on the other side of sacraments-
of aspergillums, rosemary, and unholy hands
This week I was trimming the rosemary in the front yard. I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but in the Pacific Northwest rosemary grows to epic sizes. It is less a dainty herb and more of a fragrant bush. All scents are prone to evoking memory. It’s how the brain is organized apparently and the scent of rosemary took me right back to church.
When someone was baptized in the church, we would take the holy water from the font and fling it at the congregation as we walked back up to the alter. Now this flinging baptismal water at the congregation has a fancy word: Asperges and a fancy tool- the aspergillum. It looks a little bit like a long handled silver rattle with holes in it.
At my church we just used rosemary. It was always available, holds water beautifully, and smells of earth and sunshine. I don’t know if it was part of the reason why, but rosemary is also a symbol of remembrance. I have a tattoo of a sprig of rosemary that I got on the first anniversary of my mother’s death and the day of a dear friend’s funeral.
So, there I was in the front yard with a branch of rosemary in my hand and it all came back. Like a wave, like a dream, like a gasp. I could feel the weight of the vestments. I could see the light spilling softly through the windows. I could smell how the chrism, the holy oil, used to anoint a freshly baptized forehead in the shape of a cross mixed with the scent of rosemary I was dipping in the bowl of holy water.
And I confess, I missed it so much it took my breath away. I stood there, clippers in hand and tried to understand that I am no longer allowed to do that. I am no longer a priest, I can no longer baptize a baby and then let holiness rain down from a freshly cut rosemary branch. I know that in my head. But I’m not sure the message has made it as far as I thought. I am still trying to figure out what the sacraments are, now that I am no longer a part of their story.1 My heart doesn’t comprehend how I used to be able to baptize and now I can’t.
What are the sacraments? Are they the way our embodied animal selves enact rituals of the grace we claim and cannot hold. Are they practices that let our bodies reach towards love’s reality? Are they so big that they cannot be undone? Are they our shadowing of Gods movement in the world? Or are the sacraments small and fragile? Are they the property of the church, and priests are just the licensed dealers? And what happens to the hands after they are deemed unworthy, and the license to bless is revoked?
Whose hands are holy?
Have my hands changed in some way? Are they no longer conduits of grace, little five fingered messengers of hope? Did I ever have the right to drag my fingers across the surface of the water naming it a sign of freedom? What would happen now if I whispered a prayer of love in my baby’s bathwater?
The church does not hold that priests are better than lay people. At least not out loud. I know for facts that I was never the best Christian in my congregation. I just held a role and a location. I was called to love them and continually point back to God. I was called to be the person who said over and over again- through all the different seasons of our common life that God is always with us, even when God is not obvious, and that God always- always loves us. It was that role, that relationship more than anything I think, that gave me the right to touch the water, to break the bread, to bless, and to forgive.
Way back in seminary, there were terribly sincere conversations about whether ordination was a functional or an ontological change. That is, whether being a priest is something you do or something you are. Is a priest who never priests a priest? And now I am asking these questions again. People have told me that I am still a priest, but I do not know what to do with that. Usually it is ordained people who tell me this. And usually I hear that they are afraid that a day could come when their ordination could evaporate in the bright heat of church law. What I think they mean is that my ontology- the who-ness of who I am has not changed, but that is cold comfort when I can no longer be in the sort of relationships where being that person made a difference in the lives of the people of God.
I do not know if my own sweet baby will be baptized someday by a priest who is still loved by the church. I do not know if I can promise to “be responsible for seeing that the child I present is brought up in the Christian faith and life?”2 I do not know if the congregation will have holy water cast over their heads by a branch of rosemary. I do not know if my hands will ever participate in sacramental life again. But I do know that these hands will hold my children and make meals to feed my family. My hands will make art, and caress lovers. My hands will type words on this laptop. And on some days my hands will smell like rosemary, fresh from the yard and sparkling with droplets of holy dew.
And I know it is meant in all kindness and generosity, but telling me to join a different denomination is not the path of healing I am taking right now.
mostly because I am not sure anymore what the Christian life means.
“I was called to love them and continually point back to God. I was called to be the person who said over and over again- through all the different seasons of our common life that God is always with us, even when God is not obvious, and that God always- always loves us.”
I’m a Quaker, so we don’t have priests—and the “liberal” branch of the Religious Society of Friends I’m in doesn’t even have formal pastors—but we do believe in the calling to ministry, and this is as concisely wonderful a description of ministry’s core as I’ve seen in a good long while.
Once again, Kerlin: poignant, compelling, thoughtful. Thank you. As I consider the priesthood now from the perspective of retirement, I feel it’s time to be honest about what the priesthood is. The priesthood is a shared agreement between a person and a community in which the community says, “We find you to be a more-or-less trustworthy canvas for our sacred/spiritual/religious projections,” and the person says, “I am willing to be the canvas for your projections in exchange for certain privileges.” Of course, every community of every kind of faith persuasion has this kind of agreement, not limited to Episcopalians or Christians. As long as you are willing to enter into such an arrangement with a community that sees you as reflective of their deepest truths and values, you are likely to find such an arrangement again. Now that you are freed from the constraints of an archaic and largely problematic and obsolete symbol system, you are perfectly free to invent, reinvent, appropriate or steal whatever rituals and symbols best reflect the truths and values that you and your community genuinely share and believe in. Rosemary, oil, wine and fresh bread are all available to you, along with every other element suggestive of the sacred in your community (I dunno: nakedness? eye contact? hugs? So many good life giving and healing possible sacraments come to mind). You will be a priest again if and when you choose to enter into that bargain again.
As for me, I’m glad I was able to honor the stifling and also mostly loving arrangement as long as I did, but the toll that arrangement took on me was very real and deeply wounding, and I don’t know if I’d ever submit to it again. The wounds do not invalidate the grace and blessings that came with the role, but they do give me pause. I honestly don’t think, at this time in late stage middle class American capitalism, I would seek that role again. Mostly because every single community that enters into that arrangement is prone to elevating, then crucifying, those they choose. I’m done with that kind of relationship. On the other hand, I am happy to freely express my love and joy with everyone I encounter, including a community of crusty old pool players, and to the extent that that inspires people to tell me their secrets and find healing in our encounters, I am happy to play my part. I am also free to set my own boundaries around those relationships - always a battle in the priesthood because my life, by contract, was not my own. I have no time for such nonsense now.