"Where are you?" | Shana McCauley | February 11, 2024

The first few years after I graduated from Seminary were two of the hardest years of my spiritual life. When I went to seminary, as I was preparing to go, I told God that I had an idea of where I wanted to go and where I didn't want to go. And on the "no thank you" list was the Midwest. But when I arrived at my Seminary for prospective student days, within hours I was clear that I was supposed to be there, and I said, "listen, I don't like casseroles. I would rather be in New York." I would have been in seminary with Nathan! But alas, I ended up in the place where I belonged, and it was like I was swimming with the current. It was for for sure the place I was called to be. It was affirming and it was a place to grow and develop, and I got to do this alongside people who were lovely and wonderful, and, you know, also growing. In all the lovely and hard ways. It's a little bit like church middle school. But it was good, it was good. It was a really affirming time and one of the spiritual highs of my life. And then I graduated. And it's an anxious time when you're about to graduate and move on from a place, and I interviewed here and there. And I interviewed in two places at the end that were not the right place, but when each of them called me, I had to discern between these two. And I really could have talked to God a little bit more, and said "where am I supposed to go?" But I was anxious, and I was scared, and I was afraid that I would be stuck in Chicago, like so many people who had trouble launching after seminary, and so I picked the place that was less "not right." When I got there, it was hard, it was a really hard call. It was a mismatch, and I knew that when I was going there, and I still went. And what I didn't know in seminary– I'm not sure I was ever conscious of this– but for me, my primary prayer time was the time after I received communion, when I was kneeling and praying, when the whole house is sort of shuffling and everybody's coming forward, when sometimes there's music, when toddlers are finally loosed from their parents arms and stopped being shushed because there is enough movement to cover that noise. This was the time when nothing was organized and nothing was, when I wasn't told what to do, this was the time that I was able to pray. And it was 10 minutes– it was the 10 minutes of my life, my spiritual praying life, when I got the whole banquet. And then I was ordained, and once I was ordained, I realized that I now have a job to do during communion. And I have a job to do the whole time, and when I'm done with my job, we all stand up and do the next prayer, and we do the blessing, and then it is done. So I'm in this call that is not the right call for me– me and my boss we did not connect– I should have known that I should have listened to the spirit, but it just wasn't the right place for me. And it was something like swimming upstream, where this wasn't quite working, and this wasn't quite working. We weren't quite making enough, or we weren't quite spending our money the right way, and so it wasz- money was tight and that was hard. And then we started trying to build our family, and it didn't work out. Not great on the way out, not at the beginning. And so I had a miscarriage, and then I had another miscarriage, and I started going to my spirit director and I said, "what– I'm I'm, I'm struggling, I'm struggling. I don't– I don't know what to do, I've lost my prayer time, everything feels hard. It feels like everything I'm doing is just hard. Where is God?" And my spiritual director was a lovely man, and he sat and listened to my tears month after month, and he was so kind. And I would– like most of us, I think– I would cry, and I'd say, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," but I'd keep crying, because life was just so much in that moment. And one day, he started saying to me– and he got a little bit more persistent as time went on– Shana, you've got to find somewhere else to pray. The first time, I was like "sure, whatever, yeah, blah blah blah blah, I'm crying." But as time went on, I started to challenge him back. What do you mean I have to find another place to pray? Where– how am I going do that? I'm working! Do you know what I do? He said, you've got to walk, or you've got to go to another church. I'm like another church? Do you know what I do on Sundays? Go find a place to find God again. Eventually, I was let go from that position. I was let go when I was 6 and a half months pregnant, which was very very very hard. And and in the midst of the struggle of the chaos of the grief, I went to Diablo– that church was in the shadow of Mount Diablo in California– and I drove all the way to the top. Mount Diablo is this weird. It's– it's a really interesting spot in the Bay Area. It's like nothing I've ever seen. It's aid, and– and it was the first place that I'd ever seen manzanita trees, which have these really hard, red– I don't know– stalks, or they're somewhere between a tree and a bush. And so it's got this really strong gnarly red foundation around which there is foliage, and also (we learned this in our kitchen) but Mount Diablo is one of the main breeding grounds of the North American brown tarantula. That's a fun thing to learn in your kitchen. So and on the– well, all around, there are these rock formations, these beautiful rock formations that are wind blown, and there's– you get out of your car, and you are assailed with wind. It's just windy. And it's this alien landscape and the wind blows through these rocks– these tunnels and little cubbies and all of that, and it makes this weird uncomfortable moaning sound. But it all sort of makes sense, and it's all kind of overwhelming, and I stood up stood up on Mount Diablo and I screamed at God. "Where are you? I stand up week after week telling people that God is with you in the worst moments, and I haven't seen you in weeks. Where are you? I am suffering. Don't you see? I did all the right things, I did all the right things. We even waited two years after we got married, we did it perfectly, and nothing is working, and I'm so mad at you. I did this for you. Why aren't you showing up for me?" I wonder if Jesus was struggling, too, when he went up that mountain. We know where we are liturgically. This gospel shows up here on purpose, because this is the moment when Jesus is about to go into the end of his ministry. So he's just told his disciples that he's– what's coming, that he's going to suffer, that he's going on trial, that he will be executed. And Peter says no no no no no no no no, that's not going to happen. We'll protect you. And Jesus calls him Satan and tells him to get behind him. And then six days later, Jesus takes Peter and James and John, and they go up the mountain to pray. Do you think Jesus was up there screaming in the wind? I don't know. I don't know. We believe that Jesus is fully human, and it is fully human to be scared. So Jesus goes up the mountain, and his clothes are transformed into something that is is impossible. They're bleached whiter than any bleach can do. And all of a sudden there are Moses and Elijah, and Peter and James and John don't really know what to do. They're terrified, it says. And Jesus has a conversation with Moses and with Elijah, and then a cloud comes– a great cloud– and from the cloud says, "This is my son, listen to him." And then the cloud dissipates, and Moses and Elijah are gone. Deborah Krause talks about how this– this is from the Book of Mark, we're in Mark here. And the Book of Mark ends really abruptly. Now somebody has done us the favor of adding an ending to the story that may or may not have existed at some time, but what we have on the– I think it's called the second ending– what we have in the second ending is sort of a a nice pretty wrap-up. But the way that The Book of Mark actually ends is Jesus has been executed, the women wait until the morning, they go to the tomb, it's empty, they're terrified, and the angel says, "Go to Galilee, Jesus will meet you there." And that's it, we don't get any more of the resurrection in Mark. That's why on Easter we do John. It oesn't quite work. But Deborah Krause talks about how the resurrection story of Mark is in the middle. It's in the middle, in the Transfiguration, in this beautiful moment when Jesus– the word transfigure in him. Webster's says that it means "to transform into something more beautiful" or "to elevate." Jesus is transformed, is elevated before his friends– and maybe for himself, too, because he's gone there knowing that what's coming is bad, it's going to be scary. Jesus also knows that it's going to be okay, because he's the son of God and he is fully God, fully human, and fully divine, right? He knows it's going to be okay, but he knows there's going to be suffering between now and Easter, right? So he's gone up the mountain to pray, and the spirit has come among them to reassure Jesus that he is on the right path. "This is my son, listen to him." And Peter and James and John in all their human basicness, in all their messy everything, they get to see it, too.They get to be a part of it, too, they get to be there as Jesus is affirmed, and the spirit says "Yes, you're on the right track. Keep going for me." The end of my distance from God, or at least that one came after I lost my job, my husband and I. When my husband lost his job also that year, while I was still pregnant, so 2008. Many of you lost your jobs or worse in that time. So there we were, shocked and sitting with my very pregnant belly, and Ryan's sister called and she said, "Honey do you need a place to live?" And we said yes. And so we had our baby, and my father-in-law came and got a trailer, and he moved– we put all our stuff in there, and baby, dogs, cat in our tiny little Scion, and we drove, and we ended up here. The reason that we are here in Oregon is because my sister-in-law lived in Sherwood. And we moved in with her, and my non-religious sister-in-law and brother-in-law they took us in, they cared for us, they healed us. When I had my son, my relationship with God changed. There's– there's not words for this. You've heard the words, they're corny, they're a little cringey, because there's no words to describe this. And the way they come out is– feels saccharine sometimes. So I don't have words to describe how having a baby changed my relationship with the one who created me and with the humans that created me, but it was different from then on. But it didn't change the fact that I felt like I still couldn't pray, like I still couldn't hear God talk back, and still in little ways, it felt like moving to Oregon changed the tide. And I wasn't swimming upstream so much. Almost as soon as I got here, I knew that Oregon was home. I thought for– I mean, forever. I left Anchorage where I grew up to go to college, and I thought "nowhere will ever feel like home," and "dear God, I don't want to move back to Alaska." So– I love Alaska but I don't want to be there. Anyway, I really thought that nothing would ever feel like home again. And I the day after we got here, I knew that Oregon was home. I– again– not, not a thing I can put words to. It's also corny. Anyway, but it was home and slowly, slowly– it wasn't easy, I was still swimming– but I was starting to swim with the current again. And it just happened because the Holy Spirit is awesome, the bishop here at the time– we were in an in between time– and the bishop here was somebody who was a friend and a mentor. And he said come and talk to me, and I did, and he started send– excuse me– he started sending me out to parishes that were were vacant or just needed somebody for a Sunday, and I started working here in Oregon and in the Diocese of Olympia where I came from. And little by little, I started to say "are are you there? are we going to do this?" Stil,l at that point I wasn't sure that I would still be a priest. I wasn't– the church is– it's hard for the church to have an imagination for somebody in the in between time. I think that's probably true in the wider professional world. So I didn't know I didn't know where I was going to end up, and one day at the church that I ended up serving, I was filling in, they were between priests, and I was– I had set the table, and they were passing the offering plate, and so I was waiting, and while I waited– this is weird– I heard the Spirit. It wasn't words, it was just love, I know, corny right? You hear it. But it was there and I knew– I knew I didn't know I would be a priest there, but I knew that I was going to be a priest going forward. Professionally, paid. I know, "we're all priests forever," yeah yeah. And then– and then I found that I had a new time to pray. Oh my gosh you're back! It's not the same, it's not every week, I'm still working during that time, but there it is, this moment when we can talk again. Sometimes the swim is so hard, and I don't believe in a God that punishes us– I don't, I don't, I can't, I cannot imagine a God that says, "I called you to this and you didn't do it, so I'm going to punish you with this." I don't think that that's what it was. But I know that when I'm on the right track, the swimming is a little bit easier, and it's a little bit more obvious. And the call, the movement, the current brought me here, and I am not sorry. I am clear, I am clear that St Edwards is the right place for me, and I'm clear that Trinity is the right place place for me in this moment. The swimming isn't easy, it's still work, but I am clear that I am with the current now. It's– it's good, it's good learning, it's good knowledge, it's good experience of the world, right? We see this for our kids, where you see that your kids are struggling, and you want to say god, hang in there. I know– I know it's so hard right now, it's going to get better. And this was my spiritual growth, right? It's so hard, but it got better, and now when it gets hard again, I know I know that these almost always end with these and vice versa. So if you are there, if you are swimming upstream– I'm going to be corny again– know that God has a call for you. It might be to the priesthood– um, it is for a handful of us– but you are called to do a thing, too. To be a person, too. To be– and you know what? Remember, Peter, James, and John– messy, right? They were not qualified, and remember that in a couple weeks, we're going to– I mean, just wait till you see what Peter gets up to. We're not going to do it right every time and sometimes we're going to find ourselves in that channel swimming the wrong direction, but sometimes– and if you do, try going to Diablo. Just kidding, don't go there. It's lovely though, Mount Diablo is lovely if you have time. Sometimes, we have to stop and take a breath and look around and find our bearings and find our way to God again. May you, may we find our ourselves swimming the right direction. Amen.