I have been an avid reader since the first grade. I have the receipts: my Mom unearthed a note I slid under her door when I was very young, earnestly repenting for whatever sin I’d committed that had prompted her to cancel a trip to the library.

I read in church. I read in the car. I read on my beanbag in the closet under the stairs. I wouldn’t put a book down until I finished it, even if I didn’t care for the story that much. I was in seminary before I failed to finish all the reading for a class. I was driven in leisure and school reading to the point that my self-discipline sometimes (often?) tipped over into isolation and insufferability.

Over the past few years I’ve given myself more license to put a book down if I didn’t like it. Life is short, after all. The occasions when I quit on reading were still rare, though.

That changed a few months ago. In the second half of 2021, I kicked more books to the curb than I read to the end. I wasn’t sure what that was about until I returned a Fredick Backman book - a Fredrik Backman book, for goodness’ sake - with 1/3 of it still to go. It seemed clear that one of the teenage characters was about to die by suicide, and I said, “NOPE.” I opened my Libby app and clicked “return early” without a moment of hesitation. It was suddenly clear to me that my grief had been triggered. A year and a half of Covid fear and malaise, then the death of my father when Covid blew through his memory care unit and his already disease-ridden body couldn’t withstand the virus - it was too much. I was returning books left and right, either because I had no energy for them or they were just more sad than I could bear.

We think of grief as tears or fatigue or withdrawal or even anger. But it doesn’t have to look that way. Sometimes it’s the figurative throwing of a book across the room. How does your individual grief manifest? How does the collective grief of a congregation that has endured so much loss and change show up?

We’ve got to acknowledge and make room for our grief so that we can lament and offer our honest selves up to God. Otherwise, we’ll be mired in despair that keeps us stuck in a reality we no longer recognize, unable to imagine our way forward.

Do you need to throw a book across the room? Yell into the void? Cry so many tears that they carve salty riverbeds in your cheeks? It’s ok. God understands. God welcomes all of our feelings. God sits with us in them. And God invites (sometimes nudges) us into a future that might not be what we hoped or planned but that can be abundant and good and hard in a really holy way.

Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash.

Last year Advent and Christmas looked different than before for churches that took Covid seriously. In some contexts, worship was online only. In others, max capacity was set by guidelines from the CDC rather than the fire marshal. Masking and physical distancing were required. Musical offerings - often a key aspect of holy observances - were limited. Fewer non-worship seasonal activities such as Advent fairs and Sunday School parties felt safe to schedule. It was really hard to restrict our traditions, our interactions with others, our bodily presences, in this way. It wasn’t how any pastor or layperson would prefer to experience December. But we did it, even if sometimes grumbling or lamenting, for the good of our neighbors. The promise of vaccines in early 2021, along with the Advent message of hope even in perilous times, pulled us through.

Here we are a year later, now confronted with a hope that is much more complicated. Many of us have been vaccinated and even boosted, a true miracle born of the wisdom and abilities God gave scientists. But enough people here in North America decline to get vaccinated and/or to take continued precautions against Covid such that the pandemic is still very much with us. And while some locations have weathered the Delta surge, we are all now staring down the barrel of Omicron. The TBD impact of this variant and the resulting ambiguity around how many precautions we still need to take at church are making this December a moving target for planning.

The threat of the virus itself is just one of many factors making pastoral leadership particularly difficult right now. Parishioners are understandably tired of - and thus lax about - masking and distancing. One pandemic year might not have dinged giving much, but in year two there are big concerns about budgets. Formerly stalwart members have ghosted their churches to go elsewhere or nowhere. Congregations who hoped to bounce back to what church looked like pre-Covid are uneasy with changes based on pandemic gleanings (or necessities). Because of these realities, even some of the wise, steady presences in congregations have begun to complain about unfixable situations and to open doors to conflict. Meanwhile, pastors’ work continues to be as much or more about technology and ever-changing decisions regarding what is safe to do as it is about worship content, formation, and community engagement, deferring their return to the heart of the work they have been called and gifted to do.

I hear all of these factors weighing heavily on many of the clergy I coach, and together they are pushing some pastors to the point of grief at a time when most of them expect to be buoyed by the energy of the season. On top of ministers’ vocational grief, there is the personal grief all of us share. We have been deprived to some extent of the connection for which we are built. We have missed so much of what we looked forward to the past two years. We have been pushed to the brink by worry about health and finances, by additional caregiving responsibilities, by the pandemic (and everything else) being politicized and weaponized.

I see you, pastors. You are faithful, creative, tenacious, and compassionate. Many of you are also so tired in body and soul. Please be gentle with yourselves. Find your appropriate outlets for blowing off steam. Make sure you’re getting enough movement and sunlight and nourishment. Know whom you can lean on for helpful support. Plan for time away. Ask for what you need. And, if all of this is not enough to sustain you physically, emotionally, and spiritually, take your leave (whether for a season or for good) before you are fried. You are serving Jesus’ church, and he lovingly holds it in his hands no matter what role you assume in it. You are God’s beloved, no matter where you work.

The ways that you thoughtfully choose to show up - or not to show up - in this season of holy waiting are helping to midwife a Church that will be more innovative and responsive, that will re-focus us all on God’s priorities and Christ’s love. Advent literally means “coming.” You are the bearers through your presence and your intentional absence not of optimism or toxic positivity but of grounded hope for an emerging time, a new way of being. I am so grateful for who you are.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash.

Over the past six months I have worked with several congregations and groups of ministers, and I’ve found it absolutely essential that participants process their experiences during the pandemic. Otherwise there is an isolating, suffocating stuckness, a desire to get back quickly to whatever is familiar instead of moving forward faithfully as individuals and collectives. Here's where I believe we need to spend some time during our regathering:

We need to break the ice. As I mentioned last week, in some ways we are semi-strangers to one another. For this reason, we won't be able to go deep if we don't have some sense of safety first. Play is one way to create that, and I suggested a few activities designed to take power back from the pandemic's hold over us.

We need to slow down. The temptation is there to jump right back into all the programming our churches had in the Before, when so many people were constantly on the go. School will start in the next month or two, so we need to gear up Sunday School for all ages! And weekday Bible study! And have a fall kickoff! And…and…and. Instead, we need to add things back in layers, after taking a few deep breaths and considering what we’d be gaining and sacrificing by re-starting each ministry.

We need to lament. There's no denying we’ve all lost a lot: people we care about, jobs, routines, sleep, a sense of security, time in community, places we frequented, and much more. Milestones passed without full acknowledgment. Events we long anticipated were cancelled. It’s important to name these losses and offer them up to God.

We need to express gratitude. Without denying the difficulty of the pandemic, there are some surprising graces for which we can give thanks. We’ve learned new things. We’ve shifted or broadened our perspectives. We’ve received notes and calls and porch drop-offs. And if nothing else, we’re still here, and that in itself is worth a party. Grief and gratitude are both prayerful, faithful acts.

We need to explore how we've changed as individuals. We are not the people we were in early 2020. Some of those differences are minor or temporary. Others go to the core of who we are and how we show up in the world, making us fundamentally new people in positive and challenging ways.

We need to think about what those changes mean for how we are community to one another. In some churches, relatively surface interactions were the norm. Now that we all need to re-introduce ourselves, we can go deeper. Since we've had a shared experience of difficulty (even though the intensity has covered the range), we can have a shared vulnerability in naming what that difficulty has done to and for us. Out of that willingness to be real, our relationships can grow stronger, and we can look at the gifts and needs of our congregations and contexts afresh. We’ll then be able more effectively to live the love of Christ for one another and the world.

But what does all of this good work look like? Some can be done during worship, with leaders helping us make sense of all that’s happened, preaching about the courage in vulnerability, and creating ways for all people to participate in liturgy (e.g., naming grief and gratitude during prayer times or hanging a prayer wall for everyone to write on during or outside services). There's processing that can be accomplished individually through prayer stations set up around the themes named above. Christian education classes and small groups could be given discussion guides. And congregational conversations in ways that feel Covid-safe (and as emotionally safe as we can make them) can unearth a lot of what needs to be said.

My sense is that we will need some amount of all of the above means in the early going - and that the trauma will continue to pop up in surprising ways for a long time thereafter. But if we can just start talking in real ways with one another and God, we can begin to forge a faithful way forward together.

Photo by Morgane Le Breton on Unsplash.

When school was closed temporarily last March, I didn’t think I could handle it. I love my child more than my own life. And, I didn’t want to be his primary teacher. I didn’t know what first-graders were supposed to learn in the year of our Lord 2020. I also needed him to be out of the house so that I could work and get my essential introvert time.

When school was called for the rest of the year, I curled up in the fetal position.

One year later, it is astonishing to me that he’ll return to a classroom in the fall and that I’ll probably feel ok about the safety of it. On the virtual school mornings when we are frustrated with each other (these occur often, by the way), I dream of August 10. The rest of the time, though, I’m sad about sending him back. I have learned a lot from his resilience and adaptability. I have delighted in midday snuggles. I have laughed at the stand-up comedy routine he’s developed and shaken my head in wonder about everything techy he’s taught himself to do while he’s been at home. I am relieved that his quirky spirit and big dreams remain intact, uncrushed by teasing peers and unimaginative adults.

Sending my child back to school isn’t the only part of the world re-opening that I’m not too sure about. It’s been fantastic not worshiping in the fishbowl as a clergy spouse. I have not missed the seasonal flu one bit. Though there was a brief stretch when I lamented not traveling for work, I’m not looking forward to the prospect of having to do it again. And my beefs are small compared to many others.’

There’s a lot we have lost this year, individually and collectively. It’s vital that we process our reactions to it all. But I don’t hear many people talking yet about the grief that awaits us when we emerge from lockdown. Any change, even one that is largely for the better (and a world not held captive by Covid-19 is of course a positive change) brings grief. If we’re not ready for it, it will knock us on our butts. If we feel shame about it - why am I down when everyone else is celebrating? - we will replace physical isolation with its emotional and relational cousins.

With regard to clergy specifically, I hear anticipatory grief about what the After will mean for their vocations. They have pivoted and innovated, and what has not been ideal has nevertheless become familiar. What will it mean to leave the safety of this new familiar? If the church tries to make them pull double duty, continuing online ministry while leading in-person versions of the same events, they will burn out. If the church tries to forget the last year and all its lessons, grasping for a pre-pandemic iteration that was already in need of rethinking, they will not abide it.

Grief points us to what we value. Don’t ignore it. Don’t try to process it alone. Instead, let’s listen to and learn from it. If we allow it, our grief will be an unforgiving but invaluable teacher about how we can move forward together with faithfulness, grace, and intention.

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash.