Last year, I had the honor of being asked to give the response to the annual Berry Street Essay at the UUMA’s Ministry Days conference in Ft. Lauderdale.
The Rev. Christine Robinson’s wonderful and thought provoking essay, “Imagineering Soul,” has already made the rounds in various forms, including an excerpt in a recent issue of the UU World.
What is keeping us from evoking the holy, from embracing our congregations’ purpose as imagineers of soul? I think it’s that we’re shamed, scorned, and scared.
Whatever our theologies, we have a collective fear of the spiritual that makes it hard for us, lay and ordained, to take the risk of spirituality. Our collective fear of the spiritual has deep roots in shame and in the scorn we use to mask our shame. Together they keep us from meeting our own needs and the needs of those who come to us thirsty for depth and heart without traditional dogma.
If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to do so.
My response begins simply:
There is little I can add to what has already been said, other than to stress that, besides those experiences of spiritual shame and fear of the Holy that you list as impediments to the role of minister as Imagineer of the soul, I would add that we are often impeded by the fact that the expectations of this profession have shifted — and not necessarily for the better. A long-time friend of mine, a Catholic priest who for years was the director of vocations for a diocese in Massachusetts, once told me that he felt the major reason for the crisis in vocations that the Catholic church was experiencing was that the nature of the job had changed so radically in the past several decades. The priestly role had been diminished and been overshadowed by the role of administrator, the balance between the two had been lost, and “who in their right minds,” he asked me, “would willingly profess vows of chastity and poverty so that they could take up a career in middle management?”
Over the years, more and more Unitarian Universalist ministers have taken up vows of poverty as well, loaded at the front end of formation and cunningly disguised as Stafford Loans. Many of us do this willingly, and yet the shift in demands are no different for us.
The scribe of the Berry Street Committee had asked for a copy of the text to my response last fall. Foibles of time and technology have delayed its posting. It is, at last, available for all. You can read it here.
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