Revelations
I stumble and catch myself before I fall. Not bad for a clumsy middle-aged walker in a foreign landscape on an icy March morning. This rocky path winds through a ranchland of brown hills, tottering fences, and emptiness—except for the nearby country club and surrounding homes.
I’m living a new life as a Congregational minister in the northern Arizona high country where I landed a few months ago at a small church made of local wood and stone. Sacred light comes into the interior through faceted glass placed high in the sanctuary walls. The abstract blues and yellows, reds and greens make patterns on us that change with the movement of clouds. No Christian icons adorn the church walls, except for a brass cross on the gray stone. The air inside feels fresh, crisp—neutral.
“A pagan temple!” some people call our church. “New-age fright!” others say. Gossips tell me the Baptists don’t approve, claiming it looks like a witch’s meetinghouse. I don’t care. The non-traditional building with its peaked roof suits me fine, down to the lone rosebush by the front door.
People have left my church because they distrust a woman in the pulpit. Members tell me my voice doesn’t sound right. Folks wonder if the ceremonies over which I preside are valid, and some male clergy won’t welcome me as a colleague. In a place formerly called ‘Lonesome Valley’ where scorpions lurk, gravel is the paving element of choice, and a Safeway and dime-store comprise the shopping district, I feel like a hothouse flower among cacti. Still, I like it here. Most of the members of the small church—a gentle, forgiving group—circle me with no rancor.
I trudge the Old Chisholm Trail wearing my heavy red jacket and my husband’s blue knitted cap with California Bears on the front. The cold air whips my cheeks. Some mornings I feel this desert is the proper setting for a woman in a pioneering role. I feel strong and capable in this bracing world, a lone crimson cowpuncher. We women ministers forge modern tools, clear old brush, speak new truth. We’re needed to bring fresh ideas into the church to preach liberty to the enslaved and compassion for the poor. This morning I’m just not so sure-footed.
I’ve left a lovely city, San Diego, with its beaches and boats and flowers, a place where I’d been a single mother, a high school teacher, and an actress in local theater. But something drove me into a religious profession. It wasn’t courage. I had no wanderlust. I had no spiritual calls. I’m an ordinary soul with this itch to meet God.
Arizona high country is a place where solitude is visible outside your window. To step into the landscape is to find yourself in a vastness where it’s easy to think, where thinking is required. The air, the clouds, the hawks and desert emptiness teach you to observe. This morning the skies have a pristine clarity and dance with swinging raptors. The surrounding Bradshaw Mountains are bastions of integrity. Hillsides of pine and juniper stand untouched by human development. My walk helps me clarify, discern, and I like to think I stumble toward more truth.
I’d wanted to try ministry on my own for the past five years while I’d worked as an assistant minister in San Diego. With a seminary education in my pocket, a degree in literature, a tour of raising children and high school teaching experience, I felt qualified. Today, in the March cold, I confess: I’m not a traditional believer. I can’t and won’t teach a strict orthodox Christianity using the Bible to proclaim Jesus as savior of the world, the only way to God.
I’m a fraud. A roadrunner darts in front of me with a young snake in its beak. I start. Danger. The pronghorn antelope, grazing on the open desert beyond the fairways, stop their business to stare at my pilgrim’s progress. The atmosphere changes, smells earthy, of pastures and growth. A handsome buck, proud of his magnificent antlers, turns his mighty head to regard my long-legged stride. Being observed with disinterest makes me uncomfortable. The gentleman sees into my heart. He knows how much I doubt myself. I don’t belong in Arizona among the faithful. What have I done? I’d like to sit down and watch the animals, stop the momentum, but I walk on. The antelope goes back to his grazing. The roadrunner hides somewhere with her meal.
Perhaps my questions about Christianity come from my being a woman, an alien in ministry. I question old ideas, but my church members don’t. They haven’t accepted biblical research or scrutinized the stormy contradictions in Christian theology. They like the stories. Questions are beside the point for them, and the point is comfort. My dilemma is whether to let the questions and doubts stay packed away. The effort is getting harder.
I sigh a burst of warm air into the cold March atmosphere and try to keep up a brisk pace. The church members don’t know I have doubts about conventional Christian beliefs. I should have told them the truth during our initial conversations when I applied for the job, but I didn’t. I carry a backpack of guilt on this hike. Only movement gives me energy to keep trying to make sense of my ministry.
My commitment to this vocation came out of a sense that the Christian Church was on to something, and I set myself on a path to figure out what the something was, hoping to meet God in some way. Or maybe I chose ministry to put myself in the presence of people like Dave Palmer, a born again man in the congregation. The man has soul, you could say, eyes that offer his heart. Or maybe it was the role, the robes of clerical authority.
Boulders, pampas grass and cacti are the shrubs of choice in front of the homes lining the street, but a few gardeners have planted burgeoning tulips. The tulip people come from verdant eastern places. They bring in fresh soil and grow tulips to transform our wilderness into Eden. I’m not sure what to make of their effort. Do I want the desert to look like a watered place? Even so, I identify with the tulip, a transplant from another world; I’m not a native species. Like a proud tulip, I can stand up in imposing costumes pretending I belong.
Silence. My feet touch the pavement, but they make no sound. No cars speed by, as if Arizona hasn’t come to accept the wheel yet. There’s something newly born about this setting. I’m the first to touch down.
The emerging tulips and noisy birdsong remind me that Easter is coming. My sermon for Easter Sunday will have to be elegantly Christian. I’m expected to affirm that Jesus is God and will come back to earth after dying for humankind. I should assure my listeners that He awaits them in an afterlife. My faith, however, does not include that scenario, let alone the literal resurrection of Jesus. I walk to overcome worries about being a fraudulent minister unworthy of the trust of believers. I walk so I can stop walking on Easter Sunday and stand alone in front of a faithful congregation.
*
I gave that Easter sermon in the shimmering green and yellow light of Easter morning. I affirmed the rebirth of hope, including the story of a man much like Dave who gave dignity to fishermen, held children in his arms, and fed the hungry. I could do that much, but my sense of displacement and fraud continued to weigh on my conscience as the Easter month turned into a summer of thunder, lightning and downpours. The fall shouted change. Finally, winter. Snow on cactus.
My fitness walks sustained me for another five years while the antelope watched my movements. I spun thoughts about the mysteries of religion and marveled at Arizona high country where unexpected snow fell, tulips appeared in the desert, and nobility drove a pickup truck. But I continued to doubt the comfortable beliefs of church-goers until the stones in my path became boulders. I couldn’t see over them to make my way and realized I was no more connected to the Christians around me than to the antelope. The separation between me and the others grew too wide, and I walked away from ministry aware I was leaving behind spiritual revelations from clean, untamed earth.
- Elaine Greensmith Jordan is a retired minister who lives in Arizona. Her essays have appeared in South Loop Review, New Works Review, The Georgetown Review and other journals and anthologies. An excerpt from her unpublished memoir, “Mrs. Ogg Played the Harp,” won an award from the American PEN Women and the California Writers Club.
