My Peeps



The view looking up the sidewalk
from my office

I love, love, love walking across college campuses during passing times, especially in the fall after a campus has been asleep for the summer.   Passing times look like a beehive—everyone has a place to go, something to do.  As an undergrad, I remember being in the midst of the hustle, bustle and realizing, “I’m actually a college student!”  During graduate school, I recall holding my head high as I headed to class thinking, “I can’t believe I’m a graduate student!’” 

Okay, disclosure time…. After 10 years of teaching in higher education, I still find myself giddy as I walk across UW-Stout’s campus during passing times and marvel at the fact, “I’m a professor!” [Okay, technically I’m a lecturer, but this is a trifling point.]  And when I walk from class to class at seminary, I revel, “I’m a stinkin’ seminarian, for real!”

Last night, I went to a book event by Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, who just published her memoir, Pastrix … a story of addiction, comedy clubs, a journey through seminary, and the founding of a church.  She rocks tattoos of religious images and admits that wearing professional clothing (i.e., “grown up clothes”) makes her feel like a fraud.  Frankly, this book shouldn’t resonate with me.   My past is so boring—no drugs, little alcohol, and I definitely feel most comfortable in a pencil skirt and blouse.  But Nadia’s understanding of the extravagant love of God… jeepers, I get it.  And when she proclaims grace, her words make my insides get all shaken up.

On my hour drive to work today, all decked out in my cool pencil skirt, I kept thinking about a piece that she read from her book last night.  She recalls how she got her call to ministry: As the only “religious person” in her recovery group, she was asked “to do” the funeral of a dear friend who had completed suicide.  She says this, “The memorial service took place on a crisp fall day at the Comedy Works club in downtown Denver, with a full house.  The alcoholic rowing team and the Denver comics, the comedy club staff and the academics:  These were my people.  Giving PJ’s eulogy, I realized that perhaps I was supposed to be their pastor.  It’s not that I felt pious and nurturing.  It’s that there, in that underground room filled with the smell of stale beer and bad jokes, I looked around and saw more pain and questions and loss than anyone, including myself, knew what to do with.  And I saw God.  God, right there…” 





Gathering Space at Solomon's Porch



Starting my ministry internship this fall has gotten me thinking a lot about who “my people” are.  My supervisor, Doug, uses those words to describe Solomon’s Porch—which is really made up of a wide collection of people: mainliners, ex-liners, no-liners, evangelicals, ex-evangelicals, and probably even some atheists and agnostics.   It's a church without formal doctrine--a theological playground.  Perfect for me.  And I go to a super inclusive seminary which insists that no one is left out regardless of tradition (love it!).   So, all people are my people, I guess.

But the question on my commute this morning still made my brain itch… who are my people?!  Who am I supposed to minister to, or with?  As I completed the final flight of stairs to my 4^th floor office and swung the door open, I looked down on the campus… passing time.  Bam!  These are my people.  They always have been.

Entering seminary, I had intended to leave my career in education.  But I just can’t.  There are always classes to teach, and I keep asking for them.  Every time I put some serious thought into being “done,” I grieve…. literally grieve—just ask my first-semester small group, my preaching professor who has seen me as a blubbering mess, my chaplain who gets random emails from me, or my advisor who got me through last May when I was convinced I was going to quit seminary.  I’ve been asking, “God, please just take away all this passion I have for public education.”  Yeah, give something like that a try and see how it works.  Fail.

Last year, Don, my United Methodist mentor, had to ask me a bunch of questions from a denominational guidebook:  Have you thought about being bi-vocational?  No, not interested.  Have you thought about campus ministry?  No, not interested.    I didn’t even take the questions seriously.  Yet now, I keep thinking about Don’s smiling, grandpa-looking face asking me these questions.  He could of jumped right over them in the guidebook, but he didn't.

UTS Chapel Worship

Well, it probably sounds like I am going to make some major announcement…. Like…. “Hey family and friends, now that I’m in my late-thirties, I’ve decided what I want to be when I grow up—a college chaplain.”  Nah, sorry, not going to happen.  I still don’t know what is happening after seminary (in 2 years), but I can see something starting to take shape, way out there in the distance.  I have decided this though: I’ve given up on the idea that I am going to be able to leave education completely because… 

Those busy-bodies moving about a campus during passing time… they have questions and doubts, and they need room to sit with mystery, pushing against established religion and the rigid theology of values and morals.  How else might they experience profound grace and lavish it on each other?  And those professors…. They are too smart for just-believe-it-and-you’ll-be-saved-thinking.  Come’on, that’s just silly.  They want to use their noggin and marvel in what we can and can’t know. 

Those people….. they are my people.  Pencil skirts, jeans, backpacks, briefcases, and laptops.  Study rooms, cafes, cafeterias, classrooms, dorm rooms, offices, and bars.  I can’t help it… it’s just who I am, which might be a little boring, but I’m okay with it.