Indeed. It's happening. I am about to start a new job. At a church. Serving a community of faith. Serving my city. In one of the early conversations with the senior minister of the church, Caldwell Presbyterian Church here in Charlotte, I asked him what the church needs in the person who would be called to work and serve there. He said, "The church needs someone who wakes up in the morning thinking about ways to love them." I smiled and thought, "I can do that."
Here are ten things that have come to mind as I ponder the start of this new and next stage of my life journey.
1. I remember being a child in Sunday school class at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, and wishing I could go to church five days a week and go to school only two days. Well, it looks like that wish is about to come true; actually the reality will be better than that childhood wishful and wistful dream. I will be in church five days a week - or out in the community loving the church and its people, loving the city and its people - but I will be going to school only one day. Yes, I will continue my seminary studies, and I look forward to putting these studies and lessons to work on a daily basis. Before you write and warn me about the reality of work in the church, the brokenness of people, the division and difficulties, the hypocrisy and deceit, please know that I am fully aware of all of that. Because if I am going to be there, I am going to bring my own healthy dose of brokenness, woundedness, hypocrisy, and inconsistency. That's part of the human experience. Thanks be to God - part of the church experience, certainly what I know of the experience at Caldwell, is openly and honestly admitting our brokenness and walking together towards healing and wholeness.
2. Back when I was a kid, the youth group at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church was called "The Liberators." You had to be 13 years old to join, and unfortunately I wasn't ever able to join them because our family was asked to leave the church when I was 12. (Yes, I bring my own church hurt as well.) Anyway, my parents were youth leaders. And my three older brothers were all members of The Liberators. While they spent time down in the basement of the church, while they laughed and learned, played games, and listened to dire warnings about being left behind when the rapture happened, I would be upstairs in the main part of the church, wishing desperately I could be down there with them. Anyway (again), there was a young guy who was part of The Liberators who was a bit of a loner. He was one of the few kids in the group who wasn't African American. He was Puerto Rican. Looking back now as an adult, I think it might be reasonable to guess that he had some developmental delays; physically, socially, and intellectually, he was more like a twelve year old than a fifteen year old. That young man and I would would talk to one another often. We would go for walks in the neighborhood. Sometimes we even talked on the phone. We weren't romantically involved at all. We were just friends. I liked listening to his stories. I liked walking with him.
Those walks I took with Noel back then were preparing me for the walks I will take with the folks at Caldwell. They will talk. I will listen. They will share. I will pray. Together we will walk each other back and forth to the church. Back and forth out into the community. Where we are developmentally delayed, where we are physically, emotionally, intellectually, financially, relationally challenged, we will walk together. We will pray together. We will be both the liberators and the liberated - together.
3. A young woman named Hope was also a member of that youth group at Sixth Avenue. I remember that there were often whispers, nudges, nods, and shifted chairs when Hope was around. Why? Because "she likes girls." I remember realizing, not fully understanding but definitely sensing, that the folks who were talking about her and saying those things were saying something more than those words expressed. I remember her well. I remember, even at a young age, wishing I could do something or say something to let her know that I didn't care who she liked or didn't like; I liked her. I loved watching her play basketball and football and whatever other games the young group played. I liked that she didn't have to wear dresses to church like I did. I liked that she wore her hair short.
Watching Hope and admiring her strength and independence prepared me for the position I am stepping into, for the church God has called me to serve. This church welcomes everyone, no matter who they like, who they love, or who they marry. This church welcomes people from all walks of life, from all along the many spectrums that exist in our society and our culture. This church wrestles openly and actively with its checkered past, related to slavery, related to bigotry, related to the brokenness that plagues all of us.
4. I spent my elementary school years attending PS 307 in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. I think I was in 4th grade when I began to serve as a buddy for a blind boy who was in my class. His name was Lodi. He was the only white kid in the class for a while, then another boy came, but, as I recall, that second boy didn't stay at our school for long. Lodi and I became good friends. He held onto my elbow sometimes when we moved from one room to another in the school. It wasn't long before he didn't need my elbow because he knew his way around, but we remained friends and spent a lot of time together. He taught me how to use his braille machine and also how to read braille. He taught me how he arranged his food and his belongings. He told me stories about his life. I told him stories about mine. Whenever I had the chance, I would go with him to the room that was set up in the school for the blind students to do whatever they needed to do that couldn't be done in their classrooms. I loved hanging out with him and his buddies there.
Three doors down the block from where I grew up on Bedford Avenue, there was another blind friend. He was older than me by several years. His family was from Panama. Tall black man who walked with the long, thin cane often used by the visually impaired. He and I became buddies too. When I saw him coming home from work, and I often spotted him while he was still a block away, I would run to where he was, greet him, and offer him my shoulder.
Plus there were the blind adults that my dad used to drive back and forth to the New York School for the Blind in Manhattan. During the summer months, I would ride with him in the van, hanging out with folks three and four times my age, marveling at their ability to navigate their world without one of the senses that I took so much for granted.
Once again, it was all preparation. To learn from folks that so many other people ignored or belittled or underestimated. One day when I was no more than ten or eleven years of age, one of the adults who held onto my elbow as I led her from my father's van to the front door of the School for the Blind, said, "You are going to be tall when you grow up." I asked her how she knew that, and she responded, "I can tell by your elbow, by your arm." She had wisdom in her hands, in her fingers, deep within her. Wisdom that had nothing to do with what she saw, because she couldn't see me.
It was all preparation to lead and be led. Preparation to see and be seen. Preparation to listen and learn. Preparation to welcome the stranger, the outcast, the neglected. Preparation to not discount anyone. Preparation to recognize my own blindness and my need to learn to live by more than what was apparent to the physical eye or the societal eye.
5. During my growing up time, we attended churches where women were not allowed to be pastors or elders or deacons. Women could be deaconesses and Sunday school teachers, but not pastors. I had female cousins and aunts who were ministers, but we didn't go to their churches. In fact, before I began to attend First Presbyterian Church here in Charlotte, the church I attend now, I had never been a member of a church where women were ordained ministers. That's all I'm going to say about that...
6. One evening when I was teaching a series on journaling as a spiritual discipline at a church where I had been reprimanded for the fact that a man attended one of the class sessions, at the end of the class, one of the attendees, a woman who wasn't a member of the church approached me and said, "You belong in the pulpit. You think you are teaching a class, but you are preaching in here." I nodded and smiled - and I thought, "Total heresy." Looking back now, I am enormously grateful for Bonnie's boldness in speaking the truth to me that night.
7. I am grateful for Katie Crowe, the pastor who initially mentored me at First Pres and encouraged me to pursue seminary study. She suggested that I visit Union Presbyterian Seminary here in Charlotte and speak to Dean Richard Boyce. I never went. But God wasn't letting me off the hook that easily. One evening, at a training session at First Pres, the dean of the seminary came to the church to teach. I don't remember a whole lot of what he said, but I do remember thinking, "Okay, Lord. I didn't go to see him at the seminary, so you brought him here." I approached him after the session that evening. He invited me to visit one Saturday. I am nearly finished with my third year of a five year program.
8. Back in October of last year, I was sitting in my car in a local park, eating lunch. My cell phone rang. I looked down at it - but didn't recognize the number. Normally, I don't answer calls from unknown callers, but that time I did. The caller asked me to consider applying for a job at Caldwell Presbyterian Church. I said no, that I wasn't yet done with seminary. I wasn't ready. I said no three times. He was gentle but firm, and he pointed out that my repeated declines meant that I was taking the job and the work of ministry seriously. I hadn't thought about it that way, but he was right. So I finally said yes; I would put my name in the hat.
Resume updated. Prayers prayed.
Forms filled in. Prayers prayed.
Facetime interview completed. Prayers prayed.
In person interview completed. More prayers prayed.
Trial sermon preached. Prayers prayed.
Questions asked and answered. Prayers prayed.
An offer made. Prayers prayed.
My profile and candidacy presented to the church (while I was in Guatemala!).
More prayers.
The church stepped out in faith and said yes.
I start two weeks from tomorrow.
9. I have spent a lot of time in the past several months shaking my head, pinching myself, journaling, and praying. A lot of praying. I pray out loud while I'm out walking. I pray silently while lying awake in bed. I pray in the car. And yesterday, for the first time, I stood in the pulpit at Caldwell, and looked out onto the empty pews. I imagined the congregation, the beloved and beautiful, the broken and lonely, the fearful and joyful people of God, sitting out there, looking at me, looking at my colleagues, looking towards us for a word of encouragement, hope, challenge, and exhortation. I stood there and cried - and prayed.
10. I stepped out from behind that sacred desk, walked down those steps, approached the friend who was giving me the detailed tour of the church, and asked her if she had seen the commercial I mentioned and linked at the beginning of this post. With tears in my eyes, I said to her - and much more to myself - "This is really happening. (deep breath) Oh, it's happening, sweetheart."
