TO BE LIKE A TREE - Andrew Taylor-Troutman

I write from my pastor’s study at church, which affords the view of a grove of tall pine trees. These trees resemble exclamation marks against the backdrop of a stormy sky.

On my desk is a picture of me in the pulpit with my father on my right and my grandfather on my left. They were both ordained in the Moravian Church whose motto is “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love.” Their careers illustrate the tension that defines what is essential. Tension that can break a pastor.

I look back outside. The pine trees bend in a strong gust of wind.

~

In the 1960s, Granddad served a Moravian congregation in Mount Airy, North Carolina. His stone church on Main Street was surrounded by large oak trees whose leaves turned gold in the fall. Mount Airy was the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the model for his fictional town of Mayberry on television. My father remembers his childhood like idyllic scenes from this black and white show. He and his friends rode their bikes wherever they wanted, splashed and fished in the local creeks, and played baseball until the fireflies came out.

But Mount Airy was not Mayberry for everyone. The KKK marched down Main Street.

In the spring of 1967, Granddad left town for a tiny congregation in rural Ohio. He took a pay cut and uprooted his three sons in the middle of the school year. I’ll never know why. I became interested in this story only after I had served a few years in a church. By then Granddad had died.

In many congregations, there are a handful of powerful people who can run a pastor out of town. I wonder if Granddad had crossed a line in a sermon and run afoul with such parishioners. Did his words cost him the church? Was he forced out?

On the other hand, he must have known that there would be consequences for speaking against racism. Did he want to avoid conflict in the church? And so, did he grow weary of holding his tongue and decide to leave?

Swallowing the truth also has consequences.

~

My first call was to a rural congregation in the Appalachian Mountains. A venerable Copper Beech presided over the early 19th century tombstones in the church’s graveyard. Certain parishioners could trace their ancestry to those original founders. And I was eager to hear their stories.

I foresaw the need to listen to the congregation before offering any vision of change. The people noticed. One parishioner told me that I was the first pastor out of seminary who hadn’t tried “any new-fangled ideas.” I gained the support of the church.

From my office, I could look over the graveyard and see the Copper Beech. Every fall, those leaves turned the trademark rusty red that gave the tree its name. Every year, the families rooted in that church turned the budget from red to black. This close-knit, Appalachian culture supported me as my family grew. My wife and I welcomed our three children into the world there. 

It was well-known that I was on the political left. Over the years, certain folks would turn up at my office on Monday morning to talk about a perceived liberal bent to Sunday’s sermon. As one elder told me, “I’ll grant you the right to be wrong as long as you grant me the same!” I welcomed these conversations, though they could become tense. A few people left the church over my support for same-sex marriages.

The tension ratcheted up after the 2016 president election. I rarely, if ever, uttered Donald Trump’s name from the pulpit; I did speak against his administration’s policies. I stated that Jesus calls us to spread wide the welcome table, not build walls. People noticed.

The biggest uproar was in response to Colin Kaepernick. In 2016, this professional football player began taking a knee during the pre-game national anthem to protest police brutality, particularly against Black people like himself. That fall, I preached on Paul’s vision that one day every knee shall bow (Phil 2:10) and made a direct statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I was genuinely caught off guard by the vitriolic response. Members had disagreed with me in the past. This time, not only did several people threaten to leave the church, they attacked me as anti-American.

I backed off. Publicly, I preached a multiweek sermon series on the theology of hymns, including “Joy to the World” and many old familiars. I knew such a safe topic would be well-received by my most strident critics. Privately, I began to interview with a self-proclaimed progressive church.

Then, in the summer of 2017, white nationalists descended upon the grounds of the University of Virginia, one of my alma maters. There was a call for peaceful counter-protestors. Our congregation was only three hours away by car, but I came to realize we might as well have been a thousand miles away.

A workday in the historic graveyard had been previously scheduled on the day of the counterprotest and the members refused to postpone. They felt the need to pick up the dead tree limbs and clean the old tombstones. As one elder put it, “We’ve got to take care of our own.”

I could have gone to Charlottesville by myself. But I felt pressure to show up for that workday. That morning, they surprised me by installing a sandbox near the playground, primarily for my own children. Despite our differences, it was clear they wanted me to stay.

After helping to put the kids to bed that evening, I sat at my writing desk. I was a regular contributor for a national blog and I wanted to offer words of support for the anti-racism counterprotest. But I felt like a hypocrite. I couldn’t write a word.

A few months later, the chair of the search committee at the progressive church called to offer me the new position. I went to the graveyard and, underneath the Copper Beech, asked myself if I really wanted to uproot my young family. I thought about the motto of the Moravian Church: “in nonessentials, liberty.” Could I stay and grant others, as that parishioner said, the right to be wrong about the reality of racism in our country? I knew them well enough to know what they wanted to hear.

But what was essential for me at this point in my career? In my life? In my faith?

I looked up into the bough of the Copper Beech. The leaves had begun to change, and so had I.

~

Today I continue to serve as pastor of that progressive congregation, a church surrounded by what Wendell Berry might call a “timbered choir.”[1] Though the sanctuary is built in a growing suburban area, the trees block the view of construction, blunt the noise of traffic. Many parishioners say the church feels like a refuge from the world.

Berry also warns that any institution faces the temptation to “turn inward, trying to be a world in itself.”[2] A church can ignore injustices in the larger world and justify such disengagement by claiming that such things as racial and economic equity are non-essential to the mission of an overwhelmingly white congregation.

In my new call, I have read Berry, for there’s great wisdom and beauty in his work. As part of my desire to do the work of anti-racism, I have also amplified the voices of men and women of color in hopes that these perspectives will help the congregation see beyond our own culture, race, and privilege.

Last year, I arranged for Jaki Shelton Green, the first African American poet laureate of North Carolina, to give a poetry reading in our sanctuary. As she stood before large, clear windows that afford views of the outside, Green offered poems that imagined the lynching of Black men and women from the perspective of the trees on which they were hung.

I’ve weighed the costs of pushing forward with our church’s anti-racism initiative. Some will disagree. Still others will think the church has become too political, which may lead to decreased giving and the loss of members and friends. Even in liberal congregations, the work of addressing systemic racism has cost colleagues their jobs. They have been forced out because of their words.

But people in this country have been paying with their lives for entirely too long. Green claimed that the trees remember these martyrs. As I think about those killed in the Civil Rights Era and victims of police brutality in my time, the pine trees outside my office do not wave in the breeze. They shudder.

~

My father has served the same church for over thirty-five years. Dad remembered Mount Airy. He did not want to uproot his family like his father had done. He wanted to give my brother and me the stability of growing up in the same community. Not only did he fulfill this wish, he has increased the membership and led the capital campaign for the Christian Education building. His ministry has been a success.

It is also true that my father led the church through the process of becoming an open and affirming church for LGBTQ people. One of Dad’s proudest accomplishments is that the congregational vote was unanimous. This unequivocal support was given despite the fact that, privately, a few members held different opinions. In accordance with the Moravian motto, they had decided that unity was more essential. I believe that my father’s long relationship with them made the difference. Trees and trust grow over time.

I hope to put down roots here in this community of faith. As my children grow, I hope to mature as a pastor. Right now, I believe I must add my voice to the struggle for justice on behalf of those who have been brutally silenced. And I believe the majority of congregation desires to work for racial equity and justice.

I wish Granddad could see me now. What advice would he have?

Granddad would repeat the Moravian motto as I grew up, emphasizing that I should do all things with love. When I was an adult, he would comment on the “essentials” and “nonessentials” parts of the motto: “That’s where the rubber meets the road,” he’d shrug. 

Now that I am pastor myself, I think there was a certain sadness in his voice. Whether we decide to pack up and hit the road or not, I imagine that, one way or another, all of us wish we had done certain things differently. Following the Moravian motto does not mean that I will avoid conflict or regrets. But I hear those words as a prayer:

“In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love.”

O Creator and Holy Muse, let my ministry be like a tree. To bend in the storms, not break. And grow toward the light.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman serves as poet pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC. His fourth book, Gently Between the Words, was published in 2019.

[1] A reference to the title of Berry’s collection of Sabbath Poems: 1979–1997

[2] Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, p. 40