Epilogue: In the tenth year of my priesthood, I found what I was looking for...When my husband Ed and I visited, it was love at first sight. After a lengthy courtship, I discovered that the church I wanted also wanted me. I was about to go and do what I believed God was calling me to go and do, without the least suspicion that finding my life might involve losing it - or that loss, in the end, might be cause for praise.
I first learned of Barbara Brown Taylor from my mentor and good buddy, L.W. As I turned every page of Leaving Church, I understood L.W. even more...as a woman, as a friend, and as a follower of God. Now, I see L.W. for who she is, not what she is.
...being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall. You probably won't be much worse than other people, and you certainly won't be any better, but you will have to let people look at you. You will have to let them see you as you are.
I appreciate Taylor's honestly and candidness to express her thoughts so eloquently. I, too, think Sundays are the best day of the week. When I enter the sanctuary of FUMC-Joshua on Sunday mornings, taken a deep cleansing breath, and settled into my seat, it's a foretaste of heaven. The bread and juice that I receive at Communion is given, I have not earned it with any deed, word, or gesture. And in the silence of any moment, I am sure the Holy Spirit is ever present and fulfilling my ever fiber of being.
As Taylor explains, reading the Bible persuades me to believe that God is found in right relationships, not in right ideas or particular places. To Taylor, if being ordained meant being set apart from people, then she did not want to be ordained anymore...she just wanted to be human.
My quest to serve God in the church had exhausted my spiritual savings. My dedication to being good had cost me a fortune in being whole. My desire to do all things well had kept me from doing the one thing within my power to do, which was to discover what it meant to be fully human.
When I left home for college, I also left church. It wasn't intentional, but I also did not go out of my way to find a new place of worship. I didn't lose my faith, but I felt I was 'cheating' on Webb Memorial if I attended another place of worship. The song says...O, Lord prepare me, to be a sanctuary - pure and holy - tried and true. With thanksgiving, I'll be a living sanctuary for you. I finally realized that God is not in a particular building, He's in my heart. Always with me.
There was no mastering divinity. My vocation was to love God and my neighbor, and that was something I could do anywhere, with anyone, with or without a collar. My priesthood was not what I did but who I was. In this new light, nothing was wasted. All that had gone before was blessing, and all yet to come was more.
I get it, L.W. I get it. I get what you are (human) and I have a greater respect for who you are (my friend).
...God is faithful even when we are not. When we are able to trust the gospel that our human love of God and one another is the sum total of what were put on earth to do, and that we have everything we need to be human, then redeeming things will continue to happen, both because and in spite of us. They will happen because God loves life so much that even at the grave we make our song Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Taylor says that becoming a professional holy person almost killed her, but taking off her collar turned out to be as necessary for her salvation as putting it on. Today, her life has been saved by: becoming a part of a community; teaching school; living in relationship with creation; observing the Sabbath; encountering God in other people; and, becoming fully human.
I will keep faith - in God, in God's faith in me, and in all the companions whom God has given me to help see the world as God sees it - so that together we may find a way to realize the divine vision. If some of us do not yet know who we are going to be tomorrow, then it is enough for us to give thanks for today while we treat each other as well as know how.
This is my fervent prayer: that I will extend the grace of God that I have been given to all those around me and treat those around me the best that I know how.
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