Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
The priesthood of all believers
“ If I am a child of God, a sister-in-Christ, and belong with all of you to the priesthood of all believers, then my job is to love, not hate, to be creative, not destructive, to follow Christ’s cross. This is the lesson of the great prophets down through the ages…. [4]” Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray
This snippet is from Richard Rohr’s morning meditation. Pauli Murray was an African American woman who knew from childhood that her life would be devoted to spiritual service. To know that deep truth so early in life must have felt like a burden sometimes, or a challenge when she tried to understand life through a child’s eyes. As a child I was busy wearing a gun and holster and being a cow girl, or climbing the rock wall in the back yard pretending to be an explorer. That’s about as deep as my thoughts went.
There was one night when I couldn’t sleep and went out on the balcony to see the stars. I had just learned that there is no end to the Universe. As I stared into the expanse and tried to understand infinity, I could not grasp the concept of a never-ending entity. That may have been the deepest thought of my young years. I have never forgotten that night. I still can’t grasp the hugeness of a Universe that may just be one of many.
I owe my parents a debt of gratitude for not raising me in any faith. The reason behind that decision had a lot to do with their own childhoods, but I didn’t figure that out until much later in life. I have heard many stories of people’s impressions of the church of their youth. There are many more stories of confusion and misunderstanding than tales of comfort and joy. In my career as a hospice nurse I heard people who were facing the end of life talk about being afraid of a punitive hereafter. Whether it was Catholic guilt or Protestant unworthiness that lived deep inside them, it was sad to witness and almost impossible to eradicate.
I have had a slippery relationship with “God The Father” as my Deity. My own father was absent from my life, even though we lived together. As an alcoholic, he struggled with his own demons probably until he died at the young age of 63. Thus my concept of God as my Father was based on what I knew growing up. It did not make for a comforting, close relationship with a force that was beyond my understanding.
My mother was raised by a strict Christian Science practitioner who was always lived on the edge of unhappiness. For my mother, who was force fed that “God is love, there is no pain…”, the sorrow and pain in her house had to be confusing. She never attended church again once she left home. She was, however, drawn to the holiness of nature and considered herself a pantheist. As I remember her, she believed God is “the ultimate impersonal reality, of which the material universe and human beings are only manifestations.” (My dictionary app). That makes sense in the context of her upbringing.
Today I live comfortably with God as the Creator of “All That Is” in the Universe(s). I believe that a spark of an infinite, loving God exists within all beings. I did not arrive at this personal conclusion until my children were born and I experienced the deep love for another human that comes with motherhood. Since then my belief system has been growing thanks to people in my life who are living expressions of God’s love and mercy. Today I can comfortable say that I belong to the priesthood of all believers.