Rector's Blog: Nourished by Training

And that makes sense. If you’re sending someone up in the air, you don’t just want them to know how things work when everything is going well, you want them to have a clear picture of what it looks like when things go wrong, so they can handle the stress of the situation. I had heard about this emergency preparedness for pilots before, funny enough, in a book about churches navigating tumultuous and changing times. The author had been having a similar conversation with a flight instructor and had asked why so much time was dedicated to emergency situations. The instructor responded, we tend to believe that in high pressure situations people have a tendency to rise to the occasion – but in reality, in moments of crisis, people revert to their training.

That really knocked me over. When the chips are down, people don’t tend to become superhuman. We tend to be ourselves. This is not a negative judgment of people, just an observation. I myself like to imagine how I would respond in an emergency. I have very little interest, however, in training for an emergency.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a time of great crisis for us all. The upheaval of our daily lives and rhythms was tumultuous and traumatic, punctuated by sustained uncertainty. I will not speak for you, but as for me, I did not become superhuman: I acted like a more intense version of me. I reverted to my training.

In some ways this was a good thing. In normal times, I make a habit of asking people for help and advice before making big decisions, so I did that very regularly when making some of the decisions about how to handle church closures and restrictions. I also make it a habit to stand by unpopular decisions when I believe in them. You can imagine how that might have come up in those days. And in my daily life I try to stay connected to people that I love even when I can’t see them. That was a helpful bit of training during the isolation that became my routine.

In other ways I noticed some of my training was unhealthy. I have a history of being an undisciplined eater. So, when a crisis struck, I wasn’t going to all of a sudden eat with intention and care. In normal times I go in waves in terms of physical activity – and it’s almost always done at a gym. When the gym closed down, I wasn’t going to all of a sudden become outdoorsy. So, I was mostly sedentary. In regular life I have trained myself to take responsibility for all sorts of things. Being responsible is something I care a great deal about. During the pandemic this bit of training almost broke me. The sense of responsibility I felt for so many things – including many things that were beyond my control – was often overwhelming. I experienced my first ever anxiety attack during that time.

I’m not judging myself for any of this, by the way. I love me. I am saying, I recognize that this is what it is to be human. The way we live day to day is its own kind of training. When a crisis emerges, our response to it is generally consistent with the character we’ve developed over time. We don’t become someone else – we revert to our training.

Pages of ink have been spilled over churchgoing trends – especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. So many churches – including our Church of the Redeemer – shut their doors and ceased worshiping in person for a sustained period of time. We provided opportunities for online worship, Bible Study, and fellowship, which were produced with care and intention. When doors opened back up there were restrictions in place for the health and safety of attendees. And the number of people who joined us was smaller. Eventually all restrictions were lifted, but many people did not return to regular worship.

It would be convenient to judge the people who have not reincorporated church engagement into their daily lives. If it’s their fault, I can feel self-righteous. Likewise, it would be convenient to say not everyone has returned because we church folk haven’t done the magic set of things that will bring them back. The reality is more complicated, and I think it has to do with the training.

I was having a lovely conversation with a man who hadn’t come back and said he probably wasn’t going to. He quoted another priest, a former rector of our church, who had said, “You don’t go to church because you believe, you believe because you go to church.” Then he said, “We stopped going to church and maybe we stopped believing.” We talked for a while, and of course his story, like all our stories, went deeper. It wasn’t as simple as he stopped going and his belief dissipated. Besides, when he was honest, he had already been going less and less prior to the pandemic. We saw that a lot. People who had already been less engaged during normal times were in a process that was sped up by the shutdown.

Again, I say that without judgment. We are people. We are trying to figure out our lives. We create patterns, habits. A crisis comes. We do what comes most naturally.

And I think what comes most naturally to many people is to think of church, at best, as a nice idea, as a positive extracurricular activity. The occasional affirming message, the friendly face, the familiar hymn, the nostalgia for something half-remembered from childhood. And that’s ok. If that’s the case, you are welcome to show up literally any time you want and you will be welcomed and loved. Life is hard. I won’t begrudge you any bit of joy you find at church – even if it’s just once. God bless you. Literally.

At the same time, I am interested in your training. And mine. I am interested in the habits we create in our everyday lives. The things we make normal during the normal times. Because I don’t at all believe the tumult is behind us. There will be more emergencies, more crises, more crash landings. And I want us to be prepared. How might your understanding of church shift if you thought of the things we do together as training? Bible study, for instance, isn’t about making you smarter – it's about working out the muscles for actively wrestling with God.

If church is an extracurricular activity, that’s fine. But for me, as difficult as the pandemic was, as challenging and painful as it was, I felt held in love by our church. It was not perfect, and it did not make everything better. But the time we spent together in the normal times was training. The rhythm of showing up, of engaging, of connecting becomes our practice, our normal. That’s training.

What’s more, to hear the Gospel of Jesus regularly is a training that will show up in your hardest times. Think about it: In a world that tells you that your belonging is conditional upon your performance, your earning, your achievement, your productivity, your usefulness, Jesus tells you that you are eternally, utterly, and unconditionally loved, that your life is of endless value, that your very being is a blessing. And Jesus’ message was not a product of privilege: His Gospel, like the Torah and teachings of his forebears, was forged in tumult. The beloved community that emerged in the aftermath of his resurrection knew perpetual struggle and strife.

The story we tell – the one of your belovedness – is not a fairy tale custom-fit for normal times. It is the foundational truth of your life. If you are interested in being nourished by that truth throughout the ups and downs of your life, consider making a practice of this kind of community. In the next weeks many new programs will be starting up at Church of the Redeemer. We will have multiple Bible studies, a class on racial reconciliation, a class on the Episcopal approach to faith, numerous mission opportunities, chances to serve and connect with the students at Clark Montessori High School, and of course, rich and meaningful corporate worship. And many of these opportunities are hybrid, so you can participate even when you’re not able to be here in person. Consider engaging deeply with something that is devoted to learning about loving and being loved. Consider it your training.