When I was in
college, as part of my gender studies degree I read feminist psychology about
the gendered nature of self-perception. Rather than as isolated individuals,
women (I’m just leaving
right on the floor here the fact that “woman” is a complicated category and
acknowledging the work I’m remembering relies on some conventional stereotypes
and antiquated assumptions) often perceive their identity and place in the world relationally. Not as self-over-and-against the world, but as
self understood through relationships with other people. This is presumed to be
a good thing: the rugged individual who prioritizes (um) *him*self does not
always tend to place care for others at the center of their lives. But it also cuts the other way: it’s great to
be connected to others. If, though,
someone is defined only through others to whom they are connected, the strength
and self-differentiation of that individual perhaps does not make them the
fiercest bear in the room.
As a priest, I
experienced this relational understanding a lot—not so much in terms of how I understood myself as an individual,
but how I understood myself as a priest. Being a priest was relational:
identified with that particular parish. This is not how the Episcopal/Anglican
tradition views ordination: it’s seen as an “ontological change,” a change in
who you are, period. You can be
home with your kids or working as a pastry chef or at a homeless shelter, but
you’re still a priest. It’s not a role grounded in a permanent identity, not a
temporary task. But what does it mean without a church?
The church still
has invested in me the power to, as the ordination rite says, “to preach, to declare
God's forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God's blessing, [and] to
share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the
mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood.” “I’m
not a parish priest right now, with baptisms and communion to celebrate—that’s
the only kind of priest I’d ever been.
I was most
powerfully struck by this recently at Wild Goose Festival, which my family has
attended for the last five summers. The
festival is themed on music, art, spirituality, and justice, with speakers and
readings and performances on assorted related themes. It attracts a variety of
religious impulses but is generally progressive and Christian. There’s a lot of mud (you camp) and feral
children roam in packs demanding money for lemonade and ice cream. It's heavenly.
 |
| Beer and Hymns, Wild Goose (just beer, and hymns. that's it.) |
Every other time
I’ve gone to Wild Goose I’ve done so on my church’s dime as “continuing education.” The parish funded
the trip both in terms of time off from my usual work and money for gas and the
ticket to get in. As a result, my
experience there was filtered through the lens of my perception of
responsibility to my parish: looking for shiny things to bring home. Continuing
education time is part of the standard clergy contract—you couldn’t use it to
go shopping in Jamaica, but there are no set expectations for how robust a
“payoff” it is to the congregation. Still, there’s some sense that you ought to
carry away something useful, like ideas for children’s education or profound
spiritual experience or social justice insight.
Being at Wild
Goose without a parish behind me, I realized I wasn’t constantly packaging my
experience for the consumption of others.
I was just…there. And I was aware of how pleasant—holy, even!— it was just
to be there. Ironically, I wrote a blog post about the holiness of thereness three years ago (here) and continue to
learn my own lesson. This year at Wild Goose, I didn’t go looking for the next
genius thing. I went to workshops led by my friends. Hours spent on the state of public education
or protest poetry could have been relevant enough to parish ministry, but not
to have to ask the question in the first place made me realize how heavy a
burden it had become to be manufacturing those tiny parcels of insight in the
back of my mind.
Newsflash: I
didn’t have to. I didn’t have to prove how clever or worthy I was. I didn’t
have to spin straw into gold. My job as a priest was also in the other part in
the ordination rite: “to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring
alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor.” Just love. To point to where we and God are
connected. To be connected myself. My understanding of priesthood evidently
needed less relationality between me and the people and more
relationality between all of us and God.
Being a priest isn’t about standing in front and saying smart things. When
it feels like it is, it’s time to try being a priest in a different way. This time away is inviting me into that other
space.
My experience of
being a priest at Wild Goose Festival without a congregation helped me to have
a sense for how I was still a priest even without a congregation. This view of
having been a priest having “my” people—I even did it in the last paragraph
there without thinking—it too easily slips into carrying a ridiculous burden
that deadens the clergy and infantilizes the congregation. It’s like church architecture that puts the
altar at the front of the church and the priest behind it; everyone’s looking
at you. You’re there, and you might as
well pray from there so everyone can see. The older practice of having everyone
face forward and the congregation see the back of the priest isn’t better,
necessarily, but it’s crucial to remember that being in front isn’t the point.
Crucially, too, I
also realize how much I relied on that identity and that congregation to tell
me who I was. My priesthood is more than
that particular context, and my personhood is more than as a working parish
priest. Having been more creaturely these
last months (a la Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese poem,below, allowing the soft
animal of my body to love what it loves) I’m also aware that I’m more than the
kid sleepovers and setting up house and landing in a new community and (having
moved to a Trump state) political protests I’ve been part of. More than the suburban lawn I have to go mow
now, too.
(And, because it
is impossible to read it too many times, here’s Oliver's whole poem)
You
do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary
Oliver, “Wild Geese” in Dream Work, 1986,
[Gratuitous photograph of children running hand in hand toward Lake Erie, August 2017]
