During Junior High, besides my studies in school, I attended weekly, Saturday morning classes at an Evangelical Lutheran Church. For two years, the teacher of our Confirmation Class was a Deaconess, probably the highest position a woman could serve in that particular denomination. In the third year, our teacher was the Pastor of the congregation, Reverend Hoffman. Because I went to a public Junior High, I was expected to study for three years in preparation for Confirmation as an adult member of the congregation. My good friend Nancy, who lived with her grandparents in the neighborhood near my house and the church, also attended the classes.
One year, we studied the travels of St. Paul, whose work figured highly in the denomination. We looked at large maps that hung from the wall of the classroom, and the Deaconess used a pointer to chart out the travels of Paul as missionary to those faraway lands, in what we now call the Middle East. And, over the course of the three years of weekly classes, we memorized Luther’s Small Catechism. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth…” and: “What does this mean?”
Nancy must have had a hard time sitting through those three hours of study on Saturday mornings, in addition to a week of public school. She expressed her having a hard time by acting out in some way. One Saturday morning, the Deaconess had had enough of Nancy, and so she sent her home, early. Later, as I left the building to walk home the two blocks to Medford Avenue, I met Nancy, sitting on the front steps of the Church. She had no intention of going home early to her grandparents’ house!
***
My family were not church-going people, and so, I was not a church-going young person. I survived – easily – the grueling “examination” before the Congregation, led by Pastor Hoffman, the week before we were to be confirmed. It was a large class of Confirmands, and the Pastor would call out a name and ask a question about the studies we had completed. The following week, on Palm Sunday, we were confirmed as adult members of the church. We received our Certificates of Confirmation, and a little box of envelopes for our tithes.
My family were not church-going people, and I was not a church-going young person, and so I attended church one or two times on my own before I stopped going entirely. A year or two later, I received a visit from the Deaconess, who had the charge to learn why I had “fallen away.” I recall bits of our conversation, my explanation that it seemed to me that the Hippies, with their talk of “love,” were expressing something like the Church’s teachings. I recalled that at one time during Confirmation Class, the Deaconess had used me as an example to the class of someone who would never drift away from Church! Now, I’d apparently failed her. I never did receive the visit from the Pastor, the next in line to question my failing faith.
Several years later, while I was studying at University, a surprising idea came to mind: “why couldn’t I be a Pastor?” I tell people now who inquire about my journey that I had not seen or even heard of a woman pastor! It would be several years before I found my way to a United Methodist Church with a thriving young people’s ministry led by a charismatic, politically involved Young Adult Minister who gently “took me by the hand” and led me into the Church. The Reverend Harvey Stower, had invited me, by his gentle guidance, to have a relationship with Jesus, and to show my faith by my life and actions in the world. And on one occasion, he asked me a question – no one had asked before: “Do you ever think about seminary?” His question allowed my unspoken yearning to come to the surface. His example of ministry, his work for justice, always, his walk with Jesus, was far-removed from the memorization and testing I’d encountered in Confirmation Class.
Still, I’m always grateful for the sound sense of theology and Biblical understanding I’d received during those three years of classes in the Lutheran tradition. As I grow older, looking back, I see that my life has had a trajectory of its own. Often, I was too anxious to trust that trajectory. But here I am, a fulfilling life of service behind me, and a deepening spiritual journey, still. As I like to say, “I’ve taken a drink from many cups.” I’m grateful.
