You're Going to Ask Me to Pray, Aren't You?
The blessing and curse of pre-meal praying
You know the look. You’re just enjoying yourself, scoping out the buffet table, eyeing up the desserts and someone is really trying to catch your eye. You know why—someone has to get this party started.
That someone is you.
Fellow pastors unite in the singular experience of being called upon to pray before a group meal. More than weddings, funerals, or anything in-between, I think I am called upon most in my pastoral role to offer a simple blessing of food. Let it be known, I am ready to do this at a moments notice. I can be in a complete group of strangers and feel my the hairs on my head tingle, knowing somewhere, someone has just spoken the words: Ask her, she’s a pastor.
For all of my talk of having multiple identities, it is tough to fully escape the role of pastor. There’s no good way of saying, oh, I’m so sorry, I’m off the clock and can’t pray for your sandwiches. That Rev. is always in front of my name. And so yes, I will pray. I accept that in public situations I will be called upon to be a pastor. I’ve signed up for that. Yet it’s nice to have private spaces where I’m not in charge of it all—even the pre-meal prayer.
In my household we’ve used a little prayer book I found via a previous parishioner. I highly recommend this little book! When I sit down in my home I can1 offer to pray if I’d like. Or, most often, we pull out this book and anyone can read and share one of the prayers.
It’s such a small thing, but it’s such a gift to me. It’s a little bit of acknowledgment that around my table at home I’m still a pastor, but I’m also just Rachel.
This little space for identity switching allows for some ease. It’s not as if when I walk into my home that I cease to be a pastor. More than erasing that, it integrates that identity into the rest of who I am. My pastor-self is just one way that I engage with the world. How flat would it be if I never got to be my home-self, or family-self, or piano teacher-self. You get the idea. Everyone should have a chance to be a complex being.
What I’m reading
I finished the short little fiction book, "We Had to Remove This Post” by the Dutch author Hanna Bervoets. The protagonist reviews content for a social media platform as part of the team that determines what goes against posting rules. This sounds fine, but ends up being a life altering job as the content in question is explicit, violent, and full of conspiracies. It’s an unsettling read that helps keep in the forefront just how influential all of our online consumption can be.
On revival
You’ve likely read a few things about what has happened at Asbury College in the previous weeks. There’s plenty of discussion about revival, but I appreciated most these three voices offering experiences not of cynicism, but of lived experienced. Worth just a bit more reflection.
What life looks like
Always burrowing
Full disclosure, I mostly don’t. But it’s a nice idea, isn’t it?