Pastor McLean, tough, smart and focused.

  May 8, 2008 – I spent much of my butting heads with people today, a sign that I am tired, and drained. I squabbled with almost everyone in my life, feeling generally disgruntled and misunderstood, and quite alone. This is why people love dogs so much of course. Izzy, Lenore and Rose were delighted to see me, pleased to hang around with me, thought everything I did or said was wonderful, offered me no challenges or disagreements. Rose herded sheep, Izzy exuded soulfulness, the Hound of Love licked my nose. This is perhaps why more people seem to be worshiping dogs these days than God.
  I would prefer not to be one of them.
  But it’s tempting.
  On top of that, the black flies have eaten me alive, I’ve been to too many funerals lately, the foot I cut chasing after that Goose with Annie is killing me, I’ve been driving around like  a fool,  a low beam in the barn nearly took my head off, and I’ve forgotten to take my blood sugar for a week. I don’t want to know.
  This morning, I squabbled with my spiritual advisor, Steve McLean, a hound of heaven, in his office at the Argyle Church. Steve is completely different from me in so many ways, and in others, is so much like me he feels like a brother. I love and admire him, and I listen to him. When I argue with him, I feel sometimes that I am arguing with myself, which is disorienting.
  Today we had a series of Biblical squabbles about my spiritual beliefs and evolution. We didn’t agree on much.
  First off, Steve disagreed with my notion, written here, that God revealed himself as much in the poetry of Mary Kellogg, the quilting of Maria, Hospice work, the light coming through the forest, or my photography as he did in the Bible. Not so, said Steve. God may be revealing himself in those things, but the Bible is the history and story and revealed word of God. Steve is not squishy about the tenets of the Christian faith. He is not a soother or negotiator. He is an advocate for God.
   Then, we differed on whether or not I should have taken photos of Steve praying at Helen’s funeral the other day. Photography is distracting, he says, which is why he doesn’t permit it if he can see or hear the photographer, at weddings or funerals (I had the permission of the family of course, but was too far back or too distracted myself to notice Steve praying).
  That riled me. What better picture, I asked, then of a pastor praying? What more powerful photo? And the odd thing is that this morning, I woke up wanting to take a photo of Steve praying. He said I could come back tomorrow and get one, if it was God’s will.
  To me, this is the dilemma of the photographer, who I see as a witness, a bearer of signals to the world. Aren’t my pictures an expression of God’s will, in the same way prayer might be. I am not, I thought, a distraction, nor are the images I take.
  See, I told myself reassuringly,  I have not changed so much that I can’t annoy, irritate or disappoint almost all of the people in my life on the same day. I am still me.
  Steve and I also differed on my notion of fulfillment. Fulfillment doesn’t come from making a list of things to do to be fulfilled, Steve argued, or from consciously seeking fulfillment. Fulfillment, he said,  comes from a relationship with God, the true Hound of Heaven, who pursues us in his own way, and leads us into situations where we can create, and bear fruit, and do good for others. One doesn’t need to be an artist to be fulfilled, but can as easily be a plumber or fireman.
  I believe that. I asked Steve why God doesn’t simply appear and make himself clear, and Steve said that was a good question, and there was all sort of debate and discussion about that.
 I bet. God did make himself clear, Steve thought, just not always in the ways we wished or expected. Looking back on my life since coming to the farm, I can see that, and have lived it.
  But I told Steve what I thought the real issue was an old one for me. I have always lived outside of the tent, outside the circle, it’s my natural and comfortable place. I never liked any school, or corporation, or institution more than a couple of years old. It is not an accident that I live on a farm in upstate New York with dogs, chickens, goats, cows and barn cats and that even my own family doesn’t want to be here all of the time.
   The Church, like all institutions, has its own sent of rules, regulations, beliefs and procedures. A formula for getting my back up. Accepting God is perhaps the ultimate submission, and for me submission is nearly tantamount to the end of life. Ask my math teacher in elementary school, Mr. Hauser, who actually wept to my mother at the thought of my repeating his class, which I did three times rather than learn long division, which I still cannot do. There, you want openness, take some of that.
   I sometimes feel, well here is another group of people telling me they know more than I do, telling me what to do and think, setting rules and rituals for me to follow, and thus I am once again outside the tent looking in. I have never made it inside, not once, or been comfortable in there for long. And I have had enough of people in my life telling me I didn’t know enough to join their club, or fit in. Why not simply pursue a spiritual life on my own, reading what I want, seeing what I please?
   Why turn to Steve, who  is so different from me in ways?
  I think because I love and trust him and see God in
Steve, and I want it in me, and I am at home in his unpretentious Church, filled with real people, working and living real lives. That is, I suspect, why he is there, too.
  That’s about the best I can do right now. Steve is right. Institutions are always messy, yet they seem to be necessary to human existence, and it is difficult to
worship alone. Easy to get lost, as I have learned. Sometimes, rules
are helpful, sometimes even necessary for people like me, who tend to
take off into space without them, become unmoored, falling into dark places. A relationship with God would be good, perhaps worth some submission, perhaps more meaningful than long division.
  It was Steve, I think, who pointed out the irony of a man who wrote a book inspired by the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, yet who professed to have no faith. That would be me.
  Some years ago, I wrote about a woman who chose to end her life with her dog as her only companion. After her funeral, her daughter brought me her cross, and told me to wear it on a long book tour for luck and companionship. I put it on, and I wear it still, and a few months ago, someone asked me why. I didn’t know, I said.
  Through Steve, and through my conversations with him, and through life – disagreements and agreements – I am edging closer. I am hearing whispers. I am getting messages. I am feeling Him, am aware of him,  and he is talking to me, if the truth be told, he is revealing himself to me, in ways that are clear, and sometimes that feeling is powerful enough to scare me out of my wits, and sometimes it is lonely and cold, and sometimes the most peaceful feeling I have known, and sometimes it is simply beyond me. Sometimes, I feel lost, and sometimes, I feel found. I am on a road, wondering where it goes.
  After an hour of righteous squabbling, Steve prayed for us, and our venture, and for the people in my life. I found myself praying for a friend who had e-mailed me about wanting to put up a blog, but was reluctant, believing she had nothing to say, and I felt a powerful rush, a calling, if you will, to get that blog up and running. A whisper from God, perhaps. I asked her for permission to write about this, and am waiting for her reply.  But more about that later.
  “So how am I doing?,” I asked Steve, half expecting him to tell me he’d had enough of my spiritual notions, and not to come back.
  “You are doing great,” he said.
   “Really?” I asked, always surprised when he says that.
   “Yes, you are asking questions, getting messages, bearing fruit, doing good. You’re doing great.” Wow, there was one report card I passed, after all. And I was still me, sadly, very much so.
  And Steve should ease up on the photographers, because the images they capture are important,  and he should let me take a photo of him praying, because how can truth and memory be a distraction?, and the idea didn’t come from me.