Leaving Church - Barbara Brown Taylor [76]
As a priest, I was trained in the preparation of sacred space. The altar hangings, the linens, the flowers, and the candles were all as important to worship as the words and the songs. When people walked into a space that had been carefully prepared, they were more likely to surrender themselves to it, trusting that whoever cared so much for the room might also care for them. At Grace-Calvary, I had counted on members of the altar guild to polish the silver, iron the linens, arrange the flowers, and trim the candlewicks so that people walked into a gleaming space that smelled of spray starch and chrysanthemums on Sunday mornings. At Piedmont, all I could smell were the old coffee cups in the trash can as I straightened the desks and shoved the map rack behind the door. Although I knew that a college class was not a worship service, I had no other frame of reference.
A priest is a priest, no matter where she happens to be. Her job is to recognize the holiness in things and hold them up to God. Her job is to speak in ways that help other people recognize the holiness in things too. For twenty years I had done that in churches, surrounded by ecclesiastical furniture, stained glass, sacred language, and congregational expectations that kept me ever mindful of my vocation. Now I was going to try working without a net, in a room that might yet become a sanctuary.
On the morning of my first class, I woke before dawn and pulled a green corduroy dress over my head, one of several I had bought that had no black in them. Looking in the mirror, I did not like the way my neck looked—too exposed, as if I were baring it for an ax. I tried buttoning the bodice all the way to the top, but then I looked too Puritan. Settling for one undone button, I grabbed my briefcase and my coat and headed out the door to work.
My plan was to put a boom box in the room before the first students arrived so that they walked in to the sound of an Indian bhakta singing love songs to God. The hallway was deserted when I got there, which pleased me very much. The door to the classroom was locked, which did not. Since it was 7:40 in the morning, no one who might have a key had arrived yet. Returning to my office, I called security. By the time the officer arrived, I was standing in the hallway with two dozen sleepy-looking college students, my unplugged boom box in my hand.
My heart beat at the base of my throat as I handed out syllabi and made welcoming chatter. Several of the students in the back row already had their heads cradled in their arms while those nearer the front nursed huge thermos cups of coffee. Perhaps I could keep them awake by moving around a lot and varying the tone of my voice, I thought. Perhaps I could nab their attention with some riveting narrative in spite of the early hour. Such strategies came easily to me after years and years of preaching, only I was missing all of my props. I set my notes on a desk instead of a pulpit, standing in front of a blackboard instead of a cross. Without my vestments, I knew my knees were showing. It was a clergyperson’s variation on the nightmare in which you discover that you have gone out in public with no clothes on.
I was no longer the rector of Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church. I was Mrs. Taylor, the new religion teacher, with no altar rail to separate me from my new flock. As I called each of them by name, I realized that I had not only lost all my props, I had also lost much of my vocabulary. Words such as Let us pray were not going to work with this crowd any better than our Lord Jesus Christ. Eucharist, Lent, and liturgy could all go into the recycle bin along with confirmation, collect, and diocese. The greatest and most surprising loss of all, however, was the plural pronoun we.
For twenty years I had used that word in community without thinking twice about it. On Sundays after the sermon, I had led the congregation in saying the Nicene Creed. “We believe…” I had begun alone, but by the third word they were all saying it