I miss pastoring so much

But I have never had to miss God.

I miss pastoring so much.

I miss being in a storytelling community.

I miss officiating rituals.

I miss being an official, institutional voice against White supremacy and transphobia—and for transformative love.

Whenever I did a baptism, all children were invited to come forward as witnesses. I made the water as splashy and full as possible.

I have missed it so much that I actually applied for another pastorate last winter. The congregation could barely afford a pastor and they weren’t open and affirming, but it was so nearby that I felt I had to try.

And the process was like going back to a well I thought had dried up. Mythologist Martin Shaw describes how, during the pandemic, he stopped being able to tell stories out loud. When he resumed, he writes,

The stories had fled. The stories had hurt feelings . . . They often require an elaborate and concerted courtship to return.

My stories—my interpretations, my capacity—were still there, despite being unspoken for three years. I felt flooded. Flooded with connection. Flooded with love.

Then the stories told me to stop.

I was asked to preach on a passage where disciples do not recognize Jesus after his death. The question for the preacher and the reader is obvious: How are we not seeing love beyond death today? And so the story asked me to recognize who I was in conversation with: people who had not yet chosen to recognize my full humanity because I am queer.

Damn, the church did it again.

I withdrew from the process. I remembered that the call to ministry is not a call to an employment structure. Just like the movements of the divine are not constrained by any human-uttered doctrine.

When I was testifying at the trial of the man who committed an antiqueer hate crime against my last church, the prosecutor asked me about how it made me feel. The judge was to my left, the jury to my right, and the accused right in front of me. Only four congregants had shown up for the trial. I could have felt very alone.

With the district attorney and prosecutor after the trial. It was the first anti-queer hate crime successfully litigated in the state. Smiling felt weird.

Instead, I was flooded again. I was filled, I was buoyed, I was gifted by presence not of our making or control.

I miss pastoring.

I miss being in a storytelling community.

I miss officiating rituals.

I miss being an official, institutional voice against White supremacy and transphobia—and for transformative love.

But I have never had to miss God.