The day of Thanksgiving upon
which I became engaged, I could not have imagined that my marital commitment
would require sharing the love of my life with hundreds of people and their
extended families. I have arguably loved only one man in my life, in a sexual
and relationally committed way. Perhaps that weakens my realism about human
love, imagined in idealism of spirit. The love of my life is also my first
love, one with a radicalized bent for loyalty and singularity of focus upon me.
We were chosen well for one another, as I struggle to trust within embodied
love. It was therefore a surprise to both of us that for the last ten years, our
marriage commitment has required me to share him, has required a silent and
silencing allowance of a mistress. So I write an open letter from wife to
mistress, Everywhere Presbyterian Church.
I became aware of you in this
light only slowly and in particular events. The cover that work affords. The
evening meetings. The emotional demands and delights spent in ways that did not
involve me…not only did not involve me, but required my absence. Functioned
better for him and for you without me. The interruption of vacations with
calls, allowable even on our supposedly private time. The entrance of your
presence in our bedroom, our most intimate of time and space. Though do not
misunderstand: my beloved and I discussed you, your needs, your communal
neuroses constantly. It is not as if this unbidden presence were secret in any
way. We continued to enact and live into the love given us; but I eventually
realized you had become the dominant force within a year of our life here. Even
when my own body and sexual identity were exploited for amusement and the sake
of ignorance, your power and primacy were irrefutable. How does a woman persuade against the holiness, importance, and demands
of Mistress Church? She claims to have direct and exclusive line to God, after
all. The best strategy is to know when you’ve been beat and listen for what you
can learn, listen for redemption of the mess we humans make of covenantal love.
Because redemption does happen. Spirit takes what you do, what we
least value, even what we are most ashamed of and enlivens it for holy purpose
and absolute delight. Even as my anger is palpable, aimed at what I feel deeply
as your intimate intrusion and some kind of betrayal, I also know this
covenantal chaos and multiplicity to be the root of my own body’s healing, the
seed of stability in my life of companionships, the invitation to an expressive
theological delight able to companion my own suffering and that of others. This
moral outrage has given me my life’s blood, my life’s work. Who I am today—a
lavishly loved woman able to consciously enjoy multiple covenantal intimacies
of Spirit—is a direct result of your presence, your intrusion and neediness, in
the life of me and my beloved. So, go figure. Spirit’s life-giving force takes
the ugly ways human treat one another and redeems them, turns them into seeds
of new life previously inconceivable.
So am I thankful on this anniversary day of celebration and
recognition? I am thankful for the fruits of the Spirit made flesh in these
years—nothing more, nothing less. As Brother Paul has professed, “the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.” I am thankful for the love that my husband
enjoys in his day-to-day ministries in your midst. In the Bible study group on
Wednesday mornings where he gets to share his love of Scripture, his passion
for God’s people. I am thankful for the moments of joy this path has enabled
within him—usually times away from the church, when he is reminded of Whose he
is and the beauty of his own Archimidean point on the unchangeable rocks of
Grand Marais, Minnesota. I am thankful for the peace of mind he receives when
offering his many gifts of competent leadership, liturgical passion, political
precision and more. I have seen patience
and kindness grow within him, as he faces those completely other from himself.
I have always known his generosity and faithfulness, his gentleness of spirit.
Even when he is angry, perhaps most when he is angry. And I am thankful for how
his preaching voice has developed, his vision for God’s work in today’s
changing times is growing, the many ways in which his self-control has
shepherded his own growth, our own. Because you see, he and I are of one flesh,
as created in God’s way with us before we ever arrived here.
And my own relationship with you, Mistress Church? You have forced
the death of my own idealism about congregational life. I no longer believe
that congregational life is the root of revelation(s) through Scripture for a
life of discipleship, though I know that one can be a disciple underneath and
hidden from or within a congregational community. What this little death (J) means for my own offerings to
God toward a theological nurture of
God’s people, I am continuing to learn with each new companion of Spirit I meet.
I am overwhelmingly thankful for those who have guided my steps, who have
carried my spirit during this period of learnings, who continue to live in
covenant with me toward larger redemptive pursuits to come. And I love fiercely the one I have been given to love, whom I lose and find over and over again, for the very rest of my life. Our beloved Brian.
