Proving Our Worth

I turned 30 this week.  I had anticipated that such a turning point would feel at least a little bit unsettling, but it hasn’t really freaked me out at all.  After all – I spent my 25^th birthday in the exact same place I spent my 30^th.  Namely, behind a pulpit.  I’ve been doing this work now for four years as a settled parish minister and four years before that as a seminarian in various stages of ministerial preparedness.  So, I pretty much spent my 20’s being people’s minister.  It’s not like turning 30 means abandoning my wild partying ways and only drinking three scotches on a weekend night instead of four. It basically just means I’m of a reasonable age to be doing the work I’ve already been doing for some time, so maybe it’s not such a big shocker for me.  

 

            Still, it’s made me think a little.  For some reason, turning 30 brought to mind a memory from the week I was a candidate for the ministry at the wonderful congregation I serve.  At one of the innumerable candidating week mixers, when everyone’s supposed to get to know the new minister, a young mother of two in the congregation came up to me with wide eyes and said, “You’re so young and you’ve already accomplished so much!  Here I am older than you and I feel like I’ve hardly done anything.” 

 

            For a second there, you could have knocked me over with a feather, because she said this while her two beautiful, kind hearted and intelligent children played respectfully with other kids right next to us.  Of course, I said something pastorally appropriate like, “what makes you feel like you haven’t accomplished much” and had a conversation with her, but a big part of me wanted to shake her by the shoulders and shout, “Are you a crazy person!  Look at what you’ve done!  How is it even possible for anyone to accomplish something like that! I’m a freakin’ preacher, lady!  You’re like, you know, everything real in the world!” 

 

            Over the years, I’ve come to love that whole family even more than I could have guessed when I first met them.  Those kids only get smarter and kinder as they get older, and that mom just gets more amazing, but remembering that makes me think about how we try to prove our worth in this life and what measures we use to tally up our worthiness.  For her, in that moment, worthiness what everything she was not – it was professionalism and public prominence.  For me, it was the miracle of actually raising a decent and loving child, and both of us stood flabbergasted by the strength and commitment of the other.  Of course, we were also both completely incapable of acknowledging our own strength and commitment.    

 

            Turning 30, I’m thinking about how I measure my worth these days.  Though I hate to admit it, clergy are as bad as anyone else when it comes to measuring worth through numbers and prizes and external measurements.  It happens in what I like to call the “my steeple is bigger than your steeple,” conversation which inevitably takes place in one form or another at most large clergy gatherings.  Somebody goes on and on about their new program in this or that, somebody describes their last sermon in extended detail, and somebody, inevitably, lets you know exactly how much their congregation has grown in membership during the last church year.  Sometimes I actually am that person yammering about this or that, but I try to resist the temptation whenever I can, mostly because such a conversation it just feels awful, like it’s bad for my soul. 

 

            Sure, we can measure our worth by the size and prominence of our congregations and their numerical growth and fabulous programs – but we actually try to inculcate in our people measurements of worth that are exactly the opposite.  We try to teach our people the simple Universalist message that they, and their congregation, are loved and chosen no matter what, even when they aren’t great shining success stories.  We try to teach them to reach out and grow their faith because there are hungry people who need to be fed and their worth is assured in the eyes of a generous creation.  But then we ourselves hunker down over the numbers, obsess over the canvass figures, and try to tell a story that makes us shining stars after all.

 

            It’s tempting, at 30, to look back at my life and try to come up with all of the reasons these have been three decades of reasonably well lived life.  It’s tempting to try to justify the way I used those years and envision a new and improved me for the next 30.  But I tell my people that they are loved and chosen, no matter what.  Today, in honor of my birthday, I will endeavor to tell myself the same thing.