis. Who I thought I was, and what I thought I was supposed be doing with my life, just wasn’t working anymore. I had learned to say “no” to so much, I was at a loss as to how to hear or live from a “yes”!

The therapist encouraged me to describe how I was feeling with dream like images. The first image that came to my mind was of escaping that room. I saw my spirit rushing out the 2 inch space where the one window in the room was cracked open! I told her that.

She got up and closed the window.

Somehow for the next hour she kept me in that room. And, I kept going back for what I now think of as a sacred, healing hour, for weeks. Encouraged to use my imagination to embody what I was feeling in waking dreams, during one of those hours I had an image of drowning. Using up the last bit of air left in my lungs, underwater I could see below me a box at the bottom of the ocean-of-my-despair resting on the floor. I could see it, I could even dive down to it, but I could not open it. Yet, I knew that inside that box was treasure.

I believe that there is a box of treasure inside each one of us. Sometimes the lid is open and the treasures are easy to see, they float to the surface, giving our world strength and hope. Other times, even though the treasure box is always there, the lid is heavy and locked and we need help to open it.

When I was young, my family and I attended and fully participated in church “every time the door was open” as they say. I was baptized in a conservative, evangelical Southern Baptist church when I was eight. Every Sunday, the minister’s ended his preaching with pleading for the one unsaved soul that he just knew was in the room to come forward. I have joked in the past that I walked down that aisle because I was hungry for the meal I knew was waiting for us at my Grandmother’s house! I had been attending Sunday Services long enough to know that if someone didn’t respond we would be there all day! I thought I had to do what was necessary to get us all out of a jam and move things along!

Yet, deep inside, I also knew, even at that young age; that I had done other’s wrong, that I was guilty of un-loving behavior (especially towards my brother). I wanted to be “perfect”, perfectly loving. I thought I could be, if I was somehow saved from my meanness, by the God that was calling me forward through the pleading words of the pastor!

I was baptized, dunked head to toe in the water of the baptismal pool on a Sunday morning a few weeks later.
But nothing spectacular happened! I didn’t see doves and I didn’t become perfect.

It was a disappointment.

Life went on. What I learned was that perfect loving behavior on my part wasn’t going to come about all at once. I didn’t doubt, as a child that I was loved. Yet, it was rarely clear that I was capable of perfect loving behavior!

I believe in the “yet, but not yet”. I believe there are moments when the ideal “whatever”, be it love or something else, breaks through and we know what utopia feels like. Yet, these are fleeting moments...rarely strung together one after another...

Unlike what the Baptist church taught me, healing is not a once and done thing. We circle back to it, again and again.

For a long, long adolescence I asked who am I ... where do I fit? What am I supposed to do with my life?

When I was a teen, my mother answered me again and again...I was meant to be me! (What in the world did that mean?)

There have been many other mentors, teachers, counselors and friends who have given me glimpses of who I am, who I could be, what it is I have to give.

In my teen years, my family moved away from the “we are going to stay here until somebody is saved” church! It was in this more liberal, yet still Baptist congregation on the other side of town, with a little more to offer than just being saved over and over again every Sunday; that I met a woman who would now be called an urban minister. She was single and did community ministry working with marginalized groups throughout the city, turning the ideal of love into acts of social justice.

I already knew by then that I was different from my peers, that I had no deep yearning for marriage or children. Seeing that it was possible to be a grown up single woman with a career in the church world doing good was important to me.

When I entered college, I decided to major in social work, because that is what she had done. But I soon changed my major. Social work was just too “dry” for me. I was fascinated with the religion courses I was taking. I had always asked a million questions. So many that I regularly exhausted my mother and my Sunday School teachers!

I had always been told at home and in church that whatever you were good at was what you were meant to do. I was really good at reading about religion and asking questions! Yet, I knew my questions were more than academic. My father had died when I was a senior in high school. I wanted to know how to live without a father... I wanted to know how to live and do “good” without reference to the Father God...

One of the summers during my college years, I worked as a “summer missionary” in Washington, DC. My job was to be the youth director helping a dying inner city, previously all white Southern Baptist church, grow again. The plan was to get the surrounding neighborhood kids involved in programs so that, hopefully, their parents would follow. Instead of “white-flight” resulting in erecting a for sale sign, this congregation hoped to transfer building ownership to a multi-racial congregation that lived where the church building was.

These visionaries hoped that the denomination would send them a tall, young, male pied piper that would attract youth to the basketball court and their parents into the church! Those leaders were pretty surprised, that I was the person the Home Mission Board sent!

It wasn’t all that hard to form good relationships with the youth of the neighborhood who were so eager and hungry for attention and something to do. It was a gift to find out what I (a short, round, female, that was not very athletic) could do!

The next two college summers I worked as union relief at a large paper mill in Jacksonville, where I encountered lots of blatant sexism. My job was to fill in for union members who were on vacation. I was assigned a position one summer as a “roll handler”. This involved being the only woman on the crew that loaded huge rolls of paper into train boxcars. It was hard, dirty work that paid well. I learned a lot about working class men and what they expected! I enjoyed carving out a place for myself by proving on more than one occasion that I could do the work. I was able to befriend the macho guys as “an equal” in the work world.

Back in school, I couldn’t read enough about religion. For a long time, I didn’t give much thought to how to turn this interest into a career. When I attempted to pursue answers, I had a counselor tell me that he thought I should just get married and teach Sunday School! I was getting more and more involved in feminism, and my sensitivity to the limitations imposed on women was heightened enough that his comment was more than irritating!

When I was a senior, a woman professor was hired in the religion department and I sought her advice. She told me that she had heard that Vanderbilt would have the first woman dean of a major theological school the next year and maybe there I would find what I was searching for.

In 1975, I entered Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, and found great role models and women like me everywhere. The education was expansive and I quickly found a comfortable peer group. I worked at field placements in small, struggling churches, full of old ladies and underpaid male ministers. I worked at a displaced homemaker agency, where so many women were in their own mid-life crisis, struggling to re-form their identities and make a living on their own without husbands.

I volunteered for the Rape Crisis phone lines and tried to understand violence and how to comfort and strengthen those who had experienced the ultimate betrayal.

I returned home to do a basic training as a hospital chaplain, exploring my “call” and learning what it meant to be “ordained” by those in need. I realized that I wanted to do ministry as a career and I went shopping for a church where what I was learning and who I was becoming would be welcomed. I joined a United Methodist Church and hoped I would be ordained.

During my senior year in Divinity School, I went before the UMC Board of Ministry. I was turned down for ordination. It was suggested that I had not been a Methodist long enough. I felt pressure to hide my sexual orientation. After graduation from Vanderbilt, I entered another “minister wanna be” program in a hospital in Winter Haven, FL. This was to have been a yearlong residency, which included my being a student minister at a large United Methodist church and a student chaplain at the hospital. The program abruptly ended when the director took a job elsewhere. I chose not to go before the Board of Ministry to seek ordination a second time and, instead, returned to Nashville disappointed and disillusioned, feeling unwelcome.

I began managing a small women’s bookstore. We had lots of women come through there looking for more than books. It seemed they had several needs that weren’t being addressed, one of which was someone honest who could fix cars! Some of my friends and I were trying to dream up a business that would cater to the women’s community and maybe make a profit. At that time, bookstores didn’t. We came up with the idea of a woman owned garage. None of us were mechanics and it fell to me to acquire a new skill. I attended Nashville Auto Diesel College at night for nine months. After graduating I found a job at a Peugeot dealership, where I worked for about a year as a mechanic. During that time I was teaching women about their cars at workshops held at the YWCA. One of the local newspapers featured me as the mechanic who could “lay on hands” since I had graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School. This led to job offers from other dealerships. I was hired to be a service advisor at the Mercedes Benz dealer that was just a block from Vandy. It was the perfect job, crisis counseling and mechanics with Vandy grads as customers.

I have many great stories from this period in my life that I have often thought would make a great book! Talk about being on the front-edge of social change! It was exciting to blow people’s preconceptions.

While working in Nashville, I was very involved with the women’s community. I made no effort to hide my sexual identity. Community organization took the place of church involvement for me. Going to church had left me angry and lonely. I couldn’t get past the sexist language and the sexist theology that excluded my reality. I continued to develop a strong identity as a feminist. I had many friends. My life felt full and fun for a while. Nearing my late twenties, though, I longed for family.

I moved back to Jacksonville in 1981, because I wanted to be near my brother’s two daughters while they were young and growing up and because I wanted to be near my grandmother. I spent a lot of time with my nieces and a great deal of time with my grandmother. Before my grandmother died, she asked if I would say the eulogy at her funeral. I have rarely felt so right about my place and my calling as I did when I was writing her eulogy and when I gave it. That was one of the most emotionally difficult things I have ever done, and one of the most powerfully eloquent times I have experienced, as I was able to give voice to what it meant to have been loved by her. Judging from the response I received, I must have also given voice to those in that room that day also loved by her.

For almost two decades, while I was in my thirties and early forties, managing my family’s service business, I still did not get involved in a church. And I didn’t find time to be involved in any kind of community organization either. Instead, when I wasn’t working, I spent my time and energy accumulating nice toys and going on great vacations. I have always enjoyed good health, and became an avid bicyclist and hiker. I bought two houses. I learned computers. I gardened. Always a reader, after a few years of too much work and some play and not enough reflection, I began to explore spirituality and personal growth topics. When I read “recovery movement” inspired writings, I saw how many “issues” I had that were blocking my growth on every page.

What had happened to me?

I was an excellent manager, constantly maintaining and improving my family’s reputation for reliability and efficiency. I was told by customers and by consultants over and over, that I was the one primarily responsible for maintaining our comfortable profit margin. But, I became more and more dissatisfied with who I had become. I was an angry person, quick to lose my temper. I treated co-workers with little care. Several years ago, after one of my close friends from my Vanderbilt days shot and killed herself, the need to attend to what was missing from my life became urgent. The details of service management were no longer enough to satisfy me. I was bored and restless and I didn’t want my life to end too soon, not having done whatever it was I was meant to do.

During this time, I became reacquainted with another friend from Divinity School who had been ordained after our graduation and had spent her career in pastoral education. Our renewed friendship led me to resign from my family’s business, sell my house, and move to a much smaller community where I became involved again with church and community organizations. I felt like the door was beginning to open to a whole part of myself that had been closed off for far too long.

I managed a small bookstore and read to my heart’s content. I stood in place while the fascinating, eclectic community in that town came to me, searching for meaning and something to read. I immersed myself in the larger community and in working for social change. When the bookstore could no longer afford me, I found a job in property management in the historic district, and used my crisis management skills to solve problems.

I thought I had made enough changes in my life that where I was going next would be clear and easy. Yet, after another in a succession of intimate relationships fell apart, I spent time in therapy. I learned that underneath the anger that I had defined me and protected me, was a vast sea of sadness and despair.

I was in trouble. I had learned too well how to say no. I needed help to say yes...to hear yes...

In the midst of this despair, a friend who was the minister of a tiny, tiny all gay congregation in Savannah asked me to preach on a Sunday she had to be away. It was right after Princess Diana died. The “congregation” of 15 was mostly middle aged and older gay men. It was a strange place to find myself, since I felt they lived on another planet from the one I lived on!

I don’t remember why but I based my sermon on the story from Mark’s gospel about Jesus encountering the Syrophoenician woman. Perhaps that I felt some sympathy for his attempt to retreat from the crowds that always wanted something more from him.

This story is an unusual one in Mark’s gospel. It starts with Jesus trying to find a place to hide, a bit of respite from the crowds. A Syrophoenician woman finds him in his place of retreat and clearly wants something from him. She falls down at his feet and begs him to heal her daughter. Maybe he is tired, but his reaction is uncharacteristically stingy. He basically calls her a dog!

This is very different picture of Jesus from those found in many other passages in Mark, for this gospel is known for presenting the Jesus who came not just to fulfill the messianic hopes of the Israelites, but who came for all, Jew and Gentile, even the lowly Syrophoencians.

It is jarring to read that Jesus wasn’t always ready to help those who needed him. Instead we see a man who lashes out: “Leave me alone! I am not on the clock! It’s my time off!” “I am not here for you, anyway! You aren’t among the chosen.”

The Syrophoenician woman isn’t put off. She did not return the insult with an insult.

She simply stated the facts: “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

I think what she means is “Ok, I am not a Jew, I haven’t got an appointment, but I believe if I can just get a little crumb from you, it will be enough”.

One can almost see Jesus look up and for the first time, and really see her….really hear her.

We are told that in that moment, she and her daughter are healed.

When the time came for me to move away from that small town where that therapist closed the window and showed me how to be present with my despair, I did not yet know what direction my career path would take....or how I would live out the “yes, you are worthy” that I was just beginning to hear.

In South Georgia I had also found a Unitarian Universalist congregation that wanted to know me fully, that loved me and supported me. I found a place to be myself, where others helped me open the lid to the treasures of my experiences, where we helped each other lift the heavy lids to see what our treasures are.

Eventually, I moved away from those twenty or so years where I had learned to say no to what had said no to me. I let go of the negatives, the shame, the guilt, the violence, the despair and emptiness that had defined me. I learned to claim my talents and skills and to stand with others, both my brothers and my sisters, to see that we, too, had within us treasures that could be unlocked....

I am still learning that I don’t need to be perfect... and that I don’t need you to be perfect...

I believe in the power, the healing power of authenticity, of diving deep into the self, the power of hearing our own stories, the power and faith found in our imagination, the shape our hope takes...at each new turn...

I believe that what, a Divinity School professor called “belly-button gazing”, is not all there is. My story is not your story and my story means nothing if it does not help you hear your story. My healing won’t happen and won’t matter unless it also results in your healing, your wholeness, your affirmation, your “yes”.

I believe that when I fail or forget to ask for help, or to offer help, fail to be vulnerable and open to transformation; when I hide behind anger, strike out with violence, think only of myself, that I am unfaithful to the power of life.

I trust that “yes” comes after “no”!

Last week during a Southeastern UU minister’s retreat, we all heard (most of us baby-boomers) again and again about all the latest things we need to learn. It took me, and most of us at that retreat, a long time to learn, really learn what we now know. Sitting there listening to how much more there is to learn and what all we need to un-learn to get to it, I had an overwhelming feeling of being old and tired! A big part of the message I heard was move over and get out of the way, make way for the younger generation!

It took me so long to get where I am now. I know I got here because others got out of the way, made way for me. It is hard to hear that it’s my turn to move on! I just got here!

Yet, it is OK to feel sad and then to keep on saying “yes, yes, yes!”