Who even AM I??
“God forbid that God's own redeeming work in the world be done through music and theology I find abhorrent. It's totally annoying and absolutely predictable. It happens every time.”
The above quote is from a short piece I wrote nearly 15 years ago for Sojourners, and if memory serves, is also the first time my writing was published anywhere but my own blog. And I have been a bit haunted by it this week.
For some reason when I published You Can Take The Girl Out of Fundamentalism, But You Can’t Take Fundamentalism Out Of The Girl a few weeks ago, I indicated that it was the first of “a series” on intellectual humility. I had just returned from a gathering on the topic and was filled with a delusional but short-lived optimism about my own fecundity as a writer.
But today I remembered that one aspect of intellectual humility is just simply the ability to change one’s mind about a matter of importance.
Here’s why this all came up for me this week: that essay I wrote 15 years ago…it was about attending worship at the women’s prison and how I was confronted by the inanity of my own snotty opinions about praise music when clearly the women there found it really meaningful.
In my life as a pastor I have had MANY opinions about all the things: pews, hymnals, music, lectionary preaching, length of sermons, focus of sermons, who should or should not wear clergy collars, communion bread, if there should be juice offered or not, what should be said when communing someone, if a Psalm is necessary, should there ever for any reason be back up singers, should lyrics be projected on a screen, etc…. I mean - ALL THE THINGS AND SO MANY OPINIONS.
And I just KNEW I was right about all of it.
And now? After COVID lockdowns and civil unrest and racial reckonings and the overturning of Roe v Wade and our society being like maybe a month or two from a Mad Max situation? Now?
Well, let’s just say that last week when I was planning the liturgy for inside the women’s prison and I looked at the lectionary texts assigned for the day, I was like, “hard pass”. And I have always been a devoted follower of the lectionary.
Then when choosing the music I landed on Here We Are To Worship and Open The Eyes Of My Heart. Not because I love these praise songs, but because the women do.
And then on Sunday I only read one lesson during worship instead of three lessons and a psalm.
If you would have told me a few years ago that I would be doing shit like this I would have told you “you have the wrong girl”. Because I had OPINIONS about all of that.
But as my friend Timothy Beal says in his excellent book, When Time Is Short, given how the world is teetering and climate change is careening and society is fraying - we should look at palliative care as a model for how to live in a good way if indeed the world is maybe sort-of ending. When we do, we learn that what matters most when time is short is what matters most.
I just can’t be bothered to have opinions about all the stuff I used to care about because everything is fucking shaky right now and none of the stuff I had opinions about for so long is what matters most.
If I learned anything from the film Don’t Look Up, the film about the end of the world, it’s that when time is short, maybe spend it making food and sitting around a table with people you love and praying as best you can. That’s what worship in the prison is. And it’s what matters most to me right now. So I have found myself spending less time doom scrolling on social media more and more time just cooking in my kitchen and having people over for meals.
And as I said in the first in this “series on intellectual humility” (insert rolling eyes emoji here), simply rearranging our prejudices is a zero sum game (for instance, just trading one form of fundamentalism for another). And that applies to what level of compassion we have for ourselves as we change. So I think it is imperative that if we find we don’t care as much about things that used to matter to us, that we not be tempted to judge that earlier version of ourselves too harshly. We usually just do the best we can with what we know at the time. It’s ok to change our minds. It’s ok to not care now about things that used to matter more to us. At least, I hope so because now that I am 53 my list is growing, but on the plus side, I’m trying all sorts of new recipes.
This is the teeniest thing, but before I had kids, I had this cabinet that had an open shelf in the middle where I kept the bath towels. I folded them in a very specific way so that they looked pretty when anyone walked by, and if when I walked by, they weren't folded in that exact way, I would take the towels out, refold them, and place them back on the shelf. But after I had children, if the towels were clean, I was happy enough, and if they were any type of folded, shoved, or otherwise sitting where they belonged, I was thrilled -- because that meant somebody who loved me did it for me, in their own kind way. I often think about that shelf and those towels, and it makes me a bit more open, less judgy, and more grateful. Grateful for your light in the world.
Soon, I will be 70. 70. It's such a big number. And I have decided it's ok to change my mind. A little thing like a birthday party. At first I told everyone I didn't want a party. I would go slowly into my 70s with little fanfare. This week I changed my mind and decided I did want to celebrate that I made it this far. I'm also changing my mind about what foods I like. So one week it might be one thing, and the next week another. I'm driving my husband nuts and often he says "You told me you didn't like that" to which I replay "I changed my mind"