Bitter fruit

Bitterness is not a fruit of the Spirit. I am sure of this. I checked my Bibles, both King James and New Revised King James. There ain’t nothing there about bitterness, but boy, does it seep in! In fact, the way many of us walk through life, you might believe that bitterness is a central tenet to humanity.

It is not. Rather, bitterness does not have to be a central tenet to humanity. To be clear, being bitter is not the same as being angry. Anger is certainly a scary word and place to be. Anger can be destructive and abusive, but that is generally after letting it simmer at bitter for 20 years. Anger should energize us into action. Anger is meant to move us to react or respond or change.

Instead we will stifle anger, somehow confusing that with long suffering or endurance. Uh, yeah, that is a big no. If you stifle anger, you get bitter. If you get bitter, well, the joy gets sucked right out of you for some reason. Then you start the muttering, griping, and the ceaseless, useless criticizing. You feel like: “what’s the point in even saying anything now? Nothing will change. Nothing gets better.”

Bitterness leads to hopelessness. Bitterness sucks energy from you and everyone around you. You begin to think, “Sure, every now and then something good happens, but not really, not for me”. You stop seeing the world around you. You stop caring, even about yourself. Sometimes you will give something a try because you have nothing to lose. But having nothing to lose is not the same as being hopeful. You need to get down to the root of the bitterness- that anger. You need to deal with it.

You need to figure out what you are angry about and work to change it. That anger can be a scary place because we have been taught over and over again not to be angry because we might hurt someone. The truth is that unresolved and unexpressed anger is what hurts people. Living with that bitterness, either as the owner of that attitude or anyone around that attitude, causes people to suffer.

Life is too beautiful to be bitter. There is entirely too much to be thankful for in this world to be bitter. Certainly this world will make you angry, but maybe that anger will encourage you to help in the creation of Kingdom of God. It will be in that work that you will see that hope and joy and beauty because it is there.

Bleeding knees and hope...

After a week of personal anxiety and disappointment, of realizing that God's will be done really, really does mean, at times, and not my will, I've rediscovered some of my writing from my move to my current position some 2 years ago. While I really do love my job, remembering that I wasn't so sure about it in the beginning reminds me that we truly do see through the glass dimly, but that God sees us and loves us through eternity.

After applying a dual anesthetic of profanity and Neosporin to my bleeding knee, I sat on the stairs in my ever-emptying townhouse and cried. I cried because I’d ripped a few layers of skin off my knee when I missed the step at my back door while loading my car of yet more personal belongings for my pending move. I cried because I was moving, leaving my faith community and personal community where I’d served for almost five years for a new ministry in an unfamiliar town in an equally unfamiliar state. I cried because I had acute anxiety about closing on my first home in this foreign land where people ate crawfish and gumbo and cheered for the LSU tigers. I cried because somewhere in this hurricane of emotions, I knew God was in the center, still and solid as always.

Actually, that annoyed more than comforted me.

I was in the storm of anxiety, grief, and when I allowed it, some happiness over the something new that I was entering, but I wasn’t fully ready for that part yet. I clamored for my inner Jeremiah, the prophet who spent about two-thirds of his prophecy kvetching in a grand way, even accusing God of seducing then raping him with prophecy.

No one could ever accuse Jeremiah of burying his anger.

Right now, with my bleeding knees and aching soul, his words had a place in my mouth. In the world of full-time Christian ministry, we love, and I mean LOVE, to talk about where God is calling us. We talk about prayer and discernment as if it’s a decision between the lobster and the filet mignon on the dinner menu. Or, chocolate and more chocolate. We think God’s call is exactly what we want, as if responding to God’s call in our lives is akin to submitting the list of classes you’d like to take this semester and getting an orderly schedule back with your earliest class at 10:00 am and no classes on Fridays.

"Whom shall I send to help my people? Who will tell of my great love, with absolutely no inconvenience to your own life?"

Me! Me! I’ll go! Send me.

Except that we added the last qualifying line about "no inconvenience." God really just asks the first line.

Going forth mean moving, and moving, and going away from comfort and friends. Moving away from prior mindsets and stubborn theology that is narrower than God asks. Moving away from what we want to what God wants.

I’ve walked this road before. One of the benefits of keeping journals is the almost total inability to remember selectively life events or even edit them to fit my current needs. Years before, when I drove away from the womb of seminary, where I lived in the most amazing city on earth (New York) among the most amazing people I knew and down the street from a Whole Foods, I cried then. Convinced I would never again find a community as wholly joyful and amazing at this one and I would never again shop at a Whole Foods, I gave myself permission to sob uncontrollably to the Pennsylvania border. I cried until I drove into my new home in one of the least amazing towns on earth in lower Alabama (my opinion at the time) where I would begin my ordained life.

The tears this time were tears of fear, perhaps, more than grief. I’d become very comfortable in my parish and in my town. I knew where things were placed and the bodies were buried. I'd even buried a few of the bodies myself. I knew the street names and the parishioners. I knew what I loved about my ministry and what I disliked about my ministry. I also knew, in that still, center place, that I’d become complacent and limited, and that I needed to go forth into the unknown.

Comfort has never truly seemed to have an easy place in the journey of God. God is forever moving people, uprooting them from family land and family businesses to trot them all over the Ancient Near East for these grand schemes like building an entire people and saving the whole of creation. Given the magnitude of the tasks, I suppose a bit of relocation is necessary, whether from the land of Ur of the land of lower Alabama.

Scent

Tonight, as I walked to the gym, the scent of sweet olive surrounded me. I remembered that someone told me that scent meant a cold winter. I certainly hope so. There is something amazing and powerful about scent. There is something about scent that catches one’s attention and evokes emotion, passion and memory.

I notice scents. In particular, I love it when men wear cologne- a good cologne. There is something about a good cologne that makes me smile. A good cologne can make me think of all that I love about men. Of course, it can also make me cringe with memories, but for the most part, I love that smell. You just want to breathe it in.

I often find I want to breathe in the smell of church. There is a particular scent in church. Sometimes it is musty and moldy. Sometimes the smells are lilies, incense, smoke or olive oil. All these scents blend together. Some notes of the fragrance are stronger than others at times. Together, this scent signifies life.

Each scent evokes an emotion, passion, a memory. The scent encourages us to breathe it in, to take that life into ourselves. Each scent is attached to a part of the living organism – the Church. Parts of her are being born. Parts are dying. Parts are healing. Parts are renewing. Each has a scent.

So what does your church smell like? Is it alive? Do you long to breathe it in? Or do we try to scrub and wipe away all those different scents? Does our church exude a terrible odor? What does our scent signify? What does our scent evoke in the world?

I hope that our scent, the scent of the Church, is a fragrance unlike any other. Not overpowering, but alluring and lasting, drawing each one of us ever closer to the fragrant offering of life.

The Bishop is coming!

The Bishop is coming! The Bishop is coming! Everybody run! I swear that the man must wear the same shoes that cat burglars wear because he seems to be able to sneak right into my office before I can hide under my desk. I have never seen such stealth exhibited in a fellow so, how should I say this, not stealth like. I mean the man wears an almost magenta colored shirt with a gigantic pectoral cross. Nothing subtle about that outfit.

Sometimes I feel like he shows up right as I am about to melt down. Usually, I am pretty composed. I think that my mental stability is, well, stable. Suddenly, I am swept up in some type of pastoral whirlwind. I become flustered. My hair gets frizzy, and my face breaks out. As if on cue, the purple shirted man walks through the door. He gets to witness me at my very worst. He then just looks at me like I am insane.

I suppose I am a little bit insane, but ministry is insane. Ministry is passionate and ridiculous. Some days are so quiet, and the next day people are screaming or crying or dying. Often working in a church can be tedious, even boring. You pass your time getting coffee, reading for your sermon, sending an e-mail, and then bam! Mrs. Smith’s prize tabby kicks it. The fire alarm goes off for no discernable reason. Newlyweds brandish silver butter knives at each other’s throats. The Bishop comes a calling.

Ministry, like the Bishop, just sneaks up on you. One moment you are having a simple conversation about acolyte robes and then you are consoling a friend having a hard week. You say a little prayer. The next moment you are welcoming an old friend, an unexpected joy, ministry on the fly.

So the Bishop sneaks in and then sneaks out. Quiet descends on the office. I guess I will go get a cup of coffee as soon as I get out from under my desk.

A Home of Her Own

I blamed the puddle on the kitchen floor on my dog Sophie, who sat, wagging her tail and gleefully chewing on her bone as I ranted about her apparent issues with appropriate places to pee. Then I felt the drip on my head. A quick sniff of the liquid I’d just mopped up was further proof that the puddle of water was from my leaking roof.

Yip – pee.

Oh, the joys of homeownership.

At least I live in a condominium, which means instead of stressing over roof repairs all by myself, I can call the front office, tell them of my newly acquired in-home water feature, then stress until it gets fixed. I became a home owner about two years ago, when I accepted a new call. My accountant, my parents, and my own common sense told me that I could afford to buy. I would appreciate the break on the irrationally high clergy income tax, and I would not end up like many of the clergy I knew who were retiring in their mid-60’s with no place to live because they’d spent their life in church-owned rectories. So I did the most sensible thing a first-time homebuyer could do – I came to my new city and allowed two days to buy a home. Sure, I did some research, and I did pre-qualify for a mortgage. But I decided that I’d have faith in the help of a new parishioner who, thanks be to God, was also a realtor.

Sometimes I push this faith in God a bit.

After a frantic day of looking at homes with kitchens from the 1960’s, yards that resembled the deepest Amazon jungle rather than suburban Louisiana, and foundations with cracks like gullies, my faith wavered. A few more tours of homes of former smokers who scented their home via Marlboro and cat owners who allowed kitties to use the front living room as the litter box, and I wondered if a complete crying fit would be inappropriate in front of a new parishioner/realtor.

Then we looked at the condominiums, which were the last resort on my list. Three condos later, I found my new home. I never thought I’d own a condominium, but I fell in love with the screened back gallery and marble countertops and the idea that I was the first to live here. No smokers, no feral cats, just me. After signing several thousand papers, I took the keys to my new home.

Okay, it wasn’t quite that easy. I endured the credit check and all the last minute snags that inevitably come with purchasing a home, including a frantic dash to the bank for a certified check for $38.17 because cash was not allowed. Then I signed several thousand papers and received the keys.

After a short drive to my new home, I opened the door to the empty space, sat down on the newly-installed hardwood floors, and cried. All this was my responsibility, from hanging the curtains on blazingly bare windows to fixing the pulls on the ceiling fans that were absent, and I’m not even that adept with a mop. The frightening words “sole responsibility” flashed before my eyes, and I felt sick.

This would all be so much easier if I had a husband. Wasn’t that on the rules of life for me? I was supposed to buy my first house with my husband, and he was supposed to know what to look for in a home and how to fix windows that don’t open and sinks that leak and all those boy things they’re supposed to know. That was the plan.

But God, as She usually does, reminds me that I don’t write the plan. My plan, in college, was to be a married agnostic, probably an English professor or an FBI agent (nothing like related career choices). I didn’t believe in religion then. I believed in spirituality, which meant I liked to believe in God on my terms without the annoying voices of others interjecting their experiences and thoughts which were likely different from mine. My boyfriend didn’t believe in God at all. We talked of our plans, which were vague and mostly ungrounded, and we were in love. Then we weren’t in love, because love that’s vague and ungrounded eventually dissipates. In my alone-ness, I went to law school to become Episcopalian.

Then, eventually, a priest.

And now, some years later, a single priest who is also a homeowner staring at a puddle of water coming from her ceiling.

But I am a priest. I hold the hands of the dying and I baptize babies. I’ve married people who were young and in that vague, ungrounded love who showed up in my office months or years later wondering why grounding love is so difficult. I preach the gospel to those who want to hear an exclusive version of it and stand in the fire of their wrath and invite them into the still center of community. I’ve marched for the rights of the disempowered and laughed with young people over South Park episodes.

I am a priest, and I am a woman, and I am not married. God tells me that those are descriptions of me and not definitions of my limits. I can figure out how to hang my curtains (I did). I can fix my leaky faucet, and I’ve learned when to call a repair person (anything electrical). I’ve discovered that I am capable of caulking bathtubs and fixing clogged drains, even painting a room or two.

In my life, in my home, and in my vocation, God reminds me that I, like all of humanity, am capable of much more than I often think. My leaky roof will be fixed, much more easily than some lives of my parishioners. I find my mop and soak up the water. Sophie chases the mop, and I feel God’s laughter as She tells me to look at what I did, on my own.

A version of this essay was previously published in Fidelia's Sisters

A Dress Called Sin

When I was 22 (not that long ago unless you are 22) I tried on the most beautiful red dress in the history of the world. It was the kind of dress that would be best described as sin like the dress in the book "The Greengage Summer." When I tried on that dress, it hit every perfect curve and dipped so far in front that I could not wear my bra with it. For that matter, I could not wear underwear with it. I bought that dress immediately, and I brought it home.

I tried to figure out where I would wear it. I went out looking for bras that might fit under it (to no avail). I tried to figure out how I could wear it out of the house before my mother saw me wearing it. I just knew that she would say something like: "You cannot wear that! It is positively garish!" But it wasn't a garish dress, it was sexy, but you know what? I wasn't sexy.

I didn't have the confidence to wear that dress then. Every now and then I would pull out that beautiful silk halter dress and try it on, but I never had the nerve to wear it out. After a while, I gave the dress away.

I look at pictures of me from that time, and frankly, I was smoking hot! I could have worn it. I had perky breasts, kicking curves, and no back fat (seriously, no back fat), but I did not have confidence. I had no where to wear it. I had no one to wear it for.

Unfortunately now I do have back fat. I have back fat, but I also have confidence. My beautiful red dress is gone. I wonder if where ever it is someone is actually wearing it. I hope so. I hope that woman (or man) is wearing the heck out of that dress. I hope that she (or he) feels beautiful and sexy in that dress, but that she (or he) knows that it isn't the dress that is sexy. It is who wears it.