Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
It's ok to have options
I am a deeply cautious and nervous person. I am drawn to sayings like, “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.” If I could, I’d spread those dozen eggs into individual safe houses.
This is the exact opposite of the message many of us have heard through Christianity. Give everything, your whole life, your work, your leisure, your money, your value to this one thing. For many clergy, we took this seriously and tied up our professional lives with our spiritual and personal.
What happens when this one thing starts to crack?
I’ve been thinking about this while following the deconversion journey of D.L. Mayfield. (You can read her excellent reflections on the process here.) For many folks, deconversion or deconstruction is incredibly painful because it’s not just the loss of faith, it’s the loss of everything. White evangelical Christianity in particular created a whole ecosystem for folks to live in.
I was more evangelical adjacent than evangelical myself, spending the entirety of my faith life within the United Church of Christ. My faith context was often a little less intense, more about humdrum hymns and occasional potlucks than a full life transformation. It wasn’t until I was ordained and found myself in the (apparently) covetable role of being young clergy that I began to experience the religious fervor that I associated more with my evangelical neighbors.
As it turns out, mainline church folks don’t get worked up about a lot of things, but they do get really, really excited about young pastors. We, you see, are going to save the church. So once we’re in, ordained, and set up with our stoles, books of worship, and have our seminary debt it is clear that we. are. stuck. And the worst possible outcome would be (gasp!) if we left the church.
I know this, because my career went from something that felt important, meaningful, but ultimately just one choice among many to something that would be a major failure if I left. It’s not dissimilar to how we view marriages. Once you’re in you’re in or else—a construct that doesn’t scratch the surface of what might actually be healthy long-term.
You know what’s better than this strict obligation? A freely offered relationship that can change, evolve, and expand just as we do.
In a different way, the attempt to keep clergy serving in churches just as they have been and tying up all aspects of their lives into this one particular church construct is just silly. It’s putting all of our eggs into one basket. And there are some good eggs in there!
I want to redefine what we hear when clergy (and non-clergy) take time to diversify and try different options in their careers. Isn’t this just curiosity? Isn’t this growth? Isn’t this just being wise? If you feel yourself being drawn into different hobbies, career goals, relationships, or anything else—check twice before you categorize that as a failure. Maybe you’re just spreading around some eggs.
This is bananas!
I always maintain brain space to think about this “fun” fact about bananas—that bananas have incredible genetic vulnerability. Basically, we eat bananas that are all the same. This make them quite susceptible to disease. The good news is we know this so there are people researching how to grow better and different bananas. But if there ends up being a banana shortage just know I told you first.
What I’m reading
My goodness it lived up to the hype. I finished Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang and it was amazing. It is tragic, so know that before you jump in. But the characters! The world-building! The language! This is a fantasy about the magic of translation, with a strong theme exploring the evils of colonialism. The book comes up just as Babel in many locations, but don’t sleep on the title either. What an invitation into this wildly creative and emotional story.
What life looks like
A magnificent cookie house built with my Halloween obsessed 4-year-old nephew