Writing my own rule
A second deconstruction
A few hours after this writing, I will be all made up and sitting in front of my computer to record a podcast episode with a friend to tell a story I haven’t really told before all in one go.
Almost thirty years ago now, I sensed a calling from God to become a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. I grew up Baptist but was drawn to Anglicanism in university. That was what I call my first deconstruction. I learned that the Bible as I had learned it was not the straightforward “God said it. That settles it,” that I had come to believe. There was history and humanity and beauty and complexity all tied together to create something far richer than I knew.
Canadian Anglicans are typically mainline Protestant in theology (and all the diversity that exists there) with a Catholic feel. We have sacraments. We have liturgies with obscure phrases that we repeat every week. We have candles and robes and organ music. Long story short, I followed the calling, went to seminary, and was ordained as a “priest of the Church of God.”
One reason I am a very good Anglican is I am very good at rules. I was taught the rules were there to make us a stronger community, to guide all of us into being a more loving and truer expression of the Body of Christ. I thought the rules would protect me and my vulnerable friends. Until they didn’t.
That is when my second, much more complicated, still-ongoing deconstruction began to unfold.
I was ordained right in the midst of the debates around what were then called same-sex blessings. As a closeted bisexual married to a man, I joined in the fight as an ally. My marriage wasn’t on the line, but many others were. Again and again we prepared all our reasons and defenses. We prayed, we hung rainbows and stood at booths for hours while advocates of traditional marriage came to debate our existence. We listened and offered perspectives, maintaining our gracious composure while others shouted at us and condemned us to hell. And then we found quiet spaces to secretly gather to cry together so we didn’t jeopardize the church’s unity.
I walked that road for about 15 years. Many walked it much earlier and longer than I did. We made considerable gains and the Anglican Church of Canada is a far safer place for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community than it used to be thanks to our work. But it still lags far behind what a typical Western society would expect of us. I am still hesitant to recommend all but a few Anglican churches to my queer friends.
All those years I prayed, I listened, I offered empathy to people who said hateful things while no empathy was extended to me and my friends in return. The rules did exactly what they were designed to do: maintain the status quo even at the expense of the lives of me and those I hold dear.
Throw in several bullying incidents, unsympathetic supervisors, bishops whose values I fundamentally disagreed with, bearing witness to several colleagues being outed as sexual offenders and, of course, the pressure to revive an institution in catastrophic decline for decades and, by the time COVID-19 spread around the world, I was pretty much spent.
It wasn’t all bad. The thing about ministry is the hard stuff is really hard but the good stuff is pretty great. I’ve had a front row seat to God at work in births, funerals, weddings, even divorces. I’ve met wonderful, faithful people from the cradle to the grave, many I still think of often with much gratitude and love. Some of my colleagues, including bishops, are now my dearest friends and mentors. And there are very few things that can move my heart more than watching people from all walks of life, from toddler to elderly, put out their hands to receive a small wafer, take a sip of wine, and know with all their being that God loves them and dwells in them always and forever.
In June, 2021 I retired from parish ministry. It was necessary for my well-being. I knew that while God called me into this priestly life, more was being revealed to me about how God was working in the world and how my soul was compelled to join in that work. And it was no longer within the hierarchy of a colonial institution, no matter how beautiful and historic. I was ready to follow a rule of life and that rule just didn’t fit in the system I made vows in anymore.
Listening to God through the threads pulling on my heart, I have widened the scope of my calling to endeavours like Harbor and my PhD research on creativity and spirituality. Harbor has been fundamental in this second deconstruction of mine. I am breaking down the walls—some institutional, many self-made—that kept me in what Willie J. Jennings would call my “priestly enclosure.” I am descending down the steps from the altar and bringing the feast to the world.
The rest of the story, or at least more of the story, will be told in the podcast episode, which will be released sometime this season. The podcast is called Contemplating Resonance and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
