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This parable, roughly written yesterday and today, captures the story of my life and my church’s life. Here’s how it goes:
A beautiful young woman fell in love and married the perfect man. It was a famous wedding. They were the ideal couple. They had the admiration of everyone around. It was a fairy-tale wedding and a dream marriage. Things were wonderful. For about a year.
She realized, as she became more mature and self-aware, that she wanted to continue to grow and develop as a person. She wanted to discover who she was and be that person. She started to become more vocal as she spoke her mind. She was confident enough in herself and in their love to be herself and to experiment with her own chosen path of self-discovery and self-expression. At first her husband was slightly amused. But over time it developed into bafflement as he began to realize that she was indeed changing. She wasn’t the quiet, submissive woman who fell head over heels for him. She was more honest about what she thought, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
So, one day, as an attempt to re-establish order, he lashed out at her about something she said: “What are you doing? Why are you changing the rules? We had an agreement! We used to get along so well. We never used to disagree! Now you seem to question everything I say. I want things back the way they were. I want you to fulfill the vows that we wrote ourselves where you said you would always honor me and look to me as the head of our household! We were happier then! You’re the one who’s changing, not me! You’re wrecking something beautiful.” He was angry. She never saw him so furious. And it frightened her.
He was right. She was changing! She could see that she wasn’t the sweet naive girl he married. Or… was she changing? Maybe she was just becoming more confident in who she was. Maybe her true self was coming out… her true self that at first temporarily slept under the power of infatuation but was now awakening in spite of his resistance. It took a lot of courage for her to be herself. His reactions were becoming more violent and cruel. Over time things got steadily worse until she felt she had no choice. She actually began fearing for her safety. Nor could she bear the thought of living in his prison for the rest of her life. She tried to talk to him about it, but he always managed to make her feel it was all her fault. He would get angrier and angrier. So, with all the courage she could muster, she told him she was leaving. She couldn’t live with him any more. She was tired of being controlled. She wanted to be free to be herself. His rage and attempts to force her into submission only drove her further away. Then one day, to everyone’s surprise, including hers, she left. She could finally breathe the fresh air of freedom that she had risked everything to earn.
But she soon found out that freedom is costly. Read More
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Lisa and I are insurance poor. That’s just one of our problems. We’ve got to figure out ways to bring down these expenses! Late last night, while we were talking about our insurances, we came to the conclusion that we could cut some of them. We are definitely over-insured. If I died she’d be set for life. If she died, I’d be doing very well… financially anyway. I suggest that when I die she just dump me in the river across the street. I’d take care of the rest. Then I said, “I think I could probably bury you for $10,000!” Well we started to laugh uncontrollably. I mean, we couldn’t talk and couldn’t stop. She was laughing/crying like she sometimes does. I said, “I don’t literally mean that. I don’t want to bury you…” and more laughter, in a tragic kind of way. We were laughing so hard that Abby, our dog, was getting nervous and started to whine and bark, finally wanting out of the room. In between fits of laughter, I said I could imagine myself shopping around for the best deal, hoping to have money left over to at least buy a bottle of good scotch. I could joke about fridge boxes and paying myself for doing the funeral. Then, when her laughter/crying started to turn more into crying/laughter, we felt the mood change. This is serious. We looked in each other’s eyes. Oh my love… the road we’ve travelled!
I love this girl! We’ve been together since she just turned 18. I was 21. We got married the next year. Yes, I married a teenager. We both remember talking about when we got married that we would be happy just living in a shack with one single bed and nothing else but the breath of God. That’s all we needed, because that’s all we’d use. We were crazy in love and we were happy… naturally. We are still in love. And the romance is still there. But the happiness has to be fought for. It’s more elusive. It seems that the g-force of life endeavors to suck the happiness out of us and inject dull drudgery into our life and into our love. Money has for too long been the dispenser of our fate. We’re determined to overcome this. And we will. Because we do love each other, and we love our love. We want our happiness to be ours. We want our lives to be filled with delight. We want to restore the joy of our love and the adventure of our lives. We want to return to simpler times, when all we needed was each other and the skin we were in.
This is a photo of Lisa on our first date. Oh man!
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I’ve been thinking about what holds us together as a community. This has been on my mind because of the many people I hear from, almost daily, who are hungering for true community but can’t find it. I see this especially in the young, who have no interest in what used to define community. They are looking for something else.
It has become obvious to me that, for instance, it isn’t the marriage license, the certificate, the paper, that holds a marriage together. It has also become increasingly obvious to me that neither do the vows, the promises, or the wedding ceremony, hold a marriage together. I’ve also become aware that compatibility, having things in common, sharing a common goal or vision, is not the cohesive glue in a relationship either.
Translate this analogy of marriage into community life, you have the same thing. Being a member does not hold a community together. Being a part of a church doesn’t keep it. Neither do the sacraments or vows or promises. Neither does theological unity or common goals or a shared vision hold it together.
It can only be love, mutual love, that holds a relationship or a community together. What I am trying to say is that we have to get to the place where we realize that we just can’t expect people to remain committed to each other because it is expected, or promises were made, or there is uniformity in whatever area, or that there is a common goal we’ve set for them. People, especially younger people, aren’t interested in uniformity, conformity, or forms of any kind. There must be genuine acceptance, honesty, authenticity, freedom, and love for community to work. This requires intense energy from each person, and nothing outside of themselves can be called upon to ensure the relationship will work… no authority, document, ruler, goal, vision, practice, or tradition.
This is why I don’t strive for theological uniformity, homogeneity in life-style, protocol, authority, submission, legal agreement, or anything of the sort. These no longer matter. It comes down to love, its practice. That is, the way of love.
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I’m feeling kind of quiet these days… again! I’m lying low. Or trying to. In spite of my attempts to be quiet, the is the never ending suffering of those around me. And I, to a degree, suffer myself.
Marriages of my friends are breaking up at an alarming rate. It is epidemic, shall we say. And, as usual, our own marriage is being stretched as Lisa and I try to learn to grow as individuals while staying in love and in close proximity. You see, this is always the problem: how to grow personally with complete liberty in the context of community. I read an excellent book and always recommend it to anyone interested in this complex dynamic. It is by David Schnarch and is called Passionate Marriage. His basic point is that when a couple enters into a relationship like marriage, they are entering a crucible of change. When one person grows, it automatically forces the other person to grow, and vice versa. I read it not only with my own marriage in mind, or the marriages of my friends, but for our community. It is dynamic and very intense, this process of moving into our own freedom while others move into theirs.
I don’t care about liturgy, sacraments, weddings, funerals, propriety, services, the organization… and all the order that comes with these. These aren’t the issue. They aren’t the point. Do them, fix them, reform them, change them, stop them… whatever. We are always and only left with ourselves and our own personal urgency of transformation. And this is why I am so silent these days.
The fine art photo is a cropped version of a photo of my UK friend Howard Nowlan
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The tools for self-awareness are close at hand. Years ago, early in my marriage to Lisa, I had a revelation that shattered me for life. I was all alone way back in the woods hunting deer. I was resting in the snow on a fallen log. In the distance I could hear the coyotes starting to call as the cool sun fell beneath the tree tops. I was thinking of my marriage. I was thinking of my love for Lisa. You see, earlier that day she had challenged me on the duplicity of my love. She said that when I claim to feel close to God, that’s when I’m such a jerk towards her. I was adept at nurturing my contemplative/mystical relationship with God, but was meanwhile hurting my wife. The revelation, on that cold winter dusk, was that my heart either loved or it didn’t. I can’t love God and hate my brother… or wife. My heart either loves, and loves all unconditionally, or it doesn’t. For true love is not partial about the object of its love. Love primarily emanates from the lover towards the beloved. It is not something that is pulled from the lover conditional on the beloved. This is what I realized that day.
So during my long, lonely, dark and cold walk back home that night, I realized that the very tools for my self-awareness are right at hand. Hours of meditation and self-analysis were ploys, a distraction from what is readily evident right before my eyes. I realized right then and there that if I did not love my wife, and love her well, that I could not assume or claim to love God and to love him well. I came to realize, and have seen it proven over and over again down through the years, that the way I’m loving my wife (or, in your case, your husband or child or friend or parent or whatever) is a mirror reflection of the way I’m loving God.
If I am distant from Lisa, I can be sure that I am distant from God. If I get easily distracted from Lisa, I can be sure that I get easily distracted from God. If I am easily drawn into the interest of another, then it reveals my heart’s fickleness and willingness to betray. If I am caught up in my own activity, however noble, to the neglect of my relationship with Lisa… ditto with God. On it goes. If you want your heart to be whole and have integrity, the sooner you realize this the better.
The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Mark Hemmings and is taken from his mannequin series.
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I am inside the system. I am a part of the machine. I am one of the so-called leaders of this institution. Most of the time I’m not happy about it. I continuously struggle with it and even against it. This is what makes my blog what it is: it is written by a pastor who critiques the very system he’s a willing but reluctant participant in. I sometimes wonder what would become of my blog if I left the ministry as a full-time paid clergy. Would it mean anything anymore? I think one of the unique aspects of nakedpastor is that I’m still within the system. I often wonder how bought I am by the system. How embroiled am I in it? How vested is my interest? I constantly feel like I’m compromising myself. I sometimes feel guilt about selling out to the system. Then, I remember that it isn’t about the system but the people I pastor who are also within it, the friends I work among. Like marriage I guess… I love Lisa, this person in front of me. If that is true, I don’t even have to consider the institution of marriage. It means nothing. I am in but not of. I always have to remind myself of this, and there is beauty in it.
The fine art photograph (cropped) is the creation of my friend Howard Nowlan.
Have a great long weekend. See you soon!
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David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
