Leaving Church - Barbara Brown Taylor [55]
In my role, I could act out of my best nature for hours at a time. I could produce kindness when all I felt was fatigue. I could present patience when circumstances warranted irritation. I could shine like the sun until long after dark when I needed to, but my soul did not operate on a solar calendar. My soul operated on a lunar calendar, coming up at a different time every night and never looking the same way two nights in a row. Where my role called for a steady circle of bright light, my soul waxed and waned. There were days when I was as full as a harvest moon and others when not so much as a sliver appeared in the sky. My soul’s health depended on the regular cycle of these phases. I needed the dark nights that gave the stars their full brilliance as much as I needed the nights when the moon shone so brightly that I could make shadow puppets with my hands. The problem with the collar was that it did not allow for such variations. It advertised the steady circle of light, not the cycles, so that it sometimes scorched my neck.
I do not think that I was the only one who suffered from too much sun in church. One thing that had always troubled me was the way people disappeared from church when their lives were breaking down. Separation and divorce were the most common explanations for long absences, but so were depression, alcoholism, job loss, and mortal illness. One new widow told me that she could not come to church because she started crying the moment she sat down in a pew. A young man freshly diagnosed with AIDS said that he stayed away because he was too frightened to answer questions and too angry to sing hymns. I understood their reasoning, but I was sorry that church did not strike these wounded souls as a place they could bring the dark fruits of their equally dark nights.
Some of them returned when their moons had filled out a little and others did not, but even people in no apparent crisis seemed to suffer from the full-sun effect. As enjoyable as it could be to spend a couple of hours on Sunday morning with people who were at their best, it was also possible to see the strain in some of the smiles, the effort it took to present the most positive, most faithful version of the self. Sometimes I could almost read the truth written out above people’s heads: “Please don’t believe me. This is only a shard of who I really am.” The cost of the pretense was the loss of the real human texture underneath, but since we all thought that was what was expected of us, that was what we delivered.
One of my favorite mornings at Grace-Calvary was the one when Andy showed up to read scripture at the early service with a front tooth missing. His cap had fallen off during the night, he explained, when I asked him what had happened. Air whistled through his remaining teeth when he spoke. As hard as I worked to keep my eyes away from the hole, they kept straying back. Anyone else would have called in sick or arranged a substitute, but Andy could have cared less. He was the guy who showed up to shovel the sidewalks on Sunday mornings after a heavy snow, staying for the service even if there were only the two of us and no heat. He was the guy who climbed three ladders to knock the wasp’s nest out of the bell tower, while his German shepherd watched from the cab of his truck below. He was also the guy who could get into a shouting match with me over how the church was spending his pledge, but Andy’s real human texture was always on display. When he stood up to read scripture that morning with a lisp as pronounced as his devotion, I loved him entirely.
I knew clergy like him too, who never let their collars cut off their air, but they seemed to possess some force of character that I did not possess. I had set out to wear a collar in the first place because I thought it would mark me as someone committed to going all the way with God. Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? My initial answer had been yes, I would. I would give myself completely to that ministry. I wore my collar the