PeaceBang

The Will Vs the Soul: Summer of Prayer

I had a huge to-do list for the summer, and I didn’t meet any of my big goals.

I didn’t write a book.
I didn’t start my dissertation.
I didn’t even get a book proposal finished. Hell, I didn’t start it.
I didn’t lose another ten pounds.
I didn’t become a great salsa dancer.
I didn’t read the books in my pile (but I read a different pile).

What I did do this summer was work really hard issues in therapy (and I don’t mind telling you that), adjust to having a very active puppy in my life, learn how to grill steak, go out salsa dancing twice, attend my first Zumba class on a personal dare, do a little bit of gardening, catch up with friends who had been neglected during my SweetieBang period, see a slew of films, watch Red Sox games, clean and organize my study (yes, praise the Lord I got THAT done), sleep a LOT, play outside, go to the beach and friends’ pools a few times, and feel my feelings — which actually takes a lot more energy than I have ever realized.

I continued to attend Weight Watchers meetings, held on tight and not easily to a 25-lb. weight loss, avoided retail therapy in favor of saving money for sabbatical travel, and blogged.

As the summer winds down, I give up on my big goals. I’m not going to achieve them. My will is strong but in this case, my soul had another agenda and its needs overruled those of my will and my ego. I don’t like it. I don’t like being out of control this way. I am generally a disciplined and ambitious person and when I set a goal, I accomplish it.

My soul, however, doesn’t care what my ego desires. It had a lot to communicate to me this summer, and it made me listen. There were entire weeks when I required almost absolute solitude. There were days I did nothing but sleep, listen, record what the insights I received in my journal, fix food for myself and the four-leggeds, let the dog out to pee and poop, and return to silent listening and journaling. I would make plans to DO something and find myself flapping helplessly around the house, absolutely unable to get myself together to accomplish whatever it is I had set myself to do.

This was definitely not my Summer of Love. It was, I suppose, my Summer of Prayer in some way. It was my Summer of Feeling, attending to my inner life after a prolonged period of trying very hard to figure out other people and to understand failed or profoundly disappointing relationships. It was a time to tiptoe closer to my essence than I have ever crept before, to genuinely question how much authentic regard I have — and have been encouraged to have — for that essence — and to ask if at the age of 42, I finally accept and embrace it.

I do.

I do, and I had no idea how far I have traveled emotionally and spiritually in order to be able to say that. This isn’t about self-esteem. It is about something far deeper: a soul giving itself permission to be at home in the world. This permission comes not from accomplishments or even from the praise, affirmation or love one receives from others. It is an existential resolution; a laying down of arms against oneself not out of self-esteem but out of justice and compassion.

The psychic and spiritual energy it took to finally and honestly acquaint myself with the truth of my essence, to deem it acceptable, and to sever relations with the Inner Critic who has dominated my inner life for most of my life, was tremendous. But it had to be done. For someone to make it her life’s work to preach the everlasting love of God and the inherent worth and dignity of every person to the world, and then fail to confront, challenge and exorcise a toxic Inner Critic who rules her spiritual life is one of the saddest and most common hypocrisies there is. I did not enjoy this work. For a woman of my flamboyant temperament, it is actually easier to indulge in energetic self-flagellation than to abide with the complexities of life without such distracting dramatics.

I am quietly grateful. First and foremost to my friends, for holding up the compassionate mirror for me all these years, and for helping to me to experience and know that being flawed and human is not something that deserves punishment, but rather understanding and love. I am grateful for the insights of Jungian depth psychology and for the teachings of Universalist and Unitarian Christianity, which brought me from intellectual curiosity about amazing grace to a direct experience of it. I am grateful for all the people and institutions that make personal spiritual growth a possibility for me, for the work of ministry that makes it a priority.

And I am grateful to you, dear readers, for participating in this fascinating 21st century experiment with me: to make private spiritual experience public almost as it is happening (rather than to share it years later as a memoir), to affirm the struggle we all share in real time, and to thereby strengthen and celebrate the interdependent web within which we are bound as a moment-by-moment, blessed phenomenon.

Hating on the Richie Riches, Continued

If you are interested in my further thoughts after 61 comments on this issue, I respond here to Rev. Madge in bold.

It seems to me that commitment to being the Church (not just attending church, which anyone can do) happens at two levels, and that it requires maturity to live on both of those levels at the same time.

On the first level, we abide side by side as human beings turning our hearts and minds toward the Holy, trying to orient our lives in the direction to which it points. We rely on our various traditions to help us know the way. We are all radically equal before God and regard each other as sisters and brothers regardless of any difference or disagreement among us. This is the first discipline of community,

On the second level, we are called to work for a better, more just world of equity and compassion between human beings and active reverence for all of creation. Because of this second commitment, it is entirely appropriate to hate social structures that divide people into haves and have-nots. It is appropriate to challenge individuals who support those structures and benefit from them.
But we do not engage in this second level of work (which is not hierarchically “beneath” the first level, but exists side-by-side with it) without being religiously and morally and behaviorally devoted to the first.

Obviously not an easy thing to do. And therefore no wonder that we tend to gather in communities of people Just Like Us so that we can have a much easier time of the first, and enjoy rabid communal self-righteousness while engaging in the second.

Training Pastoral Caregivers

When I set out to train a group of lay pastoral caregivers this fall, I wanted to create my own model since I had never seen one that I could entirely go for, even though I had attended numerous workshops on the subject.

Although I read dozens of books on pastoral care. I found these two books to be most helpful in framing my sessions:

A Pastor in Every Pew: Equipping Laity for Pastoral Care by Leroy Howe
and
The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning To Listen Can Improve Relationships by Michael P. Nichols, PhD

I just thought I’d let you know.

Like-Minded?

Over the years I’ve heard various Unitarian Universalists say that they appreciate our congregations for the opportunity to be with “like-minded” people. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s only human to want to share community with people whose values we share.

But lately I’ve been thinking that I’m not sure that we’re necessarily as “like-minded” as we assume. I think, in fact, that we’re just as prone to enforced conformity as the next community, and that there’s a whole lot more diversity of perspective, opinion and belief than most of us are aware of. What I mean is, while we wring our hands about the lack of racial and “class” diversity in our congregations (I’m using quotes there because I’m not exactly sure what I mean by class, but I know it’s a huge and real issue among us), there are many other kinds of genuine diversity among us that have yet to be plumbed and brought out.

Theology. Class. Values. Economic realities beyond the surface (”everyone has a big house” — “everyone has a nice car” — no they don’t, and some who do are using credit cards to buy groceries and prescriptions. Some who drive old beaters and are wearing moth-eaten sweaters are living in beautiful homes they own free and clear and have no debt — you can’t necessarily tell who is “of means” by exteriors). Politics. Thoughts on the market economy. Parenting practices. The gender wars. Our experience of various “isms.” My curiosity about the way individuals in the faith community think about these things — and I mean really think– their unvarnished thoughts– increases all the time. Because my expectations for the faith community are shifting a bit. Where I used to think we should be doing deep inner work that would equip us to go out and save the world, I am now starting to think that maybe just learning how to abide with others in a spirit of appreciative inquiry and even love is the best training ground for all the challenges of the world. I’ve been fussing with myself about how to offer more opportunities for spiritual practices at our church and it’s dawning on me that just learning how to be in community in this contentious world IS a spiritual practice.

I suspect that small group ministries are doing the best job in our UU congregations in providing the space and time for the sharing of those deeper diversities I just referenced. Am I right? Does anyone want to testify for small group ministries here?

Bucking Bronco On the Prairie

I said to a friend today that I feel that ministry is a bucking bronco. You just get on there and hang on some days.

I switched my day off from Monday to Friday, which is making me a little bit confused this week, like “what day is it now?” But I’m excited about the change because it makes Sunday the beginning of the week rather than the end, which works for me theologically as well as energetically. It was weird to get up early on Monday morning this week and get into the office instead of sleeping late and lolling over my coffee, but I really loved being able to follow through with things that came up on Sunday, and I think I may actually be able to take the entire day off on Friday, amen! When I took Monday as my day off, I would inevitably start to hyperventilate at about 4pm wondering how many e-mails were piling up, and feel inexorably drawn into my study before dinner. How else to prepare for the onslaught that was Tuesday and Wednesday? I certainly didn’t have the energy to tackle that pile on Sunday afternoons or evenings! As a result, I very rarely took a full day off. It was more like a morning and afternoon off. That isn’t good.

So this is good. Taking Friday off also helps put me in better sync with the rest of the working world and allows me to say “TGIF” with everyone else, which makes me feel more like a normal person. I know that shouldn’t matter but it does — and if I don’t have ministry duties on Saturday morning or afternoon — wow! — it’s almost like having an actual weekend experience!

Even with all this massaging of my schedule, however, I am learning that unless I make space within myself that is free from the concerns of church, it doesn’t matter how much time I take off, or what days. I have been working on what I call “pathological availability” for some years now in my spiritual practice (put your hands together in a prayer pose, close your eyes and flare your nostrils when you say that…. “my spirituaaaal praaactice”) and am finally achieving some wideness in my soul that is unoccupied territory. I envision it as a big, wide prairie where nothing happens but the wind blowing through, and it feels really, really peaceful and holy.

(Wait a sec while I go dunk my head in the toilet before I get transported directly to heaven and ascend to the right hand of the Father and everything! whoo!)

But rilly.

Every few years I get a tiny intimation that what I am working on in the spiritually and emotionally is actually WORKING and I experience a lot of amazement and gratitude. You have to understand that when I got the call to ministry I thought it was the biggest mismatch of all time, like casting Zero Mostel as Tony in “West Side Story” or Carmen Miranda as Lady Macbeth: this is not a good idea!

I still feel that way sometimes. Like why is it a good idea to have a woman doing this work who has such a naturally testy temperament when there are so many truly good and nice people in the world to be ministers? Why come after me when it takes me a monumental effort to simply not spend most of my day totally disgusted with all of humanity, including myself? I keep saying to God, “why don’t you get a nice person? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?”

But you know how God is. God didn’t make me nice. But God did make me a big believer in the goodness of Church, and God did make me a hard worker and not too dumb, either. So I work hard for the Church because I love it, but the hardest work of all happens between my ears every day and every night as I fight my own nature and try to keep myself worthy of this work. It’s a flipping PARTY when I make real progress, and that’s what I’m celebrating now.

It’s not that things in the exterior world are calmer or under control (god awmighty they’re not, believe me!), but after years and years of working on it, I have finally succeeded in clearing out some empty spaces in my being where worries and plans, vision and creative process and strategizing, fussing and obsessing about the church used to take up every inch of territory. Now there’s a little prairie in there. It is the prairie where I said “God, I give up. I am anxious and preoccupied and thinking and planning and worrying almost all the time, and no one has ever needed me to do this. No one ever asked me to take vows of perpetual concern, no one ever required of me that the church occupy every corner of my heart, mind and soul. No one asked me, no one expects it, and only my ego has caused me to become sick with the notion that by worrying and obsessing I can achieve anything positive for myself or my church.”

Over the past two years I have become physically aware that neurotic anxiety about ministry colonizes my body far too easily and too often, like a medicine ball aimed right at my chest. Every day for two years I have gamely tried to throw it back, mostly just managing to drop it on my toe. But you know, either that medicine ball has become lighter or my arms have gotten stronger, because I started throwing it farther and farther in around August (I know — it’s easier when you’re on vacation!), and now it doesn’t come at me as often as it used to. Today I felt it coming at me and I did something I’ve never done before: I stepped out of the way and watched it go flying by. That thing is HEAVY. Damn. It could really hurt a person.

So I’m trying to stop carrying around that medicine ball and to stay in the prairie more often. I highly recommend it. One thing I have figured out is that carrying around that medicine ball doesn’t even make you a better minister, just a more burdened one.

And I think that’s enough mixed metaphors for tonight. Good night, ya’ll. See you on the prairie.

Make Your Heaven!

I’ve been doing billions of reading for the upcoming year in worship and have particularly enjoyed both Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith (I’m a big fan of her radio show of the same name) and a big anthology by Bob Abernethy and William Bole (of PBS’s Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly) called The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt and Reparing the World.

I think it was in the latter book where I came across the idea by some scientist-guy that near-death experiences are a neurological event and therefore it may follow that our experience of heaven is also a kind of brain-oriented phenomenon. He was suggesting that what you believe about heaven will BE your heaven.

Before you traditional religious folks drag me out to the parking lot to beat me up, let me just say that I’m not saying I AGREE with this concept — I am a firm believer that if God wanted us to know what happens after we die we’d be equipped to know that — but I’m saying that someone HAS this concept and I find it rather interesting.

I mean, part of what I get from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is that the great goal of meditation is to free yourself from mara (illusion) so that you don’t have to go into the Bardo state of confused consciousness when your soul leaves your body. Buddhist people, please don’t drag me out into the parking lot and beat me up if I got this wrong– I am not an expert on the TBOLAD, I’m just a FAN of it and have read it a lot and try to understand it because I think those Tibetans are ONTO something.

I’m not saying that Jesus doesn’t try to prepare us for death by teaching us to be brave, pure and loving with our lives, but he doesn’t give us any mental exercises for transitioning to the afterlife the way the Buddhists teach.

ANYWAY, if it’s true that you can somehow shape and mold your consciousness in preparation for the transition from body to spirit, and that your concept of the afterlife may be your most important chance of experiencing that afterlife, boy, it’s worth working on, huh?

I think mine would be full of kick-lines and great overtures, and choirs of angels singing old-timey gospel and lots of people I love standing around laughing and talking and other angels passing around really yummy appetizers. After that we all go swim in a waterfall and play with hundreds of golden retriever puppies and when we get done with that we lie on the pristine beach to dry off in the warm sun. Jesus is on the beach giving teachings and you get to finally really understand everything about them, and you cry and cry over how badly you did at following them while you were alive. There are angels there to pat your back and give you tissues while you cry. After awhile Jesus comes up to you and says, “Honey, you don’t have to cry about that ever again.” And that’s when you know it’s really Heaven.

Then you have hot chocolate and tuck the children in and then go to sleep yourself curled up next to a big warm mommy lion. The next morning first thing you have choir practice, and you pass Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gene Kelly and your great-grandma Sophie and your father on the way to breakfast. Whenever you want you can go to the chimp part of heaven and swing around with them.

I’ll be working on this in case it turns out to be true.

Prayer Falls Like Rain

I’m such a Jesus freak that I went to church TWICE today: to a United Methodist Church in the morning and to an evening service at a UCC/Disciples of Christ church.

I got to sing “It Is Well With My Soul” and “Blest Be The Tie That Binds” and “In the Garden” and “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” and the usual Halle, Halle and “Thank you Lord” responses. Both of the services use a lot of music and I’m getting inspired with some ideas for my own congregation.

At the morning service I went up to kneel at the altar during the prayer. I haven’t done this yet but I felt drawn to do so today and was glad I did, as Sister Chantal brought down the Holy Spirit in a fierce manner and just about knocked me over. Some people have the words for prayer, and some people have the spirit for prayer, but rarely does someone have both the words and the spirit together in a passionate, authentic, poetic and powerfully invocational way. That’s a gift we rarely get to see in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, where we mostly compose our prayers (if we indeed call them that or give anything like a prayer in our worship services) ver-ry carefully and with much forethought.

I thought, man, if I’m having a bad week in the faith department, it sure does help to know that someone like Chantal is out there believing hard enough for both of us.

And I realized that her faith was an act of love. I had never thought of it like that before. It had never occurred to me that when you or I show up to church feeling like “meh, I’m just not feeling anything particularly god-like in the universe lately,” someone like Chantal might also show up and not just suggest, but TELL you that God is a Father who loves and cares for you, will never forsake you, who has made us promises about justice and mercy that He will never break, and that we are yes we ARE living in a creation that God hath made and has pronounced GOOD.

The little hamster wheels in your head finally stop turning for one blessed Sabbath moment as she claims that yes God leads you paths of righteousness and anoints your head with oil and that you WILL dwell in the house of the Lord forever, amen, and amen. Something in your remembers this. Something about this sounds eminently logical, in fact.

There is such love in naming reality in this way for a community of people who come seeking spiritual bread for the journey. What generosity, I have to think, in pouring forth the convictions of one’s own heart with such fervent inclusion; i.e., “I know I am living in the embrace of the Holy and I know that you are, too. I know that God is blessing all of us today.”

There was a time I would have listened to that prayer with critical ear, wondering “how much of this do I believe?” But I have changed. Now I simply bow my head and let the words fall like rain on my parched head that is so often bone-dry from all the thinking, thinking, thinking.

Couldn’t Wait To Get To Church, Or Why I Love the Bible

I went to bed really late last night, as is my wont in the summer time. It was 2:00 AM before I really tucked in, although I knew I’d want to wake up at 8 AM to get to a 10:00 church service in the city.

As I had my breakfast and got ready to leave, I realized that I was filled with a feeling of thrilled anticipation to go to church ! What a wonderful feeling! I wondered if my own congregants ever felt this way: this kind of first-day-of-school excitement. I certainly hope they do on occasion.

I climbed into the car for a fairly long drive and almost popped in a tape of a sermon from the Festival of Homiletics but decided to wait to hear the word from the preacher at the church I’d be visiting.

And then it hit me: I can’t wait to go to church because I’m so psyched to hear what the preacher has to say about the Bible!

How did THAT happen?
Me, a serious Bible lover?

Well, apparently so!

I have been studying Christian and Jewish scripture formally and informally, on and off, for about twelve years now. Suddenly, in the summer of 2007, I look up and realize that the stories and characters in the Bible are real to me, and precious. I care about them. They are people with whom I have a relationship, and whose experience of the living God helps me encounter the living God, too. I honor their interpretation of their experience even as I vehemently disagree with it at times. They were, as I am, products of their time and place. Their vision, as is mine, was limited. “Now we see through a glass, darkly.”

I realized this morning that it makes so much sense that I would come to madly love the Bible. Books in general have had a tremendous influence on my life and are like food and drink to me. If you could gain weight from reading I’d be 500 lbs. by now. So it’s no surprise, duh, that The Good Book would worm its way into my heart, soul and mind and draw me into deeper engagement with not only its stories, but its spiritual power.

Duh, again. The Bible does have tremendous spiritual power. Are you kidding? All those billions of people over all those years diving into that text and looking to it to address the deepest questions of their lives? Yeah, there’s a little bit of powerful mojo there.

I knew that this morning in church we might be hearing lectionary texts about Naman from 2 Kings, or the wonderful story from Luke’s gospel where Jesus tells the disciples to shake the dust from their feet if a community doesn’t want to receive their ministry. I knew that there was a chance the preacher would talk about that bizarre moment in Luke 10 when Jesus says, “I watched Satan fall down from heaven like a flash of lightening.” What a great moment; a trippy mystical vision following all that eminently practical pastoral advice. I was downright excited.

As it turns out, the preacher preached on Psalm 30, and that was fine, too. I’ve grown to love the psalms over the years, too, although I initially thought them a bizarre, dreary collection of violence and complaint. Now I see them as a record of sacred kvetching, but also as a beautifully crafted, poetic account of one individual’s troubled and transcendent relationship with their inscrutable God. Before we had psychotherapy, people had the psalms. They are deeply healing and integrative. There isn’t one emotion I’ve ever had that the Psalmist didn’t have. There isn’t one spiritual question, doubt or ethical dilemma I’ve had that the Psalmist didn’t address.

The Bible is, for me, an ancient record of my ancestors attempt to explain the ways of God as they experienced it. I think they got a lot wrong, but I believe that they got so much right, too.

As for Jesus in the Bible, well… just when you think you know Jesus, you turn back to the Bible and realize that you don’t know him at all. I read a lot of books about religion and an awful lot of those books are about what Jesus supposedly was and what Jesus supposedly did and wanted us to do. I read a lot of theology and sociological commentary on what the Church is supposedly about and what God wants us to do, and how God may or may not exist, and all that. I read thousands and thousands of pages of this stuff every year. And yet every time I open the actual Bible and read it in whatever translation, it’s like being doused with a bucket of refreshingly cool water. Let me make this analogy: you can read about music, or you can hear it. You can read about falling in love, or you can experience it. You can look at a photograph of food in Gourmet magazine or you can taste it. If you want to get into the living God of Jewish and Christian tradition, you can read theology or you can read the Bible.

Read and taste. Read and hear. Read and experience.

And there I was thinking that that particular revelation was totally sealed. Silly me. But here’s the thing: it took a lot of work and intellectual commitment before the Bible began to reveal its beauty and power to me. I’m so glad I didn’t follow the example of all the “enlightened” people I’ve known over the years who are persuaded that only fools and fanatics bother with it.

Prepare To Pray

I said to my students last week that becoming a minister means becoming one who is willing to pray with people when they ask you to. And they will ask you to. They don’t want to hear about your theology and whether or not you still subscribe to a traditional God, and they don’t care if you’re a Trinitarian or a Unitarian or any of that. If you have a “Rev.” before your name, you should be ready, willing and able to offer up prayers for folk. We all have to find our way to do it with integrity.

Today I was asked to give the invocation at an Eagle Scout induction. I went right from there to a rally for Marriage Equality and prayed there, too (they wanted me to speak but I have a funny way of making even the most general speech into prayer, or what I call “spiritual ranting”).
On Sunday morning I’ll be going over to the Firefighter’s Memorial and praying for the boys over there who didn’t re-invite a local priest to do it, “because we’re not all Catholic, and he was making a big religious thing out of it, and for most of us, our religion is love.” Sounds good to me; I’m happy to do it. Honored, in fact.

I’ve been asked to pray with people on buses, in hospitals, in prisons, on airplanes, in restaurants, at country clubs, over the phone, in conference halls, at Starbucks, on the beach, in backyards, hospitals, homes and classrooms. No one told me when I got ordained that I was being named an official “pray-er,” but given that I’m asked to do it so much, I’ve made it a point to make my peace with what’s happening when we pray together out loud. It’s coming more naturally, getting in my bloodstream some, and even changing the rhythms of how I think about things.

New priests and ministers, especially those doing your CPE residencies right now, I wish you peace and grace in your career as those who pray on behalf of others.

Here’s how it works for me: someone says, “Reverend, would you pray with me?” and I say “Of course” and then I have this terrible, swift knock-down-drag-out fight where my Intellectual Brainy Self pipes up and says, “Oh, excuse me, this is the dumbest irrational thing ev -” but before she can get that out of her mouth, my Spiritual Heart Self wacks her over the head with a baseball bat and stuffs her body in the pantry and locks it, and sweetly says, “I’m sorry, how can I help you?” Then I ask my Spiritual Heart Self to please provide some words and she says, “Darling, I’d be happy to.” And I try real hard to listen to what she’s dictating to me and if my Intellectual Brainy Self isn’t hollering too loud from the pantry, I can get a real fine prayer out of it.

For me, people asking me to pray for them or with them is pretty much equal to them saying, “Would you mind terribly believing in the power of love with me right now, out loud, I mean?” In my experience, it is only Unitarian Universalists in the act of corporate worship who, when they hear the word “prayer,” stiffen up in a communal sense of proactive offense and get out their mental thesauri so they can replace all the words you’re saying with the ones they prefer. Oi! Mi gente!

I love the story of the 90+ year old Unitarian woman who, when the hospital chaplain went in to visit with her and asked if he could pray with her, replied with her special twinkly charm, “No thank you, I’m a Unitarian.”

Saying Thank You As a Spiritual Practice

Like most pastors (I hope!), I spend a goodly portion of my time reaching out to people, making check-in calls, and sending “thinking of you” and thank you notes. As a result of this activity, I also spend a goodly portion of my time making and losing lists of who needs to be thanked, forgetting a few people now and then, and feeling truly lousy about it. It goes with the territory.

:::breast-beating interlude for failing to thank someone who totally deserves it in church this week:::

My parents raised me to write thank you notes for everything, and to basically understand that without people’s help there is no life and you’ve got to thank folks. You bring little gifts. You tell them verbally. You never leave a party without thanking the hostess. When my Dad took us out to dinner, we were expected to thank him, not to take it for granted. All of that emphasis on thanking people really influenced the person that I am today: a person who is attentive to blessings and really, truly grateful. I may be a cranky, nasty wench, but boy, I’m sure not an ingrate. My CAT is an ingrate, but that’s another story, and a species issues.

So it always shocks me how often in my life I have made a pretty monumental effort on someone’s behalf and have been utterly ignored for it. I could never, for instance, spend a weekend at someone’s house and then not write a hand-written thank you note afterwards, or at least send an e-mail. I couldn’t imagine asking the minister of a church I’ve barely attended to come speak for an hour at two college classes I teach and then never thank her. (Hell, I’d PAY her!) I can’t imagine stiffing the minister who officiates at my own wedding — let alone not thanking them — although I absolutely can imagine how one would fail to thank a clergyperson for doing a funeral — trauma has a way of obliterating manners, and I understand that. But mostly, I just don’t get it when people accept generosity and don’t express thanks. It just seems to me that their lives must be kind of impoverished for that, because I know that when I express thanks, it has the pleasant effect of prolonging the goodness of whatever I am thanking someone for.

Again, I’m not perfect in this but I do make a concerted effort.

A young Southern woman has written to me a few times to ask for my help with her spiritual malaise as she struggles to maintain a fairly liberal theology while living in the Bible Belt. She listens to my sermons on the internet and calls herself my “uncommon parishioner.” I think it’s a wonderful connection. But I noticed something strange the other day: she initiated the conversation last fall, and while I have written her at least three heartfelt and caring respones, she has never in any way thanked me for them. When she first asked for my spiritual support, I was instant in my reply of many pages. I never heard from her to even acknowledge that she received my e-mail.

Then she popped up again the other day to share her grief about a friend’s passing. I’ve written her two long letters and she has replied. She includes no salutation, just launches into her statement of need, and says nothing that would acknowledge appreciation for my being there.

I begin to wonder if her sense of spiritual torpor and arid, dwindling faith is connected to her inability to express gratitude where it is appropriate. I say this truly without malice, but with genuine curiosity. If one can reach out to a busy clergywoman one has never met and receive a very compassionate response that obviously took a long time to compose, and absolutely fail to express even a shred of appreciation for it, perhaps one is taking a similar stance toward God? By which I mean, sending out the call for help and support, receiving it in abundance, and then soldiering right on with one’s further sharing of pain without stopping to say, “Hey, I may not perfectly love the response I’m getting here, but I love that I’m getting a response, and thank you.”

As you all know, I have an anxious, irritable and melancholy temperament and spend a lot of time grousing in my head about the state of the world. It hadn’t occurred to me until now — and for that I am grateful to my Southern Correspondent — but I spend at least as much time thanking God for my blessings as I do bitching about the brokenness of the human species. If I did not, I couldn’t bear to stay here. My inner voice of criticism, skepticism, anger and disappointment with myself and other humans would drown out the music of what’s really going on, and although I’d probably survive in body, my soul and spirit would be numb and dead.

Just the other day I was crabbing in my mind about my stupid paper, my stupid aching lower back, the stupid person tailgating me down Route 123, stupid Jerry Falwell and stupid Paul Wolfowitz, and the stupid rain, even getting in some good glowering about the fact that I’ve had two movies out from Netflix since early April that I haven’t watched, and doing an excellent Crank Pile-On. Then I stopped at a stop sign and was practically attacked by a huge, dripping wet lilac bush that is my favoritest flower.

And right away, it was like I was at the swankiest divine cocktail party ever with the most elegant, gracious guests who were welcoming me with gorgeously fragrant hugs and kisses and saying, “It is SO good to see you. We are SO glad you’re here, honey!” I had to stop grousing right away and say, “Well, thank you, because I’m SO GLAD to be here! And I LOVE what you’re wearing!”

I really do feel that God is like a love-sick suitor constantly trying to win our hearts and our loyalty. As a privileged woman living in the wealthiest nation on earth, I feel like God is showing up every morning with a magnum of champagne and a huge bouquet of roses going, “Darling! Shall we dance?” I mean, even in my times of deepest depression when I couldn’t feel connected to that extravagance of love and generosity, I knew that it was there. I knew that there were lilacs, and music, and friends. I knew that it wasn’t God’s job to do some miracle on my behalf, but to just keep being God, which was miracle enough.

As I get older I am less and less interested in fussing over doctrine and more and more interested in finding ways that make being human a less painful experience. I don’t know what beliefs or prayers work, but I do know that gratitude does, and I’m pretty sure it’s pleasing to God, too.