My Career Under a Cloud

 

       My father, Rev. William Suk, died forty years ago. He was only 54. I’ve kept a few of his sermons as keepsakes. I read them over this week. English wasn’t his native language, and he was always a bit insecure about that. On the whole, though, the sermons are cogent and well-written. He worked hard to make them so. People appreciated his preaching.

 

        What struck me, though, was that I didn’t find anything in those sermons that interested me. They were all based on the Heidelberg Catechism—a mid-sixteenth century statement of the Calvinist faith. As a result, his sermons were doctrinaire and abstract—at least to my taste. I guess he wrote them in a different time and a different audience. In the end, I read through them as much for the bits of my dad’s self-disclosure as I did for any religious content or insight. On the whole, his sermons just didn’t speak to me.

 

       Which is interesting, because there is another, much larger group of sermons that rarely speak to me. These are the six hundred sermons I wrote and preached as an Evangelical minister in the Christian Reformed Church. What is more, the same goes for three hundred or so editorials and articles that I wrote over the ten years I was editor of my denominational magazine, The Banner. 

Me Doing My Thing

       Like my father, I spent a lot of time on each sermon or article. I always booked twenty hours for research, pacing the office, false starts, rewrites, practicing. I always tried (to mixed effect) to write in a way that would leave the audience wondering how I’d land the plane, in the end. Along the way many were published in journals or won awards in various forums. 

 

       Still, most of it—the vast majority of it—doesn’t speak to me anymore. I now think that the vast majority of what I wrote is either misinformed or just plain wrong. I pounded the pulpit for stuff I don’t believe in anymore. And so it was with much of the rest of my career—endless committee meetings, administration, catechism teaching, hand wringing over budgets and liturgies, and even much of the congregational visiting. All of this was in service of an institution whose core raison d’etre I no longer share, whose core story I admire, but no longer believe to be God’s word.

 

       So, now I look at all my sermons and think . . . what a waste. The vast majority of my professional life lies under a cloud of regret. I think about this a lot, and it saddens me. I might have been a paleontologist or archeologist—though as much as those careers appeal to me now, I suppose I’d more likely have become a mid-level white collar worker, given my naivete and immaturity as a twenty-some year old.

 

       Mind you, there are a few caveats, a few things that I think about as I try to justify my life as a preacher and editor.

 

• As I look at those sermons now, I see that I put a lot of energy into preaching love—of neighbors, social justice; love of immigrants, the marginalized, love of neighbors near and far; love of partners and children and art and more. And perhaps some of that preaching had an impact. If people love more, I don’t suppose their motivation for loving matters much. Love is love. 

 

• On many occasions parishioners felt my presence to be a support to them when they were sick, or troubled, or depressed, or mixed up, or whatever. To the degree that I lightened the load for some fellow travelers, I’m glad. 

 

• As an evangelical minister, I did other things—imperfectly. I preached a certain kind of morality—one that was more accepting and less rigid than was common among evangelicals. I worked, over time, for the full inclusion of gay people and women into the church’s life. I tried to encourage churches to be healthy communities where members could find friendship, support when needed, and kindness all about. I wrote often about the need to make churches safe places for children and women.

 

• My last caveat is the best. I spent my last nine years as a minister in a congregation that was okay with my being agnostic. I was overwhelmed by the freedom that gave me to explore new sources of meaning and new motivations to love neighbor. You will find the kernels of some of those sermons elsewhere in my blog.

 

       Still, I wish I had done something else with my life. True, I enjoyed myself, mostly. Along the way (less as I aged) I felt fulfilled. I climbed the ecclesiastical ladder with some success. My congregations were mostly happy places where I and my family were liked and appreciated. 

 

These days, though, looking back, much of my career seems like a long, wasted effort in the interest of a poor cause.  So how do I ultimately make peace with all that—leaving aside the caveats, above? 

 

Well, sometimes I think about my great grandfather Willem and his son, my grandfather Jan. Willem made a living selling groceries out of a dog cart. When that dried up, he went to work in a local cement factory. He died in his early forties of silicosis of the lungs. He didn’t have a choice. He did what he could to support his family—at least, until he couldn’t, anymore.

Dog Cart Grocery

As a result of his father’s death, my grandfather, Jan Suk, had to get a job with a farmer before finishing grade six. Of course he had to. There was no welfare in those days. His fatherless family was poverty stricken and survival was far from guaranteed. Years later, after immigrating to Canada, in the mid-fifties, his first job was loading beer trucks. Soon after and for the rest of his life he worked as a hospital janitor. 

 

Frederick Buechner famously defined “calling,” that is, what you should do, career-wise, as the intersection of two things: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep need meet.” Well, that’s a very modern and privileged notion, one that became an option for many people only because of the years of amazing economic growth and resulting prosperity that defined the fifties and sixties. 

 

The truth is, for most of human history, until not long ago, when it came to one’s life work, there was little “deep gladness,” and far too much “deep need.” Until recently, the vast majority of people had no choice. They didn’t have careers, they had work—often physically punishing, at poverty wages, and with little opportunity to move up ladders. I have learned to think of my career through that lens. Whatever I may think about the value of my sermons, I have had it infinitely better than all my grands going as far back as I can document.

 

I did not live a life defined by poverty, intellectual want, and difficult labor. Unlike my ancestors, I had privileged choices with respect to what I would do with my life, and even if I made mistakes, I really gave it a whirl. I also found a perfect partner. Our family was mostly (and still is) very happy. These days, I’m working hard to recognize and appreciate all the good things in my life that my ancestors could hardly have imagined.

 

I get that this might not sound like much to people who live life according to the rubrics, visions, and teachings of their churches. There is no great overarching vision here for the meaning of life, and no myth to support a hope for heaven or the kingdom come. I just do not believe in those things anymore. All my many years of theological study, my mastery of “Reformed, Christian” perspectives on sex or politics or the environment, all my life promoting Christianity, and especially my sermons—it is mostly dust to me.

 

And, to be honest, I am sad about that. Very sad. Looking back on sermons that no longer speak to me isn’t much fun. When I write about this stuff, or go on my daily walks, or remember how it used to be—I get depressed.

 

But as a child of privilege, at least I was free to change my mind. My ancestors never could, and they made the best of that in spite of tragedy and drudgery and poverty. Now, I am trying to make the best of it too. And it shouldn’t be too hard, given that my life was full of more opportunity, choice and ease than my ancestors could ever have imagined.

 

The freedom and opportunity to change one’s mind. It’s something we can actually do, these days. It’s a great gift, if we could only stop to examine it for what it is. And embrace it.