Though I’m no longer serving a Presbyterian congregation, my dear Presby-friends keep me up to date on things in their denomination.  This thoughtful article was forwarded along from a recent Covenant Network conference and really spoke to me, especially as someone who has made a similar journey of his own.

What really hit home was Achtemeier’s reflection that he “had always assumed — had always been taught that homosexuality “was a kind of destructive addiction,” sort of like alcoholism.  And having never questioned [his] selective and somewhat superficial interpretations of the Bible’s teaching on the subject, [he] assumed that a gay lifestyle must certainly involve a fairly casual attitude toward Scripture and an inclination toward personal self-indulgence.”

This assumption has been at the heart of so many conversations with family and friends who find a dissonance in my reconciliation of same-sex orientation and a Christian faith.  It is encouraging to see that someone is speaking this painful and ignorant assumption aloud and is taking the time to know, to listen to and to love people within the church who love someone of the same gender.

November 10, 2009

Achtemeier charts spiritual journey on homosexuality at Covenant Network gathering

Evangelical leader says gays, lesbians should be able to marry, be ordained

by Leslie Scanlon
The Presbyterian Outlook
Reprinted with permission

CLEVELAND — Mark Achtemeier, an evangelical theology professor from Iowa, is in many ways an unlikely candidate for radical change. He’s a white, middle-aged Presbyterian father and husband who grew up in the church, the son of theologically-inclined people. He’s most often seen wearing — of all things — a button-down shirt, coat and tie.

But Achtemeier, to his own surprise, has made a trek through uncertain land over the last eight years, a journey from life-long certainty that homosexuality is “a kind of destructive addiction” to what he is today: a man who sees the Holy Spirit leading the church to “a new and better place,” and who thinks that gays and lesbians should be able to marry and be ordained.

In the kick-off plenary of the 2009 Covenant Network of Presbyterians gathering — which has brought about 300 people to Cleveland Nov. 5-7 to consider the theme of change in the church — Achtemeier gave his testimony, telling the story of his journey in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), from a man who grew up sure that homosexual practice was wrong to one who now sees God working in the committed relationships of his gay and lesbian friends and in the faithfulness of their lives.

Yet some things have not changed.

“If there is one thing I want to emphasize above all else in this testimony, it is that this journey has not involved any kind of retreat or qualification of my strong commitment to the authority of Scripture, the Lordship of Christ, and the belief that God calls people to lives of personal holiness,” Achtemeier told the Covenant Network. “I come to you today as an out, self-affirming, practicing conservative evangelical.”

But Achtemeier, who was a member of the PC(USA)’s Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church — told of a journey both personal and theological, and to him deeply surprising.

“I cannot get around the fact that it was a God thing,” he said during a question-and-answer period.

It began in the days immediately following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, “when everybody in the country was talking to everybody in the country,” Achtemeier said. For him, those days led to new conversations with people, and, as it turned out, some of those people were gay Christians who over time began sharing stories of their lives and their faith.

“I started out very sure and very settled and very content with seeing exclusion (of gays and lesbians from marriage and ordained office) as God’s will for the church,” Achtemeier said. “Like many, I had succumbed to the temptations of an ecclesiastical tunnel vision: I read authors I agreed with. I talked with people I agreed with. I hung out with people I agreed with. I was exceedingly comfortable holding the position I did, I was supported in it, I was popular. And I had absolutely no reason to question any of it.

“But God had other plans. Out of the blue, opportunity opened up for serious conversation and friendship with some quite remarkable gay Christians. This was new for me. When you are a firebrand exclusivist, hurling thunderbolts and belching fire against the opposition, gay people with any sense tend to avoid your company, or at least they avoid telling you they are gay.”

So his knowledge of gays and lesbians up until then “was pretty much defined by the authors I agreed with, and flamboyant stereotypes presented in the media.”

His new friends, however, began sharing their faith with him and discussing with him the church’s teachings – “a remarkable gift of grace,” Achtemeier said, considering that “a lot of what they heard from me was unwittingly insulting or offensive.”

And through those conversations, “I started to realize the extent to which the church’s traditional teaching functioned like a sign over the sanctuary,” telling gays and lesbians they would not find anything for themselves there. “And that is not the gospel,” Achtemeier said.

He also found his own expectations and assumptions about homosexuality challenged by the lives of the friends he was getting to know.

First, Achtemeier had always assumed — had always been taught — that homosexuality “was a kind of destructive addiction,” sort of like alcoholism. “And having never questioned my selective and somewhat superficial interpretations of the Bible’s teaching on the subject, I assumed that a gay lifestyle must certainly involve a fairly casual attitude toward Scripture and an inclination toward personal self-indulgence.”

Because he thought this way, Achtemeier said, the arguments of progressives calling for justice and equal rights for gays and lesbians had never made sense to him – basically, they have “absolutely zero traction among traditionalists,” he said.

“The reason is that no one in their right mind would argue that the cause of justice and equality was served by affirming the right of addicts to pursue their self-destructive behaviors. Human beings do not possess a God-given right to harm themselves.”

In his conversations, however, “what I found instead were devoted Christian believers, filled with grace and a loving concern for the downtrodden that frequently put me to shame. I was surprised to discover that they were deeply engaged in spiritual disciplines, acutely aware of their own sins and failings, and eager to bring these faults to God for healing. These were devout, spiritually self-aware people who were not the least bit hesitant to confess their failings to God.”

But these friends also said that it made no sense to them to view a life-long commitment to a partner as a matter of sin or failing. They spoke of their committed relationships in terms of love and sacrifice and joy — in exactly the kind of terms that Achtemeier would use to describe his own long heterosexual marriage.

Achtemeier was cautious because “as a good, neo-orthodox evangelical, I have on many occasions delivered myself of the standard speech about the terrible dangers that result if we allow personal experience to trump the Bible’s witness. Such a move threatens to set our own personal authority above that of Scripture; it undermines the ability of Scripture to challenge and correct us. I continue to believe that. I hold firmly to the reformation principle that Scripture alone is the highest authority for the church. … So when you start using experience to veto the message of Scripture, I and my evangelical colleagues will simply have to get off the bus.”

But Achtemeier also began to reconsider what the Bible does say about homosexuality and about God’s relationship with people.

He used as an example a sermon that St. Augustine preached in the fifth century, that those who abide in Christ “ought to walk in the same way he walked.” Augustine asked whether that meant that people should try to walk on water, because Jesus walked on water. Augustine’s suggestion is Biblical, but we know — based on our experience – that that doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work, Achtemeier said. So we look for another interpretation that takes the passage seriously but better matches our experience — one interpretation being that Christians should follow the path of righteousness and charity that Jesus followed.

“There is a vast difference between vetoing what the Bible says on the basis of experience, and looking for understandings of the Bible that make powerful sense of our experience.” Achtemeier said.

As a result, “when we find ourselves in a situation where our understanding of the Bible collides regularly with the lived experience of Christian believers, we don’t take that as a license to ignore Scripture. But it certainly ought to make us ask whether we’ve correctly understood the Bible’s teaching.”

Achtemeier also was coming to understand, through his conversations with gay friends and through study of the subject, that when gays and lesbians embraced the abstinence that evangelicals called them to adopt, or even tried to turn towards heterosexual marriage, that path often turned out to be destructive rather than life-giving.

“Once I started paying attention, I began running into more and more instances where devout gay Christians, following the church’s traditional counsel, failed to find the life-giving liberation one would expect if the alcoholism analogy were true. Instead, their heroic efforts at faithfulness led to results that were spiritually and psychologically crippling.”

Some did marry in heterosexual relationships that ended badly, causing great pain to themselves, their spouses and children.

One very devout person “had struggled since high school with same-gender attraction, had for years prayed fervently for healing and strength and help in dealing with this compulsion. After years of courageous prayer and struggle, doing exactly what I and the church would have counseled, the result was a broken person, overwhelmed by despair and anger, ready to renounce the faith and give up on God, seriously contemplating suicide.”

Achtemeier said he did hear accounts — in part in testimony before General Assembly committees — of people who turned from homosexuality to healing heterosexual relationships.

But “nearly all of them involved moving away from situations involving either promiscuity or abuse,” he said. “Not a one of these testimonies told a story of being involved in a loving and healthy same-gender partnership, which the person then decided to leave as an expression of Christian commitment.”

Achtemeier began to consider, based on the account in the second chapter of Genesis of God creating people intending for them to be in intimate relationship with one another, whether same-gender relationships might be a variation of that.

As he put it: “What if same-gender orientation, than being a disease of some sort, is simply (an) alternative form which this gift takes from time to time? I’ve had so many gay friends tell me, `I would not choose all the trouble and controversy that goes with being gay, but I was never asked. Heterosexual marriage just isn’t a possibility that is open to me.’ So isn’t what we’re dealing with here an alternative form of God’s gift of life created for communion with another, with a life-partner?”

And he considered the criticisms of Reformation theologians such as John Calvin of the practice of mandatory celibacy.

“Marriage is given to us, not just in a form that responds to our need, but also in a way that is positively sanctifying and life-giving and permeated by grace,” Achtemeier said. “If, as Calvin insists, it is foolish and rash for individuals to turn their backs on this divine gift and calling, how much more so when an entire church acts to withhold this gift from a whole class of human beings?”

Achtemeier said he knows that many evangelicals “hold their positions compassionately, with the best and most godly intentions.”

But he also contends that “if the Bible’s teaching does not help us make powerful sense of life and experience, if Biblical faithfulness is not life-giving, that is a sure sign we have not understood our Scripture properly.”

As word of his work on the theological task force and his growing open-mindedness on what the Bible teaches on homosexuality began to get around, he also began hearing from other evangelicals having doubts about the church’s teachings as well.

“I am not the only one who has been led by the Spirit to a new and better place,” Achtemeier said. “I believe an expansive catholicity that fully embraces gay and lesbian believers is coming sooner rather than later to the Presbyterian Church. …

“Week in and week out I am encountering a growing company of conservative, evangelical Christians who quietly confess to me that they no longer believe exclusion is faithful. The reality of Jesus’ love for God’s gay and lesbian children is self-evident enough, it is palpable enough, that the ranks of ordinary faithful are embracing it more and more with each passing day.”

The past few weeks the singers in the Park Avenue Youth Chorale have been working on a fantastic setting of There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy by the late Calvin Hampton.  If you are looking for a well-written, singable piece for young voices that both challenges and inspires, I highly recommend it.  It’s also an easy read for adult choirs.

The text Hampton uses is a combination of various couplets from a larger poem, Souls of Men, Why Will Ye Scatter, by Frederick William Faber.  The text is a bit dated in some respects, but there is a freshness to many of the lines, which don’t sound as if they were penned in 1862.  It has been a joy to share this piece with the choir and I only hope that these powerful words shape their understanding of God’s love and grace in their lives.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea;
there’s a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven;
there is no place where earth’s failings
have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man’s mind.
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more simple,
we should take him at his word:
and our lives would be all sunshine
in the sweetness of our Lord.

Souls of men! why will ye scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts! why will ye wander
From a love so true and deep?
There is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Savior;
There is healing in His blood.

This morning we had a joyous service at church, celebrating our 199th Anniversary.  There is always lots of congregational singing throughout worship and it has been really great to hear the congregational choir’s voice growing in sound and confidence since I began my ministry at The Park almost a year and half ago.

As is the norm, I work with the pastor to select service music, get those selections into the order of worship and then prepare the hymns and responses on the organ, piano or sometimes with percussion, as we regularly draw music from the world church.  Many factors go into selecting music for a service: connection to the scripture texts and preaching focus, familiarity to the congregation, or occasionally a desire to expand our repertoire and introduce a wonderful new text or tune.  This week I was also highly aware of the time constraints of worship, with a special luncheon and other events afterward.  So, I selected a rousing closing hymn that the congregation really loves, In the Midst of New Dimensions, which appears in both of the hymnals our congregation sings out of, the New Century Hymnal and the Chalice Hymnal.  A confession: the other hymns in the service were longish (a five-verse opener and a four-verse middle hymn) so I selected the version out of the Chalice Hymnal, as it’s one verse shorter.  But what I didn’t realize is that the tune has some rhythmic variants and the refrain is lacking a repetition that is in the New Century Version.

So we got to the end of a wonderful, uplifting service and I launched into the hymn (playing out of the New Century Hymnal because the harmonization is better) with a nice full registration.  Halfway through I noticed that the congregation and choir were off by a few beats and when we sang the refrain, I was still playing while everyone had stopped.  In a moment of panic, I realized that there were two versions of the hymn, so I came to the final cadence, turned around and announced, “I apologize.  I made a mistake.”  There was a ripple of relieved laughter from the congregation.  Then I directed folks to the number in the New Century Hymnal and off we went through a verse together.

About that point I wanted to crawl into a cave and not come out.  It was an embarrassing moment, especially as I’m a person who cares a lot about getting things right.  I’ve typed the wrong hymn number into the bulletin before (and the secretary usually gets those mistakes) but I felt that I should have looked at the version I selected more carefully and noticed the differences.  I am a trained musician after all!  But strangely, as I spoke with people after the service they said that they really appreciated the honesty of that moment.  Instead of carrying on as if nothing had happened, I acknowledged that something was wrong and we started over.  One visitor even said that the mistake made her feel that this is the kind of congregation that she would be comfortable in – where there is a space for imperfection.

And I suppose that’s the take away from this morning.   As much as folks in the church (and outside the church) like to project an image of having it together, of confidence and skill, we are human.  We make mistakes, we forget important details, the flowers are a little crooked, the paraments are a bit wrinkled, words get misspelled or mispronounced, a singer in the choir misses a cut-off.  Thankfully church isn’t about getting it right but it’s a place where we can be ourselves, where there is the grace to start over again if we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, where we can celebrate that we are fully-loved, imperfectly beautiful people.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strive for our best or be sloppy (you can believe that I’ll be examining every hymn closely over the next months!) but that when mistakes and imperfections do happen, we can approach them in a spirit of grace and love, with a relieved laugh, and thank God that we’re not perfect and neither is anyone else.  Thanks be to God!

I was at a meeting with a group of folks from Park Avenue Christian Church and our interfaith partner, Congregation Da’at Elohim, tonight and heard about Joshua Nelson, a Jewish Gospel singer.  Check out his website.

There is something fascinating to me about folks who integrate what appear to be disparate styles, ideas or even spiritual traditions.  After listening to some Youtube clips, I’m not sure exactly how I feel about his music (whether it rings with a sort of deep authenticity) but I love the way he challenges my preconceived notions about who sings what kind of music.  It’s great to know that Gospel music (or any other style of music, for that matter) can become a medium for communication in different spiritual traditions.

Take a listen and let me know what you think.

It has been a busy month and I keep chiding myself for not posting much but I find that blog writing ebbs and flows for me.  I’ve also been thinking that I will try to make shorter posts rather than feel that I have to write an essay each time.  So, stay tuned.

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Middletown, NY to lead worship with the Hudson River Presbytery.  The featured speaker of the morning was Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, the President of Union Seminary here in NYC.  She’s an incredibly articulate and pastoral theologian (that is rare in my experience) and gave three stunning reflections on the theology of John Calvin, who turned 500 this year!  Three themes – messy/broken/glorious – were explored through scripture, the writings of Calvin and music.  I performed three improvisations on the hymn I Greet Thee Whom My Sure Redeemer Art (which is the only hymn attributed to Calvin) and we sang a setting of Psalm 98, New Songs of Celebration Render, which I arranged for flute, violin and organ in an attempt to bring lightness and energy to this beautiful, rhythmic tune.

I also composed a simple response based on Calvin’s “motto”: Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere (My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.  I have added it to the Music page and invite you to download it and try it out with your congregation.  It is like a Taizé chant, which is repeated until it has become a prayer of the heart.  It would work well in a contemplative prayer service or you could even consider using it as a Response to the Assurance of Pardon or a Doxology for Reformation Sunday at the end of October.  Either way, let me know if you use it.

Props to Grenetta Mason and Donna Kelsick who organized a fantastic Urban Wellness Retreat that I participated in today.  The workshops and offerings touched on a wide range of interests – alternative medicine, diet and nutrition, financial planning, aromatherapy, spa treatments, as well as yoga and Reiki sessions.  They have a real sense that personal wholeness is about mind, body and spirit connection.   They day was full of conversation and learning alongside some wonderful souls who are looking for balance and wholeness in their busy lives.  And I love that the event was nestled right in the heart of Harlem (a beautifully rehabbed brownstone that is a B&B)  and drew from the resources that are within this community.   It was great to be part of an event that is intended to bring some measure of wholeness and connectedness to individuals, to our community and to our world.

I’ve been teaching a small group singing class at church over the past weeks and it has been a joy.  The experience is geared toward individuals who simply want to improve their singing voice, not for folks who aspire to be professional singers.  This is the third time I’ve presented a class like this and each time I am humbled by the opportunity and reminded just how important it is.

Some folks have been told again and again, or have been telling themselves again and again, that they can’t sing.  In the class, we try to dispel the myths that we have chosen to believe about our voice and unpack the fears and doubts that may keep us from singing with others.  Each week we reaffirm that everyone has the ability to sing and it really matters if we do or don’t.  We also talk about our experiences as singers, about the sort of feedback and critique we have received about our voice as children and adults.  Sometimes this involves acknowledging the wounds and bruises that have been inflicted on us by parents, spouses/children, teachers and folks in the church.  But it also involves moving beyond those hurts and trusting that God calls us good (and calls our voice good) and that, like any other human activity, singing is something that we can learn to do better with time and practice.

And so that’s what we do.  We sing hymns, spiritual and chants that are learned by rote.  We talk about breathing and learn about how to tap into it; we talk about the vocal cords, vowels and the mechanics of the voice and practice vocalizes that help build an awareness of the tongue and throat.   And we talk about little details like how to hold a hymnal or a songbook when singing.  And there are one-on-one sessions with individuals who want to work a little more, who seem to be struggling, or who really want and need to tell you about their joys and struggles as a singer.   In it all, I am reminded just how personal and how precious the voice is, and how deeply connected it is to other parts of our life.  As Helen Kemp quips, “body, mind, spirit, voice – it takes a whole person to sing and rejoice.”  It is a truly holistic activity and teaching singing, especially to those who have been told that they cannot, is a pastoral activity for me, something that gives me a deep sense of fulfillment and of purpose.

Park Avenue Christian is blessed to have Alice Parker and singers from Melodious Accord recording sacred choral music in our sanctuary this week.  It is such a gift to have your work day full of beautiful melodies, and Alice’s settings of hymns and spirituals are always so thoughtful and well-written, with great attentiveness to the color and character of the text.

The piece that is running through my head this morning is an elegant versification of Psalm 23, “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” from her Eight Appalachian Mountain Hymns.   I am busy, busy, busy these next two weeks, especially with many details before I head to Italy in early June, where I will be participating in a workshop of a new piece based on paintings of Mary, Jesus’ mother (more about that soon.)  While listening to this hymn (especially the last stanza), I was reminded that I can see all of these things to do as work or I can see them as an occasion to praise.  Even in the minute and sometimes infuriating details, I can thank the God who has given the gift of life and who sustains and tends to me always and everywhere.

And as work emerges out of a spirit of praise and thanksgiving it can and will reorient and redefine my priorities, values, and time frame. So that, even in the midst of many important and time-consuming tasks, I will find the rest and security of a beloved child of God.  Then the work can flow because my being is focused on faithfulness to God rather than overwhelmed by the tasks at hand, or bound up by perfectionism or fear of failure.  I will know what and how to do because I have taken to time to be.

I recently finished “Gilead” by Marilyn Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a Congregational minister in Gilead, Iowa.  It is a fictional memoir written in the first-person with poignant descriptions of small town life, growing old and work in the church, but also contains brilliant passages that reflect on the meaning and mystery of life.  The book is stunning – simply beautiful – and I can’t recommend it enough.  I was moved to tears at several points not because it was sad or tragic but because it touches something so fundamental to our human experience.

One passage has stuck with me, related to the minister’s understanding of baptism and the act of blessing others.

“I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand.  Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing.  It stays in the mind.  For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them.  It still seems to me a real question.  There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily.  It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.  I have felt it pass through me, so to speak.  The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.”

Over the past few months I have been seeing someone and it has been a beautiful time of learning and discovery.  We are slowly getting more comfortable sharing the deeper parts of ourselves with each other and I have found many of our talks and intimate moments to be much like Robinson’s character describes the act of blessing.  There is a sense of mystery, beauty and joy as you hold a person who has opened their heart, mind, body and soul to you.  Something wells up within me at those times and “deep speaks to deep,” as Henri Nouwen writes.  It is holy experience.

I grew up with an understanding of same-sex relationships as somehow incomplete or incorrect, and was told that one could not find fulfillment in them.  These were conclusions drawn from very different readings of scripture than I have come to accept today and I’m not going to open that can of worms in this entry.   My sense is that an understanding of gay relationships as flawed comes from a narrow/exclusive focus on the physical/sexual aspects of gay relationships – the mechanics, if you will, or their reproductive potential.  They appeal to some notion of what is “natural” in a biological sense but tend to completely ignore the deeper human and spiritual qualities that, to me, both include and transcend our bodies.  And this binary reading of relationships and of sexuality in general makes for a very simplistic, two-dimensional understanding of what it means to be human.

I don’t claim to have profound insights but in my process of discernment it is becoming clearer that relationships are sacramental, and in that respect they are mysterious and deeply personal.  Each one is an occasion to experience God’s presence in a real, tangible way in our lives.  There are as many different types of relationships as there are people, and there are different levels or dimensions in which they are expressed.  But the labels and particulars are secondary.  At the heart of them all – the partner, the friend, even the passing acquaintance or stranger – is this idea of blessing others.  We are not here just for our own satisfaction or pleasure.  Relationships are not simply about being happy or fulfilled (though healthy relationships often bring a sense of wholeness and satisfaction); they are about experiencing and seeing the sacred in and through others. They are about calling forth or naming others’ beauty, worth and potential.  And then, maybe in the process, we find the beauty, worth and potential in ourselves.

I believe that same-sex relationships require great care and thoughtfulness, might I even say prayerfulness.  We have freedom, a scary but equally exhilarating opportunity to define our relationships in the ways that we need to and want to.  Gender roles are not assumed; we do not have to be bound by many of the societal norms and expectations as heterosexual couples.  But I also believe that in our attempts to forge new ways of being together, we should not forget that the heart of all relationships is in an invitation to the mystery and wonder of life, an opportunity to know another deeply and to be deeply known.

My hands are made to bless,
to offer on behalf of others,
a prayer, a touch,
inner healing and life.

It is part of my calling
part of my own healing, perhaps,
to hold another beautiful soul
and to claim its beauty and worth,
to pray from a deep place for
its safety, peace, stability,
to ask that this soul know the
ground-shifting, life-reorienting love and grace
that I have heard spoken of and
glimpsed in unexpected moments in my own life.

I feel myself a broken vessel
into which something of great
beauty and value has been poured,
and I am grateful, and humbled,
and curious how it could be.

But I know that I am also called to be courageous,
to live in this holy paradox and to
seek God’s will in it,
to ask more deeply whose I am
and who I am
and what this this precious gift of life and love
are to accomplish in this beautiful, broken world.

I feel like such a fair-weather blogger. Where some folks tend to their blogs incessantly, mine is for occasions when I really feel that there is something to say – something that seems important, pressing, or particularly vivid for me. And when life gets incredibly busy, as it has been these past months, the blog almost drops off of my list of priorities altogether. I came through the Advent and Christmas season in good spirits, a little tired after my first go-around in a new congregation but I think that’s to be expected. I was amazed at how quickly Epiphany flew by and I’m aghast that that we are at the beginning of Lent.

What has been on my heart so much these past weeks, and what is finally taking shape in my mind, is the ongoing challenge of staying balanced and centered when life is moving at a breakneck speed. New York is a stunning place to live and to work and I have have been telling friends that I am not just getting by but I feel that I am living and thriving here. Professional and personal connections are growing. My ministry at Park Avenue Christian Church keeps me very busy but there is much to celebrate – joy and a sense of play in our work together, while striving to make music of high quality and from diverse styles and traditions. We recently began a new Youth Chorale that is contributing regularly to worship. This ministry offers free music training to young people in the city but asks them come to weekly rehearsals and to sing every Sunday. They are doing a wonderful job and I have been touched by their energy and spirit.

I am settled in my apartment and my life has a certain orderliness and regularity which has really helped to give me a sense of place. And I have a growing relationship with a wonderful man, which is not something that I exactly planned (who does?!) but it feels so good to share time together. I haven’t talked much about my relationships on the blog, partly because I have been single for the past two and half years, but this connection feels qualitatively different than any I have had before and I am very excited.

But the blessing of many good things happening at the same time also has a shadow side for me.  In the middle of all this, I have found it difficult to stay centered!  I begin to derive my sense of well being and worth from the feeling of being busy and productive, from how connected or distant I feel in my relationships, or how I feel others are responding to me as a leader or as a person. On those days when things don’t go as well as I had hoped, when I make mistakes or disappoint those I love (or even worse disappoint myself), when I sit down to practice and my fingers or feet feel clumsy, when I feel creatively dry and barren…I find myself so quickly teetering toward negativity and anger. There are many fears, some real and others self-imposed; so many voices with varied or conflicting opinions and perspectives; so many doubts that often plague my inner life. It is amazing how quickly I find myself in a funk, or even if not even that extreme, just feeling closed off from the world and others. It can be as simple as a word or a glance from someone.

As I look back on this past Epiphany season, God has been speaking consistently, even insistently, to me in the midst of my busyness. It all began back in early January with the Baptism of Christ, the descent of the Holy Spirit on Christ and his affirmation as the “beloved One.” The season also ended with the voice from the cloud speaking similar words: “This is my beloved Child; listen to him.” But I didn’t expect to hear them again on the First Sunday of Lent, this time from the Gospel of Mark and as a preface to Jesus’ wandering in the wilderness for 40 days. Every time I encounter these words they resonate deeply within me, especially since my personal story of faith has been shaped by the understanding that I am God’s beloved, too.  There is nothing I can do to earn God’s love, no way that I can get away from it. It has been and will always be a constant.

But the challenge for me (and maybe for all of us) is remaining “in” that love, especially when life is busy, even with the work of the Church! The crazy thing is that I am rather addicted to the feeling that I get when I am busy with “God’s work.” I have gotten strangely accustomed to the idea of running around doing a million things to prepare for worship each week (almost neurotic over-preparation). Though I know I’m not a complete control freak, there is a part of me that enjoys being at the center of things. As much as I sometimes lament the fact that much of the music program in my church leads directly back to me, I sort of like the control. There have been times in the past when I wondered whether I could take a Sunday or two off because I feared whether things would go alright without me there. Yes, perhaps there is real care and concern for my congregation written into that but as I’m typing it, it also sounds really creepy. It sounds like there is a part of me that needs to be needed and I’m not sure if that is living into my identity as a beloved child of God!  If the church is really about the people of God doing the work of ministry and not paid ministers doing it for them, is my constant presence enabling others to step into leadership roles or inviting them to come alongside me as partners in ministry?  Or is it really a glorified one-man band? I am struggling to see whether my understanding of myself as God’s beloved has really permeated deeply into all parts of my life, especially into that most vital expression of vocation in the church.

I had a great conversation with a friend and mentor today and he said something that really got me thinking. He mentioned that sometimes it is important for those of us who serve the church to make ourselves scarce – not to bury ourselves more deeply in the work but to gently step away and let our absence be recognized and felt by the community. It can give a very subtle cue that we are not indispensable, but it is also a healthy reminder to ourselves that we are not. Though I know that Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness were in preparation for his public ministry, the Gospels are clear that even amid the almost relentless pace of his ministry, he regularly retreated to a quiet and lonely place to pray. He made himself scarce.

I am seriously thinking that maybe part of my Lenten journey this year, and part of the ongoing inner work that I need to do as a leader in the church, is to find ways to consciously step back from my ministry and to take the time that I need to rest, relax and remind myself that my work (even what seems like good and important and necessary labor for the Kingdom) needs to be seen in the light of God’s extravagant love for me and for the people that I am called to serve. It is a challenge, especially in a fast-paced place like New York City and in a growing congregation with lots of new programs and potential. But my spiritual health and the health of my congregation will be served by my ability to hold onto things lightly, to invite God’s peace and non-anxious presence not just into personal situations and challenges, but into my ministry in the church.

Am I the only person who has struggled with this?  I would really love to hear from others out there who may have found a healthy balance and are finding ways to living into their belovedness within the context of their ministry.