Is this really it?

I should never read Barbara Brown Taylor.

She is the Meryl Streep of pastoral writers to me, someone against whom I measure myself only to come up short. This is why I stopped reading the Mitford series too: one, because the pure-saccharine nature of the books started making me a little nauseous; and two, because Father Tim and his everlasting goodness made me feel like a huge failure.

"My breasts fairly leaked every time I met someone in need," BBT writes about her call into the ministry. (That's an approximate quote; I can't find the right page in her new book, Leaving Church). If Father Tim had been a woman, that would likely have been his problem too. The sort of self-extending, give-away-your-last-five-dollars, drive-a-stranger-to-the-bus-stop love they seem to have for everyone they encounter may, in fact, drive them nearly to despair. It may drain them of the last bit of energy they have. But it still seems like the sort of problem a pastor should have.

I do not seem to have this problem.

Maybe my instinct for self-preservation will keep me from burning out. Maybe it will keep me from writing my own version of Leaving Church someday. Maybe it will keep me out of the poorhouse. But maybe it also keeps me at a bit of distance from God, a safe arms-length from the burning bush, just out of the reach of the hot coals seraphim are reaching out to my lips. I think of myself sometimes as standing on the edge of a precipice, unable to make the leap, knowing that the fall will be exhilarating but still preferring the safety of the view from above. And I am not sure how to change this, other than to pray for a change I am still not sure I really want to receive.

If I don't have the million problems most pastors seem to, am I really doing my job? Is this really it? And, if doing "it" meant necessarily inheriting those million problems, would I really stick around? I have no answers to these questions. At least part of my anxiety today comes from the fact that we are buying a house and I am staying up at night worries that we can't afford the thing, even though in the daylight all looks well.

What I appreciate in the book is her frank admission of the complexity of this work. If parishoners got mad at her, I probably shouldn't sweat the occasional dilemma here. Even Meryl Streep gets the odd bad review (I think). Oddly enough, though, it's precisely the nature of her admitted weaknesses that give me pause. I don't think I will solve this problem today.

In the Beginning

Considering that I counted among my worst third-grade fears the discovery and publishing of my diary, the blog seems an odd decision. And yet strangely liberating, at least for the more public yearnings of my introverted soul. So we'll see. Perhaps the anonymity of cyberspace is comforting for the otherwise all-too-public life of a pastor.

It took about ten tries to find a blog title not already taken. "Mine unbelief" comes from one of my own favorite stories in Mark's gospel: from the lips of a father tortured by his child's illness, crying to Jesus for any help he can offer. "I believe," he cries, "help my unbelief." I wish the Creeds ended with that verse. (I really wanted "Emmaus Road," but someone's got it already. Well done.)

And, despite evidence to the contrary, I'm not a big fan of the King James. Sometimes, though, you just can't beat the poetry of it. Help thou mine unbelief. Just right.