Transformational Hour

This essay was featured on the Episcopal Divinity School blog established for progressive theology and critical thinking to transform the world.

You speak in my heart and say, “Seek my face.”

Your face, Lord, will I seek

You have been my helper;

Cast me not away; do not forsake me,

O God of my salvation.

Though my father and mother forsake me,

The Lord will sustain me.

(Psalm 27:8-10)

I open myself to wherever I am taken in this hour that I do not clock, and do not care if it becomes 80 minutes or more. I’m out of chronos time for a little while.

The entrance hymn begins. I turn and watch the approach of the acolytes carrying the cross, the candles, and waving banners. I hear the strong voices of choir members passing by and see and hear our pastoral leaders singing their way into the sanctuary. My whole self is caught up in the symbolic drama enacted down that aisle every Sunday. I often cannot sing the entire hymn because of tears.

During my first year at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, I took the Collect for Purity home and memorized it. I felt there was something in it that I needed.

“Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord.”

When my husband Cecil and I had moved to Pasadena in 2008 we were familiar with All Saints Church and I was drawn to join this church by the uniquely inclusive congregation and by the worship, which moved me in ways I did not understand. I only knew it met a deep inner need. On Sunday mornings at All Saints I experienced resting in God, who saw my open heart and the secret desires held there; who knew them in a way I did not yet know them. My heart told me I needed this place where I could relinquish control and let myself be carried into sacred space.

On a recent Sunday, speaking with Cecil about my experience over three years now at the church, I heard myself saying that during worship I was able to feel vulnerable. Vulnerable. It was as though God had let me know the secret God had seen in my heart all along: my deep longing to be able to trust others, and to trust that God was there, and would be there in the multitude of ways God becomes present.

Family dysfunctions during childhood can rob us of the gift of vulnerability, the gift that we can trust others to care for us as children, and that we can trust that the grown-ups will take care of themselves. Growing up trusting grown-ups is a way we learn to trust God. I missed that.

By the age of ten, it was fixed in my mind that I should trust only myself. Others might help, but I couldn’t depend on them. These childhood ways of coping get set and years later, when all the people those coping strategies were about are gone, the strategies may continue.

God heard as I prayed the Collect each Sunday and God knew I desired to let go of the anxiety of trying to cover all the bases and plan ahead for every exigency.

I love kneeling at the rail, holding out my hands to receive the bread. It is a bodily act of vulnerability. Every week I get to practice trust before God and others. Kneeling, I hold out my hands and the portion I need is given to me. And during this act, hundreds of voices carry my spirit, just as my voice helps carry the spirit of others as they go to the rail.

God meets us as we are, complicated human beings with complex brains. I may need to kneel with hands out and receive the bread a thousand times before all those old brain connections turn off and new ones are made. I may need a thousand times of passing the peace before my whole self knows that when all those pew-mates turn to take my hand or give me an embrace I’m truly offered God’s peace in their presence. My practice is to receive it. Every future exigency is not in my hands alone.

Sometimes tears fill my eyes as we pray the post-communion prayer: “…you have fed us with spiritual food…Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage…through Christ our Lord.” I feel fed and cared for and, with Christ’s help, prepared to take the shelter of the sanctuary with me in my heart for another week of seeking God’s presence in the world, and bringing it.

* Pat Hoffman has written books and articles on the church's need to be with the marginalized in movements toward justice. For permission to reprint, contact her at pathoffman.com.

The house looks plain and more exposed than when we lived there. Back then, there was a huge carob tree on the parkway. I practically lived in that tree; every branch was designated a room. I only allowed Dorothy, a quiet, younger girl from two houses down, to climb the tree with me. The tree has been gone quite a while, cut down by the city for interfering with something or other. The orangeberry pittsporum that was in front of my bedroom window is gone too.  But the house looks neat and well-cared for. Did the shutters used to be baby blue?

We have the car idling right in front of the house. I ask Cecil to back up. I want to see the driveway. Isn’t that kind of odd? It looks just the same as when we moved there in 1946. The cement driveway runs along the south side of the house with the six foot wooden gate half way back, not flush with the front of the house or the back of the house but halfway between. I never thought about it as a kid, but now I notice this placement. 

But here was the main thing about the driveway. It was down this driveway, from the garage at the back, I rode my bike. It was old and clunky, with balloon tires and a basket in front. I named it “The Blue Streak.” It and an even older boys bike were left in the garage when our family bought the house. Martha, my older sister, and I now had our first bikes. I rode around the neighborhood feeling like a Cadilac owner, empowered and free. I was happy to ride to Odie’s Market at the corner of Exposition and Sepulveda to pick up things for my mother.

I would ride my bike to the gas station on Pico and carefully adjust the air in my tires. At home, I would wash my bike and polish its fading blue frame. Looking back I can see this innocent little blond girl loving her bike and caring for it like Daddy cared for his car.

By now, I notice someone is in the house and has turned off a light, probably to be able to look at us looking at the house, so I ask Cecil to slowly drive on up my old block.  I moved from that house sixty years ago when I was about fifteen. The memories swell my heart like sun-warmed yeast in dough.