Singing into an Empty Sanctuary

I couldn’t stop crying this past Palm Sunday, sitting in an empty sanctuary, preparing to sing a solo for a congregation’s online worship service. Deep belly sobs came. So strange, it felt, so odd. I was sitting in a place I never feel at home in anyway...so what gives…what is the intensity about?

Part of me feels a bit ‘caught’ in this, as I rarely enter a sanctuary anymore without a deep sense of conflict in my body…
I am very thankful that sanctuaries like this exist for those who yearn for them, are nourished within them and the shared practices therein. My impulses? 1) Stay to be heard and teach and transform from within traditions and systems unconsciously refusing the experiences and healing ways of women (or the feminine, if you prefer).
2) Get the hell out of Dodge and let all those who are nourished in these old ways go with God, in peace, leaving me to the freedom my own spirit needs from...??? But…

Two weeks ago, I got asked by a friend’s husband, who is also a pastor, to sing a couple moldy-oldies for his congregation’s online worship service. Sure, I said, without much attraction or aversion. How Great Thou Art. Great is Thy Faithfulness. Blessed Assurance. I do NOT feel conflict in offering gifts to older Christian populations who do not feel the jarring language and hierarchical baggage in these hymns. My voice is apparently a gift for many of them, and it’s easy for me to offer it. Perhaps this is because I have few expectations that older populations can flex 'forward' or 'outward', so it simply is what it is.

My own husband did not want to be outdone, of course, so asked if I would sing for the Palm Sunday morning in his congregation’s…maybe at some point our congregation’s…online service. Sure, I said, without much aversion or attraction. True to form, the choir director wanted me to sing something from Fauré—the Palms—a classical choral-soloist-show piece. I was girding my loins to do so, but the accompanist had to change at the last minute. Blessedly, because I got to choose a simple hymn to sing, which would press me much less.

I was eager for the morning to be over, but not overly anxious about any of it. Then…

...something broke open in me. I could not stop crying. The empty pews. The energies of yearning for togetherness in a huge room of no physical connection at all. Before the service, I had brought my own energies to remembering and welcoming the faces of those who so yearned to be there...who were with us through the online portal. But there I sat--a woman who doesn't really ever feel at home being there anymore. What was I to receive or learn, being there when so many who really wanted to be there could not? Grief overwhelmed me, presumably for those who so yearned to be there yet could not, for my own for being there, feeling so very alone... 

Quarantine, then?
Life has changed.
We can no longer gather in congregational ways, or in any fashion, for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully, I got it together before I had to sing my little ditty about Hosannas and little children. Well, not a ditty…a hymn of processional entry. But…I am aware I am weary… I’m not letting the grief go very easily. 

Perhaps I cannot let it go until it tells me its name.

* * * * * * * * * *

My Grief name is Loneliness, it says.

Feeling not at home in congregational sanctuaries is a long and seemingly irresolvable storyline in my life now. If you are not aware of it, you should know I had felt completely at home in congregational sanctuaries for nearly 40 years, give or take a year, here and there (like adolescence). For the last 5-10 years, in a very gentle and not-so-gentle transformational journey into deeper and deeper spiritual friendships across traditions and none, my capacity and experience have changed. I now avoid congregational sanctuary spaces as often as I can, even while sustaining a continued call to seminary teaching and teaching-elder orders in a Protestant denomination. I attend formal worship settings when my calling requires it, acknowledging in myself, every time, the lack of women's voices, pronouns, ways. I sign in for Presbytery meetings, at least once a year, so to remain 'on the books' for as long as Spirit seems to require it. It was a community that shaped me in its ways, and one I served in leadership capacities for years...until it became that no longer. I enter into some congregational opportunities in my husband's calling, though not as many as many of them would like. The easier ones for me are those outside of 'the normal Sunday', like a pilgrimage to Israel or Theology on Tap. 

On the one hand, very few particular people have created or caused this discomfort in me. A few have, of course, but those injuries are well known and digested into stories by now, with the hurt met in genuine forgiveness and understanding. I am actually thankful now for those persons' journeys, those events that grew and awakened me, us all. On the other hand, the discomfort is unending in congregational sanctuaries because so seemingly few are able to see? willing to see? supposed to see? what I've been given to see and feel and know: a calling into Restorative Wisdom in the archetype of the Circle, welcomed by human beings who are willing and able and...?

I guess that's part of this... I feel so overwhelmingly lonely in congregational sanctuaries, while surrounded by well-meaning and good-hearted Christian people who are not interested or able to see/hear what I cherish so passionately now. For whatever reason, the majority of faithful Christian persons in my life are not called into or interested in or willing to enter into new ways of gathering, new ways of being human together...in the archetype of the circle. Including my pastor-husband, I might add. Folks in these settings are embedded in habits and practices that are no longer nourishing for me, but still deeply nourishing for them. There are times when I am envious, to be honest, though Envy is not the name of what I've been holding this week. So I remain mostly outside of the church sanctuary, in the twilight of the 'church yard,' to use a Barbara Brown Taylor image. And for the most part, I love it here, can thrive here. I can find just enough oxygen here to see what is happening within the "church walls" but yet breathe in the New I've been given to know.

And yet...and yet...I want and need to be surrounded by those drawn into more of the New, less of the Ancient...(though arguably even more Ancient than the denominational congregation). Those trusting a space co-created by whomever shows up, not by those 'in authority,' which by and large puts me into non-religious/non-ordained communities of inquiry, practice. I want to be with those risking into vulnerability and awakenings that are anything but comfortable. Those holding divine Scripture loosely or even not at all, because more of us are finally admitting: there are not enough initiated adults who are able to hold paradoxes and contradictions with compassion across anger. Any deep dive into the Scriptures (broadly understood to include Torah/Talmud and others' Scriptures) requires this both/and of holding paradoxes and sustaining compassion in anger. I know very few Christians who are able to sustain this both/and...at least when they are holding onto the either/or's our Scriptures offer with an idolatrous preference for certainty, historical-critical scholarship, and security. I don't know how to be immersed in Scripture AND hold the both/ands my own experience has invited and grounded me in. No judgment or shame or blame here...just a sadness and grief at the loneliness I feel IN Christian settings.

Not surprisingly, I love being on the periphery of conversations with pluralist Jews right now. The classic joke: an issue arises between two rabbis, and three perspectives will be there. At the very least. Probably more.

So...singing into the empty sanctuary was probably the most honest and obvious mirror of how I feel in Christian sanctuaries all the time. For me, the feeling was the same, whether the people were there or not. I wish it were not so, yet feel freed to name what I do know. 

I don't know quite what to do with that learning, that awareness. I don't want or need congregational members to see me/hear me...because I have been gifted with circle upon circle of women who see me and hear me regularly. But it does hurt to realize that I can be surrounded by congregational members...or not...and still feel the loneliness in a sanctuary space. I grieve the days when entering a sanctuary felt in my flesh and bones Invited, Welcoming, Desired.

My name is Loneliness. Seeing while not being seen. Listening while not being heard. Singing with no one else singing along...in places that used to be Home.

Betrayal -- Musings on a Holy Saturday

Betrayal. This word was thrown at me this week by a beloved partner, in his own fear and anger that my actions could bring the virus into our home. The details are less important—he said, she said etc.—than the power of that word for both of us. The word has lived amongst us in our marriage for nearly two decades, after all, though neither of us likes seeing how each has betrayed the trust of the other. The rupture this week seems to have passed over us in these holy days, yet I’m left with wonderings that beckon…

At root, without judgment or accusation, ‘betrayal’ points to a rupture in expectations and need, dependence and impermanence. From within the story, one person’s actions do not meet the expectations or needs of another. A sense of rupture arises because the one who is surprised thought the other shared his/her assumptions, need, expectations. In the throes of fear or anger, it feels like trust has broken, an agreement has been ruptured. An assurance or dependability feels torn open, like a wound.

Place this into the context of a healthy and determined marriage between two very different people who yet embody a love for one another in the best ways they know. What does betrayal mean in a container of determined and lived trust, for decades? As I wrestled with my own feelings from this encounter, I found myself smiling with a quiet, wry thought: Who has been married for nearly twenty years and not betrayed his/her partner? We betray each other all the time.

Some of the betrayals have been large, requiring ongoing decisions of steadiness to stay the course of union. On the one hand, making a big promise at engagement that is then refused fulfillment in the early months of marriage or on the other, emotional investments in spiritually intimate companionships that nourish one but threaten the other in the marriage bond. Both can be considered big betrayals of the primacy of the marriage.

Then there are the small betrayals, like… You said you were going to go on a walk and keep six feet apart….and you didn’t. or You left the basement window open again…or You said tonight was our night and now you say you have to work? or All I wanted was one hour of your undivided attention and time, and you forgot to show up. These ‘betrayals’ are the natural complement to living in close proximity with another person, in a deeper intimacy than the kind that feels good all the time. These small ones can take the form of ‘felt large ones’ if the stress level is high enough. Say, in a global pandemic.

Both ‘large’ and ‘small’ betrayals can be considered necessary choices, if they are indeed conscious and intentional choices. Many of our betrayals are not conscious choices, but actions made from wounded places needing healing. Many betrayals are unconscious actions, made by living in worlds and assumptions not shared by the other, not needing to be shared by the other. In this sense, the conscious discernments can be made to preserve the marriage, amidst family dynamics and spiritual growth. A committed, devoted marriage can actually grow and expand to envelop the divergences in the needs of each. I would even argue that a healthy marriage needs to expand in this fashion, in order to stay alive, to thrive.

So how does one sustain the steadiness of devotion when s/he feels betrayed by the other?

For myself, the first thing I’ve learned to do is breathe. Count to ten, or twenty, to welcome the feeling of being accused…or desiring to accuse. Anger and rage may be the best energy to welcome, to release in healthy ways, outside of the immediate relational spaces.

Speaking as a woman in a historic tradition of Christian faith, I have spent probably 5-6 years enraged at the betrayals of my own faith communities and our institutions—betrayals of neglect and silencing, shaming of bodies and dissociations of spirit, utter refusals to awaken to the hidden and overt pains of women’s experience, wisdom. The God I was traditioned into ultimately broke herSelf open to awaken me to a deeper and more profound Way of Restorative Wisdom; yet I am now deeply suspicious of any ‘new’ God language at all. Such is the depth of my being betrayed by what/who I was told was Sacred.

My task in these years has been to find the fidelity in betrayal, to use Peter Rollins phrasing…to search for the deeper Story, the implicit Way, the healing Path of wholeness and restoration. I chose for years to stay in a kind of relationship (marriage) and a (male-normed) worldview that has betrayed me as a woman for centuries. Unconsciously and in my situations, without malice, but no less genuinely and deeply betrayed. Alongside this raw enraged journey, a Way of Wisdom did find me, in such abundance and overwhelming fruit of Spirit that I/we could not but surrender and receive. I surrendered to its Invitations, diverging from all I had known before. I breathed through the incongruities and the potential threats that could implode a life. All the while, I knew that my surrender into this restorative Wisdom way could and even would be experienced as betrayal by many in my life. And it was. It was experienced as rupture, incomprehensibility, and worse, complete with refusal, requests for no contact by those who said they loved me, and attempted interventions to coerce me back into previous norms. It still appears in my marriage sometimes as felt-betrayal…

…because my beloved partner and I no longer share his worldview, his commitment to the church, his need for security and dependability in his own eyes. I respect his worldview, as it is so present and collaboratively created by so many in our world today. But I no longer share it. The world has grown so much more mysterious and interactive, energetic and inviting for me, for those with whom I do share a worldview. My work is being in my own world, now, here, at home, alongside his world, all without triggering rage and hurt. I honor his commitment to the church, as it is his calling and joy. I even offer my gifts within his setting, when invited. But the church as it is conceived and embodied today is no longer where I spend my time or energy, but for my commitment to him. I am no longer committed to the institutional church the way he is, though I (for now, and for as long as Spirit seems to desire it) remain credentialed within it. I even observe and honor his need for security and dependability, watching him be who he is acquiring supplies and groceries that benefit us both in this pandemic. I breathe into this need of his, except when it confines my need for wide open spaces or attempts to interrupt the connection within which I thrive.

At root here, it seems to me, each of us is fiercely loyal and faithful to the other in our years of marriage that have placed the Sacred as our primary loyalty. Each of us also regularly betrays the other, though not with the sense of immorality or malice. Each of us is way too cognitive and articulate, too highly functional-intentional for the offhand unconscious acting-out kind of betrayal. But with a Sacred that has betrayed me as a woman, and the Sacred that has found me as woman, you can see the train-wrecks that will indubitably happen—in these past years and in the years to come. I can get seduced into wanting him to approve and legitimate who I now know the Sacred to be, and he can yearn for the time when Sacred meant the same things to both of us. But neither of those things need happen for the Sacred to be precisely how the Sacred is.

As a Loyalist, a particular Enneagram type, my beloved will chafe at this statement of assured betrayal in our us. Another difference, we see. J Our consistency does illustrate, however, the diversity of worlds and choices both of us have had to make to continue to mature, spiritually, relationally, with love. We are blessed to be in union as One, always changing, always remaining One with all, conscious or not.