The Roller Coaster

I suppose every person has what I call a "bag of tricks." It's that place in our minds where we store all those euphemisms, metaphors, truisms and sometimes even trite sayings that we pull out to describe various events in life. Many's the time when I've sat with a person in the midst of a difficult situation--usually illness or death--and reached into my bag of tricks and said, "It's really a roller coaster, isn't it?" I can't think of a single instance when the person didn't immediately understand and identify with my words. I guess that's because life itself is a roller coaster and the extreme ups and downs are only heightened in the midst of a specifically difficult situation.

The reality that life is a roller coaster puzzles me. Why, yesterday, did I feel on top of the world, even empowered, and today I'm feeling a bit moody and unsettled?

Not too long ago, I was talking with a man who told me that he always woke up happy. I lied and said that I did too. I lied because he has something that I so want. I lied because who wants to hear that, most mornings, I wake up in a mildly depressed mood and it often takes the better part of the morning for me to not want to analyze every part of my psyche to try to figure out why I have this light haze of negativity surrounding me?

As I look back over my life, I guess that, in some form or fashion, depression has always lurked, though I can't really say when it began to affect my mornings. As a kid, I loved the mornings, much to the consternation of the rest of my family. I was always an early riser and ready to play. When I was in junior high, I was a paper boy and on Sunday mornings, after I had finished my route, I came home and made breakfast for the whole family. But, by the time I was in my thirties, I had what I refer to as two major depressive episodes. About seven years ago, as I was going through the process of coming out and going through a divorce, my doctor told me I needed to be on anti-depressants, not episodically, but for the rest of my life. He put it to me this way: "You have hypertension and you will be on hypertension medication the rest of your life, because it's a physiological reality. It's not a moral issue. It's not a character issue. Depression is the same thing. It is a physiological reality. It's not a moral issue. It's not a character issue. You need to be on a daily anti-depressant medication for the rest of your life." I got the message. I'm on daily medication. But I still hate depression.

I don't hate my high blood pressure. It doesn't affect my day to day life. I never even knew I had high blood pressure until it was diagnosed. I had only had one symptom--waking up in the middle of the night with a headache--but I didn't even know that was symptomatic of hypertension. So, I take daily medication and never even think about it. Depression is not that black and white. It affects my day to day life.

I guess that, to be fair to myself, I'm facing some pretty difficult circumstances. I've been out of work going on four months now. I'm an interim pastor, so the job stability is not all that great. You can put the details of all of that in the "I'm sure I'll write about that later" category.

The curious thing about all of this is that, in the midst of being unemployed and dealing with mild depression, my faith is growing stronger. You can put the details of that in the "I'll write about that in my next post" category.

I'm Not Peter Marshall

For so many reasons, I'm not Peter Marshall. But, I suppose, the number one reason that looms large in my mind is that Peter Marshall was straight and I'm gay. To say that I am gay doesn't sum up who I am, but it's a large part of who I am, made all the larger because of the pretense I live with daily. I am a pastor in a denomination whose church law currently proclaims that those who are ordained shall "live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness." Such lovely and noble language. So romantic. I bet Catherine Marshall would have loved it. But the next line is not so lovely: "Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained..."

I won't go into all the political wranglings that produced that bizarre way of saying, "Gay people are sinful and therefore shall not be ordained." I am so tired of those who want to quote scripture (or confessional statements) ad nauseum at me to defend their positions. I'm equally tired of those who want to quote other passages of scripture (or other confessional statements) ad nauseum refuting those positions. But of course, that brings up a whole other issue: I'm just tired of anyone using any faith document to defend their positions about anything. Use faith documents to inform? Yes. To challenge? Yes. To question? Yes. To nurture? Yes. To encourage? Yes. But to defend? No. Give me a break! Have you heard about the Inquisition? Have you heard about biblical defenses of slavery? Have you heard about biblical defenses of women as second-class people?

Maybe the reason that I don't think of people who disagree with me on the issue of gay ordination as gay-bashers or hateful people is because I know how long it took for me to come to terms with who I am. Or, to be truthful, how long it is continuing for me to come to terms with who I am--not just with my sexual orientation, but with so many other facets of my being. I'm just tired of arguing and defending. I just want to live and be.

I'm gay. I love a man. I'm a contributing member of society. I'm part of the two per cent of Americans who have a doctoral degree. I've served faithfully in churches for thirty-four years (I was very young when I started!), preaching, teaching, administrating, caring. I've served my denomination in various capacities. All I want to do is to be a pastor and be wholly who I am in relating to the people I work with and live with. But the energy it takes to keep up the pretense!

Oh, I'm not totally in the closet. I'm out to my family. I'm out to a lot of other pastors in my denomination, some of whom are also gay.

You see, one of the biggest problems is that, although many in my denomination don't love me, I love my denomination. I love its theology. I love its worship. I love its polity. I love its history. To leave my denomination would be akin to divorcing my family. Just as much as I am gay I am a child of my denominational tradition. And, just like my family, it's imperfect, at times dysfunctional, judgmental, even mean. But it's also nurturing and loving and absolutely jam-packed with people with whom I have rich, long-standing, loving relationships.

I don't want to be Peter Marshall. I just want to be me.

All Saints Day

I wonder if there's not just a bit of irony that, seemingly with the whole world blogging away, I finally decide to do this on All Saints Day. I chose the name Pastor in the Raw because, first of all I'm a pastor. I've no doubt that, as I pursue this endeavor, I'll spend a lot of time reflecting about what that means, but for the moment, the memory of the impact of the movie A Man Called Peter had on my adolescent psyche floods my mind.

The story recounts the memories of a wife (Catherine Marshall) about her husband, Peter Marshall. The movie was made in 1955, which ought to tell you something about how any subject is romanticized, and it certainly did romanticize pastoral ministry. Peter Marshall was the pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C. and also served as chaplain of the United States Senate just after World War II. And, the Marshall family had a summer home--some place like Cape Cod--I don't remember exactly. As a kid growing up in a decidedly Southern Baptist family, feeling like our religious beliefs put us on the fringe of society, the movie was a breath of fresh air to me. I think that there has always been something within me that pulled me toward pastoral ministry, and in that movie--in my adolescent naivite--I believed that it was possible to become a pastor and be respected and enjoy all the perks of the corporate world. Wrong!

But, more than all the material things that Peter Marshall's story seemed to promise, I totally bought into the vision of the "perfect pastor" that only a widow could contrive. I am not Peter Marshall. In fact, I have great doubt that Peter Marshall was the Peter Marshall that his widow remembered. And yet, me and a large part of the rest of Christendom has, somewhere down deep in our psyches, this idea that all pastors ought to be the mythical Peter Marshall.

And so, with that totally unrealistic expectation of pastoral ministry, I need a forum where I can be in the raw. To write, explore, vent, contemplate, rage, celebrate, confess who I am as a pastor.

I began talking about the irony of this being All Saints Day. The irony for me is that, when I think about All Saints Day, I don't think about its historical context coming out of the Roman Catholic Church. I think about what the writer of Hebrews calls a "great crowd of witnesses." All those people who, like the Apostle Paul have "fought the good fight, ...finished the race, ...kept the faith." All those people who finally got to meet God in the raw--all the pretenses of this earthly existence laid bare. And I think about all the energy I put into pretense and the freedom that great cloud of witnesses enjoys. Maybe I'll get a little bit more of that freedom doing this.