June 2009

From Your Minister

BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP

I never did graduate from high school. I didn’t mean to not graduate, it’s just that there was something in my high school about an Ohio history requirement, and I was an exchange student in Australia that year. It’s been decades, and nobody has ever asked me if I’ve graduated from high school—it hasn’t stopped me from further graduations— but I still half expect that someday soon some big guys will show up at my door and demand to see that high school diploma.

The fact that I myself did not graduate is the first of four reasons why I should not offer advice to you who are graduating or making transitions, even though it’s part of my job as a minister.

The second reason why I should not give advice is that I don‘t know what you should do. I used to know what everybody should do, but after some years in the ministry, I have learned that I don’t know what anybody should do unless they all but tell me.

People who care about you will tell you to major in math when you have the heart of a poet; people will tell you to welcome children into your life early or late, when only you can know if and when you want to be a parent; people will try to tell you who to love and where you should work and how you should get the job in the first place. Then people will tell you whether to rent or save up for a house; they will give you advice about direct deposit, and house paint, and chimney sweeps and appliance repair though what you may want is a motorbike and a sunny day, free of any address at all. And when you are old, people who are concerned about you will tell you not to drive anymore, to live in a smaller place, to get rid of a lot of your stuff, to give away your money. And though they love you all the while, they never will quite know what it’s like to be you, and neither do I. That’s why I don’t know what you should do.

The third reason I shouldn’t give advice, especially to graduates, is that graduates have to sit through any number of ceremonial advice-giving sessions in the first place. Why do we pick on graduates? Granted, their lives are not settled. But whose life is really settled? I constantly hear people exclaim, “If you had told me a year ago that this would be happening to me now, I never would have believed it!” Nobody’s life is settled for all time, I am sure of that, and it’s the graduates who already get a disproportionate amount of unsolicited advice.

The fourth reason I shouldn’t give advice to graduates and those making other transitions is that ministers talk too much to begin with. Studies show that 42 percent of churchgoers regularly fall asleep in church. Among those who are able to stay awake, more than one-third of those questioned look at their watch in church every Sunday, and 10 percent shake their watch, thinking it must have stopped. Even though you yourself are reading this or listening to the podcast, the point is well-taken. Everybody knows that the clergy give too much advice in the first place. Why compound the problem?

I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why someone who didn’t graduate from high school, who doesn’t really know what you should do, who knows you get too much advice already, and whose job makes her preach too much to begin with, would offer advice nonetheless. It’s because you hold such promise. That’s why most people give advice: they care about you and they want things to go well for you.

It’s my particular business to fuss over you about theological matters.

You may have heard about the Hasidic tradition’s “two-pocket theology,” the idea that religious people should always have two pockets in every garment, a slip of paper in each one. The first piece of paper should say, “I am but dust and ashes.” And the second should say, “For me the universe was made.” I want to make sure that as a Unitarian Universalist, you keep both slips of paper at the ready.

I want you to hear the message about being dust and ashes, about not being self-centered and arrogant. But equally important is the companion theological message: “For me the universe was made,” the message about how empowered you are, how terrific you are. And so I offer this piece of advice:

“Remember that something inside you is holy, and you are capable and strong, and at the same time, you are interconnected within the universe, and you are small.”

There is much more advice to be given, of course, and I can scarcely stop myself: Along the lines of earning your keep, about love, about finding a center or a god or some life of the spirit, about using your head to think things through, about independence and connection. There are ethical rules you need to have at the ready, and expressions of joy, and committed acts. But you know me—I’m not apt to offer advice.