Mentorship through the Written Word

I have been tremendously blessed to have many mentors, living and dead, people who have taught me through word and example and people who have taught me through their writings and stories. As I build a life for myself, I find myself reflecting on what I have learned. Over the past year or so, three mentors of the written word stand out (as do so many who have taught me personally). I wanted to give tribute to these three in this post.

First, Will Campbell. He died just a month or so ago, near his longtime home in Tennessee and part of me wishes I could have met him. He’s one of those authors I feel like I know, whose words and stories have resonated deeply. A white man of the south, he shared much of my culture, the culture of the white working class. He was, at the same time, its most vocal critic—a leader in the civil rights movement and tireless in his fight against racism and racist structures (including prisons) in this country. What moved me most about Will Campbell was his decision, after years of seminary training and a few working in liberal institutions, to embrace his identity as a Baptist “bootleg preacher” (he had been ordained at 17 in a tiny Southern Baptist church). He recognized that he had begun to privilege only one kind of knowing—academic knowledge—and was pursuing respectability as much as he was justice. Instead, he chose a harder path. He moved to a small town outside of Nashville, truck farmed and sang country music at bars, and sometimes baptized people in his backyard and shared moonshine Eucharist. The country tavern became his church and he found himself the pastor of those who never darkened the doors of a church building. He was as fiercely independent as he was committed to community and he was deeply and sometimes harshly critical of institutions of all sorts. His was a sort of backwoods, Christian anarchism, if I may call it that. As a person who has often been torn between my culture of origin and my academic pursuits, a person torn between my love of place and my call to pastor on the edge, Will Campbell has offered me an example of a man who honestly and sometimes painfully navigated the same questions. 

A second mentor has been Wendell Berry. Anyone who knows me or even occasionally glances at my facebook page will not be surprised to hear this. Wendell writes clearly and forcefully on the importance of land and of place. It was his novels that kept me company when I became unbearably homesick for the forest and the smell of the soil while in seminary and his essays that have inspired much of my theological and ethical reflection. Perhaps it has been Jayber Crow, Wendell’s fictional character that has most influenced me. Maybe it’s because Jayber cut hair for a living and I used to cut dog hair for a living, I don't know. A young man who dropped out of seminary and walked back to the town of his birth, who lived as the town barber and gravedigger, and finally, in his old age, found that he did believe in God and community after all, Jayber Crow captured my own struggle with what it means to minister with people instead of to them. Berry has frequently criticized Christian ministers for being too interested in heavenly things and too removed from the life of the community to minister effectively. In Jayber, he created a character who was the town minister in the guise of a barber and who discovers, after long years of thought and hair cutting, that he has found a new vision of church—a vision that includes the whole community. Not just the people who live in an area, but the whole history of a place, dead and living, as well as the fields and the river, the camping and drinking places, the deer and the livestock and the tidy farmhouses. A community that encompasses all life and a gospel that embraces all life, that finds heaven not so much in the future but in the love of people and the life of the land.

Finally, and perhaps unexpectedly, my final mentor has been Juliet Marillier. I am an avid novel reader and fantasy is my guilty pleasure. One would perhaps wonder why a fantasy fiction writer would make this top three list, but her stories have allowed me to capture my childhood love of fairy tales and my deeply rooted connections to my own heritage and to nature spiritualties. Most of Juliet’s stories are set in ancient Scotland and Ireland, set in a historical frame, and inspired by Irish and Scots folk tales. She is meticulously attentive to the landscape as it might have been and her stories are deeply rooted in the “old religions,” the pre-Christian nature religions of the ancient Celts. Her strong female leads are strongly connected to the natural world and generally end up on a quest that tests their strength. Perhaps I love these books so much because it is often so difficult to find strong women in fantasy stories and because so many of her characters are called to ritual and religious roles. I’m pretty taken by her recent Shadowfell books, in which a young girl finds herself gifted and called to unite the human and non-human (the good folk, or the spirits of the earth) forces of Alban/Scotland to overthrow a tyrant king. Underneath the simple enjoyment of fairy tales and stories of love and loss, I find a certain resonance with my own love of the land and connection to the natural world.   

Musings at the Vietnam Memorial

The air is heavy here—not just the June humidity waiting for rain but heavy with memory. For all the political self-serving propaganda of war memorials in the capitol of a powerful nation, the spirits of my people lies thick on the land, crying their sorrow, their rage, their brotherhood, their courage. They rest under the trees of their native land and their eulogies are sung by a thousand birds.

Across the lawn is a vast wall of names, men and women dead fighting the wars of the rich and powerful. In front of me is a statue of a dying soldier tended by a female medic—perhaps designed to be a nod toward gender equality, but what I really see is the central virtue of my people. Loyalty above all else. Sacrifice for a brother in arms.

For many Americans, community is formed in the military. Unions, gangs, and granges serve that purpose to an extent, and churches to a lesser degree, but the bonds formed in the armed forces are by far the most powerful for my people.

What keeps working Americans fighting the wars of petty politicians? Economics play a part—joining the military may be the only option for a kid who wants to get ahead. It is a way out. But it is not only that. It is community and a place to belong and a place you know your comrades have your back. It is a place where people lay down their lives for each other. It is a chance to be part of something greater than yourself.

As I look at the vastness of the place, as I walk with bowed head past the names of the dead, I honor them. The Capitol is a tiny dot in the distance—the place where wealthy men and women whose children are usually safe from war decide the fate of thousands, millions. But, here, among the dead, I see courage and loss and love. I see a community born of struggle and born of our intense need to find a place to belong.  

Coming Home

When this last trip to the east coast, to graduate and to research, is done, I will go home. I will rent a little place not far from where I grew up and take this year for discernment. 

I am going home. Home to the wooded trails I know so well and to the ocean beaches and the dripping moss under the towering trees. Home to the maritime climate in one of the rainiest regions in the world, home to tiny towns and friendly people scratching out a living in a declining economy, home to hay fields and aging barns and failing farms, home to a place where the height of the year’s entertainment is the rodeo and county fair. Home, too, to the people I grew up with and to generations of my extended family—my great uncle and my baby niece, my mentors and pastors, my old bosses and coworkers, people who watched me grow up, some whom I want to see and others I hope I never bump into.

Over the past decade away, I have realized just how much this place has meant to me and just how attached I am to it. No matter where I have lived, this place, this land and its people bordered by the sea and the great forests, has made its way into my dreams at night and my deepest longings by day. And so it is time to come back to it, at least for a time and perhaps for a long time.    

I have always felt that I have belonged to this place in a peculiar way. As much as my education and my career path have encouraged me to become an individual without a history and without a fixed place, I have never been able to shake my loyalty to where I come from and to the soil that carries the bones of my grandfather and the sweat of my childhood labor.

 In a time where many wander and where so many of us long for home, perhaps it is time to begin to learn anew the value of place. To learn again how to find home. To learn anew how we become a part of something larger than ourselves and how we can become dependent on each other. In this time of economic crisis and hardship, perhaps this is our best hope for the future.

A Grace Period

Many of you know that I have decided to step back from the whirlwind that has been my ordination process and take this next year for discernment. 

There are many reasons why I decided to this. Most importantly, I feel a deep need to continue in discernment around my call. From the beginning of this process, I have remained committed to doing work outside traditional parish ministry. As I have matured in ministry, that commitment has remained and developed. As this year has unfolded, I have been less and less comfortable being on the “inside” of parish ministry and church work, instead of outside it with the people I love and respect so much. I have found myself in positions, while truly wonderful and doing good work, that are further away from where I feel called. I found myself making decisions that were in the best interest of a career in the church, but not necessarily in keeping with my deepest call.

I have been privileged to have found work and ministry that accesses my deepest joy and that makes me fully alive. Working alongside people on the street and people who live on the edge—as more and more of us are doing in this time of economic crisis—has made me become more fully myself. I have been deeply enriched by the wisdom and the courage and the faith of people in crisis due to an unjust economic system. I have committed myself to ministry in this context and to work that will confront unjust systems of power.

This decision, ultimately, is a choice for me to explore how I might do the work to which I feel called and to explore ways to do this in western Washington. I am open to the leading of the Spirit. I am also deeply grateful for the support I have received in the diocese to take this step and discern what my role in the church will be. I will remain a deacon in the Episcopal Church and continue to explore the future.

I approached this decision with a great deal of trepidation. After all, I was giving up a full time position after graduation and was halting a process that I had worked so hard to complete. And, yet, I have continually received confirmation that this is the right decision. While it means that my future is less certain, I am excited about what is developing and what God is leading me to do. I ask for your prayers as I take these next steps, catch my breath from several years of harrowing schedules and seminary work, and envision the next step in my ministry.

Mother's Day Musings

I had the privilege of spending the day with four generations of the women of my family--my grandmother, mother, sister, and her little girls. I am struck, looking at this picture, by how strong the women of my family are and how strong we have needed to be.

We have always worked hard. My grandmother and my mother both dropped out of high school to start working at fifteen and neither of them have stopped. My mom has raised three daughters and is now helping raise her three grandchildren. My sister is working three jobs to support her kids as a single mother. And none of them has ever complained.

We have survived a few difficult marriages, a few painful divorces, and some abusive men. And we have refused to let go of our self worth. We have also refused to let go of our humanity. We have come through and we have remained strong and remained ourselves.

Our story is rooted in the U.S. working class, in generations of hard working women who have raised families, worked multiple jobs, and supported each other in a world less and less secure. We hope, of course, that the little girls that we now hold will have an easier life. But we cannot guarantee that. We can hope, however, to give them some of the strength that is their heritage. For now, I can only stand in awe of the women in my family and feel privileged to be the daughter of strong women.

A Dirge for Aberdeen, the city of my childhood

 Hear this, as I take up for you a dirge, O my people

You have fallen, You will not rise again—

Rural America, town of Aberdeen.

She lies neglected on her land, there is none to raise her up.

The port city that was once thousands strong, full of ships and timber and fish

Has only hundreds left, with tent cities on her banks;

The one that had a thousand workers

Has only tens of unemployed left.

Thus says the Lord to the town of Aberdeen,

Seek for hope, that you may live.

But do not resort to methamphetamines

Or come to crack houses

Nor place yourselves at the mercy of drug lords

For the DEA will certainly take you captive

And the poor will come to jail.

Seek for hope, that you may live

Or the wind will pass over and you will be no more

It will blow over a desolate ruin.

Because of those who turned justice into profit

when they exploited workers to fell the giant forests

And then cast mercy from the earth

when they left them to starve when the forests were gone.

The one who made the wind and clouds

And sends the sun to restore the felled forests

Who deepens the shadows as new trees revive the land

Who calls the waves on the rocky shore

And crashes them on the rocks

The Lord is the one.

Who destroys the oppressor and the strong

So that destruction reaches the great cities who have extracted your wealth.

They hate the worker who speaks for his rights

They mock the simplicity of his words.

Therefore because they accumulate land and houses throughout the town

And impose heavy rent on the poor or leave them empty

Though they have beautiful condos and vacation rentals

They will not stay in them

They have preserved their vacation parks and well-kept forests

But they will not walk in them.

For I know their transgressions are many and their sins are great,

They who profited off of the labor of your forest workers

But walk past them now as they beg in the streets.

At a time like this, we can only keep silent, for it is an evil time.

Seek out the impoverished worker and not your luxury, that you may live

Then the Lord will be with you as you ask.

Hate neglect, love action

And establish justice for the small rural towns.

Perhaps the Lord may be gracious to the remnant that is left.

Therefore, thus says the Lord,

There is weeping in the city parks and in Wal-Mart parking lots,

 and in the streets people cry; “We are screwed.”

The farmer whose land lies fallow is called to mourning

And the migrant worker who waits on the corner is called to lament.

And in the forests and tree farms there is wailing

For the work that sustained the community is at an end.

Alas, you who are waiting for the end times

For what purpose will the world end?

I hate, I reject your supercilious services

Nor do I delight in you sumptuous liturgies said within closed doors

Even though you offer up prayers and collects

I will not accept them

And I will not even look at the solemn processions of your services.

Take away from me the noise of your fancy songs

I do not care about the music of your thousand dollar organs.

Let justice come down to my people

Let mercy be found for my small towns.

In a seminary class last year, I was asked to rewrite a section of Amos for the audience of my choice. I wrote about the land and people where I come from, wondering what the words of the biblical prophets might be to them. This piece captures my love and sorrow for the places so close to my heart.