Spiritually Damaging Experiences

I’ve been reflecting on four years as your colleague in mission.  After my appointment had been announced four years ago I remember writing to all of you expressing my excitement at the prospect of working with you.  I have never, not once, been disappointed in that.

I also remember saying something about which I have thought many times since.  I said that working for the church ought not be a spiritually damaging experience.  I think I said it to begin with because I realized the enormity of the challenge ahead and I was trying to say words of encouragement to myself.  I’ve come to realize that is easier to say than it is to make a reality.  I’ve also come to realize that making it a reality is my own work to do.

What is true is that there will always be those who are challenging.  Sometimes there will be those who are just mean.  From time to time there will even be those committed to damaging others, but even then, I don’t doubt they do it with the best of intentions in a strange sort of way.  From time to time, we will be challenging, mean, and damaging to ourselves.  These things build up to run the risk of a very spiritually damaging experience indeed.  In a strange sort of way, it is to be expected when people care as much about an endeavor as they care about the church.  Family is the only thing that comes close.

This is what I’ve learned from you over four years of working together to focus The Episcopal Church on mission:  I can’t do anything about how others behave, well or badly, above board or underhandedly, transparently or not.  Yet, whether any of this damages my spirit is entirely up to me.  It threatens to, of course, from time to time.  But it only harms my soul if I allow it to. 

For me that means struggles with anger from time to time, and worse, acting out of anger, particularly speaking out of anger.  It helps me to remember that anger is in essence and at its root the same emotion as grief.  In fact, the word anger comes into English from the Old Norse word angra, which means to grieve.

I know more what to do with grief in a spiritually healthy way than I do anger.  I know that my spiritual well-being depends on letting myself grieve when I need to until I am ready to move on.  Grief is not fun.  It just has to be done.  Tears help.  Sadness eventually yields to something else.  Never, though, have I acted damagingly out of grief. 

I find it helpful to approach anger more like grief than anything else.  I just need to grieve until I’m ready to move on.  Tears help.  Sadness dissipates eventually while if I just leave it as anger, it tends to hang around longer.

So it is true that working for the church ought not be a spiritually damaging experience, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be wrongs, injustices, and hurts in this holy work of ours.  It does mean that what they do to us, and whether they damage us, is ultimately up to us.  Our spiritual well-being is in our hands alone.  And God’s.

Here’s looking toward the years ahead and the holy work we have been given to share.  We will make of it what we will and we will never let it damage our spirits.

Peace,