What has changed, shifted, deepened in me? My first response is to say not much. I don’t feel so deepened. In many ways I still feel unchanged. The sessions are encouraging and challenging and sort of a haven in the midst of a lot of bad news.
Then I have interactions and experiences that point out that maybe something has shaken loose. I’m currently visiting my mom in Oregon. She lives in what is a retirement community that was formed by our denomination in the 1960’s. It’s in the little town where our church conference was torn apart about 8 years ago. It was and is gut wrenching to lose so many that had raised me into ministry and that I had served next to. It was my whole life as I had worked in these churches for my whole pastoral career, all of my family, and much of our social life. I remember being floored at how some folks talked to each other. I am ashamed of how I thought about some of those folks. God and my therapist have helped stitch me back together. I’m getting there.
It’s inevitable that I would see folks from both sides of the rift who still live here, many of them in the retirement community. This morning sitting in the coffee shop at the retirement place, I saw one of the former pastors working in the coffee shop kitchen. We were on opposite sides of things, I avoided eye contact. But as I sit here, I am remembering so many memories of his kindness and wonderful ability to draw in those who were a bit on the edges. He is in the kitchen washing dishes with several migrants. I smiled when I imagined that those folks have surely experienced his love and earnest concern.
I have set up a lunch meeting for tomorrow with a pastoral couple who we were pretty close to. I have grieved the separation, some of which has been geographical and some philosophical. I hope to apologize for any distance, I have placed between us. I hope to rekindle our relationship.
On Friday after our session, I was able to use the “Us versus Fear” image and the analogy of a book of fables that we write about others. I used it during a board meeting that included two sides that want to separate within an organization. I think it helped. If nothing else it helped me approach the situation with much more grace and peace.
It is comforting to begin to see a few cracks of light that have broken through my armor of pain. I have hope.
4 comments
Shawn, I really appreciate your open-hearted willingness to wrestle with this tension and lean into the uncomfortable for the sake of relationships and potential repair. That seems to be missing in so many places these days and it is an inspiring example!
Thanks so much for sharing Shawn. I appreciate you naming the underlying seeds that God is planting that are taking root in practical situations that you are facing. May the “few cracks of light that have broken through your armor of pain” continue to break open wider and wider as you discover your own role in peacemaking amidst the division and fractures in your context.
Thanks for sharing this, Shawn. I resonate with this quite a bit. The pastor and mentor I served under for 5 years, who sent me to plant the church I now pastor, argued the case against a fellow pastor on my district who was eventually defrocked over LGBTQ+ issues a couple of years ago (essentially playing the role of prosecuting attorney). The whole incident has been extremely painful, and I find myself still struggling to stay in the denomination, here mostly because it’s easier than dragging my church through a painful process of me/us leaving. For years, we joined congregations for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday services, and after a long hiatus, we hosted them for Ash Wednesday this year, and we will join them in a few weeks for Good Friday. I have a lot of mixed feelings about bringing my congregation back over there and worshiping together with all of the tension that I/we feel toward what has happened. The note about imagining this pastor washing dishes with a group of migrants is really helpful in putting Jer’s reflections into action for me with this former pastor of mine. Praying for restoration and reconciliation, somehow, in the midst of ongoing conflict. Hoping the Spirit will allow true communion during Holy Week across the divide this year.
Shawn, sharing this is obviously so very personal and vulnerable and I so appreciate your willingness to do this. Your honesty about the need for both God and therapist is refreshing as I find myself hesitant to talk about my therapy experiences in some ministry circles where it feels like there is still judgment or suspicion of this.
I hope when you look back on this visit, you will be able to see even more of God’s restoration work in you and through you!