Budgeting for the Search for Meaning

It's an odd world when something like ministry is quantified. Yet, it's done all the time.

I had an interesting conversation with someone this week who works at an institution that is primarily Catholic, but has numerous members who don't identify with any religion. Curiously, while most surveys usually include a "none" category for those who don't affiliate with any religion, this institution's categories include "Other" and "Unaffiliated." How these are different is anybody's guess. Are they different from a "none" category? Perhaps. It seems different to me to say you're "unaffiliated" rather than to identify with being called a "none." An unaffiliated person might be someone who has simply stopped attending religious services for a while, or who only attends with family members on occasion.

Still, if the survey doesn't tell you, the participant, what these categories mean, there is no chance that the participants meant the same thing when they filled it out. And this of course means that the participants are a very diverse group, who might or might not have things in common.

There might be a small percentage of the respondents who are unaffiliated because when they go to religious services, they are bored. This could be because the clergy and members aren't raising the bar so that the messages people hear in services are challenging; or it could be because the members and clergy lack a sense of reverence. Then again, there might be people who are unaffliated because they can't reconcile science and religion.

The list could go on and on. Where do you start, what do you grasp onto, when you want to understand something about why people are unaffiliated with official religions? It is like to trying to grasp onto a sand dune on a windy day; clouds of the sand blow away and shift, even as you are walking on them.

This is why it makes me incredulous to think that one might have to prove - in a quantifiable way- that the unaffliated need support and community in their search for meaning. And yet, imagine this: University X knows it has a larger unaffiliated population, but it resists putting resources towards this population... at least until it can be proven that this population will turn out for real, tangible events that require at least one person's - if not more than 1 person's- time to make happen. In essence, then, the search for meaning has to make it into the budget.

But how do you budget for something you have never seen before? When I make a budget, it's based on what I really spend on things I know I buy. I haven't even met the people in this group yet. At least, not directly. What next?

Trying to Build Hope

When I first started this blog, it was merely a few months after I had been confirmed in the Episcopal Church. In but a year and a half, I had seen in fast forward the extremes of beauty and harm that a faith community can bring to its people. Harm done in the context of religion is a special kind of harm because leaders in a faith community- both lay and clerical- become stand-ins for the divine. When people in these contexts hurt us, the process of recovery can take years- or sometimes never happen at all. On the other hand, when a faith community commits itself to continually learning to accept and forgive its people unconditionally, remarkable healing can take place.

Of course, the idea of learning to accept and forgive others can be an overwhelming idea. Are we supposed to be able to unconditionally forgive those who have committed terrible acts against us- whether those are acts are tangible acts of violence or intangible, emotionally hurtful behavior where we feel ignored, disrespected or unwanted? The idea of adopting such a stance by ourselves is daunting.

But we are not supposed to do this by ourselves. No, I am not saying we should not aim to improve ourselves, but this is where a community learning to take this stance can be a source of healing. For when we cannot, by ourselves, accept everyone unconditionally, perhaps the community can do it for us. And if we commit to being part of such a community, then we gradually may transform ourselves and others, and this process may be a source of healing.

But what does this look like? How does a community do this? I have experienced this in several communities. What all these communities shared was a deep reverence and love of beauty, and these values led their members to live out all their communal actions with intention and presence. When they gathered together for liturgy, every step, every word, every gesture, every note sung, was a prayer. When they gathered together in meetings and in coffee hours, every moment was a moment where someone could be welcomed through the actions they were involved in. In one particular community where I saw this, the people were not especially gregarious; in fact, it was a parish of introverts. Many people had a hard time initiating conversations with new people. But their actions spoke for them. Welcome, I saw, was not about effusive greetings.

The liturgical way is not the only way this can happen in a faith community. I happen to have a bias towards incense, sung liturgy and worship filled with bowing and other physical ways of being engaged. But this is not the only way to be a community. It is not for everyone. But reverence, love of beauty and intentionality are for everyone; they are the things that make a community's life sustenance for the people. And spiritual sustenance brings healing.

I am now without a community like this. I have searched within my own tradition, and it is not within my reach. As more time passes since my experience of healing faith communities, it becomes tempting to think it was but a dream. But I know it was not; and part of why I know it was not is because that way of being - the sense of reverence for the divine, beauty and intentionality-are still the ways I try to carry out my daily life, even though they are not to be found in the Church I call my faith community.

I teach religious studies at a local Jesuit college. Of my almost sixty students, most of them grew up Catholic and their faith has been a driving force in their lives. On their first assignment, I asked them to write goals for the semester. As this course is part of the core curriculum where they learn how the Jesuit mission can inform their life as a student and beyond, I wanted them to step back a bit and think about what this opportunity to reflect upon religion might give them. Sadly, many of my students wrote about how guilty they felt for not going to church, and many of them set a goal to go to church regularly. Some of them said they felt they were "bad Catholics" for not going to church. But what none of them said was why they stopped going. While I do not know why many of them stopped going, I know that few of them have been invited to read scriptures with a creative frame of mind. And I know from what many of them wrote that they view a religion class as a chance to become closer to God. And so I know that in my classes, I must approach them with the care of someone who knows how much religious communities can be a source of harm and healing.

For now, these classes are the only way I have to develop communities as a source of healing in the church. When I moved here for the work I do now, I gave up being part of a Church where the healing stance I've written about here was the goal. One day I hope this will change and that I will be able to do this work in the church, not only in a classroom. And like my students who feel bad for not attending their church regularly anymore, I hope all the people who have helped form me in the communities I have been part of before will not give up on the fact that one day I will be able to give back to the Episcopal Church. It is still the community that defines my path, even if I do not feel welcome in the local iteration of the Episcopal Church where I am.

Is it okay to leave a faith community over not being fed?

Recently I read two different articles, one about reasons why one should not leave the church; the other about reasons it was ok to leave the church.

The former article's #1 reason was, "Because I am not being fed." The argument was that, as mature persons of faith, we should not expect the church to be responsible for "feeding" us. Rather, we should have the means to obtain what we need spiritually without the church handing it out to us on a platter.

I agree with this to an extent. After all, as mature persons of faith, it is possible to have more developed spiritual practices, as well as many images of God, so that if one or more of our routines is disrupted (such as a parish community not feeling fulfilling), it is possible to draw upon other resources: i.e. God does not just belong in houses of formal worship, but also the houses of our selves out in the world. As in Psalm 84:

2

The sparrow has found her a house
and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; *
by the side of your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.

3

Happy are they who dwell in your house! *
they will always be praising you.

4

Happy are the people whose strength is in you! *
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims' way. 

 

 So there is much truth to this idea, I think.

 

I'm also reminded of a notion I learned from a congregational development training- the idea that churches benefit from having what are called "mature practitioners"--that is, people who have well-developed prayer lives, and who bring their presence into church services with them. Others benefit simply by others who come to church, and who lead contemplative lives outside the church. It's much like going into an empty cathedral that feels full of presence - because many have prayed and worshiped there before. A full prayer life in a place or a person brings life to others.

But what of those practitioners themselves, if they are coming to a place where others are not prayerful? Where reverence is not valued? Where they must always draw upon their own wellspring, rather than feeling they can sometimes-not always, but sometimes-lean on the community, much like the woman who gripped the hem of Jesus's cloak?

This is the problem, I think, with saying it is never ok to leave somewhere because of "not being fed." Because sometimes it is not just that people are not being fed; it is that the church is asking them to feed it (or her, if you prefer).

Consider this. The article about leaving the church that I referred to at the beginning of this post continued on to draw an analogy between one's relationship to the church and dating. It implied that commitment is to be valued more (I agree) and that those seeking "should put their shopping carts away and roll up their sleeves." That's fine ... but if the dating metaphor is valid, then it is also okay to walk away from a dysfunctional, unhealthy and one-sided relationship. This is the reality many people face in parishes, and which keeps people away from the church.

So, is it okay to leave a faith community over not being fed? I would say "sometimes." It requires careful discernment, no doubt. But it not always a bad reason.