Self-reflection

Not sure why I am posting this.  I wrote it in a fit of self reflection brought on, I think, by a question my ex-husband's current wife asked about what I remember about a disastrous co-ministry my ex and I had many years ago.  I've thought this and talked of it for a while but I haven't put it to paper (virtual tho it may be) 'til now.  A fit of honesty can be good for the soul.

I went into the Christian ministry as a ‘fuck you’ to the religious tradition in which I grew up; a tradition that told me women were second class citizens, required to subjugate themselves to men. 

For all their limitations and the difficulties in our relationship, I saw my mother and grandmother put a roof over our heads and food on our table every day of every year without the assistance of a man.  I saw women come to church every week knowing that their husbands were waiting to beat the shit out of them when they got home because the husbands forbade them to go.  These were damn strong women.  And while I now may not share their beliefs I have to respect their strength. 

These women were no second class citizens.  They were under no obligation to subject themselves to abusive asshole husbands.  They came to church for comfort and relief, yet they had no voice in a system that said only men had the right to speak; only men had the right to decide; only men had authority given by God over matters of the home and the church. 

When I was 12 I asked my pastor if he would rather see a church close for want of a pastor or have a woman as pastor.  He would prefer the church close.  This was crap.  As were the visiting preachers with their flow charts of ‘God’s Order for the Family’ with God as the head, Men next, and women and children together on the same bottom rung.  More bullshit.  More anger to fuel me.

I rebelled in the way I knew would piss them off the most.  I signed up for seminary with the intention of becoming an ordained minister. 

I graduated seminary cum laude.  I had a baby in the middle of my studies and appalled male classmates by discreetly but unashamedly nursing her in classes where I was one of only a handful of women.  I was a campus leader and agitator for the inclusion of women the great boys’ club of the church.  I was ordained in the denomination of my choice. 

I was serving as superintendent of the church’s Sunday School when I started school.  One of the church's 'ministries' was to provide financial assistance to male seminarians. Their response to me was to inform me that I was no longer fit to have influence over the souls of the children since I was willfully and disobediently overturning God’s order. 

Needless to say my future relations with that church were rocky.  One of my greatest personal victories, as I defined 'victory' at the time, in this battle occurred when the church invited my then husband to preach on one of the weeks the pastor was on vacation.  My mother, respected though no longer allowed to serve on a church board or committee on account of her being a woman and divorced and all and having no man under whose authority to operate, insisted that my husband would do no such thing unless I was invited to preach the next week.  Surprisingly they caved and I preached from a pulpit to which, I was still officially denied access.

 So I did it.  I accomplished my great ‘fuck you’.  I was good at doing the minister thing.  Congregations liked me and respected me.  And I was a phony.  Not only was I there for the entirely wrong reasons, a personal kiss-off to a tradition I abhorred,  I wasn’t sure that I believed what I was saying from the pulpit I had bullied my way into.

The end came in, as they say, the middle of success.  I was serving as associate pastor of a moderately sized church.  I did lots of counseling, a fair amount of preaching and married and buried a number of church folk.  People trusted me.  I stood up for the youth of the church, insisting they not be treated as mere children.  I led well attended and well received bible studies.  I served on statewide and national denominational committees.  I was a great package.  But I no longer believed any of it.  And I played the part, week after week, month after month.

Until I got the letter.  It was anonymous, slipped into my church mail slot on an ordinary day.  It was a plea simply for me to pray for the writer.  About what he/she didn’t say.  He/she did say that the strength of my faith was evident and he/she knew that if I prayed God would surely listen. 

Whoever the writer, whatever their sincerity, it suddenly hit me that while I didn’t take myself all that seriously in my role as minister, other people did and I had absolutely no right to do what I was doing to them.  I had no right to allow them to trust in an illusion.  I had no right. 

So I left.  At the time I said it was because I needed a job with health benefits since my husband had been laid off.  However true that was, it was not the whole truth.  I could no longer sell my soul to the church.  I could no longer maintain my personal integrity and my position in the church.  I had said ‘fuck you’ to a religious tradition.  Big deal.  I was miserable playing a role, lying to myself and to the people who looked to me for truth. 

So now, many years later, I am a reasonably happy agnostic, trying to live not for Heaven but for the day, the moment; for this life and not the next; trying to do good where I can and not do harm when I can help it.  And it feels right to define my life for myself and not as a fuck off to a magical way of thinking.