I got nothing. Nothing except everything. Trying to understand everything, when nothing stays the same. In the days since concluding a vocational journey of more than three years as preacher & pastor, this is where I have been: theologically confused, liturgically frustrated, ecclesially homeless (sort of), emotionally spent with anger & grief.
I am Jesus-follower but also spiritual-explorer, & I am at this place of admitting no perfect path, no authentic all-encompassing place for a person who wants to be both faithful & free-spirited, orthodox yet eclectic.
In my more than fifty years, I have:
tried supernatural theism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, atheism;
practiced Christianity, Buddhism, neopaganism;
studied process theology & liberation theology;
met the Cosmic Christ & the Universal Christ;
listened to every hipster evangelical charismatic, to every radical progressive dogmatic;
seen God in drugs & drink, abstinence & sobriety, yoga & deep breathing;
worked the 12 steps & tried to live by the 4 agreements;
& don’t even get me started on Tarot, divination, numerology, & animal medicine.
In searching for every possible place to meet God, to locate authentic spirituality, I need to be constantly reminded of the simple stuff, the sayings that end up on cheesy church signs: love God, love people, love creation.
When it comes to dining-out at the religious equivalent of an-all-you-can-eat Las Vegas casino buffet, I have tarried there long & come back for seconds & thirds. It’s as if, in all this, this regimen of heavy & heady religious studies, it’s as if having the hip & correct orthodoxy, whatever the heck that means, was somehow more important & pressing than the desperate need for radical orthopraxis, based on those go-to-teachings like Matthew 25. In this sudden moment of freedom & uncertainty, it’s abandoning perfect theories for imperfect practices, some daily reality that keeps calling me in.
Because with the latter, for you or me or everyone, the planet & the people are crying out for help, for hope, for truth. Not just a private spirituality but love-out-loud as public justice. If I get lost too much in the weeds of the former, I might follow my brain right back up-my-butt, so to speak, until theology is no better than the booze & other behaviors, that I must surrender my addiction from, every-single-freaking-day.
Flashback eleven years: after two decades of ardent radical activism only matched in its fervor by my active addictions, I flip-flopped fully into born-again religion. Give me all the testimonials, all the hand-waving, always praying-out-loud, prayer-without-ceasing, praying-on-my-knees, I was ready for church. Every path & tributary of spiritual-but-not-religious had been tried, but I will be sure to loop back around eventually, just in case I missed one, on which I might learn more. But for the last ten years, the mainline church has been my jam. From Sunday school to Divinity school to my very own pulpit, preachers are going to preach. Until we don’t. At least not for money, on Sunday, at a regularly scheduled time.
For years of my spiritual adventures, I have been trying to find my way home to that everlasting epiphany, to get grounded, to settle down & land in a place of religious sustenance. One day, I might not be a desperate dabbler, a homiletical hobo, a theological transient. So when we landed somewhere, we wanted to sink roots, to stay. But it didn’t work out. My attempts to moderate & modify & mellow out may have failed. Such delusions I have about meeting people in the middle. We realized all along how moods & minds can turn on a dime, & now, I recognize my own limitations, alongside the obvious shortcomings of an institution.
The mainstream stream is sometimes just a stagnant stinky pond of stupid sewage. Where is the waterfall, where justice rolls down like water, righteousness like an everflowing stream?
It seems redundant & hyperbole to remind everyone that we worship a homeless radical brown-skinned executed criminal & resurrected Resister. But in the land of white Jesus, insist on this anyways.
Seems silly to reiterate that the actual Jesus described in the gospels is that guy that your parents warned you about, told you to walk on the other side of the street from, that white Christians actually go to church to murder him again, but not until they twist & belittle his truth. Mainly I am so utterly sick of the hermeneutical gymnastics, the sheer effort required to prop-up antiquated country-club church & to suppress the revolutionary church, wherever that can be found, inside or outside the institution.
See I have been an activist much longer than I have been a pastor, a restless seeker much longer than I have been located in any singular theological location. As to my membership in the resistance to modern misery, certain privileges & comforts of age & career have made me want to retire or hide, to quit the movement, or at least step back, take a breath, maybe work from the sidelines. Yet I guess I may have underestimated the depth of this radical calling over-and-against the other competing callings: teacher, poet, author, blogger, husband, artist. Or perhaps, it is the times in which we live that have simply chosen & insisted on this calling for me.
It was second nature to be in the streets in June 2020 for Black Lives Matter, against police brutality, for LGBTQ rights. I don’t know where else I could have been. It’s also been at my heart to write about it all, talk about it all, say what is really going on with it all, which will wait for other rants, with many more specifics. Reckoning with racism & surviving a pandemic are only on the surface of many things that are bubbling up strong, from a deeper depth. My desire to talk about, & participate in, liberation for all humans & for the whole planet, the whole cosmos, burns bright.
In the two weeks since losing my church job (has it really only been two weeks), I have walked a million miles in my mind trying to figure it all out. My friends have also been generous, to an extent, with unsolicited advice.
My interpretation of my beloved reformed teaching tells me that grace & salvation are cosmic facts beyond my control. For some strange reason, God has elected & selected us, whether we play-along-nicely or not. Neither your cosmic destiny, nor mine, are up-for-debate for this love wins, love love love-based Jesus universalist. Jesus lived & died to save us all, without exceptions, true story.
So as I unpack the unraveling of one part of my vocation, following my genuine call remains compelling. Something my spouse said, it just stuck; she said it during the heightened anticipation, anger, & anxiety of the events leading up to leaving church. She said I might have to choose between being a pastor & a protester. That at least turned-out-true with the particular call that has closed-up-shop for me (they will find another preacher). Will another particular call come for me? Or will radical devotion to the resurrected revolutionary require me to labor with love outside the traditional church?
What seems to hold my heart & hands closest to the kindling flames of change, though, are the practical topics & pressing trends that will contribute most clearly to the total transformation of this world, to better be the Beloved Community. Trust & faith & surrender on my personal path are tempered with feeling the fierce urgency of now, of finding where we can best serve the movement.
Not sure if I will see you in church, or even, what churches that might be, but I do hope I will see you in the streets. Peace!
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