2021 Response to Berry Street Essay: The Reverend Jennifer Crow

Janne and Rob, thank you for your ministry, your mentoring, and for your modeling of vulnerability and deep sharing of your own experiences of the holy.

If we were in person, I would invite all those in the room who have been impacted and influenced by your ministry, who have been taught by you, preached to by you, angered and inspired by you, counseled by you, challenged by you, brought up into the web of collegiality by you, or touched in any way by your ministry to indicate that – and I know that we’d experience a wave of acknowledgement of the depth of your impact on our shared ministry as Unitarian Universalist leaders.

You began with the image of the root crown – the grandparent tree that intertwines with and nourishes new growth, the tall branches and leaves now visible in the sun, interconnecting just as the roots do below the soil. You name Channing and James Freeman Clarke and the Transcendentalists as your root crown, and it would be impossible for me to proceed without acknowledging that the two of you are part of the root crown for me and for us.

Today you reminded us that whether we know the particulars or not – we exist in relationship with each other past, present and future – each of us one in a long line that extends backward and forward in ways that we know and in ways that will always be beyond our knowing. You reminded us that we each have an important part to play in creating the communities of love and justice we long for, and we are one among many in a world that will keep on turning through cycles of our individual lives. This situating of us in a long line – for me – this is an experience of the holy, the transcendent that you talk about as the heart of your ministry.

I’m struck by the intertwining of your stories and the way you show us what I know in my bones to be true – that whatever I am working on in my personal life – in relationships and therapy and spiritual direction and spiritual practice – is also what is unfolding in my ministry, and vice versa. You claim daily spiritual practice, shared ministry, and practices of confession, lamentation, and covenant as central to your ministry – and through your stories – I see that those are central to your own personal and spiritual lives, as well.

Reading and listening to your essay, another image arose in me as a response. The image comes from Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

I heard this poem for the first time at a memorial service at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence. It was 1999. The memorial service was for my friend, Aaron. Aaron was a father and a husband, a nurse and a friend and an all around good guy. He served on the board of trustees, and when we weren’t goofing off together as advisors to the youth group, we were planning our entry into seminary. We both felt the call to ministry, and we both had complicating factors. Aaron and I knew each other first not through church, but through the small but vital recovery community in town. We were both relatively newly sober, and hanging on to this new found health for dear life. We both clung to the church, too, and loved the new minister, Rev.
Erin Splaine, who made room for us, each in our own way, with her open heart and confidence in our ability to heal and serve our faith. The day of Rev. Erin’s installation, Aaron didn’t show up. He’d been relapsing, we knew that, but still, not showing up meant that something was very wrong, and it was. Aaron was dead. Alone in the home of a church family who had been helping him out, Aaron overdosed on heroin. Was it suicide or an accident? We’ll never know for sure. So many unanswered questions, so much complicated grief.

Over the years, I’ve wondered what was moving in Aaron’s spirit that day, what particular lies his disease was telling him – and while I will never know the exact answer to my questions – I do know this – in those moments when the power of addiction overtook my friend and our would have been colleague – he did not know his place in the family of things. He felt separation, apartness, and the pull of addiction dragged him further from the connection that could have saved him.

I pray that in death, all separation was washed away for him, that the great spirit that connects us all swooped him up and welcomed him in to the undeniable apart-of-ness – to that grace of acceptance and love that will not let us go, even when we cannot feel it, even when we do our best to push away from it. I pray that in death Aaron found healing and knew his place in the family of things – beloved, beloved, beloved – whole and holy and worthy.

I tell you this story today not to stir up grief in you and in us, but because listening to your essay, Janne and Rob, the strongest image for me is this one – the world, the church, our shared ministries – calling out like the wild geese, reminding us – Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Knowing our place, being known in our place, one among many, each of us important – in the family of things. That is the image that came through loud and clear in your essay, to me.

The two of you have talked about the importance of spiritual practice and shared ministry for years. You have written for us and lived by example the practices of confession, lamentation, and covenant. Today, I wonder with you if shared ministry isn’t actually the daily spiritual practice

for us as ministers – the practice that will help us to find our right-sized place as people and as religious leaders in the family of things. The practice that will help us create for ourselves and our communities the transcendent experience of knowing our place in the family of things. To know our place in the family of things, to be known in our right-sized place in the family of things, disrupting the limits of the societally prescribed place and space that have been put upon us and choosing instead, wholeness. Loving ourselves and each other into wholeness so that we can return to our original state of grace – each of us born one more redeemer, whole and holy and worthy.

For some of us, shared ministry will require us to believe ourselves worthy of a place in the family of things. For some, shared ministry will challenge others to see and bear witness to our rightful place in the family of things. For some, shared ministry will demand that we take up a little less space in the family of things. For all of us, the reward of the spiritual practice of shared ministry will be the experience of blending our voices in harmony, knowing that we are not alone, but one among many, each of us an essential part of a long line of leaders stretching far back into the past and pushing far out into a future we will never know. This original experience of the holy will ask much of us – discipline, self-awareness, accountability, acceptance of the unknown as the destination of our journey, humility, risk, and increased comfort with conflict – all of these and more will be required. And the reward will be great. Let’s practice, together.