Below the Surface
One of the privileges of wearing a clerical collar is being allowed to offer a friendly smile or a kind greeting to complete strangers without much risk of being creepy. People expect that of clergy. It is our job. Sometimes, though, when I make eye contact with someone in the store or on the sidewalk and give them a smile or a wave, I get a strange look in return, and it only then occurs to me that I am not wearing a collar and to them am just an overenthusiastic stranger. Now that I am wearing a mask whenever I go out in public, regardless of whether I am also wearing a symbol of my vocation, I find that people cannot discern the difference between a friendly smile and a disapproving scowl. Even my best intentions remain hidden beneath the piece of cloth stretched across my face.
Masks are both an isolated example and a deeper symbol of why we cannot see what is going on in other people's lives. Is someone hurting? Is someone happy? Does someone need a kind word of encouragement or maybe a more substantial intervention? How can we tell when other people—whether strangers on the street or friends we know well—need something from us?
On a typical Sunday morning, I lay eyes on over 400 people. Even in brief encounters at the church door, in the span of a few hours, I say hello to a few hundred folks. As I walk between the church and the parish hall or linger briefly during coffee hour, I may hear a dozen different stories of how the week has gone for other people and what is on the horizon for them. By Monday morning, if I am lucky, the memory of two or three of those encounters will stick with me long enough to make a phone call, send a follow-up email, or reach out to a clergy colleague in order to ask for help responding to whatever pastoral concern I picked up on the day before. These days, of course, none of that happens.
Clergy are not the only ones whose primary mechanism for discerning the needs of others has been covered up by cloth masks and hidden behind quarantine doors. You may see the people who live with you all day every day, but you cannot bump into friends at your favorite restaurant or enjoy a long walk with them in the park. We do not get those unscripted, unscheduled conversations at the grocery store or in the waiting room at the dentist. None of us is able to stay behind in the pew after church and hear how someone's radiation therapy is going or listen to someone talk about the grief of a lost pet. In this vulnerable time, we need the support of friends and our church community more than ever, yet the pandemic has robbed us of the natural ways we encounter and respond to one another's needs.
Last week, I took part in a Zoom conversation with a few other faith leaders from northwest Arkansas. We discussed how our communities of faith are adapting during the pandemic and shared our discussion through Facebook. When asked what I was worried about, I named the ongoing struggle of pastoral care in a time of physical distancing, using the image of the surface of water to describe how so much of our needs are being hidden from others. Even in normal times, all of us carry some of our concerns down where no one else can see them, but COVID-19 has reduced the opportunities we have to let a few trusted individuals into the depths of our lives as well as those unplanned encounters with clergy or other people who know us well enough to discern that a concern is hiding just below the surface.
Although our governor has begun discussing plans for relaxing the protocols for physical distancing in our state, it will be a long time before all of us are able to be back together again in church—before the pews are filled, before the breakfast tables are packed, before the bread and wine of Communion are shared, before the vulnerable in our congregation are able to return. How will we care for each other in the weeks and months of physical distancing that still lie ahead? How will we find substitutes for the natural ways that we usually discern what is going on below the surface in each other's lives and care for those needs that otherwise remain hidden?
In a church our size, regardless of the need for physical distancing, we depend upon smaller networks to provide pastoral care to each another and, when needed, to share the concerns of those closest to us with the clergy. Although physical interactions are critical to the care I normally provide, even on my best day, I cannot possibly recognize or remember all of the needs that walk through the door on a Sunday morning. No one can. In churches of any size, pastoral care almost never begins with the clergy. It begins with you—those sitting in the pews, bumping into friends, and sharing a meal with one another. That is how we really care for each other, which is why that is what we most need to replace.
Think about the people who normally sit beside you in church. Picture the faces of those who come to the same Bible study or centering prayer session you regularly attend. Remember those who usually eat breakfast or dinner at the table next to yours in the parish hall. Who else sings in your section of the choir? Whose company do you enjoy at coffee hour? Pick up the phone and give them a call. Ask how they are doing and how they are adapting to this strange time. Tell them what is new in your life and what worries you are holding onto and what thanksgivings you are celebrating. You do not need an excuse to pick up the phone. You already have it. We are all connected because we are members of the Body of Christ. In this time of physical distancing, we all have to work a little harder to maintain those connections, but, if we are going to continue to be the church even when we cannot be together in church, that extra effort is essential.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan