Every few weeks I encounter a minister on the subway. They surprise me, a sudden voice projecting from the far end of whatever car I’m in. These sermons occur more often on colder days. Heat and humidity seem to limit the Holy Spirit aboard the MTA. I’ve heard variations on the Anointed Word ranging from protecting your Inner Power to denying the Devil your Immortal Soul, followed by an impromptu collection, a shaking of a plastic cup like a tambourine. I’ll reach for my wallet or dig for change, but I’ve never gone in for fire and brimstone. Ministers of grace are my preference.
My mother wanted me to be a United Methodist minister. I suspect this was her wish since I was old enough to talk. She would never admit it now, but there was something in her life advice that kept pointing the way toward seminary. She’d mention it off-hand while complementing the way I told a story, remarking how I’d remember details of books and songs, how I paid attention.
“You know, Tommy … you would make such a good pastor.”
***
When you grow up in the United Methodist Church, you learn to think of pastors (or ministers, preachers, the words are interchangeable) as impermanent fixtures. A good minister is a blessing to any church, but the United Methodist Church takes its pastoral cue from tales of the old circuit-riding preacher who would travel from parish to parish to spread the good word. Preachers come and go for various reasons, staying for years at a time. The church itself maintains a committee to weigh the decision annually, to keep the status quo or not. Some preachers leave earlier than they expected. Other preachers just move along of their own volition.
For a time, my home church shared a pastoral assignment with another church some eight miles away. Ministers assigned to my church would preach two sermons every Sunday. For this reason, I was an anomaly from my church-going school friends. They knew Sundays scheduled with Sunday School after Sunday Service, but our church did the opposite. Putting Sunday School before Sunday Service allowed our shared minister to preach at the other church first, then dash over to ours for a second round. This led to our church letting out a few precious minutes before the nearby Baptist Church, minutes that allowed our hungrier parishioners to get to the local Golden Corral before all other denominations.
Pastor Lewis was the first minister I remember. He didn’t baptize me. I’ve seen photos of the minister who did, photos of me in his arms, but I’ve no actual memory of the man. Pastor Lewis was white haired and bearded, a look somewhere between Kenny Rogers and a Founding Father. I wasn’t old enough to pay attention to sermons, to make an assessment of how he handled our small church. Also, his daughter went to high school with my older brother. They dated for a time, but that’s neither here nor there.
Pastor Julian was next. I want to say he was tall and thin, but everyone was tall back then. He wore glasses, had a dark mustache and was mostly bald. He was the first person I remember meeting who looked like the dictionary definition of intelligent. His wife Alma had an accent and a way of speaking she proudly described as South Georgia Lockjaw. Pastor Julian’s voice was cultured, almost European, though I knew he was just as much a product of South Georgia as his wife.
Pastor Ed was a soft-spoken family man with two incredibly accident prone children. Almost every weekend brought another minor calamity with one or both of the boys at the center. At least twice I witnessed the younger of the two attempt to follow the older out a door only to have that door close on their fingers. An accident prone kid myself, I was amazed at how unlucky they were. There were outings in the fall, visits to the park. He liked us, all four of us kids.
Pastor Ron was boisterous and bearded. I liked him immediately. He resembled my Uncle Charley to such an extent that I wondered if they were secretly brothers. His sermons were the first I remember keeping my focus, drawing my nose out of the fine print in the back of the hymnal. It was under Pastor Ron’s tenure that the youth group stepped into the territory of hosting all-night lock-ins at the church. Later, Pastor Ron took us on overnight retreats to places like Lake Junaluska and Epworth-by-the-Sea.
Pastor David arrived fresh out of seminary, the first minister our church didn’t have to share with another congregation. Unmarried, closer in age to my brother than my father, I liked him immediately. He had a smile and a laugh ready for even the most awkward of situations, making him seem surprised by the humanity of the job he’d undertaken. His sermons drew connections to examples he knew best. He could preach about the Sermon on the Mount, then tie the lesson into a plot point from M*A*S*H or Star Trek: The Next Generation. We got to watch him fall in love with a voice teacher, get engaged and get married, start a family.
Pastor Linda was an unexpected surprise. Her arrival caused tiny schisms in the congregation. Some congregants left entirely, while others started attending under a kind of duress, saying they loved the church, supported their church family, but had issues with serving under a woman. Pastor Linda was sharp and witty with a disarming way of turning simple conversations into deeper discussions. It was during Pastor Linda’s tenure I left for college.
***
Why did my mother want me to be a minister? I think I gave her the idea.
I started reading at age 2. Indiscriminate in my sources, I wanted more information, to learn about everything, to just keep reading whenever possible. It didn’t have to be fiction and it certainly didn’t have to be age-appropriate. I would read from the first opportunity the day afforded me. I’d ask for cereal in boxes based on how much I could learn from the printed backs.
When I was eight, I’d started reading joke books, the kind of joke books I could buy with my allowance at book fairs. These were themed, full of horrible puns and knock-knock jokes. One of them was a collection of jokes about grapes. I remember riding home from church with my brother, sitting in the back of his VW Bug while he drove and tried to look cool next to his then girlfriend up front. From the backseat, I read these jokes aloud and his girlfriend played along with more patience than I deserved. “Orange you glad I didn’t say grape?”
As much as I loved to read, I wasn’t very good at just talking to people. Conversation was a family gift that seemed to skip me, leaving me the quiet kid at the table while my parents and uncles kept the room entertained. I figured joke books would help me. They gave me set-ups and punchlines, a foot in the door and a reason to speak up. Everyone likes jokes. The logic was sound, if a little naive.
Around the same time, I had a little orange New Testament. It was a prize from Vacation Bible School at a neighboring church. Gideon New Testaments came in different colors. I had a green one, a black one, but the orange one was my favorite. In the back of this little New Testament were several questions and corresponding answers with verse references to match.
So one night, orange New Testament in hand, I walked downstairs to find my Mom. She was cleaning the tub in our downstairs bathroom, sponge in hand, scrubbing away at the drain. Occupied with nowhere else to go, she was the perfect audience. Without even saying hello, I opened the little half-Bible, turned to the questions and asked her the first on the list: “Do you know how to get to Heaven?”
I was ready to turn to the listed chapter and verse when she looked at me, blinked. “Well, Tommy …,” she started, and then came a look of heavy concern. She nodded to herself, then looked at me again as if to say, “I know what I need to do.”
She put down her sponge and called Pastor Julian.
That Saturday, I was taken to see Pastor Julian at the parsonage, the home given by the district to a preacher for the duration of their assignment. My mom left me with Pastor Julian and said she would return in a few hours, telling the Pastor I had a few questions. He and I sat for a bit, him being very attentive and smiling with expectation. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was there, and then I remembered something:
Rocks.
Some weeks earlier, Pastor Julian had taught a children’s sermon and used rocks as a prop. He showed us these little polished stones of turquoise and quartz. He showed us rougher stones he claimed were also turquoise and quartz. This was a hobby of his, one he would be glad to show us someday. The lesson was about how these rough stones could become something shiny and smooth to the touch with a little work, with polish. I’m sure there was a chapter and verse to accompany, but all I retained was the way those rocks felt in my hand.
I asked Pastor Julian how he made the rocks. He lit up more excited than I’d ever seen. I can’t imagine he’d been asked much about his hobby. A preacher is approached about prayer concerns, sick friends and sicker relatives. In our church, he was asked likely about budgets and cornered by well-meaning parishioners with ideas to fill offering plates and pews. Anyone asking about simple rocks must’ve seemed such a relief.
We spent the morning looking over his stores of rough and prepared stones. More turquoise and quartz, quartz in white and rose. He had tourmalines and obsidians, tiger eyes and amethysts. From several little boxes, he pulled a handful of blood red garnets and decided they would make for a perfect example.
“This is a tumbler,” he said, pulling a little device like a cement mixer from a shelf. It plugged into the wall of his garage, of the parsonage garage. “Into this go the stones to polish, then water and grit to do the polishing.” It seemed a messy and noisy process to me. I told him so. He agreed with a laugh, confided that was why his hobby stayed in the garage, then set up the tumbler to do its work.
A handful of stones, including the garnets, went into the small barrel along with a couple scoops of sandy grit, then water to cover. It was like he was following a soup recipe. He then closed the barrel, checked it for leaks and set the tumbler spinning. Slowly, it turned and turned, just like the cement mixer it resembled.
“When do we get to see,” I asked.
“Not for another 24 hours or more,” he answered.
Disappointed, I sighed like only an eight year old can. Alma made us some lunch and called us into the kitchen. Shortly after, my mom retrieved me from the parsonage and took me home. She asked what I’d learned, so I told her all about the rocks and the tumbler in the garage.
“The rocks go in all rough and sharp, then spin for a long time in gritty water until they come out all pretty, but they’re still the same rocks.”
The following Sunday, Pastor Julian found me after the service. He’d brought the garnets from our afternoon together. They were smaller than I remembered, but shone like drops of cherry red candy. He said they were mine to keep.
A few months later, Pastor Julian started to take the occasional Sunday off from the pulpit. He wasn’t well, I was told, but he would get better. We had substitute preachers on those days he couldn’t make it. I missed him like family. He was kind to me and shared his wonderful hobby, even if that wasn’t entirely the lesson my mother had planned.
Before long, I was told more about Pastor Julian and his condition. He had cancer and it was in his brain. He’d undergone surgery and that surgery had left him with only one eye. For a short time and after a few weeks of recovery, Pastor Julian returned to the pulpit and preached while wearing an eyepatch under his glasses. I don’t remember the sermons being any less engaging. But he was tired and went home soon after every service. We didn’t talk anymore, not about rocks or anything else, but he remained kind. He was loved in our church.
I went to several funerals as a child and even more funeral home viewings. This comes of attending a church with so many parishioners of advanced years. They call it a “graying church,” which is meant to be a kinder way of saying the membership is dying off. Funerals were something that happened for people much older than me, much older than my parents. My months-older cousin was my cohort for quite a few viewings and we had a standard routine. First, we’d find the food, the funeral home kitchen that served to collect the casseroles and cakes and assorted snacks brought by various church women. It was always more than the bereaved family could ever eat, much less take home for later. From the kitchen, we moved on to the lobby, where we’d watch strangers come and go, making guesses if they were heading to the bereaved we knew or someone else. Then we’d wind our way through the funeral home to the casket showroom, to look at the various floor models and dare one another to crawl up and inside. Neither of us ever did, though once my cousin turned the lights out on me and shut the door. I was terrified, might’ve screamed a little, and swore I’d do the same to her, but from then on we both kept an eye on the light switch and one foot pointing to the door.
Pastor Julian’s funeral was different. I remember not wanting to go. I remember being hoisted up to look into the casket at what was supposed to be Pastor Julian. As I recall, he still had his eyepatch, black silk still under his eyeglasses, though that might just be a trick of childhood memory. My cousin was there and I’m sure she teased me about avoiding our runabout routine, but it didn’t seem right or fair. I didn’t understand why this person who’d collected the prayer concerns of others couldn’t keep some of that goodwill for himself. This was too soon, too close to the age of my own parents, too much of a surprise, even if I’d watched Pastor Julian fall further into the cancer that eventually took him. I wished I’d asked to spend more time with him, even just to tumble more rocks.
***
I stayed active with my own youth group and later, much later became its leader, playing chaperone to the handful of younger children who’d become teens as I was finishing high school. I took them bowling, to the movies. I taught Sunday School for a short while. My parents praised my patience. At one point, my Dad called me “as mild-mannered as Clark Kent,” a compliment I still carry with me and not just for the Superman reference.
I went away to college and left behind a young lifetime of consistent Sunday church attendance. Berry College was and is Presbyterian-affiliated, but I stopped attending services at the college chapel a couple weeks into my stay. As I figured it, I had an understanding with God. I’d been loyal for some twenty years, so surely He would be okay with me missing a few Sundays. I made sure to attend whenever I made the hour and half journey home, which was fairly often. I would be welcomed back with handshakes and hugs, announced from the pulpit as a special visitor. I felt like an ambassador returning from journeys abroad.
I remember a visit Pastor David made to Berry, probably in my sophomore year. We met at the Berry Square Mall across Highway 27 from campus and had lunch in the food court. Over fries and a Coke, we talked about school, how things were going. At one point, he mentioned seminary as a possible option for me. Had I considered it? It felt for a moment like he’d been sent directly from my mother, but he assured me he was only asking, thinking it might be a path I hadn’t considered. I told him I’d let him know if I felt a calling.
After I graduated from college, after I’d moved back home for a year, I managed to land my first real job post-graduation. I’d stumbled into a low-rung entry position at a consultancy firm in Atlanta. A week or so before I moved, Pastor David came back to our church for homecoming, an annual event that draws crowds and families from the church’s history. Hearing I was moving to Atlanta, Pastor David said he needed a youth minister at his own new church, an assignment just south of the city. I’d done well as a youth leader at home, so would I consider taking on an actual role with his church? It wouldn’t pay much, only $50 a Sunday, but it would be something.
I took the job. My mother was thrilled. And so was I. This had been in the corner of my possibility for years, and here was an opportunity to see if I could actually do this. Could I do something just short of preaching?
The church was indeed just south of the city, but that “just” was still beyond the southernmost part of the Perimeter, beyond the airport, and (most importantly) beyond Atlanta Motor Speedway. On race days I had to time my drive from suburban upper Atlanta to defeat the endless lines of fans waiting to turn into the Speedway parking lot. Only once did I miss a service because of NASCAR, but I felt awful for doing so.
These kids weren’t like the kids I knew back home. They were into The Foo Fighters and Adam Sandler movies. I knew them, but I didn’t know them very well. It seemed like kids had gotten older while I’d been away at college, that 13 was an older 13 than I remembered.
What I did know, I passed along to my charges, attempting to be someone they could approach about spiritual questions, personal problems, even just concerns they had about growing up. I didn’t know everything, but I wasn’t afraid to share the little wisdom I had. I taught Sunday school, I led the kids in Sunday evening meetings, even had a few minutes every Sunday morning to give my own children’s sermon. I took them to a Braves game, to Six Flags another time.
One of the older teens was never without his Kurt Cobain t-shirt. Cobain had been dead for only a year or so by then. I never asked the boy what Cobain meant to him, but I wish I had. At the time, I fear I quietly dismissed his fascination with another dead rock star as something unnecessary. College-educated, striking out on my own in the adult world, I still had so much to learn about life.
After a few months, the job I’d landed in Atlanta started to wear on me when I realized the entry-level role wasn’t allowing me to enter anywhere I wanted to be. Around the same time, I was getting into minor disagreements with the church leaders over my too informal approach to ministering. I wore jeans too often. I referenced popular music too much. I leaned against the offering rail when I spoke. The complaints were small but gathered one to another like a rolling snowball until finally I had to tell Pastor David I was leaving. He understood, as I knew he would. He was gracious.
***
I hear that calling faintly. Still. Now. That curiosity in the back of my mind, in the center of my heart. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, described that feeling of present faith as having a “heart strangely warmed.” I’ve felt it myself. Was there an opportunity I missed? I ask this time and again. The answer comes with an exhalation of breath and a slow shaking of the head. No. I might be a witness, but I’m no preacher.
But that calling remains. I hear it in the roaring quiet of the subway, the quiet occasionally broken by another minister on the MTA. It’s in the sound of taxi tires against asphalt as I wait to cross at the light. It’s in the cavernous echo of cathedrals I’ve visited in Europe, the high echoing ceiling of St Paul’s in London and the shining gold sanctuary of St Jerome’s in Vienna. It’s in the sound of footsteps in museums, of wind through the trees in Central Park. It’s in the way sunlight comes through our bedroom window. It’s in the key change of a pop song.
I’ve not had a church of my own since leaving home, since leaving that first and only church, but I take these ministers of grace with me. An understanding of grace was the most beneficial lesson I received, even if grace itself — that free and benevolent favor — can be a difficult gift to accept. That even the most difficult trial, the hardest moments to endure, they’re worth the effort for the sake of grace that sustains the effort. So we tumble and we roll until we emerge a more beautiful object for the experience.
