Leaving Church - Barbara Brown Taylor [53]
As I rounded the corner on my first front porch church service with the congregation of creation, I framed an apology to all the people who had ever told me they were not in church the previous Sunday because the weather had been so nice. At the time, I had judged them for shirking their duty to worship in community. I had thought that they needed to be where I was, meeting their own responsibilities for keeping Grace-Calvary going. Clearly, I had forgotten that people are not the only creatures who glorify the Lord. I think I had also envied the freedom of those who chose to keep the Sabbath in their own ways. On the first Sunday after I left church, the irony was hard to miss. If one day without work had that much holiness in it for me, then what else had I missed while I was laboring for the Lord?
CHAPTER
12
Getting dressed in the morning was the hardest part. For years, I had spent no more than two minutes in my closet, where a row of black, long-sleeved clergy shirts hung next to a row of compatible skirts, suits, or jumpers. All I had to do was mix and match, attach the white plastic collar, and I was on my way. Some mornings I did not even look in the mirror. Of course I had stacks of sweats and jeans for working around the farm, and another closet downstairs with bright clothes in it that I wore only on vacation, but for six days every week I spent as little time on my wardrobe as a nun.
The price of this ease was the way my uniform shaped other people’s responses to me. Those with no frame of reference sometimes took it for a fashion statement. A man standing in line with me at a grocery store in Atlanta once asked me if I were headed to a costume party as a cross-dressing priest. In Clarkesville, the collar had a more sobering effect, especially among church members. When people saw it in public, they shifted from normal gear into the most reverent gear they could find. I was a reverend, after all. They talked about things that they thought might interest me, such as Sunday school or how the plans for the Vacation Bible School were shaping up. Although I never asked, some explained why they had not been in church lately, while others promised that they would catch up on their financial pledges just as soon as they were able. As well intentioned as such deference was, it was as distancing as a velvet rope in a museum. I had the clear sense that I was supposed to stay on my side of it, where I would not get mixed up in things that were too crude or worldly for me.
I would have thought this had something to do with my gender if I had not heard a clergyman describe the same phenomenon in the small community where he lived. “I am always invited to the Christmas parties,” he said, “but never to the New Year’s Eve parties. Why is that?” He knew the answer, the same as I did. Who wants a clergyperson leaning on the bar at a bacchanalia? Especially a clergyperson who has heard your confession?
One New Year’s Eve many years ago, I was invited to a party at a fancy club in downtown Atlanta. My host was a parishioner whose law firm threw this gala every year, spending more on boiled shrimp and ice sculptures than I made in a month. I am not sure what possessed him to invite me, but I decided to rise to the occasion. Ed dusted off his tuxedo. I made an appointment with a hairdresser. Since everything in my closet was black, gray, or black with gray stripes, I borrowed a royal blue dress