Carry me through, Lord. Carry me through.

Lately, a few of us have been wondering to ourselves and out loud just what exactly it is that we're doing here. What is it to be a pastor? Why is it that we're on this grand four-year adventure to become pastors? We all have different answers to these questions and most of them are just more questions, frankly.

One of our internship goals is supposed to be to develop our pastoral identity. I was trying to explain to my mom what that even means, and struggled. Clearly I'm not checking off many boxes in this category at the moment.

And though many of us are interns right now, what that looks like is so varied. We fall in different places along many spectra -- between overwork and boredom, between excitement and fear, between assurance and doubt. 


We communicate with one another constantly, trying to figure out if what we're experiencing is "normal" or if it's unreasonable, or if it's just us that's the problem. This one of  the only ways we're surviving, I think--each other.

And that's when it hits me.

Someone has to be around to carry our deepest, most complicated stuff with us. Pastors do so many things, (that's something we're all learning on this internship adventure) and a lot of them are unremarkable -- leading meetings, copyediting bulletins, updating the Facebook page, etc. But a pastor can sit beside you and listen to that which you can never tell another living thing, and carry it in their heart in a way you cannot carry it on your own. 

And certainly ordination doesn't make that possible. We are reminded that ordination does not give us "magic fingers" for the eucharist, and so it most likely does not give us magic listening ears or carrying hearts. But we who are here on this journey to discover what it is to be "pastor" are developing such things. Many of us who are on this journey are already those who carry the sufferings of others on our own hearts in a way that feels abnormal. 

In the wake of the ineffably tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last week, many Americans -- not just pastors -- are finding themselves deeply, gut-wrenchingly, abnormally troubled. 

Are you? Do you well up with tears every time you see or hear anything related to the deaths of these children? I have found myself grieving in a way that I didn't even know I was capable of. I had to pull over my car when NPR reported on Monday the first funerals -- two little boys, one of whom has a twin sister who survived the tragedy. Tears are forming in my eyes now, just to type this. 

Why is this? What is it that has connected us to these people -- people we would not otherwise have ever known -- so deeply that we are weeping with them across the nation? 

And all weekend I thought about the pastors in and around Newtown who are caring for their congregations, their own families, their own selves -- where do they find those words, that strength? I wrote a letter to the Monsignor in Newtown -- ten of the children killed were from his parish -- and to the ELCA pastors closest to Newtown. It was the only thing I could think of that I could do, from here, to let those incredible humans know that the work they are doing is invaluable, and that we are all carrying them as best we can. 

There aren't words for these feelings -- all evidence to the contrary, in that I've just written a bunch of words. But these words are just words about how there aren't words. And where words fail, somehow there is something else that finds a way to communicate. There is holy, human spirit at work here. Making space for that spirit is, I suppose, why we do what we do.


There's a mountain here before me
And I'm gonna climb it with strength not my own
[God's] gonna meet me where the mountain beats me
And carry me through

A light shines in the darkness.

When you last read words from me, I was scrambling to say something about the tragedy in Aurora, CO. I didn't go to church this Sunday (gasp!) because I was taking a friend to the train station instead (excuses!) but my parents told me that the guest preacher (our pastor is on vacation) did not mention the shooting -- at all. Not in his sermon, not in a single prayer.

This is unacceptable.

When 12 people are massacred on Thursday night, you'd better be talking about it on Sunday morning. We, the United States of America and we, the body of Christ, are all bleeding and broken because of this senseless act of terror and violence.

The world is unpredictable and scary sometimes, and church is supposed to be the place we go to heal from that. We can't heal from it if we're ignoring it.

It is particularly interesting to me that one of the ELCA's greatest preachers, Nadia Bolz-Weber, lives and preaches in Denver, CO and ministers to Aurora residents on a regular basis. Even if this tragedy had not befallen her community, I know her words on the subject would have been just the catharsis we seek; her proximity to the massacre is particularly poignant.

Here's a link to her sermon. I'd recommend listening to it, as opposed to just reading it. Following the sermon, you'll hear her congregation, House For All Sinners and Saints, singing. This is particularly important because her sermon tells us that we sing praises to our God in the face of disaster not to say that God or that we endorse the damage that has been done, but rather defiantly, "to put evil in its place...to draw a line and say here and no further."

And Nadia also preaches that in the face of evil, we weep. We weep for the loss of life in Aurora this week. We can weep because we are the "bearers of the resurrection," she says. A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.

Just listen to it. And weep.