Searching for God # 62

 In the previous post about money in a parish setting, I mentioned a church form of ‘social hierarchy’ and failed to include the elevated status of the parish treasurer. As the ‘guardian’ of the purse strings, this person has a unique perspective on the affairs of the budget, administration and the potential collision of needs and a shrinking bank account. The social elevation is not connected to the character or the personality of the man or women serving in that position; it is merely a shared perception that ‘what goes on in the church community always and inevitably passes through the hands, eyes, ears and calculations of the treasurer.

And, speaking of treasurers, and administration in general, another aspect of the small and medium-sized church (perhaps of all sizes), is the kind of leadership and culture that develops. Some have offered thoughts on the role of the clergy, including one with a title something like, ‘The Impossible Profession’.

Think for a moment of the roles expected of the clergy, sketched sometimes in 2H pencil, other times in India ink in the imaginations of the men and women in the church. Homilist, celebrant, scholar, religious educator/teacher, pastoral counsellor, chaplain (to prison, hospital, college), liturgist, ‘cantor’, fund-raiser, bridge to the community, chair of the parish council, crisis intervenor, surrogate parent, picnic cheer-leader (and organizer), talent-developer, media-contact, strategic planner and liaison to a central church office (Diocese)…..just some of the various jobs many of which overlap in a perceived ‘personality gestalt’ which is either comfortable or not so much to the critical and important people in the parish.

The cliché attending many beginning clerics runs something like this,” comfort the afflicted  and afflict the comfortable” a phrase originating with American satirist Peter Dunne, when describing the role of a newspaper. The phrase has also been attributed to the Mexican poet, Cesar A. Cruz who used it in a poem about art:

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable .

Hypothetically, try to imagine such a light beacon in the midst of a specific moment of either crisis, or emergency, in palliative care, or in funeral planning…and how the adage might guide the conversation. Family members in grief do not operate on the same emotional or cognitive or social planes that would be their comfort zone outside of their grief. On the other hand, those planning celebrations such as a wedding often have highly elevated emotions as well as  their expectations. One wedding dress rehearsal I attempted to conduct the whole party had been out drinking the whole afternoon prior to the rehearsal, and I felt as if I was hearding cats, and not compliant felines. I very nearly threatened to cancel both the rehearsal and the ceremony itself, and politely recommend the party find another celebrant. Nevertheless, I bit my lip, turned my head, counted to 10 and attempted to finish the task.

The perception that is/was reinforced each and every time I entered a situation with a family or an individual, surprisingly especially to a neophyte, is that the situation had its own ‘special’ and heightened aspects, perhaps of a family history, or a personal dream or fear, or a previous unpacked memory that spoke new insights for the very first time, or….Naturally, in each and every private personal encounter, not so much in groups, the clergy is legitimately expected to observe the letter of the expectation of confidentiality. And, given that such a perception is shared by both the parishioner and the clergy, there is the potential for a moment of self-disclosure for which neither was or could be fully prepared.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book entitled, Surprised by Joy, as part of his renowned series of religious, spiritual text. I would reframe his title, when reflecting on a dozen years in active ministry, to something like ‘Surprised by Surprise!’…..Nothing could be more surprising that to enter a hospital room of a dying woman with her husband and the chaplain trainer/supervisor, as the husband politely intoned, ‘Ruth, John is here to say a prayer.’ Instantly, the previously sleeping woman opened her eyes, and quietly yet pleasantly responded, “Oh, it’s so soon; I haven’t said my goodbyes.” To which the shocked husband attempted to lower the tension: ‘No, no, it’s just a prayer, dear!’ Ruth died later that day, and the chaplain supervisor, while conducting the funeral, noted that that moment was the moment Ruth ‘let go’ into a peaceful death.

Surprised by surprise also attends to the memorable, penetrating and soul-shifting experience of attending an autopsy, for the purpose of observing, reflecting and ruminating about the meaning, the theology and the divinity of that life and the whole of life itself. Nervous, anxious, filled with trepidation, and fear of the unknown, the experience of disclosing my apprehension to the supervisor, (written about previously in this space) has been a line of relief, sensitivity and empathy that has served in multiple moments in the intervening three decades: “Just go to the autopsy and give yourself permission to leave at any time when you are in there!” were his words.

The surprise, partly that the supervisor was formally granting permission to leave, if the experience became too much, and partly that the experience, which he already knew would be a dramatic, if not a traumatic one, for chaplain trainees, needed to be broken into ‘smaller’ bites to be absorbed, integrated, and withstood. It was a brilliant piece of professional, pastoral pedagogy and mentorship, likely the best of my eighty-plus years. The experience itself was unforgettable, and  moving and humbling, as one came face-to-face with the intricate complexities of multiple interconnected and mutually dependent systems that had sustained the life of a 61-year-old woman who had died suddenly of a brain tumor. No biology class, or anatomy class, without the experience of the ‘wholeness,’ the totality of the human being, could bring one up short as that afternoon did for this naïve candidate.

Engaged in the lives of others from birth to adolescence, to young adult, to middle age and then into the grey-beard stage, evokes one’s person, not merely some skill set or sets, but the whole of one’s person: one’s ability to perceive, to listen, to digest, to embrace, to imaging and to wonder….it is the aspect of wonder that is so reinforced by the opportunity to share in those lives, especially when they are often ‘on the edge’ as it were.

The notion of a human life, not from the perspective of the pathologist who conducted that autopsy, but from a ‘whole’ perspective including thoughts, feelings, dreams fantasies, finalities and identifications cannot help but fill one’s life’s ‘cup’ to overflowing with awe, wonder, amazement, astonishment and ….what are other words to say what is unspeakable?

No reductionisms there, no medical diagnosis or legal arguments, and no objectifying of human life into a physical entity only! Such a perception is neither warranted nor even contemplated in such an experience. Of course, the pathologist was charged with determining the cause of death (a lung tumor that metastasized to the brain); that analysis, however, did not in any way compromise the awe and the wonder and the surprise, nor could it!

And then there is the parishioner who becomes quite angry, disappointed and withdrawn from the affairs of a parish, after years of active participation and tells the church council that the clergy has ‘yelled at me’ over the phone. Sadly, that was neither true nor necessary, although I had made some tutorial remarks about attempting to inject more grace into my own life and modus operandi. And when the council demanded that I visit that woman, I immediately agreed on the condition that one of them accompany me, so that there would be a witness to whatever might transpire. Of course, no one would agree to such a boundary. The visit never took place and my stay was cut short, shortly thereafter.

Of course, there is a very old man nearing the end of his life here, lying in the hospital bed and whispering to one of his friends and me, “I am not ready to meet God because I am not good enough. I have been dreaming and in my dreams I am throwing bales of hay up into the hayloft. And the more bales I throw, the more empty is the space into which I am throwing them. And that tells me how inadequate I am, and how disappointed God is going to be with me.”

And the instincts of one who legitimately counters the stated import of such a dream and God’s anticipated rejection of this man’s spirit and life, the clergy, are instantly magnetized. “God is not seeing your dream in the same light that you are describing it,” I lamely muttered, and “I have no doubt that your welcome will be one of love and comfort.” A prayer attempting to comfort the man followed, irrespective of how meagre and insignificant it was. It was an honest attempt to ‘be’ with him in that moment.

This space is filling, not with the administrivia of the role, and the experience, but with the less-talked-about and yet the more significant moments of one’s encounters with the mysteries of life.

And it is in and through the mysteries that this scribe contends we come closest to anything remotely associated with the divine, God, and the question of the meaning, purpose and fullness of life.

And, so, disturbing the comfortable, at least for this scribe, was to gently, relentlessly, persistently and almost incorrigibly, introduce questions about the unconscious, those thoughts, images, tears, fears, hopes and dreams that someone might be imagining without actually bringing them into consciousness. ‘What might those tears be saying, if they could talk?’ was a sample question that, for some, brought irritation, for others, a quizzical look, silence and then….a potential, insightful and surprising response.

A conversation with a former warden, prior to my appointment as a student intern to his parish has jumped into my head. I was curious about his relationship with God, and how he saw the parish contributing to that relationship. One of the words he uttered comes back, “I am a fatalist!’ and quite comfortable with that. I rarely ever am surprised or shocked by whatever might happen; it happens because of fate. After the conversation, over breakfast in the King Edward hotel in Toronto, he reportedly commented to the bishop, “That guy is scary, he got to know be better than I was comfortable with in very short order.”

And therein lies a great conundrum for any even thinking or imagining a life as a practicing cleric. Seeing into the lives of men and women, into places that they would definitely (and perhaps defiantly) wish to keep private is almost inevitable. The opportunity for sharing is conditioned by a mutual (if unwritten) perception of confidentiality, lends itself to men and women feeling less constrained than they might otherwise be, in a conversation with someone over coffee about the weather or the sports scores or the political scene.

So, in a not-so-insignificant-manner, the clergy can become a surprising mirror and echo chamber to another person caught up in his or her own affairs. And, often when that realization comes to the surface of consciousness, perhaps for the first time in that person’s whole life, the reaction can be quite unsettling. It is not that the cleric is attempting overtly to disturb; the context and the intensity of the listening, and the surprising new insight that might come to the forefront of the mind of the man or woman, can be troubling. And the only person, unrelated to family and loved ones, that might be associated with that discomfort, is that damned cleric.

We need not be the world’s most highly efficient, highly effective executive administrators; indeed, if that is our forte, then perhaps we might be better off in some corporation. We need not be the world’s best plumbers, electricians, doctors or lawyers. It is our lot to be the most attentive ‘other’ that each person can or could meet (given our own capacity to enter into the fears, hopes, dreams and fantasies both of ourselves and of the other, because that capacity is linked).

Clerics are not looking for honours here, reputations of growth of dollars or even of bodies in pews. Clerics are sharing their most intimate, private and spiritual fears, hopes, dreams, fantasies and anxieties, especially around important questions like meaning, purpose and mortality.

It is as hard, if not impossible to ‘train’ for such a role as it is hard and possibly impossible to incarnate such a role, given to the degree each of us is and always will be a ‘work in progress.’