LIVING ON THE EDGE AND IN THE CENTER

I’ve mentioned Barbara Brown Taylor’s LeavingChurch. On these long, dark, rainy nights, I have been rewarding the end of a long day with a re-read of her chapters. There’s something discomforting by the very cover, a cage door opened, and a bird set free. One gets the impression the wear and tear of ministry, the “omnipresence” of church culture, the confines of the institutional church began to slowly cage her in. As she puts it, “My context was so tightly focused that even my junk mail was Christian.” 

I have this haunting feeling that a lot of us in the church get to this place—where we become so immersed in our work that our contact with creation shrinks to the distance between our front door and the driveway; our exchange with those outside the church becomes confined to a transaction with a cashier at Safeway. Taylor came to a place of “compassion fatigue,” leading to a move from the staff of a large urban church to a small rural church. But eventually, it led her all of the way into the wilderness. She found that in order to keep her faith she had to leave her role as a pastor, her “institutional power,” as she puts it, her role of standing up every week in special clothes and talking while people quietly listen.

In the wilderness, where the collar came off, she began to see how her ministry role had “cut into her soul.” Listen to the way she puts it: “I needed the soul’s wisdom to do my work. I needed its compassion. But I had too often failed to set it loose in its own pasture at night, where it could kick its heels and roll in the dirt. I had kept my soul so hitched to the plow that it stood between the traces even after the harness was off, oiled, and hung on the wall.” But now, the harness is off.

God, I love good writing. But some of the best writing also makes me squirm in my bed. Out from the demands and expectations of ministry, she found herself simply another of God’s beggars. Out away from the work, she discovered that God has both a center and an edge—and that each is necessary for the soul. That sometimes you have to step out, “where the lights from the sanctuary no longer pierce the darkness.”  Out unto the brink, the wilderness, where you discover needed things about yourself, needed things about the Spirit. Jesus occasionally lived out on the edge, where the Spirit wasn’t always so safe, thrusting Him into the wilderness to face His hunger, face the adversary, and experience the Father’s love.

Somehow this resonates with me, not because I am contemplating leaving ministry. I love ministry. I just want to be careful that the role does not so cut into my soul that my interior becomes defined by its ruts. That I don’t get so attached to the pastoral identity given me that I would not know how to make up one of my own. My grandfather was a pastor, and its role so defined him that I never saw him without a tie—ever. I don’t remember him as anything else but clergy.

I don’t want to close myself in the center, where it is safe, and get so caught up in ministry that I start speaking Christianize, so immersed I am scared of ever setting foot into the wilderness—and would not know what to do if God thrusts me there (which He has been known to do).

Yesterday I met with an old friend I had not seen in years. In the comforts of my seminary study, surrounded by books, we reminisced on our earlier times in the literal wilderness, surrounded by the wild. Hiking the Jefferson Wilderness in the summer, snow camping on a frozen TrilliumLakein the winter, biking trails that burned our lungs. But we’re not so inclined to go there anymore. I’m inclined to stay closer to the center. Taylor urges me to take care to live in both worlds, both literal and metaphoric.

 

Comments

[JD]

True words indeed! It seems that at times (possibly without knowing) that we leave one of the worlds and start to stay in one. It might be part of the whole comfort factor. We do not want to leave our comfort zone. It is like what an earlier commenter said. God might want us out of it and if we don't heed it too soon and listen, God might force us to listen. Perhaps I'm wrong. God is a good God, but we all know that, there is also the God that is our general and the one who guides us not only gently but a bit forcefully.

[Scott Davison]

John,

I've got the snowshoes and hiking gear, you pick the day and we'll make it happen. Camping on Trillium sounds fun.

I am glad you are digging into the reality that many of us seem far less connected than we realized.

[Debbie Hays]

I, like you, enjoy reading a well written book that seems to capture the very heart of my soul. When such a book comes along that challenges me to search deep within, I am so grateful yet a little fearful at the same time. Ms. Taylor's book sounds so much like many of us really, but what does one do when they have gone into the wilderness and have no desire to come back? Does she deal with that issue in her book? I ask only because I stopped teaching at church and elsewhere, long ago and have not come back. (I know that I cannot be alone out here!) My teaching now stays in the secular realm and I watch others in the christian arena at a distance. For years you would have always found me either teaching adults, college, and/or high schoolers at church, leading home fellowships and speaking at women's retreats. I've even had the wonderful privilege of being on christian television. But no more. And it's not that I haven't been asked, it has just been easier to stay where I am, here in the wilderness. Don't misunderstand my post. I still go to church, Sunday mornings only now, I still have my daily devotions and I still pray, cry out to God with all of my heart, continually. However, (even though I KNOW I've been gifted to to be a teacher) I remain in the wilderness and I know that it has been by my own choosing. I just wonder how long He will let me stay here for I have become rather comfortable.

Thanks for your post. Love, your sister