Requiem for a Red Headed Wild Woman of God

The Rev. Katherine “Kathy” Merrell Glenn died peacefully in her sleep on September 5 in her home in Tacoma, Washington.

So began the email I received from Kathy's address. 

I cried a bit, noted her passing on Facebook (where all life's events are recorded, it seems), and wrote these few remembrances in the thread of condolences that followed: 


things that come to mind about her---her telling me how she sat in a jail with a parishioner all night, not because he was innocent (I don't know if she knew) but because he was her parishioner and she was his advocate. her heartbreak over a run for bishop that turned ugly and resulted in very harsh and libelous things said about her from other clergy. her joy in her daughters. her clapping when she was happy. The way we should have been told to leave during a compline service at St. David's/Austin, because she'd just gotten back into town and we were too happy see each other to keep silence (though honestly, we tried!). her wrestling with God over the untimely death of a parishioner due to a brain tumor---and when this wild woman wrestled, she wrestled hard. she may have left the river with a limp, but God knew it was a real fight! her intense faithfulness to God in the wrestling and her undying conviction that God was LOVE! (dammit!) and that meant something more than words on a button or bumper sticker. Tender and fierce and so full of joy and laughter. (so of course she had her enemies!) In hearing of her death, I'm reminded of who I'd like to be . . .

But there's more I want to say, and I probably won't say it all here. I will say we were in seminary at the same time. She was a senior when I started, but we'd already started a friendship while I worked at the Austin Augsburg Fortress store (now closed). Always smiling and laughing, the type my more Eeyore-ish self is drawn to, I remember when I told her that I was going to start seminary the next fall. I was ringing up her purchases at the store. She was, as would be usual, more excited and happy for me than I was. 

Behind the laughter and smiles was a serious woman of God. She was passionate about the love of God, the love and joy she'd experienced as a disciple of Jesus. There aren't many people I can compare her to. Somewhere along the way, I started calling her the Red-Headed Wild Woman of God. Her wildness was the sort of Holy Spirit wildness, aware that the love of God blew where it would. She did her best to hang glide in those currents. I find myself reaching for words I don't have. 

I reference above the grief and anger she had over losing a parishioner to a brain tumor. This was the darkest I ever experienced Kathy. She told me of driving out of town, in her valley community in Colorado, and throwing rocks and yelling at God. He was younger than she was, in better health, generally, than she was. She was grooming him towards significant lay leadership in her parish. She saw gifts in him that would go to waste if he died. She spoke of feeling the helplessness of God as she yelled and hurled rocks. Even as she prayed---demanded---healing, she knew God was not going to heal him. I also had a terminal friend at the time, and we spent a lot of money on phone bills, wondering what it meant to worship a God who seemed helpless in the face of our friends' impending death. The main thing we agreed upon was also feeling God's grief as well as God's helplessness. Somehow, in ways I can't explain, we experienced Jesus more fully in these conversations. We knew something more deeply of a suffering God. 

She spoke of wanting to write a Christology. I'm guessing she never got very far. While she was healthy enough to minister, she ministered. I suspect when she became too infirm to minister, she was also too infirm to write very much. I do remember one conversation wherein I had expressed a lot of my theology falling away, pretty much dropping out from under me. In that conversation, I said that if I still believed, if I was still a Christian, my Christology was taking a nosedive. She said, "That's the right direction." 

I don't even know if she knew it, but just words like that were a comfort. I don't know if she was like this for everyone, but for me, she always said something that comforted me. Usually while making me laugh, too. 

Another remembrance I wrote on Facebook:
oh goodness. She was like the second person I came out to! Maybe first. i took her for a walk in our pasture. Because it was me, I had to do it in the form of a vaudeville routine. "Kathy, I think I'm in love, but there's good news and bad news. The good news is he's Lutheran . . . "

Kathy was one of those (many) people who seemed to have been just waiting for me to come out. In so many ways, she was there in seminary preparing me for my own coming out. Again, I don't know how consciously she did that. But we had several conversations about homosexuality and the church, me being the conservative-leaning seminarian who wrote at least one paper on why gay and lesbian people shouldn't be ordained. She argued with me, but since it was Kathy arguing, she did it in a way that made me realize she was one of those people I could trust when I reconciled with my sexuality. 

Talk about finding a safe place to start coming out! Glory, could God have given me a safer person for those first cautious steps out of the closet? 

As happens with friends separated by miles, our frequency of contact eventually dwindled. At one point, I'd thought I'd lost her completely. She always had a list of health issues, and there was a move wherein I lost track of her. I'd asked around and someone told me they thought she had died, but I couldn't ever get confirmation from anyone. Then out of the blue, I got an email from her. "Kathy! I'd heard you were dead!" Well, she had almost died in the previous year and we had a long phone conversation catching up on that. Then we dwindled again and I guess the last I was in contact with her was early this year, when I told her I was visiting an Episcopal church. But I don't know how her health was at that point. She didn't answer emails all the time, so I never knew what an unanswered email might mean. 

But she almost always ended them with "I love you Neily." (She's one of, like, three people who I let call me "Neily.") I almost always signed off (or ended phone calls) with, "I love you Kathy Glenn!" 

Goodness, the world is a less joyful place without her. 

Midnight Mystery and Miracle

I've been sick the last couple of days. Some sort of stomach virus passed through (pun intended). This included a fever of 101 at one point, a discussion of West Nile virus and its symptoms on Facebook (diarrhea not included on the CDC website, so I felt in the clear), and a LOT of sleep. My cat, for whom I'm simply a big (and willing) hot water bottle anyway, loved it.

The fever has broken (like the first fever) and I'm on the mend except my stomach is still a little not quite back to normal and . . .well, I slept a lot. I still feel tired or maybe just a little weak, but I'm not sleepy.

I tried going to bed this evening. I read a book that I had been enjoying and ended up finishing it after two hours. It disappointed me a little bit, especially in that it seemed to become a different novel about halfway through, but in general, it held my interest to the end. I put it on top of the scary and precarious pile on the nightstand next to my bed (how I've never been killed by a book avalanche is a mystery), turned out the light and lay on my side with my cat against my stomach.

And I couldn't fall asleep.

The cat repositioned himself to the crook of my ankles as I noticed my ear was pressed against my arm just right so that I could hear my blood rushing through my veins. It sounded much like the sound when I go to get my EKG. I marvel at this sound that signals life in this body and I marvel that it can stop, practically without notice. Or with trauma. Or for whatever whenever. Mortality thoughts.

Yes, this is what the midnight hour, a bad stomach, and an inability to sleep begets.

And I start wondering if there is any good reason why I get to sleep in this bed, mortally threatened by an eclectic library, my feet warmed by a miniature predator. I start wondering why I'm not on the street, sleeping with the crowd down on Preston near Minute Maid Park. I start wondering why I'm not sleeping in a big country house surrounded by woods and the sounds of whippoorwills.

I wonder why I'm not sleeping.

Being sick, having a snuggly if opportunistic cat to warm my feet, having some amount of discontent, having some amount of success and forward movement . . . all in one week . . . so I lay in bed, thinking thinking thinking why why why.

And why not.

"The frightening thing is not dying. The frightening thing is not living." (T-Bone Bunett)

"And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?" (Talking Heads)

"You know, it never has been easy, whether you do or you do not resign. Whether you travel the breadth of extremity or stick to some straighter line." (Joni Mitchell)

I was hoping a destination would reveal itself if just started typing, but I end up quoting songs. Which is a sort of destination, I guess.

My blessings are my own---not everyone could bear them. My curses, likewise.

As I look at the clock in the lower corner of my computer screen, I see it's 1:44am. My stomach is gassy and uncomfortable. I'm middle-aged and sleep with a cat in a narrow bed. If I lay the right way I can hear the blood rushing through my veins. I have oodles of books, all of which I love, even the ones I didn't like. I've never spent a night of my life outdoors.

It's all mystery and miracle and sometimes when I have too much sleep, if I'm not exhausted, these things will keep me awake, even if I'm feeling tired or maybe just a little weak.

There's my destination. It's all mystery and miracle.

And to all, a good night. Or good morning, as the case may be.

Changing Churches (part 3 and the end for now)

Some random thoughts and I'll probably leave this alone for a while again. After all, I haven't actually joined the new church, just started the "inquirers classes." But some things that flash through me now and then.

+ + +

Someone said it shouldn't matter what kind of church I join (Episcopalian or Lutheran) because it's all one Body of Christ. Yes, I pretty well agree with this. I have longstanding connections to Episcopalians, seeing as how I attended seminary on an Episcopalian campus (although in in a Lutheran program). I've long enjoyed interactions of varying sorts with Episcopalians. 

My angst about joining an Episcopalian church (and I'm quite comfortable calling it "angst" with all the things that might mean) has to do with the networks and systems that I'm already familiar with. I have a joke about not wanting to leave the Lutheran church because I know pretty well where all the traps lie in those woods and I didn't want to learn where the traps lay in any other woods. 

But it may be because I have been to seminary that I hesitate all the more. I'm more acutely aware of the subtle differences in theological perspectives and, perhaps more important to me, hierarchical structures. I know how to move among Lutherans. I know where offense may be given or taken, I know how to talk to the hierarchy, I know the power the hierarchy has. This is slightly different in the Episcopal church and it makes the ground shift a little beneath me. I can't go into specifics, but as I say, it's subtle. Suffice to say, that this sort of thing is the best and worst of denominational politics (which can be good as well as horrific).

I stumbled upon my own analogy there. Yes, changing churches is a bit like an earthquake. I'm terrified of earthquakes. It's why I've never visited the west coast. I can't imagine anything more unsettling than the ground beneath me shifting and shaking. Changing churches---denominations---is, for me, something akin to being in an earthquake, where you're shaking and things are moving about, falling, and suddenly things are not where you left it.

And that includes things like my support of organizations like Lutheran World Relief. A few dollars out my paycheck goes to LWR every month and I doubt that will change anytime soon. I continue to think they do good work. But now I'm confronted with Episcopalian equivalents, and I imagine they also do good work. Is there some dissonance in supporting these things across denominational lines? It's a foolish question in many ways. And the ground continues to shift underfoot . . .

+ + +

One thing that has become apparent to me in the last half decade is that graduating from seminary 15 years ago was more significant than I might have thought for a bit. I came out of seminary and thought I'd just go back to being another person in the pew and be just like I was before seminary. For a bit, that worked, facilitated by a pastor who understood that to be my desire. People seem to assume that I didn't pursue ordination because I'm gay, but after four years of seminary, I still could not discern a called to ordained ministry. I went to study, but that was the only call I ever discerned: study.

This gets complicated and is a book in itself (which I've tried to write and it got stuck). Suffice to say that I had a moment, at the turn of the century, when next to everything I believed fell away and I wasn't sure if I was a Christian anymore. (Perhaps that's still open to discussion!)

As I became more involved in a congregation again, I found those years of "formation" were not completely shed. This is a problem insofar as I have opinions---educated opinions, even---on how a church might be arranged and run. Having lost many layers of theology along the way, those opinions are not always in the mainstream. To an extent, I can tolerate the mainstream way of things, but once I entered positions of church leadership, I realized I was at odds with pretty much all the other leadership.

It became very difficult to navigate my feelings---my ecclesiological doubts go pretty much to the foundation of how a congregation might arrange itself.---and live in that "trained to pastor, but not a pastor" space.  But once you're enmeshed, it's next to impossible to get disentangled.

So it became apparent to me that I needed to change altogether. To keep with the seminary training, I began to think of it as time to "put in my mobility papers," Lutheran pastor language for letting the Bishop know it was time to change parishes.

One more illustration. I had proposed a performance installation for the lenten Wednesday evening services. I'd offered or proposed other things before, which were always turned down, but this felt different and thought it might have a chance, if a slim one. In the committee meeting wherein I proposed this, I was asked, "Is this something you really want to take on?" In that moment, I knew I had done a very poor job of telling this congregation who I am. I answered, "This is what I'm trained to do," but inside my head, I realized that people saw only the seminary education, not the two degrees in the arts. It was turned down ("Not the right time"---the answer I generally got and should have learned long ago usually means "Never," especially if you hear it more than twice) but even more, I knew I had an image of someone other than I wanted to be seen as. I have to take responsibility for some of that, and at the same time, I didn't now how to turn that around.

So here I am. Changing churches.

+ + +

 This is new on many levels for me. One of the oddest things for me is to change churches without moving. Anytime I've changed church membership, it was because I've moved to a new city. 

Doing it this way cannot help but highlight that something was, if not "wrong," then certainly not "right." I'm trying to make the change without talking smack about the congregation I'm leaving. There are lovely people there who have been nothing but kind to me. Are there complaints I have? Obviously. Are there ways I'm at fault? Obviously. 

I've tried to reflect publicly, here, primarily on my own character flaws or else my own shifts in what I discovered I needed. My disappointments are also plain, I guess, if not specifically, then between the lines. 

The truth is, it was never a good fit. I nearly left years ago and stayed because  friend was going through cancer there. Between then and her death, I thought I had maybe found a way to be a member there, but it was short lived. 

This challenges my ecclesiology, such as it is. My ideal is that it shouldn't matter what church you belong to, but I know it's only an ideal. Even so, I thought this might be "close enough." It wasn't. And it's a divorce in an earthquake and it's weird and uncomfortable and . . . freeing. 

All the ways I'm broken, I know no congregation is going to feel completely comfortable. And as I said at the start of this post, I'm only in inquiry classes at the new church, so who know what might happen there as I step forward in this journey, not always having enough light for the next step. 

But for now, this seems right. I've felt affirmed from many directions. My broken bits seem, so far, to fit better in this new congregation. Time will tell.

I'm becoming quite comfortable with the notion that this may be my next "call," and that in a few years it will be perfectly fine to once again put in my mobility papers. After all, we're all one Body of Christ. It shouldn't matter where I worship. 

Changing Churches (part 2, we'll call it the "Pride Edition)

I'm a gay. I write for gay publications using my real name. Generally, even if we've just met, you'll learn fairly quickly I'm gay, not because I wear rainbows, pink triangles, or feather boas (not that there's anything wrong with wearing any of those things), I've just learned to sort of let it be known with at little fanfare as possible. Maybe it's a conversation about dating, or some hottie from Hollywood, or any number of things that happen pretty easily in daily conversation, but unless I feel personally threatened, I don't hide. (I'll probably try to move out of a group of burly men speaking violently of gay folk---I've little interest in being a martyr in the modern sense.)

But Pride weekend . . . I generally don't do it. I don't care for crowds. I don't care for drinking. I don't care for noise. I seem to have that thing where I have a hard time picking out individual voices in a noisy room, so I can't have easy conversation without most of it being "What?" My friend Margo, a speech pathologist, told me the name of this thing, but I've forgotten it already. Anyway, in noisy crowds, I tend to just watch other people talking, but it all sounds like barking dogs.

So, if you've ever been to a Pride event, you maybe can see why I don't care to go.

This year, I was going. Through misadventures with Houston's rotten public transportation (upon which I rely daily but the weekend schedules are awful), I didn't make it. But I really intended to go because earlier this week, I realized that walking in the parade with people from the church I'm joining would be . . . I don't know . . . good.

Mind you, the church I'm leaving didn't do Pride parades and I didn't really care if they did. I did care that being gay was still treated a bit as something to keep secret. I think by the time I left, most people knew I was gay, but I would still have people speak of this reality in hushed tones, as if we didn't want some people to overhear, as if it were a secret to be protected. I understand they're now starting a process for becoming a Reconciling congregation, which surprises me because I've been in those meetings in the past, the "why do we need to do this when we say we welcome everyone" conversations. (That's perhaps a post for another time, but those conversations always annoyed me greatly.) But if they're moving forward with that, I'm glad and happy for them. I hope its a good move for them and that they're able to reach the growing gay community near that church.

All of which to say, I'm not leaving that church because they weren't a Reconciling congregation. I never made decisions about church attendance based upon that status, so long as LGBT folk weren't denounced from the pulpit.

What attending this new church has done for me is tell me that I've turned a corner on that. I didn't mind that I was only one of maybe three gay men in the congregation. (I always heard rumors of a lesbian member, but I was never able to figure out who that was!) But once I started attending this new congregation, I began to be moved by the visible presence of couples and families in the pews. It was a comfort I didn't even know I desired. I highly valued the racial mix of my former church, and this new church has that, too (although I'm quick to acknowledge that both are still predominantly white congregations). Seeing gay couples in church seems, right now, to be a balm to some sore I didn't even know I had.

Some LGBT people stay in predominantly straight congregations---sometimes even in congregations that are hostile to LGBT people---out of a sense of call, a call to be a witness to people that gay folk are, sometimes, even oftentimes, people of faith who sometimes, even oftentimes, stay away from church because we really don't feel all that welcome. One or two people have suggested that my former church is considering becoming Reconciling because I was there, maybe because I've now left. I don't know about that, but if so, may it be a movement of the Spirit, not just about me.

But the lack of open welcome to LGBT folk at the former church was only one reason why I'm changing congregations, and in my mind, it was a small part. Now that I'm in a congregation with a larger, visible presence of LGBT folk, I realize it may have been bigger than I realized.

And for that reason, I'm sorry I didn't make it to walk with them in the Pride parade this evening. I'm very thankful to have found a place that is willing to have that presence and witness at Pride. I think there's some sort of healing in it for me. Maybe. Time will tell.

It's just a strange thing to find comfort for an ache you didn't even know you had.

Changing Churches (part 1, probably)

I'm in the process of changing churches.

It's a little surprising, even to me.

I'm not only changing congregations, I'm changing denominations.

If you read the last year or two of this blog, it's clear that I've been unhappy. In some ways I'm unhappy with the larger church, in other ways it was with a particular congregation.

Not everything about this change will be for public consumption. So much of this decision has to do with me and my failings as well as the failings of the church. I want to be careful not to air dirty laundry. Still, I feel like I want to unravel it somehow. Not unravel, untangle. Sort it out.

There are questions of identity involved. I'm Lutheran. I don't know that I'll ever not be Lutheran. Yet, here I am, signing up for the "Inquiry Group" of this Episcopal congregation. Will I ever be Episcopalian?

And yet, I recall at least two other times in my adult life, when I nearly left the Lutheran communion. Once was in my mid-twenties when I became enamored of the Roman Catholic church and even started the process of becoming RC. And then I didn't. It was a strange moment, but it was almost like throwing a switch. I was becoming RC one week, the next I was back in a Lutheran church.

The second time I nearly left the Lutheran church was during my failed attempt at becoming un-churched. This was about 10 years ago, when all my theology fell through a suddenly opened, previously hidden trap door. I went about saying, "I still believe in God, I just don't know what I believe about God." I moved to Chicago for grad school and tried not to go to church and still found myself in a pew at least twice a month. I lived in a neighborhood with four Lutheran churches and none of them felt right. The last six months or so that I was in Chicago, I attended the neighborhood Episcopal church---which I admit was very comfortable, very much a place to explore my un-churched-ness at the time. I never joined. I graduated and moved back to Texas, but there's no doubt that had I stayed in Chicago, I would have become Episcopalian then.

So maybe this is just a delayed inevitability.

I've said it feels like I'm breaking up with someone, getting a divorce. I have no idea what a divorce feels like, but all the feelings of disappointment and disillusionment must be somewhat similar to what divorcing folk feel. In retrospect, this was a marriage I was sort of pushed into, that I wasn't sure about from the beginning, but I went into it, even experienced some periods of hopefulness that I might finally settle in there.

But the hopefulness and settled feeling never lasted long. I gave it eight years. The last year or two, it came to a head and something needed to change.

So I'm changing congregations, even denominations.

The uncertainty and fear that I feel in this moment feels like the kind of uncertainty and fear that is pregnant with creativity. Possibility. It feels right.

It's going to take some processing. Maybe doing it publicly will help someone else. Maybe it's just an exercise in public self-reflection and no one cares.

But here we go. It's a definite new chapter in my life.

A Note on Science and Belief

Belief in God isn't for me, some fact we're taught or given. It isn't a lesson like "if you drop an apple, it'll fall to the ground."

It's an experience that gives context to the facts.

If, at one time, our best observation and understanding said, "the sun travels around the earth," finding out otherwise doesn't mean that our ancestors in faith who believed were unfaithful or heretics for writing poetry thanking God for the sun's daily travel. It means we now write songs of praise for the yearly trip that the earth takes around the sun.

And if we once thought mythologically and made up stories to explain a creation that gave credit to God for our being, the fact that we now investigate scientifically and think that we have generations of development---yes, evolution---behind our being makes us no less indebted to God.

Why is this such a threatening idea?

Jesus, Judas, and Friends

They were friends, you know. Knew each other well, traveled around together, ate together. All that.

And really, setting aside Jesus being Lord and all, it's just one of those things that happens with friends. Visions differ or change or were misunderstood.

Maybe you've been betrayed. Maybe you've betrayed. Maybe no one was betrayed but everyone goes away feeling some trust was broken.

Or we're just broken.

I had an acting teacher in college who said over and over that no one plays villains. Every character we play had to believe s/he was doing the best thing, whether for the world or for the self, but really doing the best thing.

So I sympathize with Judas. Surely he thought he was doing something for some purpose---we can argue what. Something about Israel, maybe, or when Jesus said "the Reign of God," some other picture came to Judas' mind than what Jesus had in mind.

It just all got so terribly out of hand. And however passively, he had the help of the other disciples.

"Do quickly what you are going to do."

"Could you not keep awake one hour?"

In the night of the new commandment---that we should love one another---deeds are quickly done or else sleep overcomes. A nap. A kiss.

Jesus. Judas. A few other friends. Everything broken.

Remain here. Stay awake.

I mean well.