Reclaiming the Past

Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to First Lutheran Church in Venice was like driving back into my past. This was my old church. This was my parent's church. So much of my own faith formation is centered in that community, that when I found out that they were installing their new pastor, I wanted to be there to celebrate with them. The pastor we all loved left for another postition just before my father died nearly three years ago.

It was a dark day, threatening rain the whole way down the coast. How beautiful. The sea so dark, the highway empty. The old neighborhood was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Lincoln Boulevard has become so seedy, and the traffic lights longer than I remembered. I couldn't remember where the bank was, so I just kept driving toward the shopping center nearest my old apartment. Ah, yes, there was a Bank of America in that shopping center where I used to get my nails done. The center looked so different and I hardly recognized the bank. There were big stores that I don't remember and the bank all frilled up to look like it dropped out of Art Deco Paris.

The church looked beautiful, and friends were gratifyingly glad to see me. No one knew I was coming, so there were lots of widened eyes and huge hugs. These are the people who were there at the very beginning of my journey to a pastoral vocation. We sang together, planned worship together, ran a school, welcomed children and their parents, prayed each other through tragedies and triumphs. These are the people who visited my mother faithfully for five months when she lay in hospital bed on a respirator, unable to move or talk. They brought food for my father for months after my mother's hospitalization, and the men in the congregation visited my Dad every week during the year and a half he was alone after Mom died. It was good to be surrounded by them again, to feel part of the Body of Christ in that place. I gasped as the processional cross that my Dad carved for them moved down the aisle at the head of a procession of pastors and singers.

The story of their three-year search for a pastor was inspiring. These days I am frustrated and close to despair. I have done everything I know to find a call. And everything I have done seems to be useless. Every avenue seems blocked, and I am suddenly unsure of my next move. I want to wait with patience, to be open to the Spirit's work, but instead I am agitated, anxious, crabby and grieving. The Venice congregation looked at 26 resume's before they met this new pastor. Some of them told me that the first two pastors they called were not pastors everyone was sure of, but that they seemed overall to be a good fit, so a call was issued. But those pastors chose not to come. This pastor was one that everyone agreed on. And he wanted them. He told them that it was a good thing that they hadn't called him at the beginning of their search, because he would not have been a good fit then, and would likely have declined the call as well. This is an encouraging story. And just being with them all as they celebrated made me happy. Much like the love-fest of a wedding, I was swept up into their joy, as if he were my new pastor, too.

So many people told me how much they missed my parents. The older people said they had missed my Dad during the discussions of procedure could have been helped by his understanding of the past and his strong voice against change simply for the new. My mother had been such a model for young women who had no church experience growing up and were now raising families in the church. They remember her dedication and energy with such easy fondness. I have been missing my parents especially in this season of All Saints, and it felt good to be sad about their loss at the same time that I experienced their community going forward with Spirit into the future. All that love is still there, gathered inside those walls, ready to be touched, to be taken home, to be held in my heart, to be shared as I look into my own future.