Member-only story
When a Minister Moves Home & Who She Calls When She Finds What’s Next
A story told in poem of disorienting and reorienting belief.
When a minister moves home
the stoles get folded in the back seat,
tossed about on the bed
and hung up in the closet
next to the board games
and yearbooks of her youth.
When a minister moves home
the calling turns into a job.
A theology of benefits
transforms to health insurance.
The luster wears off.
What am I doing again?
Why am I here?
A liturgy has been made of my existence.
Liturgy: the work of the people.
Breaking out of it now,
letting those people no longer be my people,
and bursting forth into whatever exists
beyond the walled-in pedestal.
A terrifying freefall into nothing.
But I believe —
in the words of Ruthie Foster —
“There’s joy on the other side.”
Joy seems so far away.
