April 2007

This is the last of my three Ordination Papers. This paper addresses my theology, which I will admit has radically changed–at least as far as how I would articulate certain aspects–since I dated The Bean. Working to speak of my faith with an atheist enriched my own sense of who God is and who God is not to me in a way unparalleled. Also, these papers needed to be reflect my own faith with integrity while also meeting the United Church of Christ’s expectations of a minister in full standing.

If you and I shared a pot of tea together, I would flesh out my vision of God first. I would tell you how I feel what we say about God is speculative and important–all at once. I would tell you about the room in my spirit for Jesus to be God in the same way you and I might be. I would tell you what I do not know and of all of my questions. I would also say much of what is here too. Although I resist the word “Christian” given the word means what we as human beings did with Jesus’ message for our own good and for our own evil, I still embrace following Jesus and the faith community I cherish. Mostly, I continue to want to live a life of radical discipleship, which for me means standing in solidarity with all those hanging on crosses right now: the disadvantaged worker; gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, and transgendered persons; those suffering for any number of reasons; persons–especially women–of colour; and the list goes on and on.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8

My theology begins and ends with Jesus. Even when the Omniscient Powerful Creator God and I are not on speaking terms, or I wonder how the Holy Spirit weaves together my life, Jesus and I remain in constant dialogue. As a young child Jesus became my dearest and closest friend, so I cannot really recall a time in my life when Jesus was not with me. My vision of Jesus is clear and pervades my day-to-day living. I see him everywhere. How many times have I felt Jesus lay down beside me as I curled up sobbing? How many times have I felt his hand encircle my own? How many times have I looked across the bed of a dying patient into his tear-filled eyes? How many times have I laughed to myself and heard his laughter fill my spirit? Jesus, his life, his ministry, his death, his resurrection, and his promise to be with us to the end of the age are woven into the fabric of my life. My faith in God is reliant on my vision of Jesus. The Philippians Hymn above captures my vision and understanding in much the same way that it did for those first followers of Jesus. Jesus is God. Jesus understood the path of humility leads to enlightenment. Jesus came to be a servant, yes, even a slave, to us—his most precious creation. The hymn tells us that being a human is not a sin, for even God has walked the human path of life. The roads of obedience, humility and love can and will lead to death on a cross. And what should we, as followers of Christ Jesus, do? We are called to “let the same mind be in [us]” that was in Jesus. We are called to the ethic of discipleship.

While at Duke Divinity School, I took a general theology class, as every seminarian does. I had two choices: 1) Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright, who would prepare me for taking the Methodist theology examinations; or 2) Dr. Mary McClintock-Fulkerson; who would not prepare me for the Methodist theology examinations. Another way to frame their fundamental difference is that Dr. Wainwright taught a systematic theology, whereas Dr. Fulkerson taught how to think about theology. I took Dr. Fulkerson, which was the obvious choice for a girl with deep Progressive Baptist roots, but my choice also proved to be of incalculable value. She taught us a grammar with which we could read anything theological and understand the assumptions, world view, moves and intentions of the author. The grammar then served as a way to not only catalogue a theological writing, e.g. “This writing is Postmodern because the author creates a dialogue between their present socio-cultural reality and eschatology;” but also as a way to uncover how theology can then be practiced. In other words, a written assertion about the nature of God has the end goal of changing practice—changing the way we do our relationship with God.

I spotlight her methodology because I want to create a diorama into how helpful her teaching continues to be for me in my life and ministry. I also want to illustrate how challenging her class was for me. My deep Baptist roots gave me a grammar that focused primarily on the Biblical record of the first church, the Bible itself and the problems of the daily Christian life. I was completely overwhelmed by the challenge to consider two millennia of Christian writings. This it not to say that I came to the table unaware or uneducated, but the wealth of writings did not necessarily have considerable weight with me. My upbringing in the church focused on my personal choices that would bring me closer in my relationship with God or would take me further away. I had no concept of being a part of a wider conversation evolving through time. Those theological writings I had been exposed to were easily put into categories. They either supported or challenged my own personal understanding of who God is and how God works or they did not and were disregarded. I wish to convey a certain element of flippancy because I see it in myself prior to being taught how to think theologically, and because I think much of Evangelical Christianity abdicates from the wider ecumenical theological conversation. Evangelicalism lends itself to a particular kind of independence because of the core value of a personal decision to choose to follow Christ over and above a communal understanding of faith. When one marries this value with Rugged American Individualism and the pervasive dis-ease we as Protestants have with anything written between the end of the Canon and 1517, when Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenberg church door, I see how much I was the product of my Evangelical nurturing and the suspicion of anything non-Biblical.

The Evangelical climate of my formative years, 1975-1990, was a period of rapid change. The beginning of that time saw the Hippies who claimed Jesus as their personal Savior take up social justice issues in a new way that their parents did not feel compelled to do. This generation was greatly influenced by the theologian Francis Schaeffer who ran a Christian commune in Switzerland called L’Abri. Schaeffer became close friends with C. Everett Koop, prior to his appointment by President Reagan as the Surgeon General, and this relationship would ultimately become paramount to Schaeffer’s legacy as the Patriarch of the Pro-Life Movement. But this is not where Schaeffer began. Schaeffer embraced the Hippie culture and their choice to “opt out” of society and embrace a more loving and peaceful path. In a seminal and legendary chapel service at Wheaton College, the intellectual hub of American Evangelical life, he told the students to see movies that challenged their assumptions, which was a big deal on a campus that almost came to blows over the showing of Bambi. He wanted them to engage the culture, to look at art, to read beatnik poetry, but his most disturbing call was to stop wrapping themselves in the American flag and become “World Christians.” Schaeffer was utterly progressive for his time and in relation to his contemporaries, but he was also consumed with panic over the legalization of abortion. Growing up during this time, I heard and saw the transformation of the central theological conversation move from a desire to help and nurture all people as an extension of sharing one’s faith to the necessity of Christians working to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Social justice had only one name, “abortion.” So, as I grew up and moved further and further away from the legalism of my Evangelical upbringing, further I also moved away from a communal conversation about God and how God works in the world.

Seminary not only gave me the challenge to absorb the content of thousands of years of writings, but also provided an invitation to think of the theological conversation extending back through time as being relevant to me and calling me to be a part of it. My response to the sheer plethora of writings and the divergent viewpoints, so many of which raised important issues to me, was to become deeply troubled. Did I believe in God or in a bunch of other failed and flawed human beings’ understanding of what might, could and should be in the nature of God? I did not believe in the inerrancy of scripture any longer, but if I cannot completely trust the scriptural record to tell me who God is, then what other source of knowledge do I have? Am I simply left up to my own devices? And why should I trust my faith community? They are all just as human and situated and flawed as I am. A mental Chinese Finger Puzzle—for sure—the more I would pull on one end, the tighter I would feel squeezed on the other. In sheer pain and humiliation, I approached Dr. Fulkerson after class one day. I said to her, “The more we study in here, the more I feel like I am becoming an atheist. Human beings made everything up! This is all a bunch of crap! Nobody knows anything! And, the majority of the theology that we blindly accept as being ‘correct’ is just the human opinions of the richest, most powerful men who won the argument. Every day I feel like I get closer to becoming an atheist. I do not know what to do.”

Her response? “Stick with that.”

Ivory Tower theological answers to my questions did not fill my empty cup because they seemed contrived and convoluted. The rigors of seminary life did not fill my empty cup because reason and hard work are not enough to propel one over the hurdles of faith. Prayer, for the first time in my life, did not appear to be filling my empty cup because I was no longer convinced that there was a God actively listening and caring and knowing me by name. And I hated going to church because I felt like such an imposter. I could not be dissuaded from my suspicion that God might very well be a figment of our collective imaginations. The dread in my heart grew as I questioned my history, my experiences of God that had been on a more guttural level, the “miracles” of my life, my calling and then the most terrifying proposition came to me. Who would I be if I was not a Christian?

In Matthew 7:7 Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” I found myself, not for the last time, asking, seeking and knocking. The following semester I took a Pastoral Spirituality class with Father Phillip Leach, a local Catholic priest and closet evangelist, in the hope that the class might help me to sort out my atheistic dread. Seek and you will find. One night he preached a sermon instead of lecturing. I do not believe he planned it this way; for me it was a God Moment—a time when the only reasonable and understandable explanation is God worked in the hearts and minds of those present that night, including me.

The room was silent in that way where it feels like everyone is breathing together at the same pace and rhythm. He held everyone’s rapt attention, and yet my memory is that only Father Phillip and I were in that room. He was speaking to me and to me alone. Maybe everyone felt that way. He looked right at me and saw me, Jacqueline Hope Derby, the doubter, the questioner, the faithless, and he said:

Do you know why we believe that Jesus is God? The resurrection? Yes, Jesus rose from the dead. Yes, Jesus saves us from our sins, our stupidity, our fear, from ourselves—my little Baptists and my little Methodists who are always so worried about being saved from something. But what good is salvation to you today? Why do you care? Are you really going to tell me that you are obsessed on a daily basis with going to hell? Please! You are too busy fornicating for that! You can’t be bothered with hell today. You will face that if and when it comes. Anyways, you are saved; you have the right answers to the questions. ‘So, no, Father Phillip, we have no clue why we believe in Jesus.’ So, let me tell you. We believe that Jesus is God because of the cross. The cross! Are you listening? We KNOW that Jesus is God because right now someone is hanging on a cross. A dissident is facing a firing squad for speaking the truth—he is hanging on a cross. A child is starving to death—she is hanging on a cross. A woman is on the run from her abusive husband—she is hanging on a cross. A man is facing the end of his life and the fact that he spread HIV to his partner—he is hanging on a cross. We KNOW that Jesus is God because he is hanging on the cross with us. We do not suffer alone. The Holy One hung on that cross and suffered and bled and cried and was forsaken and abandoned by those whom he was sure loved him and would never leave. What cross are you hanging on today? What cross have you hung on? What cross will you hang on? Cause if you are going to be a minister let me just tell you that you will be hung out to dry—well, if you are doing it right you will be! Jesus, who lived, who loved, who triumphed on Easter morning over all that breaks us in two, is right here with you, suffering with you. Jesus is Emmanuel and that is the only thing that makes any of this make sense.

Emmanuel: “God with us.” God is with me. God has been with me all along. Everything clicked for me as I looked at that suffering Jesus on the cross and thought of all of the crosses of my life. Yes! Jesus was with me when I suffered the death of my father. Yes! Jesus was with me when my sisters abandoned our family. Yes! Jesus was with me when I was being molested. Yes! Jesus was with me when I could not go on and prayed for death. Yes! Jesus was with me when I was deemed the girl that you should not be friends with and a social outcast. Yes! Jesus will remain with me regardless of the cross I hang on, and so I can have faith in God not because God is a puppet master controlling my life, but because God intimately knows me and the difficult and beautiful road I walk down. When I break the bread and drink the wine, I join with my brothers and sisters as we sit at the table with Jesus right now. God with us right now.

As a hospital chaplain, I feel this is the first and most important Gospel, “good news,” that I have to offer. God is here. We are not alone. None of our pain has gone un-witnessed by the Holy Spirit. I know a great deal about crisis intervention, the Grief Spiral, intake history mapping, spiritual assessment and techniques to help people pick up their own coping skills, but this skill set is not my theology. My theology is Emmanuel under-girded with unwavering loyalty to my spiritual conviction that each and every one of us has been created in the image of God and that there is nothing that we can do or that can be done to us that can obliterate our lineage.

I cannot offer a systematic theology full of checks and balances. I have no tidy scientific way to explain the virgin birth, the resurrection or the power of the Holy Spirit, nor would I want to explain them in scientific terms for they are elements of my faith story, i.e. narrative. What I can only offer Emmanuel. I can only offer a lonely man in a garden sweating blood because he is so scared, and yet the same man who John brought out of the waters of the Jordon River with the Dove descending and the voice of God calling, “”You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” I can only offer the One who promised that we do not have to be afraid, and the Biblical promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And these offerings are more than enough reason for me to believe that Jesus is in fact God. But knowing Jesus’ identity, even as Emmanuel, is not enough to teach me what it means to follow Jesus and be his disciple.

I do not want to simply admire Jesus for being a good and moral man. Admiration and discipleship are two completely different paradigms. Being a Christian is not the same thing as being a good person. My baptism sets a seal upon my heart and calls me to life anew. Being a Christian demands that I model my life after Jesus’ life and be open to God’s continuing revealing presence in my life…being open to God’s continual call to accountability. But what does God require of me? Micah 6:8 defines it this way, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

But God does not just require this of me. God requires this of us. I am not a Lone Ranger Christian. I am a part of a community of faith where we struggle together to be more like Jesus and draw closer to the person God created us to be. When we gather at the communion table we declare our legacy: To Jesus and his disciples; to the Cloud of Witnesses who have gone on before us; and to the faithful who will link our generation to the future. The wider theological conversation through the ages now has such depth and meaning to me. I may push away from the narrow halls of systematic constructs, but the faith in which they are created connects me to the writers. Yes, they are just human beings like I am, but they are also seeking, knocking, asking just like I am. I can read Luther now and hold “brotherly speech with one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.” The conversation for me is not about locating “correct doctrine” but about being a part of the community of faith and about our shared eschatology—what we consider to be the enduring qualities of God. I also believe in God’s enduring promises, not just for the time of the historic Biblical record but for right now. I believe in God’s continuing revelation, so the broad theological conversation contains a located understanding of these promises, just as our work now reveals our own life stories and their engagement with these promises.

I maintain a prophetic baptist vision of what it means to be a disciple in that I believe my faithful life must be characterized by the faithfulness of Jesus who was and is and is to come. Like my historical Christian counterparts within our tradition, I do not stress doctrinal agreement as the way in which to form the blessed community of the faithful. But I do not want to imply that the life of the Christian is without accountability or without doctrine. I see this accountability and doctrine very clearly in our covenantal relationship with one another, our baptismal seal and our continuing open table practices. The scripture that defines the covenant for me is Matthew 22:36-40. The Pharisee and lawyer asks Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus replies, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I feel that I am coming of age as a minister during a time of warring bumper stickers proclaiming the “correct faith” one must have in order to be a faithful Christian. On the one hand there is the one I recently saw saying, “Do not put a question mark where God puts a period.” Counter that with our own God is Still Speaking campaign where we quote Gracie Allen saying, “Never put a period where God puts a comma.” We cannot even manage to love one another within the Christian community, so how can we begin to grasp the radical call to love and pray for those we might deem “other” or our “enemy?”

In the Luke version of Jesus’ being tested and asked to define the greatest commandment, he responds by telling the parable of the “Good Samaritan.” The Pharisee hoped to trick Jesus by asking him, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus declares that the one deemed unclean, the Samaritan, was the neighbour. I believe in this kind of radical inclusion, and discipleship requires radical inclusion. As disciples we affirm, just as Paul did two thousand years ago, that ”there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The Christian community is made up of equals before God. But, even in our equality, God calls out our individual names and requires different things of us. Some of what God requires is based on our gifts and the call to use those gifts. The body of Christ must actively utilize these gifts in order to be effective in our ministry of radical inclusion and care for our neighbour. Paul puts it this way in Romans 12:4-8:

 

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a [person’s] gift is prophesying, let [them] use it in proportion to [their] faith. If it is serving, let [them] serve; if it is teaching, let [them] teach; if it is encouraging, let [them] encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let [them] give generously; if it is leadership, let [them] govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let [them] do it cheerfully.

Just as God requires us to use our gifts in service to one another, we are also required to resist evil as it manifests in our hearts and in our world. Discipleship does not end at the church door. I make my voice known in protest against the inhumane ways we treat one another, not because I label myself “liberal” or “progressive,” but because Jesus requires that my discipleship must “do to others as [I] would have them do to me.” I must resist the lure of “us versus them” because Jesus has told me to “pray for those who persecute [me].” Discipleship is not about being a good person, for God intimately knows my identity as God’s child and friend. In other words, I do not need to impress God with my goodness. But, in order to draw closer to the woman God created me to be, I have to practice radical loving and including those I perceive as my enemies, which I see as the hardest part of the greatest commandment. My neighbour truly is everyone on this planet, and loving them is not easy. This is why there is such a high personal cost to being a disciple. I have to come out from behind my false gods who lure me with their empty promises of security and whisper to me that I do not need a God who holds me accountable to my commitment as Jesus’ disciple.

Without this accountability I do not see how we can join Mary and proclaim God’s mercy, God’s righteousness, God’s redemption and God’s plan of reversal for those who are lowly. Yes, for me God is all about love, and that love asks me to love as I have been loved. Jesus is the greatest example of that love because he shows the beauty of the human life and that God suffers with us. We have been created in God’s image with intentionality and purpose. Our gifts are an extension of God’s creative force in our lives. We get to choose if and how we will use the gifts we are blessed with. We get to choose if and how we will love with the love we have been blessed with. Being a disciple is a choice; a choice I affirm for my life. The opportunity to turn, repent, reconcile and draw closer is always available. God is always there waiting with open loving arms to receive us. God has an enduring imagination regarding our lives and our potential to co-create beauty and peace in the world that God created for our delight. God has an enduring imagination regarding my life and calls me to co-create love and compassion in the world.

Everyone is just a little bit prejudice, and one of my BIGGEST prejudices is against men who wear tank-tops. I see a man in a tank top and I run the other way. Men should not wear tank-tops, but if you must wear one, please be gay. The Gays can carry it off–sometimes–but I have yet to see a straight tank top wearing man rock the sleeveless wonders. Here is why:

• Many of the guys who wear tanks, especially to the gym, do so to show off their muscles. I understand this. I like to rock my best features, which is why the boobs are always pushed up to where God intended and my hair shiny and soft. Tis’ human to highlight and accentuate, however, when a guy highlights his arms I immediately (remember, I told you this is a prejudicial issue for me) think, “Buddy…not too smart, are you?” Can you believe how pedantic I can be about appearances? I figure a guy showing off his arms like that has to do it to make up for being a complete idiot.
• I also find the guys with the tight workout tank-top cannot get enough of looking at themselves in the mirror. They go to the gym to show off their bodies and announce how hot (which I think means “fuckable”) they are. They want hot girls to see them and want to sleep with them. If my former roommate is a good litmus test, this plan usually works for them. Now you probably are thinking, given my own confession of not being a “hot girl” previously, that I am just jealous. Two amazing bodies see each other across the room and instantly want to fuck like rabbits never happens to me. The wallflower in Nike capri’s and her Duke Divinity tee-shirt does not get the “fuck me baby right after this rep” look ever! You are right about that! Jealousy though? Not on your life. Again, if my former roommate is any indication, these guys also have more drama wrapped up in them then you can find on a Telenovela. Do not even get me started on the insecurity issues either. They pump up for more than just health for damn sure!
• I find myself staring at the guy’s arm pits. The shirt stops right there! I never swoon over the muscles bulging, but instead find myself mesmerized by the little hairs sticking out. Now, when I guy is naked (really the best way to size a man up) I embrace the underarm hair. I will even embrace it when he is naked from the waist up–most of the time. However, standing next to a guy in a tank, I find myself totally grossed out by the underarm hair. I want to scream, “Cover that shit up man!” Sometimes, a guy will look all cute and athletic until you see the little Tribbles poking out their heads.

Dear Captian Kirk Up to His Pits in Tribbles.

• On the topic of not being mesmerized by a guy’s muscles…the WORST case scenario is when there are no muscles at all to size up! I speak from experience here. My arms flail in the wind. I know not to wear tank-tops in public unless medically necessary, by which I mean I find myself in the midst of a peri-menopausal moment and coolness wins over “Cool Factor.” Flabby arms on a guy, plus one tank top, equals REDNECK. Sweaty, stinky, beer can tossing, tractor pull going, NASCAR lovin Redneck. And for the record: A wife-beater is a tank top.
• Add some zits to the above and the ick factor quadruples.
• Lastly, and most importantly, when I see a good looking guy, well-groomed, athletic, etc. in a tank I a.l.w.a.y.s. sigh and think to myself, “God bless the Gays.” In fact, I discussed this whole Tank-Top Man Hating Thing with The Boys (a totally fab gay couple and good friends of mine) and Bubbie piped up saying, “But I have a tank-top that I work out in, what would you think of me?” With that The Joker hit him over the head and howled, “She would think you are GAY!” And she would be right.

In summary, boys if you have the muscles to highlight in a tank and are gay, feel free. I still find it a bit weird–Tribble Factor and all–but who am I to judge? (HA!) If you are not gay, keep those biceps under cover and let me use my imagination. I especially like the imagination part where I run my hands up your arms…wait! I do not write that kind of blog…

If you do not read Post Secret every week, you are missing out. I always laugh and cry. I find someone I can relate to deeply. Sometimes it just scares me shitless…

 

I told Fundraiser when he called me for my birthday in February what mine would have been…

 

 

I did not tell him about wanting to kill myself. I kept promising myself I would go for my final swim in the Keys when I could no longer tolerate the pain. I did not want Fundraiser to know just how bad it had been. In fact, I got Emma to try and stay alive. I almost didn’t get her. In the end, I figured I was due some unconditional love just about then. If I had not gotten her, I am not sure I would have made it this time.

I tried to commit suicide in sixth grade. Thirty-six aspirin one afternoon at school. God only knows why I did not die. I also had a pretty good plan when I was 17 and in Jamaica on Choir Tour with church. The Jamaica trip served as a turning point in my life. I finally went to get help for all the buried shit from my childhood. I told the truth for the first time. I said, “John touched me.” I told my mom the day I got back from Jamaica. And I worked and worked and worked. I used to believe I worked it through enough to never want to do it again. I am smarter than that now. I know how once you try it trying it again is not all that difficult. But I would not try; I would succeed.

Working as a “Mental Health Professional” of a kind means I know what happens if anyone finds out about your plan. You get locked up. I do not want to be locked up, so I keep the times I feel utter despair to myself. I think of despair as “negative hope.” Given how I see hope as having an imagination things will change, or how they might change, despair looks like things not changing at all. Of course, I do think of suicide as hopeful because it means things can change once and for all. My lifetime of suffering (not the only stories–I know) will come to an end. No more rejection. No more heartache. No more isolation. No more loneliness. No more fear. No more struggling. No more panic.

I see now how I wrapped myself in the warm comfort of ending it all after The Bean left and extinguished my star from his sky. The irony? I do not know how I would have made it through those really awful nights, days, minutes, seconds without its tender embrace.

I do not live in this same space now. How do I know? I am talking about it. I speak the truth of my secrets…posting them even. Plus, I no longer protect or censure what I say about The Bean. I did in the past under the heading of “just in case he comes back.” Now I feel I can say whatever I damn well please!

Want to know another secret? I still find joy in being me and in my life. I am just ridiculously optimistic like that even if it is hard-won.

I keep going over in my mind the differences between “burying the past” and “letting go of the past.” We all do both, but one–letting go–somehow gives more life to us than the other. One puts more cellulite on my ass, the other helps it come off. Why?

I never try and pretend I was not molested. I was. I also recognize its indelible mark upon me. My DNA changed the first time John touched me. The boundary between the girl innocent and unmarred and the one raped crossed once and for all. I will always wear my scarlet “I” for incest. I could not run away from it, although I tried. I ate and ate ice cream all day long to make my body as unattractive as possible so John would not touch me. Then I found out he still would, but by then the binging comforted me too much to go back to the thinner version of myself. Plus, once I grew up and away from his terror I insulated myself from the panic another man would touch me–even one I might want to touch me–by keeping a hundred pound wall around me. You could not look at me and pretend something bad did not happen. I wore it from head to toe.

I did bury my feelings of loneliness, isolation and general grotesqueness in the weight. With each pound I gained I sank further into a world where all the true dreams for my life mattered less than the all consuming fear in the present. I flourished in the areas I could control–school, friends, family, church–and floundered terribly in the one place I knew no one could ever love–the whole me. See, no matter how much love and intimacy the love of family and friends brings, without sex it only goes so far. Thankfully. I would not want to have sex with my family at all, and a good 99.9% of my friends! I really only want one person for sex, and one who really loves me, the whole of who I am and who I will become with life transformations.

The first time I slept with someone–The First–I weighed over 260 pounds. I let him bore a hole through all those walls and find me. He felt safe because of his status as a good friend and because I knew I would never be with him for the long term, even as letting go later proved difficult. I found sex allowed me to un-bury the past in my cells and begin to let them go. Ounce by ounce the weight dropped off my body. I worked hard at it, of course, but the inner work let the outer begin to reveal itself from its mask.

The inner work of my life consists of over $100k of therapy and an utter determination to face the shit of my life. I know if I do not face things, the only one buried in the past will be me. I practice complete honesty. I say “practice” because I realize how similar to playing an instrument or a sport truth telling really is. I find I must apply myself again and again, and I can never rest on the truths I told before. I understand the truth of yesterday may not be life-giving to me today. Today, I must find and tell the truth again.

Today’s truth is that I keep gaining weight here recently. I talk to myself about it over and over again. The Mono back in November took me down to within six pounds of my birthday goal, but by my birthday I regained six additional pounds. I probably am up ten all together now, but I do not see the end unless I find the truth of why I need to gain. Yes…need…I need to gain the weight.

I feel all the ways I am free from the pain of The Bean. I know he is not the reason, although I also know the truth about why I needed comforting food at Valentine’s Day and my birthday had his name all over it. I am a thirty-six year old woman and no man has ever really loved me. Not even for a minute. I never received a New Year’s kiss or a Valentine, and I guess I thought this year would be different back in November when my heart flowed with love for The Bean. I really believed he loved me too, but he did not. I allowed myself to dream and expect in places where I never let myself. Year after year of disappointment–in myself as much as anyone else–teaches a girl not to use her imagination in places dead to her. I never begrudge anyone any silly holiday because being on the outside of all of them creates a longing so deep I would never want to take away one precious moment of happiness from anyone else.

I think the trust it took for me to let The Bean into my life fuels the current weight gain. I trusted and lost. I feel like I wasted my heart on someone who took it, saw it for what it really really contained and could become, and then threw it away. He threw me away. I do not want to trust again like that. I need to hide. I can feel still–feel all sorts of things–but it kills me. I keep trying to push away the moments of trust, curiosity, desire and longing I feel. I want to hide behind my thighs again so I will not be in a position of trusting someone else who will automatically possess the power to destroy me.

I also know I must practice risking this again. If I do not, The Bean will be buried on my thighs and forever written into my DNA. There will be no room for anyone else. No room for loving again. No room for sex, with all its glorious fucking and making love. No room for my desires. No room for my dreams. No room for me.

I guess letting go is that moment when I risk just a tiny bit towards the future instead of holding onto the pain infused past. My run this morning contained more than a few steps in the right direction, but I do not know if I will find my footing and momentum today.  I guess I will just need to practice again and again.

After one month I deleted The Bean’s phone number out of my cell. Of course, I made sure to write it down in my Address Book, but not on the front page with all the other folk with last names that began the same. I guess I figured if I wrote it on a page rarely seen, it would not count.

After two months, I returned all of his things to him. Meticulously. I made sure not to keep anything, even the first gift he ever gave me because throwing it away seemed too cruel and keeping it too painful. The gift was this little ceramic wall hanging of a guy zip-lining in Costa Rica. My “Flying Bean.” When we first started dating he robbed a bank there and went down the line, video on You Tube and all. He brought me the “Flying Bean” back from his trip, and I cherished it. Letting it go hurt like hell.

Keeping the Mac Mini, desk, chair and bike also hurt. I really wanted to give them all back–preferably by throwing them through his front window–or at least pay for them. Deep inside I get all wicked about any man buying me anything. Old shit from John given how I would manipulate him into purple bathing suits from Burdines and extra Hello Kitty for keeping my mouth shut. I hate feeling paid for, so when a man breaks my heart I want to throw up every meal, scrub off every caress, sterilize my mouth and pussy, and return every fucking thing he ever thought to give me. Fortunately for me, most men I date never give me anything. Unfortunately for me, The Bean did.

So, I sit here writing this on the Mac he bought me off a truck through Craigslist, at the desk he bartered for, in the chair he got for free, with the bike in the storage unit that he bought for his sister, but then gave to me to ride. I guess they are mine now. I would have liked my actual stuff back, because unlike when I gave him his things, I never got back my things I did not think to take with me on the way out the door. During the Parking Lot Confrontation I did manage to get back a CD he just happened to have in a case in the car–The Bean I knew only used his ipod in the car–and forking it over was not too much of a problem. The case is probably in the bottom of his closet somewhere. He denies having some things, flat out kept others, and then offered to write me a check. Fuck that noise! I wanted them given back to me because he knew they were mine, but I settled for him knowing what a thief and wimp I found him to be after it was all said and done. I wanted to make sure he knew the score. “Jacqueline was more generous,” which is a lie–neither one of us really was there at the end–but given I tried and he never did, I win.

I work hard to make sure the score favours me when my heart feels at stake. Maybe some times I really am more generous, however, when I find myself so very low I will scrape your eyes out to be on top. Case in point: Right before the break-up, and during a time that turned out to be really really tough on me financially (although I did not know how bad it would get when I did this), I paid for the tax on The Bean’s fantastically expensive bike as his Christmas gift, got him monogrammed towels (a joke, but not a cheap one), got him some more long sleeved shirts for riding, and bought him “Nacho Libre” on DVD. WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING? Oh yeah! I thought I loved him, and sacrificing for him made me feel good inside. The night we broke up I gave him all this loot–which were to be his Christmas gifts–because in my crazy heart they all had “The Bean” stitched to them.

In the third month, I deleted all his old emails–except the first ones–I need to go do that now. I also tried to have casual sex with Frenchie. What the hell was I thinking there? Twenty-eight and looking like a member of Depeche Mode was not such a bad thing. But! Between the smoking, weird silences, not really liking anything but oral–and I only like oral with the one I love, not the one I fuck–and then…well…imagine a pencil…

I never fuck someone for the sake of fucking them, so I figured why start now?

Here in the fourth month, I deleted everything about him off my computer. All the beautiful pictures of he and his mom in Vancouver last Fall. Gone. All the angry, loving, forgiving, painful, pain-filled, longing letters deleted. All the photographs thrown away or lost in an envelope somewhere. All the disappointment over him missing out on Emma. All the sadness he never sat at my dining room table. All the hope he might change. All the dreams of what might have been. All of what I once was with him, but I decided to keep the really amazing parts of whom I transformed into.

What else remains? My Ordination blog–I just cannot delete him because it would be all wrong without any pictures with him, but it now looks like this photograph book found tucked away in a lost piece of luggage from the Titanic. The tears I weeped into the blue paint on my walls. Catching my breath sometimes when I awaken in the middle of the night gasping for breath after dreaming again of making love to him where I see his face just as it was before: pure bliss. Then there are the nightmares of running, drowning, killing, melting, and being abandoned just one more time by him, usually with a baby in my belly. The random thought of “Oh, I need to tell The Bean that.” when I hear something or read a thought he would connect well, but then I remember. I still steel myself a bit in his neighbourhood, which overlaps my own in some places, but the energy got let out of that with the conversation last week.

Of course there is the Mini, the bike, the desk and the chair. My Mini, my bike, my desk, my chair.

This post is the second of my three Ordination Papers. This paper addresses my sense of what it means to be a United Church of Christ Minister in light of our history and polity (how my denomination “does” church).

 

Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!
Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
-Isaiah 1:16b-18

Talmudic Literature tells the story of Rabbi ben Shila who was holy enough to once encounter Elijah the Prophet. When he meets Elijah, he asks, “What is it that the Holy One is doing?” Elijah responds, “He is studying the Torah and the Rabbis…” Studying the Torah is such a great and wonderful undertaking that even God studies it. The history of the United Church of Christ shares a similar value with her brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith. As we trace the outline of our family tree, the importance of education, knowledge, curiosity and freedom spring forth on all of our branches. Even as we wrestle to define what it means to be “united and uniting” as our assumptions, beliefs and prejudices are repeatedly re-examined, we turn to our familial understanding that study creates opportunity for us to reason together. Our reasoning will hopefully lead us to places of community, if not agreement. Our covenantal bonds implore us to talk to one another and find places of connection so that we might better serve our common Saviour in his call to do right, seek justice, defend those maligned and share the good news of God’s continuing work of redemption through us in our world.

Louis H. Gunnemann, in The Shaping of the United Church of Christ, traces our very beginnings back to a Bible Study in St. Louis in 1937. The group of clergy involved included Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed ministers who began to recognize that they shared “common bonds and responsibilities.” Truman B. Douglass noted that it was “this regular thinking together about the fundamentals of [their] faith… [that led them to consider] that the two denominational fellowships which [they] represented could come together in unity.” The United Church of Christ’s family tree, which has four distinct branches grafted together, then owes its formation to the spirit that the LORD speaks of when imploring Judah, in Isaiah, to come and join the LORD in utilizing logic, rational thought and sound judgment as they worked together for the betterment of the Hebrew people. Similarly, our family tree formed so that we might “accept the cost and joy of discipleship” together. The fact that two denominational bodies with such radically different identities, inner-church relationships and understandings of the role of the minister—the Evangelical and Reformed Church with its emphasis on their presbytery and the Congregational Christian Churches and their congregational and autonomous polity—ever came together is nothing short of a work of the Holy Spirit.

I must admit that my own Baptist heritage lines up more with the Congregational and Christian branches of our tradition. Despite attending a rich and vibrant Presbyterian congregation for my first 15 years, my own understanding of how to “do” church, i.e. polity, stems from local church autonomy over any form of presbytery or episcopacy. Fortunately for all of us, polity and theology are not interchangeable terms, even as they dance with one another within our fellowship. I do, however, think that in order for us to be “united and uniting” we have to be a fellowship of equals and our insistence on ordering our life together around covenantal bonds and not around hierarchal mandates allows us to be both a cohesive and diverse body. In this way, my transition in identity from Baptist to baptist within the United Church of Christ fellowship seems organic.

I also see how being diverse comes easily, and being cohesive does not. We live in an age marked by adjustments and modifications to our language but not always to our inward orientation. When I think of the benchmark terminology for our fellowship—unity, autonomy, covenant, congregational, freedom, diversity, mission, evangelism, and dialogue—I see the depth of what we have to offer but also the tension. These words can be incongruous with one another. How can we be a united and diverse body? Does our covenant, that calls us so that “all might be one,” really allow for freedom as well? I know the individual cost to live out the reality of the tension between these terms, but I can barely comprehend the cost we as a united body must undertake. The General Synod 25 presented all of us with a portrait of the painful and complicated struggle we face as we seek to proclaim justice in Jesus’ name while also internally struggling with what it means to be a “we” within a body of individual churches made up of singular human beings with minds and hearts all their own. Within our body we do not prescribe doctrinal agreement as necessary to have the privileges and rights of full inclusion and membership. Ahh…are there not times when doctrinal agreement might be simpler for all of us?

The easy answer is: yes. Simple lures us all. I heard that Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the radio personality, once commented that one of the reasons she loves her faith path is because it tells her to do, or not do, a certain number of things and then she is guaranteed a happy life. I see how this would offer safety and certainty. You know that you are getting your faith “right.” We share the name “Christian” with brothers and sisters who feel certain that a singular understanding will unite them and send them on the path of righteousness before God. Our understanding of covenant dramatically diverges from this understanding. Covenant for us is never simple; for we, much like our Hebrew brothers and sisters before us, find ourselves grumbling in the wilderness of plurality. We struggle to be fully committed to one another—to live sacrificially for those we covenant with—even when we are in sharp disagreement with them. Our ecclesial journey flows from our designation as heirs to the Kingdom. Our “shared identify” demands that we be willing to lay aside our individualism and its inherent self-interest for our calling to be bound to one another.

Being new to the United Church of Christ, I lack extensive experience in different congregations, but I can tell you an interesting story about our differences that played out in my own life. While serving as the Chaplain for the Trauma Unit in Chicago, I encountered a very unique and powerful woman named “Grace.” Grace is a nurse on the unit and has Cherokee, African, Spanish, Navajo, German and Chinese blood flowing though her veins. She is proud of all of them. She comes from a working class family, and she works hard. Her son was shot and killed—lost to the streets as it were. She attends Chicago Trinity UCC where Rev. Jeremiah Wright is pastor. Her congregation is Spirit-filled with a strong call to its members to support and foster their Black Identity. As a result, her faith identity stems from both a more traditional understanding of who God is and how God works and from her racial identity.

I am Caucasian, with mostly British and Finnish lineage. I can only say “I love you.” in Finnish, so I do not feel any great sense of heritage beyond the matriarchy of my Mother. I come from a family of professionals, and we have been lucky to not have the rage of the streets harm our loved ones. I attend a predominantly Caucasian, affluent and intellectual congregation. My faith is radical, inclusive and has a different idea about how God works in the world. In many ways, Grace and I could not have been more different. We could not attend more different congregations. We are in the same denomination. Grace and I forged a special relationship while I was in Chicago, once I passed her inspection, in large part due to our communal bonds as members of the UCC. She would brag to anyone who asked what religion that I was, “Jack is like me—UCC.” You should have seen the looks on their faces! “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all…that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” Our “shared identify” demanded that we be willing to lay aside our individualism and its inherent self-interest for our calling to be bound to one another as sisters.

Recently this dynamic has played out in my own congregation. The church suffered great pains as a result of trying to come together and decide what it would mean to be “church” together. What is our vision? What is our mission? What is our witness? Fundamentally: Who are we, and what are we about? This pain and our continuing journey of discernment has taken many forms. While in seminary, I received letters from one faction or another outlining their position and urging me to sign on with their point of view. Our Senior Pastor left the church, and our interim resigned over the ugliness that has unfortunately marked our inability to disagree without dishonor.

One Sunday I noticed that the two men who lead our Music Ministry were not mentioned in the bulletin. After the service, someone came up to me and talked to me about the fact that these men had been fired following the previous Sunday’s service. I know my friend came to me hoping that I would be as dismayed as he appeared to be over this sudden decision by the Church Council. He asked me my opinion. I replied, “I think that is good. Not because I feel there was a problem, for I do not know, but because I see this as a positive sign that the Council we elected is making decisions. They have been charged with the duty of keeping secrets, seeing the underbelly of our church, and equipping our staff to provide for the nurture and service of our church. I am happy to see them take a stand and say, ‘We as your representative body have reasoned together that we are going to go a particular way, the way of our greatest day here being today and tomorrow!’ And with our collective vision in mind they lead us. That leadership demands accountability, and leadership demands making a decision. I am glad to see them separating the proverbial ‘wheat’ from ‘chaff’ in order to maintain the vision we gave them to help us fulfill. I do not mean ‘chaff’ as any kind of indictment on those two men—for they have obviously had a tremendous ministry here—just that their time of effective ministry here has come to an end. May God call them to another place worthy of the gifts God has granted them with…just not in this church right now.”

Similarly, the Church Council sent out a letter telling the congregation that disruptive behavior would no longer be allowed within our fellowship. Some persons were asked to leave our fellowship if they could not agree to end their disruptive behaviour. A new interim senior minister was called. Church services continue to happen each and every Sunday. The choir sings beautifully, even as some of the faces have changed. Most noticeably, I sense a new sweet spirit in our house of worship. The steam has been let out. Those who remain in our covenant do so willingly, even as we continue to struggle together to articulate what it means to be in fellowship and ministry together.

As these recent events unfolded I could not help but think of how our union formed. Yes, discussion, idea planting, joint fellowship and prayer all worked together in the forming of the United Church of Christ. But so did lengthy litigation! We continually form and re-form with congregations and individuals joining and leaving voluntarily. Our denominational forbearers not even seventy-five years ago had “the concern to find a way to bridge the differences that were considered by some to be insurmountable obstacles to union.” I take great peace that the conflict and reasoning within my own congregation is part and parcel of what it means to reason together within the fellowship of the United Church of Christ. I hold the same for our congregations that see themselves as either “Open and Affirming” or “Faithful and Welcoming,” even as I wholeheartedly believe faithfulness demands radical inclusion of all of God’s children within our churches, including our pulpits and marital covenants.

Our covenantal bonds implore us to talk to one another and be accountable to one another under the headship of Christ. We are not free to do as we please, but instead free for the work that the Holy Spirit calls us to. We come together that we might better serve our common Saviour in his call to do right, seek justice, defend those maligned and share the good news of God’s continuing work of redemption through us in our world. Come and let us reason together what God is calling us to do today.

I do not know how we became a culture obsessed with “closure,” but I admit I love the damn thing. I hate the feeling of unrest in my gut from awkward, ugly and hurtful endings, especially where I feel my heart never fully heals due to the love cut off at the quick. When The Bean left, I reeled from the swift and unexplainable exit. I could not fathom how it seemed to me that we were just getting to the good stuff, and he “imploded” (his word) and left body, mind and spirit. I needed closure and answers to my questions, but if someone does not acknowledge that you are alive closure tends to be elusive. Well…at least until I saw him driving to the Bike Shop.

As I turned my car around I cried out to myself, “What I need matters too!” So there we were in the parking lot face-to-face for the first time in four months. I just wanted to know from The Bean, “Do you know why you left me?”

He kept talking over and over again about when he did the “Post Mortem” on our relationship. I found strange comfort in his words given the pain of losing him set me on fire like a death. I led one of work’s Bereavement Support Groups the day before, and I kept thinking to myself, “It is okay that I have been so lost and incapable of almost anything–I just have been grieving.” Grieving like death. Something died between us, but I never wanted him out of my life, so maybe I would be better served to say something died in him. Maybe.

He told me that the reason why he had to leave immediately and cut me off fully centered on his feeling judged for not wanting to look at the effect his past might be having on his present. He said, “I learned everything I could back when those things happened, and I never want to think of them again. The longer we were together and the closer we became, the more pain I found myself in with you. You live in your past, present and future all at the same time. This way works for you–its what makes you so good at your job–and I know you were not intentionally judging me, but you require the person you are with to look at things, and I did not want to. I did not need to. I already got what I could out of them and want to leave them buried in the past where they happened.”

Figuring that I had already been pegged correctly, and that it was no time to stop being my own damn self, I said to him, “But when you saw Ana (THE EX), you said that the shit of her life was weighing her down even more because she refuses to deal with it; yes?” He agreed. I went on, “So, it seems strange that you would want others to deal with their stuff, but you do not want to deal with yours. Plus, I did not set out to root around to find your past pain, I brought up these things because they were hurting you, and us, in your present.”

When telling all of this to Paparazzo, he asked, “What was his major in college?” I told him what he already knew, “HISTORY.” Paparazzo replied rolling his eyes, “Just checking.” Irony. Irony. Irony.

Now granted, The Bean could have just been blowing smoke up my ass with all of this, but I do not really think so. He left me because I got inside the facade and that is not how he does things. He is the one who gives and never receives. He is the one in control. He is the one there for the girl–and he does love to date girls who have been molested–and all her problems. I brought disorder to the delicate balance of chaos and control he exerted over his life, but the disorder possessed a rightness to it because it centered on his needs being important.

Remember those drawings he did? Ours was an equal relationship. He could not be in control with me given the pain of my past. Not this girl. Not this time. I am the fucking poster child for recovery. I deal with the shit of my life. And he is right; it does work for me. The problem is that even if my way does not work for him, neither did his.

Given how this is my damn blog and I can say whatever I want, you would think I would bash him royally. You would think. I just cannot do it because I know too much. Too much about him and too much about adult children of alcoholics. I bought a book. I read up, which is another point of irony given my being a well-trained chaplain that I never really thought so much about this issue when we were together. One thing I read turned on the big light bulb over my head. In Children of Alcoholism: A Survivor’s Manual by Seixas and Youcha I read, “The inability to trust [their] own feelings and perceptions puts [them] in a precarious position. Trying to do away with uneasiness by hiding it and hoping no one else will see is exhausting…” and as a result “secrecy, evasion, and deception all [become] as acceptable as the truth.”

I kept seeing The Bean over and over in the pages of the book. I did not want to see him. I wanted to believe he would be the exception to the rule. I wanted to believe he would be the poster child for figuring it out on your own and getting it right. I wanted to believe he would not be just plain typical, but I kept seeing him over and over again.

The book put new light on why he lies to his parents all the time, why he has no real idea what he likes to receive–he can never trust anyone would take his desires seriously–and why all these things came up for us when they did.  The book talks about how real intimacy will cause the adult child of an alcoholic to fill with panic, which is actually a good sign of new life being right around the corner.  They do  best to face their past while being supported by love, especially intimate love, in the present.  I understand that, for being with him helped my whole being to heal in ways I could never approach without the kind of connection and intimacy real trust with sex can only bring.

I do not know what it was really like in his house as a kid, but given my own history with incest my imagination is probably pretty damn close. Even with all the really hopeful and helpful information contained in the book, I realized just how painful and distorted growing up with an alcoholic really is. Who can you ever trust if you cannot trust your parents? Yes. Both parents. The one who drinks almost ends up making more sense than the one who stays and allows all the craziness to continue. Nothing is real. Your perceptions are not real. You are not real.

So I stood talking to The Bean thinking,”You did the best you could.” I felt so sad. Sad. Sad. Sad. Here is this amazing, beautiful, brilliant man who just cannot go the emotional distance right now. I still hope he will one day, but I know I will never see it. He has been practicing and perfecting burying the pain for a long ass time. He will have one hell of a journey if he ever makes the changes necessary to accept and give real love. I know. I have been practicing them for years.  That is why I walked away thinking how good it was for me that we parted, and maybe not the best choice for him.  Maybe.  Or maybe I started something - planted a seed in a fertile garden perhaps - that will grow and flourish one day when he can go the emotional distance and not keep reburying things over and over again.

I am reminded of Robert Frost’s first lines from Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

So I stood there knowing how much I could go the emotional distance. I told him how angry I became over him leaving just when things got interesting. I got to the core fears and wanted to face them head on because of how much I wanted to be with him healthy and whole. I wanted to give him my very best and keep raising the bar again and again. I wanted to be more real, more loved, more loving, more giving, more free. I could see how we challenged each other in every single way and were on the verge of something great for ourselves as individuals and together as a couple. (Check out this great article about getting to the good stuff.) And then it was over. Sad. Sad. Sad.

I found closure to the most important and devastating chapter of my adult life standing in a parking lot. I found a way to bless him and our time together. I found a way to voice my anger and disappointment in him and the way he cut me out of his life. I told him about the destructive path of his verbal rage and emotional extinction. I told him how profoundly sorry I felt to find I caused him so much pain. I found forgiveness again.  I found a way to say goodbye to my first real love.

I found closure.

November, the month prior to my break-up with The Bean contained more emotionally, physically and spiritually intense–let  alone draining–events than we ever could prepare for.  So many things transpired that even now they do not seem real. It is almost as if the whole month happened in “super-slow-mo” and the tape playing in my head only makes the “waahwaahwahnan” sound over and over. Writing it down still stuns me.

The arduous rundown:

1. I broke a molar and had root canal the first few days of November, just before…
2. I was ordained on November 5th. Now The Bean continues to have major issues with any sacred or religious space (Let’s be sure to keep the two separate, because not all religious spaces are sacred or vice versa.). As a kid, his parents–one an atheist Catholic, the other Jewish–were blackmailed by the priests running the private school into having him baptised. The Bean did not want it, nor did his parents, but it allowed them to keep their illegal immigrant child in school. I have issues with baptizing any child, but against a grown child’s will and that of their parents and demonizing said child is abuse. Period. So, when I looked out and saw my dear sweet Bean sitting in my church I came undone with love for him. I knew what it took for him to be there, and I knew how much he cared for me to cross that threshold on my behalf. Pure selflessness in the place of pain for him.
3. I told him, in the throes of Ordination Bliss, the night of my ordination, that I loved him. He held me closer, and we fell asleep at the hotel.
4. November 7th we went to dinner. He said something to me over dinner about how he did not remember anything after we got back to the hotel due to being so tired. It turned out that this included what I said, which I repeated (feel free to judge me now). He replied smiling, “As if I did not already know that!” I said, “Right back at-cha.” The conversation brought up so many fears for me, especially the Big Kahuna: abandonment. I also talked to him that night about how I felt I had gotten really “busy” in our relationship due to my own fears of him leaving. Overcompensating. I told him about how I would drop yoga for him week after week–wanting him to keep my boundaries–but never expected him to not go on his weekly ride. I told him to expect some big changes from me in the coming weeks, not because I did not care about him, but because I realized I needed to take a step back and care for myself. I apologized for making him responsible for what I needed.
5. November 8th, The Bean called me at work to tell me how upset he was. I felt like he might be experiencing a panic attack and urged him to leave work “sick” and go to the doctor. He desperately stated how he needed a break and all of the pressure seemed to be too much. I got it and took him seriously. I also urged him to consider therapy, if that might help his anxiety coupled with all the really smart and hard physical workouts he already incorporated into his life for stress management. I heard a great deal of anger–rightly so, I might add–that I thought a therapist could help him with processing in ways that empowered him more than leaving him feeling helpless. He listened, but he never went further.
6. I took a terrible fall off my bike on my way to The Bean’s house on November 9th. He rode towards me but was on the opposite side of the road. Even after not finding me, he never thought to cross to the other side. Given my “safety first” alarm bells, I never would ride on the side where he rode due to there not being any street lights and it was at dusk. He found me, patched me up, and took me home following dinner. I felt just awful, in part because I wanted him to care for my boo-boos (only fair given how I had nursed his from a bad fall in August that he took), but I also realized that–for whatever the reasons–he needed to be alone that night. I told him later, “My wants got trumped by your needs.” I felt really grown-up for getting the difference with him that night.
7. I woke up at his house on the 11th with the worst sore throat of my life and a fever. By the end of the day, I was up to 103.7!
8. I went to the doctor and found out I probably had Mono on Monday the 13th. By Thursday, I had the confirmation. My official first day off Probation at work was the 13th as well, so I used my Paid Time Off on the first day possible and until I ran out. In the Month of November I worked only six days and out some of December too. This left me one whole paycheck short, not to mention all the medicine, doctor visits, etc. November would have completely ruined me financially if not for the money people gave me at my Ordination and some help from my congregation.
9. The next week I developed Thrush in my mouth. So, now I had the most exhaustion I ever experienced, could hardly go downstairs to get food, and now could not put anything in my mouth. Add to this diarrhea and nausea. The Bean planned a bike trip with a friend the day of the 18th. I felt so disappointed in him for planning that trip while I was not only so sick, but also because my Aunt Charlyne had just been taken to the hospital with life-threatening lung problems and Miss Audrey and Baub were up in Ocala for her that weekend. I never asked him to stay; I only told him that I was hurt he would plan to leave. In the end, he did not go due to spending the night with me in the ER. I could no longer speak or open my mouth, finding myself in terrible pain, dehydrated, not able to keep anything in me, and trying to throw up. That night still shines out to me for other reasons as well. The Bean told me of how he drew up these schematics of all of his relationships that day while at lunch. In the end, he drew them for me. He showed me how all of his other relationships were so “out of balance” with the relationship overshadowing him and his needs. He had no life outside of whomever he was dating, other than work and his own family–although they were enmeshed there too. When he drew out how he saw us, he drew equal circles placed beside each other, but with some distance between them. He said, “I see us as individuals now and always, but I can also see that we are moving closer together…not to overtake one another or become ‘one’ but to be right up next to each other as full partners.” He showed me how he had balance in his life for the first time. He had his own friends. He expressed concern about how large and dominating work had become. I asked him, “Is there anything you need from me or need for us to work on to help you in this?” He replied, “No. I would not change anything about us. What we have is really working and brings me a lot of happiness.”
10. The night of the 18th, we lay in bed talking until five in the morning. The Bean needed to talk about the pain his most recent ex (from over a year before, and the one who will call him December 1st) caused him when she left saying, “I do not love you.” He told me how he could not think of her without “feeling searing pain,” and how this applied to the good times as well. We held each other. He cried. I cried. I told him I knew he could find his way to holding both the pain and the good times in such a way that the pain no longer robbed the good, but also where the pain no longer robbed his present either. I must admit I feel as though I am betraying him for saying this at all, but I also know that I still protect his identity from most and how important this moment felt to me. I firmly believed that until he could let go of the pain she caused him, he could not fully open to the love I wanted to give him or receive from him.
11. Thanksgiving night he surprised me by coming back early to see me. He told me of how he shared with his family his deep thankfulness for me because I “challenged [him] in every way.”
12. Saturday the 25th, he went on his ride. I suffered the effects of a new colon infection IN PUBLIC, but I did manage to buy the plants for re-doing his front garden. We wanted to get it in last Fall, so it would be beautiful and ready if he tried to sell this Spring.
13. Sunday we worked and worked and worked on his front garden. By dusk, it really looked amazing. He asked me if I would help with a work thing, which ended up taking almost four hours but gave him some sleep he never would have gotten otherwise.
14. We worked on getting his resume ready the next few days to send to a personal friend of mine for help in finding The Bean a new job. His work life had become unbearable and his boss utterly unkind and unprofessional, in my opinion.
15. Wednesday the 29th, we sent off his resume. The Bean lay down next to me on his couch and told me, “Baby. I needed you. I never need anyone, but you were there for me. Thank you.” I told him how I could not believe my ears, but “thank you” for letting me in to help you. I also thanked him for all the amazing ways he helped me during my illness.
16. This is as good a place as any to mention the last time we had sex was in November.  Due to the contagious nature of Mono, we just would look at each other with longing.  God!  How I missed him!  Every single part.
17. I tried to go back to work on the 30th, but my boss took one look at me and sent me back home. Thankfully.
18. December 1st: The Bean and I sat in the car driving to his parents’ house to pick up something and then out to dinner. His ex called him, which he called “disturbing.” She called again. He did not answer. He became very silent and upset. I wanted him to go and see her. I wanted him to forgive her–something he told me in the Summer he wanted to tell her–because I felt we could not go on until he had full closure with her over the past. He was to call me when they were done talking, so I would know he was okay, even if he could not talk about it. He texted me at 2:30 in the morning.

We never really spoke about that conversation with the ex, other than him telling me that “the shit of her life is weighing her down more now than before.” He told me that he was “imploding” following talking to her, and after a week of time in his Man Cave, I went to see him. He told me that he did not love me, only dated me because he was lonely, and we were done. Two days later, I went back to him and told him that I did not know if we were doing the right thing–if I was doing the right thing–and how mad at him I was. Then I got the “your star is extinguished from my sky” email, and I was officially dead in his world.

Funny thing is, I was not dead in mine, nor was he.

So, when I saw his fucking car–for the first time ever since we split–on the road last week, I followed his ass to the local bike shop (I just knew where he was going.) and confronted him!!!!!! I have GUMPTION! And I must say how proud of myself I am. Damn!

Starting today, 13 April 2007, I will post my Ordination Papers for the coming three weeks. This paper addressed my own faith.

Claudia McK… was a rarity at Westminster Christian School in 1979. She was half Colombian and being raised as a Catholic. We both had the status of “social outcast” and became fast friends in fourth grade. When she went through Confirmation at her church, she asked me to come to the special Saturday service that the local Archbishop would be conducting. Having been raised to believe that the Christian life is a choice—not that anyone in my family gave me much of a choice about going to church or not—my ears and mind were on fire when the Archbishop talked to the Confirmation Class and said, “When you were born a baby Christian…” Born a baby Christian? No! I could not begin to grasp the possibility, or for that matter the Catholic theology and tradition, of such a thing. One makes a personal decision for salvation and without that decision one is not a Christian; or so I had been raised…irony of ironies. I keep thinking of this moment at her church and what the Archbishop proclaimed for I see that I was indeed born a baby Christian. The fabric of my life story has been woven within the context of the Christian faith. My earliest memories include being in the nursery at church, singing “Deep and Wide” and listening to Web Chenault and his dummy talk to me about Jesus and the lives of missionaries. I nursed on the Gospel. The raw material of my faith was a part of me much like the zygote has all the raw material to grow into a fully aware human being.

My Mother has always been the spiritual compass in my home. I can still see her kneeling and praying in the mornings before taking me to school. Her faith has been my greatest teacher, and she remains someone I turn to in order to discuss my faith, my doubt and my calling. I look back at how she raised me and I am surprised that I was not raised within the UCC, specifically the Christian Church, or within the Disciples of Christ because her own articulation of her faith so closely resembles these two veins. Historically she only goes to a church in her neighborhood, and she once moved our household to live closer to church. We went to a Presbyterian church from when I was zero to fifteen. I never was raised to think we were Presbyterian though. I never joined the Presbyterian Church. I made a major stink over some part of the Children’s Shorter Catechism and told our pastor that I could not in good-conscience join a church that affirmed this particular point. I have no idea now what that point was, but needless to say it was a deal breaker for me in sixth grade. Mother affirmed this choice because she continually encouraged me to think for myself and to make my faith my own.

I know much less of my father’s faith because he died when I was six. I know he valued people and took the time to take young men under his wing and teach them how to be good husbands and fathers. Mother says I get my sharp wit and my plotting demeanor from him. I hope I am as good a friend, raconteur, and fisherman as he was.

I cannot speak of a faith journey or my call without speaking of who I am and the life events which shape me. My life continues to be full of the vibrant colors of pain, hope, joy, despair, truth and faith. I frame my life through the lens of my relationship with God. Even from the earliest days I have always been convinced of God’s presence. I can remember being about three years of age and not being able to sleep because I needed to pray. I awakened my parents at two in the morning to help me. My disquiet, even at three years of age, stemmed from a deep desire to make sure that Jesus knew of my love for him. My sense that God waits for me to engage with God pervades my life. I pray all the time. And yet I still wonder about the efficacy of prayer. Can I change God’s mind, as Luther contends in his commentary on Moses’ response to Yahweh wanting to leave the Israelite people following the incident with the Golden Calf? I also have asked God, “What right do I have to pray?” My point simply is that even when I wander and ponder, I take these to God.

I never feel concern that certain topics are off limits when I speak to God All conversation with God is holy for me, so I take to God my joy, my praise, my anger, my disgust—even when these are directed right at God. The first time I decided God was a big failure was when Rev. Reed sat in our living room praying with us the day Daddy died. He said, “Lord, we want to thank you for being with this family.” NO! I just did not believe it. If God was with us then something had gone terribly wrong. Either God was not who I thought God to be, or God was not present. Period. I remember opening my eyes to see if Mother and Grandmother were buying into Rev. Reed’s prayer. I could not believe that they were sitting there shaking their heads in agreement.

And yet, by some miracle, prayer existed for me. I kept the dialogue going. Many years later a woman stopped me at a luncheon. She asked me if I knew who she was; I did not. She was the wife of our interim pastor the year my father died. She turned to her friends and told them the story of when her son was 11 and in the hospital dying. The church decided to have an evening prayer service of intercession for the boy and his family. She sat there knowing her son was going to die and feeling these prayers were only to give them support. Then a six-year-old girl got up and took the microphone. (This girl would be me, but I do not remember.) She started praying and telling God there was too much pain in her world, she had lost too much. So would God just let this one boy, her friend, live so that more pain could not come into the world today? The woman said that she looked up at the girl and knew her son would live. She knew God could not refuse this particular plea, and so they praised God for answering their prayer when he recovered fully.

I find this story interesting because I still sort through the efficacy of our prayers. Can we compel God to intervene in our lives? I know of points in my own history that demanded God’s intervention—an intervention that never fully came as I needed it to come. And I also know first hand the miraculous power of God’s intervention. This story also strikes me as amazing because it comes from a time where my walk with God was characterized by rage and uncertainty. I find it striking that I somehow still believed in Emmanuel, especially in issues of life and death. I confront this paradox so often in my ministry. We have the belief that God has power over that which seeks to destroy our very beings. We also know that we live in an age of despair, brought on from living in an imperfect world and filled with the consequences of imperfect people. How can we affirm the miraculous God, who we see acting in both grand and delicate ways in the fabric of our lives, and also deal with a God whom, too often for our comfort, seems silent and distant, and maybe even far removed from our very present suffering?

I consider the deepest source of personal suffering in my life as having come from the desertion of my half-sisters from our family life. My father had two daughters from his first marriage, and I spent the first part of my life with them all of the time. Unfortunately, the pain my sisters were in after Daddy died was so great they told my Mother that they never wanted to see us again. We went from a dinner table of nine to just my mother and I in less than one month. My sisters have never come back.. Now, almost 30 years later, I think I better understand how it is that we can make terrible decisions in our lives and feel stuck with them. I too have been stuck sometimes. Some days I pray there will be healing between us. Some days I forget they exist. And yet, I find I always carry them in my spirit and ponder the themes of abandonment, worthiness and reconciliation with this story in mind.

For all of the changes 1977 brought, nothing could have prepared me for 1978. Mother remarried, and sadly she married a pedophile who married her to get to me. A fundamental change in my being occurred as a result of being molested. I do not live on the edge because of it though. I missed having a Daddy in my life, so John was welcomed into my life and heart unquestioningly. The searing pain that he brought left me with an even larger hole in my life. At that point I needed the Father God, terribly. I needed him to kick butt, but where was he to be found? I felt so desperate for him. I believed that God had the power to intercede for me then and called upon God daily. Today I would say God the Father was present during the abuse. I can look back at certain moments and claim that the only way that the evil was mitigated was God’s intervention. But more than that, I can see Jesus holding me, comforting me. I see the Father God screaming at John not to do this terrible thing. Screaming at him that he was not created for this, it was not God’s will or purpose for his life. John chose to proceed. God chose to stay, refusing to leave me alone with John’s expression of the monster within. I know this. I know God was there and God being my witness helps me validate the truth of what happened.

Conceptualizing God in this manner propelled me to think deeply about my faith from a very young age. My Sunday School teachers loved me, and not just for being me, but also because I always came prepared with my memorized Bible verse. I took seriously the commandment to “hide God’s word in your heart.” Attending a Christian school gave me even more opportunities to work on the God questions from both mental and emotive places within me. By fifth grade, my faith constructs were quite savvy because I was reading Leon Uris, Mildred Taylor, Calvin Miller, Madeline L’Engle and C.S. Lewis. By sixth grade, I was radicalized because of listening to the music of U2 and had joined Amnesty International. The Sunday School teachers who loved having someone so interested in their class now had to contend with a young lady unafraid to question them and their teachings.

Around the age of fourteen I had a different prayer. Our Presbyterian church no longer felt like home. I was an outsider due to my refusal to join. I convinced my Mother that we needed a new church, one where I could join. We found University Baptist Church. Although I had been baptized as a baby at the Presbyterian Church, I insisted that I be baptized by immersion at UBC as a sign of Jesus’ ownership of my heart. Ah, Menno Simmons and the Ana-Baptists would be so proud! I think this began something in me that continues to this day. I started to see myself as a Baptist, which was a change given my familial reluctance to formal denominational ties. Baptist does, however, capture the historic roots and practices I still ascribe to. I believe in the autonomy of the local church and continue to rely on the priesthood of the believer. The last point, regarding the priesthood of the believer, gave me the certainty in my faith that I could question the church’s teachings on women in ministry, which for me was the final barrier to my heeding the call to ministry.

When I was growing up I had very few role models of women in ministry. The few women in Ministry I knew were missionaries. Many of them would cry at our kitchen table about how difficult it is to be a woman in the man’s world of the Church. I saw my own Mother never considered for church elder or deacon due to her gender, while at the same time she would defiantly speak up for causes she felt strongly about. I must admit that one of the largest reasons I never considered going into the ministry as a child, despite my love of all things God related, was I never thought I could since I was a girl. No one ever told me that girls could grow up to be ministers, preacher, evangelists or serve in leadership over men in a church. And yet, everywhere I looked in my Presbyterian church, with the one exception of the pulpit, it was the women who were the spiritual leaders of the church and of their families.

In college I became exposed to Christians for Biblical Equality. This evangelical group used the scriptures to prove that both Jesus and Paul argued for the full inclusion of women in ministry. They see the patriarchal hierarchy as a result of the Fall and not a part of God’s original design. Their writings inspired me to think differently about God’s plan for women in general and my life in particular. When I returned home after going to school out of state, I found our Baptist congregation no longer fit my needs. I could not attend and support a church that saw my affirmation of women in ministry as a sign that I was not a good Christian. So, in the spring of 1994 I began to look for a new church. I found Coral Gables Congregational.

This part of my pilgrimage coincided with my search for what I wanted to do with my life. Finding a congregation where I could flourish outside of the restrictions of labels like “conservative” or “liberal” blessed me immensely. Each Sunday we read from the lectionary, which meant we read more scripture each week there than we had in a month at my former congregation. I was in love, mad love. I became actively involved in the life of the church and felt at home. I also began working in an Adult Day Care Center where I began to have a glimpse of a future serving God’s children. During this time I started to prayerfully consider going back to college to finish my degree with the intention of serving God in some sort of helping or healing ministry.

I want to relate my first conscious articulation of my call to ministry to you. I was working as a Special Events Coordinator in 1996 for the Miami City Club. In less than three months I put us on the map for party clients and had the Big Boss impressed. My immediate boss, who I was only going to be under for three more days, drove me nuts. He left much to be desired. I knew booking weddings would mean a three-year minimum commitment from me to the club. So, I sat on the Metro one Tuesday morning praying and crying out to God for help. I knew I was not in the right place for me. I kept saying to God, “I know you have called me for something other than this, but I just do not know what.” I could not leave my job; I was helping to pay our bills. And I had no idea where to go or what to do if I did not stick this job out. I asked God for help. My immediate boss fired me that afternoon.

Getting fired was the best thing to ever happen to me. I went to work the next Monday for Dennis Nason, a club member, who believed in me, and he had frequent “come to Jesus” meetings with me about my future. He pushed me to go back and finish my BA, and he would not take “no” for an answer. When I told him I was thinking about getting a Master’s in Theology, he told me to go for it. Our dear friend, Susan Rodriguez, lived at our house after her graduation from seminary as she integrated into her new life as a pastor. So, in one ear I had Dennis saying, “Go for it!” and in the other Susan asking, “Why don’t you go to Divinity School?” She too would not take “no” for an answer. God placed two mighty forces in my life that helped me listen to the Spirit of God asking, “Whom shall I send?” From the time I went to work for Dennis to the time I went back to college was just over a year, with one more year to finish my BA. I still was not sure why God was sending me to Divinity School, but I was thoroughly convinced I was to go. When I got to Duke I realized that I was not alone in this experience. You can hear First Years every fall saying to one another, “Yeah. I know what you mean…I may teach, get a PhD, go into a local church, or become a chaplain too.” Uncertainty mixed with certainty.

But should I go as a UCC student? I was a member of my church, but I had no idea what that meant for my future. Heck! I know I did not have any concept of the wider UCC body beyond my own congregation! I felt uncomfortable with the idea of being a part of any denomination at that point, plus I had seen my own church’s struggle to be in the world and not of it. My first day at Duke led me to the head of the Baptist House, which serves the needs of Baptist students, the second largest group at the Divinity School. He encouraged me to look at going back to Baptist life since North Carolina is one of the more affirming places for women in ministry. I spent my first two years contemplating this, and I worked as a Youth Minister in a Baptist Church. I now know I am not called to the fight in Baptist life regarding women in ministry. I do not have to prove anything to anyone about the veracity of my gender’s call. And so, without regret, I left that particular turmoil behind me.

Now I see this sojourn into Baptist life as a vital key to the development of my call. During this time I met one of the leading forces in Baptist Women in Ministry: Anne Neil. I had the privilege of attending her ordination, just before her 80th birthday, and she mentored me. Over the last 60 plus years in ministry she has served as a teacher, nurse, health facilitator, missionary and women’s rights leader. She helped to form the Alliance of Baptists, one of the most progressive arms of Baptist life that now affirms an ecumenical fellowship with the UCC. She recognized progressive Baptist churches needed a seminary to send their students following the conservative takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention. Baptist House, a support system for students at Duke, was her way to address that need.

Seeing her life taught me that God’s call is to service, not to a particular place and fashion for all time. Once you are called God will change the locations to which you are called to, but not God’s investment in you. Over the seasons of her life her ministry has changed and evolved, while her call has remained constant. I see this as the model for my call: ever present and ever changing. My ministry has been and will continue to evolve as both my faith deepens and what I am called to, changes.

So, back to the question of what role the United Church of Christ could have in my life and ministry: My last two years of seminary allowed for a season to examine if I could find a spiritual home within the UCC. Seminary was an impoverished time, so I rarely came home to Miami. At Christmas, in 2001, I was afforded a rare opportunity to be in Miami for a month. During that time I met Donna Schaper, who was then the new pastor at Gables Church. She and I sat down for an in-depth conversation about the UCC and me. She asked me to consider requesting a time of mutual discernment between myself and the congregation about my call and future in the UCC. I left feeling God had answered my plea for direction and a home. Instead of a new home, I found a homecoming, which delighted me more than words can express. But I still had my lingering questions about any future in the UCC itself because of my identity as a progressive baptist—little “b.”

During the fall of 2001, I had the privilege of taking American Christianity with someone who sees the Congregationalists and Northern Baptists as being the best representation of mainstream American Christianity. Dr. Wacker gave me a glimpse of what it might mean to affirm my new Congregational identity in conjunction with my Baptist roots. Tracing the “religious family tree” and seeing how Baptist life in America in large part grew out of the eviction of Rodger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony helped me to trace my lineage as both a Baptist and as a Congregationalist. My UCC polity class heaped “Miracle Grow” on these seeds by teaching me how the constructs so central in my own faith and intellectual upbringing: local church autonomy; covenantal relationships; intellectual curiosity; pluralism (valued within my own family), social justice as an extension of faithfulness; and the priesthood of the believer, were also values I shared with the United Church of Christ. Each week as I read about what was becoming my denomination, I became more excited. I love the things we struggle with, our tensions and our resolutions. I began to form a picture of myself serving in the United Church of Christ. As my own sense of place grew, my questions regarding what God would call me to bloomed as well. Here I am Lord, send me…but where shall I go?

My life began in a hospital. Yes, most of us are born there, but for me it was more than that. My mother is a nurse and came to Miami to work at Baptist Hospital. Baptist Hospital is where she met my Daddy, where she had me, where Daddy was taken care of during my kindergarten year when he was so sick, and eventually, where my Grandmother Hazel Osborne died. The pulse of the hospital matches my own, but I will admit that I remained closed to the idea of both chaplaincy and working in the medical setting for a very long time. The hospital is where I see my Stepfather, John, for he was not only a pedophile but also an amazing and gifted physician. When people would talk to me about doing my Clinical Pastoral Education Internship while in seminary, I would kindly nod my head and shake my heart “no.” But after this idea continued to be proposed to me by total strangers meeting me and telling me how they thought I would be so well suited for CPE, I, like Gideon, had to admit that the fleece of wool was wet with dew and the ground dry—I was going to go to the hospital for my Clinical Pastoral Education.

Have you heard the story about the duck and the water? My parents raised me to be a hospital chaplain; they prepared me for my call. The way they would engage the people they cared for taught me how to talk to people about both their lives and their health. I possess no fear of medical conditions, blood, ooze or complicated medical terminology. We read the Journal of American Medicine and the Bible at the dinner table! Nothing else was allowed to be read, but those two were read and discussed. I can remember going to a medical meeting in late elementary school on geriatric care. My Stepfather took care of a man who had AIDS when it was still called ARC. My mother would go by a church friend’s house and take their blood pressure and talk to them about their health needs. She would pray with them and comfort them. All these moments became linked together for me in the hospital setting. Every nook and cranny within the hospital walls felt like home. And my own journey to find God within a life full of suffering found a resting place in the hospital because I could co-create with God a new redemptive meaning for that suffering. All of a sudden my whole life made sense. All of sudden my calling made sense.

I have had to face the mystery head-on in my own life, and so I find the hospital to be a beautiful place to be present to people as Jesus was to those who were suffering in his own time. The Incarnation makes sense to me at three in the morning, as I pray with a family gathered around a dying loved one. I think ministering in crisis allows me an ecumenical opportunity the parish minister is rarely afforded; I get to be the face of God to people I would otherwise never be able to do that with, due to all of the walls of rubble we so readily put between ourselves. The practice, or discipline, of chaplaincy opens up the “secret prayer closet” of people’s lives, so I tread on sacred ground as I listen to the real truth of what has happened in a life and in a family. I see the real face behind the mask.

Following my internship I stayed on at the University of North Carolina Hospitals as an on-call chaplain, working a 24-hour shift most weekends. While at UNCH during my last year of seminary, Carolina Donor Services approached me three different times about coming on board with them and working in a bereavement capacity with families facing the brain death of a loved one. The last time, just after graduating from seminary, I applied and went to work for them. Even before I started, I found out that a chaplain colleague from UNCH—Vivian Hunnings—was also coming to work at CDS in the same capacity. The following year brought an amazing amount of personal and professional growth as Vivian and I created a new model for doing bereavement work with the families. Part of CDS’s support of our efforts included sending us to get our Advanced Bereavement Facilitator Certification. I went to Chicago, in November of 2002, for my training. My trip proved to be a seminal turning point for me as a woman of faith and as a minister.

I first want to discuss the radical personal transformation that occurred during the training. While working at the hospital in North Carolina, I had become more and more dissatisfied with the normative Baptist understanding of hell. Being at the bedside of so many as they died, even a death row inmate shackled to the bed, I could not shake a growing suspicion that hell is a human construct, given how we like to solve our problems through death and dismemberment, and not a God reality. But even as I moved away from this normative understanding of hell, I reserved a special corner of the old hell for my stepfather. During the bereavement training, we were given a writing assignment to explore the continuing dialogue and relationship we have with someone from our lives who had died. John died when I was twenty-five, and so for reasons I cannot fully explain, my dialogue was with him.

When I stand with a patient as they die, I have a vision of my Daddy and Grandmother being there with me. I also see Jesus clearly, regardless of the faith affiliation of the person dying. Jesus and my family are there for me, and God—in the all encompassing way we might define God—is there for the person who is dying. As I sat there at the hotel table creating this dialogue I began to see that in the shadows of those moments John was standing there as well, and so we began to talk to one another for the first time since I was fourteen. I told him how close to him I felt in the hospital and how appreciative I am for all that he taught me about medicine, physicians and about healing the mind, body and soul. I told him that in the hospital I was proud to be his daughter. He told me how sorry he was for being so destructive in my life. I understood, by some miraculous spiritual intervention, that John, more than anyone else, knew the terrible price that had been paid in my life because of the pain he inflicted. His intimate knowledge of my reality, meant that he wanted more than anything for my life to be full and free of pain and fear. My dialogue with him released him from the private hell I put him in and released me to embrace him as a wonderful doctor, without shame, in the hospital. I do not want to suggest that I never find myself touching the wellspring of rage over the pain he caused, for those waters are too deep in my life to just dry up instantaneously. I do want to offer that a miracle of healing came to me through this dialogue and that this reconciliation informs how I function as an empathic and forgiving chaplain.

The second big change that came as a result of my weekend in Chicago was that a conversation began between me and Rush University Medical Center about my coming there for my Clinical Pastoral Education Residency. They had an ongoing dialogue with the Department of Trauma next door at Cook County Hospital about providing a chaplain resident to their team. They had never had an appropriate candidate, since Rush does not offer any trauma experience. Given my three years of experience in numerous Level I Trauma Centers in North Carolina, the need and the right person for the job were finally coming together. Part of what made this opportunity right for me stemmed from my growing unrest from no longer being a chaplain. Bereavement work outside of the context of my calling to be a minister left me empty. My time working as a chaplain demonstrated to me the depth of my commitment as a servant of God, but also the depth of my ministerial identity. I do not tend to the hurting, confused, angry, grieving human beings out of the goodness of my own heart, although that is a factor. Mostly I engage with them and their stories out of my own faith story and ministerial calling. My commitment is to being a disciple of Jesus, so my work extends naturally from my radical understanding of discipleship. During my year with Carolina Donor Services I longed to be back in the hospital as a chaplain; I went to Chicago the next September to begin my Residency.

I could write an entire book on my experiences at County. I worked with people who were in desperate need of care and compassion. My patients were mostly African American and poor. Of these, the majority were young men who presented to us with gunshot wounds. I learned what it means to be a prophet in my own age. Standing at bedsides telling young angry men that God does not want them to kill in retribution took the power of the Holy Spirit standing with me to say, but I did. Being prophetic to the degradation my staff uttered took the power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. My staff maintained a level of anxiety unparalleled by any other unit I have ever worked with. They manifested this fear through anger, racism, addiction and emotional distancing. My faith has been a way to make sense of the suffering in my own life and the lives of others. I came to understand that unit within the context of great suffering. My method of being a chaplain is not to graciously stand on the sidelines waiting for an invitation. I jump right in; getting bed pans or warm blankets is common place for me, as is holding someone’s hand during a painful medical procedure. Even with this as my practice, I would not have thought that I made much of an impression on my unit by the year’s end; they were just that hardened. When I went to leave some of the nurses threw a party for me. One of the nurses, who had tried my patience on more than one occasion with her hostile attitude and behavior, came up to me to talk. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “You do not know what this unit was like before you came…you have no idea…but I want you to know how much it means to all of us…to me…that you came and you loved us.” She later presented me with a Tiffany bracelet from the “Trauma Chicks” as a thank-you gift, but her words were the real gift of affirmation. I went and loved them, which for me is both the simplest way to talk about ministry and the most profound.

When I think of all of the possibilities of what I may be called to next, I become overwhelmed. I know that my heart’s desire is to continue on with a call to a chaplaincy position, but I also remain open to God’s continual call in my life and how that call will transform over time. My continuing faith in the God who is with us leads me to a place of acceptance in regards to the great mystery of where I might next serve. Accepting mystery for me is somewhat akin to wearing burlap, but I also recognize that with maturity I have come to embrace the mystery a little more. I find meaning and delight in the apparent chaos because it affords me the opportunity to be on a God Hunt. In many ways I am still the same girl listening to the pastor’s prayer in the time of tragedy, only now I hear my own voice. I pray remembering the prayer said when my father died, so I know how singular and shaping these prayers can be. I pray knowing that these moments are both endings and beginnings I pray knowing we are being heard and loved. Mostly, I pray with confidence because I know God is with us. As Isaiah 54:7 says, “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back.”

This post is a part of my ongoing series “Don’t Be A Christian” about the failure of religion, Christianity in particular. The main thesis of this series is: Don’t be a Christian. Follow Jesus. In my opinion, Christianity has failed. Persons of faith and/or conscience must rise up against Christianity and its many forms of greed, tyranny, manipulation, hatred and irrationality. Our very survival as human beings depends on the end of Christianity as we know it today, and as it has been developing since the time of Paul. Eradicating Christianity does not mean that we should eradicate Jesus or Jesus’ central message of love of the other. No. Those of us who find solace, teaching and inspiration in the “Christian Story” must embrace Jesus anew, instead of embracing any kind of Christian identity. Again: Don’t be a Christian. Follow Jesus.

My ex-boyfriend The Bean, in case you have not read my page on The Dating Game, is an atheist. Now you might find it strange that a girl minister would date an atheist, but at least as far as this girl minister goes, the spiritual match I experienced far exceeded any other relationship in my life, past or present. Huh??? I know this may seem strange, but curiosity has characterized my relationship with God and with the faith I nursed on, Christianity. Empty pat answers do not quell my questions, which has been true since I was a kid. The Bean never was satisfied either. He too would challenge teachers of the faith–having gone to a Catholic elementary school and having been assaulted by Evangelical proselyt