On Leaving Church, Becoming All Flame, and the Glory of Everyday Astonishment

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?”

Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

            --From “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers”

Recently, after nearly 15 years in pastoral ministry, I left the church. The breakup was amicable and I even hope it’s not forever. But as a woman approaching 40 with the prayer of starting a family and a few years of fertility treatments already under my belt, I knew it was time for a change.

When I started sharing my intention to depart, people began to ask, “But what are you going to do?” There was kindness and curiosity in this question. People who know some part of me wanted to share in my life going forward. But behind this question I heard a few others: “How will your life have meaning and value if you aren’t employed?” “How will you connect to God if you aren’t connected to the church?” To which my spirit responded, “Oh, honey.”

Fewer emails and no meetings? Time to feel the feelings that ebb and flow with the inevitable grief and general lack of control around infertility? No weekly date with extroversion that takes a full day to recover from physically? Moments to pause and pools of time to assemble thoughts uninterrupted? Stepping away from church has already been a gift to this introverted empath.

Part of why I could step away with such confidence (in addition to Lucas’s willingness to support us both financially for a season – privilege indeed) is my experience of Spirit woven in and through all life. Church at its best is the place people go to remember that Holy Ground is everywhere. It’s where people practice awe, remembering that God is God and we are not. Ideally, people take that practice back into their daily lives. Doing like Abba Lot in the saying of the Desert Fathers excerpted above. We worship and fast a little and pray and try to be at peace as best we can. What else is there?

“If you will, you can become all flame.”

This is what I’m striving for in this season that feels like a refiner’s fire. A season that is burning away anything that’s not essential (and some of what I thought was) in order to clear the way for new life. It’s already been a season of tears (more about this in another edition) that have scrubbed me raw and left me feeling simultaneously vulnerable and strong, and also nearly translucent.

And I guess that’s what I hope to bear witness to in this newsletter. Reports on the dance with a fire that enlivens but does not consume. It won’t all be about fertility. There’s a lot of waiting in this dance. But this will be the place I’ll share what’s shareable on that front. Annie Dillard wrote, “You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” Irenaeus of Lyon, “The glory of God is [a hu]man fully alive.” Something astonishes me just about every day. And when it does, I’m inclined to say, “Glory.” So subscribe for reflections on the life of the spirit in the everyday. There’s a lot of glory here in the Prairie Pothole region of Iowa.