I remember my first…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

pastorate, Tabernacle Baptist Church in West Allis, Wisconsin. I still think about them, pray for them sometimes, and hope I didn’t do too much damage along the way because I really did love them.

Yet I was fresh out of seminary, loaded with ideas, could speak a bit, and was ready to be, as I look back at it, a one man revival. Tabernacle was a big church waiting to happen, a theory or two away from filling the pews. All it needed was for me to come riding in with the cavalry, the signature barely dry on my diploma.

I meant well. I really did. You’re doomed if you don’t pursue ministry with at least some idealism. I loved my new calling. I loved being a pastor. Sunday mornings were highlights of my week, still are, and things started out well.  The church began to grow.

Somewhere along the line, though, idealism started drifting into obsession. Every word of conversation, almost every waking thought, and my whole identity were being absorbed. My long suffering wife asked me not to speak about the parish from at least Friday night to Saturday evening so we could have some kind of day off. I usually didn’t make it. I burned bright but short, around two years and there was no more left to give and off we moved to another parish in Kansas where for the most part everything repeated but this time for only a little more than a year.

It was humbling to drive home from Kansas, spirits down, tail between my legs and no place to live outside my parent’s basement. I’d like to think that it was about persecution, about suffering for the Gospel, and in part I suppose that was true. Yet it would be more than fair to say that I did myself in with my obsession masked as spirituality, my sermons at and not for, and a failure to understand the most important thing.

It’s not your church.

I know people call it that when they ask you “How’s your church?” Yet it never was and never will be “yours”.  You don’t own it. The people are not yours. It’s past and its future are not yours. All you really have is your books, your vestments, and hopefully an understanding of all of this simple fact to help you along the way.  Unfortunately there are some of us who have to learn this through pain and hopefully we didn’t get burned out of serving the church altogether in our struggles.

Wherever I go and whatever I do, however the future unfolds it’s not my Church. It’s not the Bishop’s or the people’s or the non profit corporations, none of us own it in any sense that matters. We are all just temporary managers of eternal things, things that are so much larger and more important than any one person or moment that thinking otherwise is like banging your head on a wall, it only feels good when you stop.

 

 

 

I understand…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

the world being crazy. The idea of it even makes an odd kind of sense to me. When the Church goes crazy, or seems to, that’s a whole different thing. I count on the church to be sane, wise, deep, and clear in a way that I never expect politicians or the heads of corporations to ever be. It’s the whole kingdom of God thing. Just those words mean that it should be different, better, and something other than the world.

Alas, that’s not always the case. It seems that at any given moment we can be as petty, political, and downright stupid as anything in the world. Kingdom of God or not we can be a bunch of knuckleheads precisely because the whole Church is filled with knuckleheads like me.

How I wish it was different. How I wish that the Church could be some kind of refuge, some kind of place of peace where the cruel world was outside the door never to come inside. I guess that’s why we have the eschaton, the day when all things will be as they were meant to be. I guess that’s why we get glimpses and pieces of that day now but never the complete package. The creation groans and we groan along with it even as we stand about the altar.

Perhaps that’s what our hope really is. We see the seeds and anticipate the plant. We catch a glimpse and faith fills in the rest of the picture. We have moments and those moments help us imagine eternity. A taste previews the great banquet and a few notes let us hear the future, eternal, song.

I’d like more, but I can live with that if I have to and wait with a kind of joyful sorrowing anticipation for the rest.

The distress one feels…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

when someone or something they love is going through hard times is a sign of the love that exists. Our hearts are troubled because those people or things  which are  important to us, mean something to us,  or are included as part of our lives, appear threatened and our love makes their pain more acute and real.

Thank God for this pain and discomfort, this sad grieving reminder of love. It tells us we’re still connected, that there are places in our life that haven’t been given over to meaninglessness, and this love that pains us when its object is challenged, or hurt, or threatened is also the love that when transformed by grace will help us find our way home.

I guess I'm a prude…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

these days. I shouldn’t be as I presumably have everything to gain. The rules were written by and for people like me, an American man. Everything with everyone is okay and if that’s not how you want it then you need to shut up and crawl back under your rock.

So why the “prude”.

Its not that I’m the living example of purity. I came of age in the 70’s and basically took part in much that was available. The remnants of the old walls were being kicked down and an army of us surged out of our confines and on to the world. We were possessed, or so we thought, of both freedom and omniscience and we made the best of it. Some did more, some did less, I have no idea who did what and I don’t care but it happened.

We were looking for something, love, acceptance, touch, belonging, intimacy, but all we were offered, or so it seemed was sex, drugs, and rock n roll. It was an enticing lure, great flashes of light, moments of arrival, followed by empty mornings with nothing left except to try to do it again. Whatever it was we were looking for was more than the temporary fix.

And people got hurt, really hurt.

Someone had to pay the bill for all the goodies and apparently it was going to be us. I hurt people and people hurt me. We were struggling to get to the top of the food chain and we became objects of conquest along the way. How far could you go? What could you get from another person without giving? We thought were free but we were really just parasites hanging off each other taking what we could and then leaving when a better host came along.

There is no such thing as “unsex”. Once you have sex with a person they are bound to you and now we understand the chemicals that make this happen. If you go from person to person and use each other as a kind of playground equipment you exponentially increase your risk of sickness, emotional barrenness, and pathos. The more “intimate” you become the less intimacy you are eventually able to experience. Everything you think you want from sex gets less the more you share it with different people.

Nobody told us stuff like that.

The truth is we probably wouldn’t have listened anyway. We thought we knew what we knew and we were certain there was no hook underneath the worm. We didn’t know there were people out there playing with our minds and emotions and souls for no other reason than to make money. We didn’t know that the rules we thought so prudish had come to humanity through the experience of generations of pain. We were young, we were stupid, and we thought we would live forever.

So I guess I’m a prude now.

I can’t change what happened even as I wish I could. There are more than a few people I should apologize to but its probably best that we keep to our separate paths. We had a party, a really big party, and every generation after us has had to clean up the mess.  Most of us regained our senses but by then the damage was still done. It’s tough being a kid, even tougher now because the world is so different and the stakes so much higher largely because of us.

I know better now. Actually I knew better then but just ignored the inner voice.  I see my scars. I see the train coming and I’m trying to push the car full of the people I care for, and people I don’t even know, off the tracks before impact even as I fear I’m too late. If I can’t have the best for my past I want the good for the future.

I guess that makes me, in this strange new world I helped create,  a prude but if it keeps somebody alive I’ll take it.