A few nights a month, I pass through Stuyvesant Park, around 6 p.m. One night, the Episcopalian carillon pierced the park’s quiet with John Greenleaf Whittier’s words. Set to the familiar tune of the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, or better put, Dear God and Maker of us all, the bells hit clear notes, requiring me to go Karaoke.
My favorite verse came back to me:
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
I can have as much trouble with overstated and overconfident God language as anyone. So. let’s not fuss about the language so much as hum the tune. The tune sticks even if the address is not in your address book. God is not captive by any address book, even in the old familiar hymns.
That day, with its welcome and rare evening off, I’d had interesting conversations, all non-compliant with the poet’s theme, the conflicting names for God and the autumn peace.
One person, age 35, said that he was following an “over-functioning white woman” in his current parish. He understood why she had worked so hard and missed the carillon for so many years. “She was overcompensating. As a pioneer, she had to prove herself.” He wanted “work life balance” instead. He was in an ok boomer mood. I understood.
A second, age 28, told me she was leaving after one year in her first parish. “Fed up. Expectations ridiculous.” She wanted to know if all churches were like this. I baby-boomed, “Yes.”
Then a gifted music director, age 31, said, “How much of this s….do I have to put up with?” I responded, all of it. I am 72.
A fourth called to say he had told someone where to go. I asked if he wanted to apologize. All his 29 years on the planet responded “No. If she wants to talk, she can call me.”
I was grateful for the odd evening off and the park’s music. I also wondered why I had over functioned for so long. When does the compensation stop, and the ordered life begin? Right now, answered the carillon. Right now.
Over-functioning is different than functioning. But sometimes over-functioning is a requirement for keeping the job. My cousin will lose her position if she doesn’t complete 52 claims per day. Her former quota was 39. In ministry, the number of claims to complete are fuzzy, to put it mildly. Over-functioning is a negotiated term. Many power people in our congregations have different ideas about what we are supposed to do all day long – and they don’t mind contradicting themselves, during our almost nightly meetings, which are for their convenience, not ours.
Over-functioning in ministry is different than in an insurance company. Oddly, both insurance and ministry are designed to achieve more peace of mind but usually don’t. Over-functioning is unnecessary work. It’s doing more because you never feel like you have done enough. Absent a decision about what is enough, it is likely there will never be enough. Over-functioning is being driven instead of driving.
Maybe you are driven by the human suffering that abounds. Maybe you are driven by a larger paycheck or having have more impact. My mentor, William Sloane Coffin, Jr., argued that we were torn between loveless power and powerless love. He pushed me to over-function and head for powerful love. That is the claim on me. But clearly, I have memorized insufficient scripture or poetry or hymns to balance me.
I am often an apologist for my over-functioning. First, I want as much power as I can get to minimize unnecessary human suffering. I know some suffering is necessary. I know that most is not – and comes from human beings over-functioning, always wanting more, however they define the more. For some it is clothed in capitalist apologetics, the excess of which they fully believe is morally useful, if not right. For others it is clothed in finding someone somewhere to pay them some attention and to pat them on the back. We clergy are gluttons for a little thanks, a little recognition, a small compliment. A hundred people can tell us Good sermon on the way out the door of a Sunday. The one or two who offer a negative are the ones who we have for lunch, along with our sandwich and antacid.
So many of us were early starved for emotional insurance policies. These come from someone loving you unconditionally. We over-function to get approval, if not love. That is my second reason for over-functioning.
The third reason is much more like my student argued. Proving myself as a woman, who lives in the giant majority of women who feel like we have to prove ourselves, is a lot of what drives me, even though you’d think I might have done that by now.
Even my stained car mats can issue judgement, not to mention the dust bunnies in most of my corners. I can break into tears at the sight of a well-tended front garden or a well-cooked meal.
I will never fold all my clean or dirty laundry. In domestic matters, I am neurotic so why wouldn’t I be even more so in the multiple relationships of ministry? There you can’t even please some of the people some of the time, so urgent is their need for grace and relief from the very punishment you self-apply. Failure is normal in ministry. We can resist people’s projections all we want and all we can, but the projections don’t disappear.
What is wonderful right now is that the millennials are fighting back against over-functioning. They call it work/life balance – and notably more than just Protestant Work Ethic adherents are negatively noticing. They will even take a smaller paycheck if they can get flex time or parental leave or not lose their job if they have a sick baby. Millennials are widely accused of having no work ethic. Or not knowing how to work. Or not over-functioning. The distortions of the Protestant Work Ethic form the spine of these now clichéd accusations against millennials.
We boomers were taught to work for our salvation, to earn our respect. If working didn’t work to get respect, we just worked harder. We were taught that over-functioning was a virtue, when it turns out to be a vice. How is over-functioning a vice? It is anti-grace. It is anti-Sabbath. It is what old religion calls works righteousness. It is a form of earning a salvation or recognition or notice or worth which cannot be bought but only bestowed.
I won’t go all the way to saying that millennials are accepting grace or worth which cannot be bestowed. Or letting their strivings cease or losing the strain and stress on their souls. They are pleading for ordered lives confessing the beauty of God’s peace. Just because they call it work/life balance, in the same kind of clumsiness with which we spurt out “over-functioning,” doesn’t mean that its lust is not for peace. Or living life in our rightful mind, as the hymn says.
After my difficult day and lovely walk home, I did consult with my 34-year-old daughter and 36-year-old son. I couldn’t stop contrasting the day’s conversations and the night’s peace. Hey, I said casually what do you think about this hey boomer business. “Mom, the phrase is OK, BOOMER.” OK. When they got done correcting me, justifiably it was like a cannon went off.
BOOOM on the boomers.
“You say we are lazy, and we don’t work. We don’t have good work ethics. We don’t have good work habits. Nor do we have any clean air or clean water or pensions or will we have social security. You took all the money and the air. Why wouldn’t we be mad? This has nothing to do with generations. It has to do with the economy.” Ok, Katie. Ok, Isaac.
The matter of over-functioning in ministry – and it’s not just women – is a large issue, all on its own terms. Our first 30-year-old moderator at our church explained it to me. She works in a health agency in Stuyvesant Park. Her task was to figure out how to get “food insecure” people to food. Her booming boss (yes, most bosses are boomers) said she should use a white kid in the promotional material because having a white kid being “food insecure” will bring in more donations for the kids of color. (Food insecure reminds me of over-functioning and work/life balance. Why not just say hungry or tired or peaceful? But that remains another matter.)
She felt a genuine moral quandary. Why not tell the truth, that more black kids than white kids are hungry? Why manipulate generosity? Why fill up the coffers short term while stroking racism long term?
Dear God and Maker of us all,
forgive our foolish ways;
reclothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper reverence, praise.
OK?
Rev. Dr Donna Schaper is senior minister at Judson Memorial Church, co-founder of New York City New Sanctuary Movement and Bricks and Mortals: RemoveThePews.com. Author of 35 books, most recently I Heart You Francis: Love Letters from a Reluctant Admirer. She also grows a good tomato.