When the walls come tumbling down

Originally published 8/23/19

Michael and I have returned home to the Jesus House, as it has come to be called, made of pumpkin patch stone nestled in the crook of an S-curve just outside the Sewanee domain. It tilts slightly down to the west side, and its 85-year old nooks and crannies welcome mice and snakes in whom we have come to find comfort living alongside. Its mural of Jesus with sunglasses and a thumbs-up on the fence at the top of our drive have become iconic, a local artist told me recently. We bought this house four years ago when we moved to Sewanee for Michael to attend seminary; most seminarians don't come equipped with the means to buy a home on this rural mountain - and they're pretty sure they're going to graduate in three years and began life in parish churches far and wide - but we're also older than the average 20-something seminarian and had 20 years of equity from a whole 'nother life, and we're already dreaming of what retirement would look like. And, we brought a teenager with us, who also fell in love with this obscure and odd place on the top of a mountain and calls it her home. After graduating from the day school nearby, Isabel enrolled at the University of the South, opting to stay another four years to squeeze all of the joy she can out of the Gothic stone buildings and intimate community. When Michael got a job in Florida last June, we left this house fully furnished, ready to return for winter breaks from the Florida heat, and college weekend visits with Isabel. Upon the advice and encouragement of the hiring rector in Florida we bought a home there, too, because he asked us to stay for five years or more. We were excited: a long-term job out of the gate, in a tropical place with both amenities (a pool at our condo) and challenges (a struggling church). We spent our savings on the down payment, and splurged on new furniture. I'll admit, I got caught up in the seacoast theme and ordered chairs with coral and sea stars on them. Michael advised against it, but I thought we were putting down roots, and, since we were on the coast of sunny Florida, they might as well be sea-themed roots, right? It became clear very early, though, that things were not so sunny at church. So early, in fact, that our special order furniture had not yet even arrived. Michael sensed a deep disappointment in the church, and a disconnect with the church school at which he was teaching. We dug in, though, and began forming relationships with parishioners and neighbors. Michael organized Sunday School, confirmation class, the construction of a Christmas parade float, and the ubiquitous Christmas pageant. I joined the choir, participated in the women's group, assisted with liturgy and baked casseroles when called upon. But it wasn't enough. We weren't enough. We couldn't provide enough salve to heal the wounds of another's disappointment. In fact, the more we tried, the more our salve turned to acid, deepening the unseen wounds of another. We were so unprepared for this. There was little honest communication from the clergy. Instead, they advised things like "clarity, but not transparency" in communicating with the congregation. Difficult decisions were made, but no one would own them, or even talk about them. The result was a confused and hurt congregation that only wanted to grow in love and serve the Lord. I thought we were sent out into the world to share that Gospel of Christ - love God, love your neighbor, essentially - but we were caught in a whirlwind of a church in which the leadership, to the highest level, would base decisions on rumor and innuendo, without getting the facts from all involved. And then refuse to engage in a conversation about it. Terse directives through one-sided emails left questions unanswered and unanswerable, so that responsibility could not be mis-assigned. There was no loving of God that I could see in this church leadership, and there certainly was no loving of a neighbor. There was only ass-covering and blame-placing, based on the protection of ego. Ironically, in the midst of this crisis, I began to read Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans' book about why she left the evangelical church for....drum roll...the Episcopal Church. Rachel was a 20-something blogger educated at a conservative Christian college just 90 minutes from Sewanee whose blogs about her faith turned into books, conferences and speaking engagements with quite a following. She openly questioned many of the literal Biblical interpretations of the evangelical church, and found comfort in the openness and acceptance of the Episcopal Church. She died just this summer of an infection. Rachel lost her evangelical faith (my words) over the church's surgical dissection of the Bible, with which they used politics to operate. She stopped being present in church, she writes after the congregation was invited to attend a meeting about the "radical homosexual agenda in America and how Christians should react to it." Eventually she stopped attending altogether. After a failed attempt at starting an independent church with friends, she found her way to the Episcopal church, whose motto is: The Episcopal church welcomes you. It's on most directional signs.

I sighed at the overt irony and incongruity in our stories. Rachel felt welcomed by the openness of the doctrine of the Episcopal church, which is at its best to love God and love one another. I have suffered (twice, now) its worst through the heavy hand of an invisible despot who reacts to the one-sided telling of a story by triangulating the elimination of the problem. Pleadings cries for help, conversation, mediation and intervention in both instances were met with direct silence and hands-off you're-on-your-own shoulder shrugs from those who remain in tense relationship by employment. Leaving Fort Pierce, Florida, marks the third time I have been asked to leave a church (One Lutheran, two Episcopalian). These are difficult stories to tell, especially as Michael is still dependent upon the church and its Bishops to guide his future. But I can't let these experiences lie beneath my feet, like the Tels we trod upon in Israel that hid hundreds of civilizations.

Right: Climbing up the Tel es-Sultan, believed to be near the site of Jericho.

A Tel is an artificial mound where ancient cities lay buried. We walked up two in Israel, one at Megiddo, which overlooked the valley of Armageddon, and a second just outside the modern day city of Jericho. A Tel isn't exactly a mountain, but it's a little more than a hill. The original city started at a place of significance - at a crossroads, or a water source - and sometimes, on a slight hill. A hill is always an advantage as it provides a lookout for enemies. After its destruction (the likely event), it was easier, our guides said, to bury a city, and build over it, than it was to tear it down and start over. Water systems were in place, roadways and infrastructure already built, the additional layer made the city higher anyway, and wartime destruction usually left little to reclaim of flimsy mud-brick homes. This resulted in hundreds of such Tels across Israel and the middle east. At Jericho, it is believed at least 12 civilizations are hidden in the man-made mountain. We sat on top of the Tel near Jericho on Dec. 31, 2018 and looked across a modern city, yet one of the oldest cities in the world.

Overlooking Jericho, across the Jordan River and perhaps to Mount Nebo, where Moses died looking at this promised land.

Like the tels of Israel, we have buried one more civilization below us, one more experience. Does it have to be buried, though? Buried and forgotten, until its excavation thousands of years later? I'm not one to bury my wounds. I much more bear them, wearing them on my sleeve for all to see. Some may think that embarrassing. My husband often thinks it tiring. But the story, the stories of what happened to us have to be told, just as the stories of Jesus were told over and over again, just as the army marched round and round the walls of Jericho, so that the fortress that is the church comes tumbling down. It will leave a mess, rubble and stone and dust, that I no doubt will have to clean up. As the fallen walls of Jericho paved the way for the Jews' entrance into the promised land, perhaps it will help us uncover some things about ourselves, about each other, and about the institution that will help us rebuild it a different way. And, wasn't Rahab changed after the destruction of her home and the life she thought she had to lead? Rahab's home was destroyed as the walls of Jericho fell as the famous story is told, but she and her family were spared because she harbored the spies Joshua sent ahead of the war party. Later, Rahab, who was at the time an apparently successful prostitute, resettled and rearranged her life; she is listed in the first chapter of Matthew in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Our condo in Florida sold (at a $30,000 loss - another wound of the hurried exit), but our Sewanee rock home remains standing. I'm not sure who my descendants will be, which is iffy as Isabel swears she will NEVER HAVE CHILDREN. We did come home and immediately begin painting, though. Maybe our way of starting a new civilization here. We've covered the drab greens and browns that here when we bought it, and covered the bedroom in a rich Indigo Batik (blue) and the den and kitchen in Vaguely Mauve and Intuition (light purple and purple). Painting also involves deep cleaning, so windows and floorboards were scrubbed as well as pictures and light fixtures dusted with detail.

Vaguely Mauve changes color throughout the day, and adds just one more dimension to our mish mash of furniture and colors. It brightens the room, which is often shadowy on account of the hardwood trees that loom over our mountain home.

Odds are we won't be able to stay in this particular version of civilization. Michael has been required to seek a job as an assistant, for which we have discovered 53-year-old white men with no facial hair or young children aren't exactly attractive. So we wait, and paint, and I'll tell our story in hopes that the church will crumble, leaving a new slate on which we can raise our Tel one more level.