22/50: Forty and On
Chris and I lucked into seeing the original cast of Wicked in San Francisco before it opened in NYC. This song has always felt like a reflection and a calling forth.
“I don’t want to end up a bureaucrat in the time-management business for God or a librarian cataloguing timeless truths. Salvation is kicking in the womb of creation right now, any time now. Pay attention.”
I graduated from seminary with honors and became ordained as a Presbyterian pastor after seven years of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual work. It was a productive time externally, but I consider those to be years of exile. Leaving the structures of my childhood and early adulthood cost me the easy familiarity and common faith understanding that I had been surrounded by my entire life. Though many understandably question God and struggle with Jesus, I never did. I followed God all the way out of conservative evangelicalism. The freedom of a newfound way of faith allowed me to fearlessly and joyfully explore, but the journey was painful and the scars remain.
What I had questioned was institutional religion. I pursued a Masters of Divinity (the professional degree for pastors) for the breadth of it, not because I wanted to be a pastor. I seriously considered doctoral work in theology, but I was willing to pastor a church that met a few qualifications: 1) It needed to not be tied to dogma and had room for me to continue to for and explore, 2) It needed to balance justice and spiritual format, 3) It needed to be willing to innovate on the forms and structure of church.
First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon met and exceeded all of those qualifications. I was called as the Associate Pastor for Justice, Spirituality and Community in 2011.
It was important to move out of the Bay Area to “become” a pastor. I created a professional identity away from home. I added the role of working mom to a new job in a new state. But I felt like I was starting late and needed to catch up to my peers. Having grown up in a world where women did not lead, I was internally insecure and unstable. In seminary, I had looked to my grades to prove that I had made the right choice. As a pastor, I was driven to succeed to prove that all the sacrifice that I and my family had made was worth it. This was a recipe for over functioning and burnout. It still is a growing edge for me. However, Bend was full of growth, thanks to the confluence of friends, mentors, and a church that loved and trusted me more than I trusted myself.
Church has been the source of so much pain, but it has also been a place of healing. I’m now that person in front of church, knowing that every person before me is on their own journey. If I wasn’t at the front, I’d probably be in the back still, worried that if they really knew the questions I have and struggles with church structures that trip me up, I might not be accepted. There are days when I’d rather be in the back, but I know how desperate I was for someone to make a safe space for me twenty years ago. And now I get to create safe space for others.