It's Sunday morning and I'm not in church
Sometimes the heart needs space for anything good to grow
It’s Sunday morning. Spotify is playing a nondescript, lo-fi beat called “bonsai” through my tv speakers. My coffee, a little bitter today, is still warm thanks to the magic of insulated mugs. My hair, which has grown several inches since I last wrote a Heartsong post, is giving Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown vibes (google it, kids). My orange and brown flannel shirt is pilled up and cozy, and there’s no clergy collar holding the top together.
I look like a person who is really leaning into the weekend, or someone who is happily unemployed.
Coincidentally, I’m both.
It’s Sunday morning and I’m not at church. I’m a priest without a gig, which was a choice I made a few weeks back for my health and well being. Sometimes the heart needs space for anything good to grow, and I’ve been trying to be a better caregiver to my own heart. Week after week I tried to show up and offer care for a community, but my body was telling me – yelling at me, really – that what I needed most was to show up and offer care to myself.
Admittedly, I’m still trying to figure out what that means.
During the past 4 months, in this brief season of silence at Heartsong, I’ve made a lot of choices to try and kickstart my life in a new direction. I made those choices out of public view because – honestly – narrating my own process publicly felt too tender and risky, even to a supportive and loving audience. The fact that I feel guilty for not sharing the complexities of my inner process with an audience gives you a little window into one of my perpetual struggles:
How much of my life actually belongs to me?
I genuinely don’t know how to answer that question.
People are allowed to live their life quietly, a little voice in my imagination assures me. I’d like to believe that’s true, but I’ve never experienced it. At least, not with any consistency. There’s always a stage with a spotlight – even stages of growth, development, or grief.
Right?
No, that’s actually not true. Not for me, and not for anyone reading this who feels an obscene amount of pressure to post the details of their life for public consumption.
It used to be that this problem only plagued people who’d consented to a public profession, like entertainers or politicians. Not anymore. Social media changed that. We’re all doing public relations now. And I have this feeling that the struggle to be one’s self publicly, especially in difficult moments of transition or loss, is something that many people are trying to work through. And mostly, alone.
Do you think I’m right about that?
Are you experiencing this struggle?
Post a comment below.
Thanks for your patience and understanding. To those of you who’ve quietly messaged, expressing care and concern, thank you. I’m grateful for the support.
Now, I know better than to offer an assurance about when the next Heartsong post will be. It could be tomorrow, or it could be weeks from now. And I know that’s a different arrangement than the one I made with all of you when I launched this newsletter.
So if you’re a paid subscriber who feels slighted because I haven’t been able to show up in the ways I thought I could, I’m sorry. I’m happy to issue you a refund, if that’s something you’d like. I don’t want anyone to feel taken advantage of. If you’d like to discuss that in private, let me know in the comments and I’ll reach out to you.
And if you have any perspectives on how you negotiate the sharing of your personal life with the public, I’d love to read them.
I’m also curious about what you do when you’re not in church. What’s your Sunday morning look like?
Sent from the heart,
Matthew David
Oh, gosh. This so pulled at my heartstrings and resonated with my journey. - I don't even remember when I signed up for this but it fit so synchronicitously with my journey today in this moment. I like what you say about posting timelines, because that's why I switched to monthly(ish). This season of my life, where I'm an Mdiv-graduate who got right up to the ending of licensure and experienced some health challenges that kept me from finishing, who doesn't go to church or a faith community regularly. I decided that today, I don't have to. Tomorrow, I don't have to either. It's my life, it's my journey, and I have the ability to choose. I see you, I hear you, and though you don't know me as more than a comment on a wall - solidarity in the wilderness journey. I hang out at Evolving Faith when I need some sustenance, blast Lauren Daigle when I need, drop in some One Day by Matisyahu, write with waterfall sounds in the background, appreciate the falling snow. You are not the only traveler in the wilderness, if you would call it that. We are a growing community of former ministers and ministers on sabbatical and ministers whose pulpits are keyboards. :) Haha, that thought made me chuckle. Thank you for sharing this... May you find what you need and need what you find! :)
I had to put God on hold awhile. Didn’t go to church, couldn’t pray except those times God sent me a prayer through a beautiful moon or lake or something to remind me that prayer was a two-way thing. If I couldn’t pray, God would pray for me. Eventually I made my way back to church and found that my time off had been a good thing. Praying for you (and God is, too).