I quit...

I used to be an activist until I plumb wore out. I was raised in the bosom of activism... the Southern Baptist Church. As a family, we went to worship twice on Sunday accompanied by Sunday School and Training Union, Wednesday night prayer service and choir practice, attended associational meetings and rallies, visited the sick and housebound on Sunday afternoons, did my homework while mama and daddy did the Lord’s work at the church building. I became the children’s choir leader at the ripe old age of twelve, was a member of the Sword Drill Team, joined the adult choir again at the age of twelve and learned to sing alto, was a camp counselor at our local church camp. Southern Baptists knew how to teach the young the routine for getting the work of church done... the nuts and bolts... the unglamourous jobs that must be done to keep the machinery running. My mother kept a purple stain on her fingers from running the church worship programs off on the mimeograph machine (remember them?). My dad helped keep the grounds tidy and when the building needed painting or plumbing repair, he was there.
It was no accident that the Civil Rights leaders came from church and the movement was centered in the church... not only because of the justice "what would Jesus do" part of the call to change... but because they knew where the trained leaders were... the committee members... the ones who showed up to run the mimeograph machines... the ones who had the church keys and knew where the light switches were... the ones who acted because they were called not just to causes, but to be Christians in a world community... a family that taught me the first lessons in differences, how to get along with those who disagreed with you, how to find common ground on which you could stand together, how to be the family of God.
The paradox that I have lived is in two passages I learned in Sword Drill from the books of Ephesians and Second Timothy. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God: not of works lest any man should boast". And, I learned this while studying to "show myself a workman that needeth not to be ashamed".
For many years I have been busy about good works. When I was a social worker, I raised money from churches to send a twelve year old girl, pregnant by incest, to Nevada for an abortion which was then illegal in Texas where we lived. When the Green Revolution hit in the seventies, I switched to cloth napkins, threw out my paper towels (but kept the newly discovered paper diapers), saved my newspapers and tried to be a responsible consumer. When the large state mental hospitals were closed down and the patients were sent back to their home communities so they could be helped to become productive community members, I was there to see the disaster that followed. I was teaching old men and women who had never lived anywhere but the hospital how to make change, how to catch a bus, how to cook, how to find the doctor’s office, how to manage in a world that knew them not... in a world that they wandered lost and often alone with few safe havens for soul or body. I did grunt work for political campaigns handing out literature, making calls.
And as our children came, I began to lose my balance. I could see change in some individual lives but the system kept rocking along. I chose for my soul’s sake to retreat from what had become a life draining weight and focus on the new lives in our family. I still helped in various ways... continued to recycle... do volunteer work... be involved in the larger world through our church... but I could no longer bear the weight of feeling so responsible for change, so guilty for lack of change, so tired from work that seemed to have no end. So I quit. I quit trying to be God in the World and started looking for God who was already in the world. I quit feeling like the work I was doing was more important than the work others were doing. I quit worrying about what would happen if I quit. I just quit.
Now as I sit in my pew, watching those I love file by to take Communion, I pray. I pray for Doug who has a passion to care for the Palestinians and South Americans. I pray for DeeDee who has made the homeless community her place of ministry. I pray for our Christian Action Committee that they not grow weary in well doing. I pray for Elizabeth and all those who staff the shelter in our church for homeless women. I pray for all of us who do the work of peace and justice. My prayer is that we may find the balancing point between faith and works... between soul work and grunt work... between this world and the next life to come... We are not God. We are God’s.