Nadia Bolz-Weber - Pastrix

For Dick & Peggy

pastrix (pas triks) noun

1). A term of insult used by unimaginative sections of the church of define female pastors.2). Female ecclesiastical superhero: Trinity from The Matrix in a clerical collar.What on earth was that noise?A pastrix just drop-kicked a demon into the seventh circle of hell!3). Cranky, beautiful faith of a Sinner & Saint.

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S hit, I thought to myself, Im going to be late to New Testament class. The traffic on I-25 in Denver had stopped. Not just slowed to an irritating pace, but fully stopped. For some reason (misanthropy, most likely), I always assume that any traffic stoppage or slowage is due not to construction or an accident, but to human stupidity, as if someone had suddenly forgotten how to drive or decided to stop and pick wildflowers on the interstate.

Attempting to redirect my general disdain for whatever human idiocy has us all stopped on the freeway, and in one of the countless attempts in my life to be more spiritual, I tried to be present and find something beautiful to distract myself. The beauty of Colorado is something you have to try to actively ignore rather than something you have to try to find, yet so often I forget this. The sky on that day was the kind of clear blue that cannot be replicated or sufficiently described. Most human attempts to recreate this particular blue, while well meaning, are facile. It can only be experienced. And on that fall day, it filled every inch of sky, only occasionally punctuated by a fluffy, little Bob Ross cloud.

The sky was so gorgeous that I rolled down all my windows and leaned forward to try to see more of it out of my windshield. A trucker next to me winked and eyed my tattooed armsunaware, Im certain, that the big tattoo covering my forearm was of Saint Mary Magdalene and that I was a Lutheran seminary student, soon to become a Lutheran pastor. Truckers, bikers, and ex-convicts smile at me a lot more than, say, investment bankers do. I smiled back, and then returned my glance to the blue sky above, becoming lost in the thought of the outrageous out-there-ness of space. The beauty of our sky is really just a nice way for the earth to protect us from the terror of whats so vast and unknowable beyond. The boundlessness of the universe is disturbing when you think about it. Its too big and were too small. Suddenly, in that moment, all I could think was: What the hell am I doing? Seminary? Seriously? With a universe this vast and unknowable, what are the odds that this story of Jesus is true? Come on, Nadia. Its a fucking fairy tale.

And in the very next moment I thought this: Except that throughout my life, Ive experienced it to be true.

I once heard someone say that my belief in Jesus makes them suspect that I intellectually suck my thumb at night. But I cannot pretend, as much as sometimes I would like to, that I have not throughout my life experienced the redeeming, destabilizing love of a surprising God. Even when my mind protests, I still cant deny my experiences. This thing is real to me. Sometimes I experience God when someone speaks the truth to me, sometimes in the moments when I admit I am wrong, sometimes in the loving of someone unlovable, sometimes in reconciliation that feels like it comes from somewhere outside of myself, but almost always when I experience God it comes in the form of some kind of death and resurrection.

The mystery of the universe (the same universe that sometimes still makes me wonder what the hell Im doing and that maybe this really is a fairy tale) was created by God. And God chose to reveal who God is by slipping into skin and walking among us as Jesus. And the love and grace and mercy of Jesus was so offensive to us that we killed him. The night before this happened Jesus gathered with some real fuck-ups, held up bread and said take and eat; this is my body for you. And then he went to the cross. But death could not contain God. God said yes to all of our polite no thank yous by rising from the dead. Death and resurrection. It is the Christian story as it has been told to me, starting with Mary Magdalene, the first one to tell it; and as it has been confirmed in my experience.

I have only my confessionconfession of my own real brokenness and confession of my own real faith to offer in the chapters that follow. My story is not entirely chronologicaltime often folds in on itself throughout the bookbut rather, its thematic. It is about the development of my faith, the expression of my faith, and the community of my faith. And it is the story of how I have experienced this Jesus thing to be true. How the Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. Its about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small. This faith helped me get sober, and it helped me (is helping me) forgive the fundamentalism of my Church of Christ upbringing, and it helps me to not always have to be right.

Smiley TV preachers might tell you that following Jesus is about being good so that God will bless you with cash and prizes, but really its much more gruesome and meaningful. Its about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live.

Death and resurrectionthe recurring experience of seeing the emptiness, weeping over our inability to fill it or even understand it, and then listening to the sound of God speaking our names and telling Gods storyis a messy business. But its my business, and its the most beautiful thing I could tell you about.

Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 5:3

D uring my early years of sobriety, I spent most Monday nights in a smoke-filled parish hall with some friends who were also sober alcoholics, drinking bad coffee. Pictures of the Virgin Mary looked down on us, as prayer and despair and cigarette smoke and hope rose to the ceiling. We were a cranky bunch whose lives were in various states of repair. There was Candace, a suburban housewife who was high on heroin for her debutante ball; Stan the depressive poet, self-deprecating and soulful; and Bob the retired lawyer who had been sober since before Jesus was born, but for some reason still looked a little bit homeless.

We talked about God and anger, resentment and forgivenessall punctuated with profanity. We werent a ship of fools so much as a rowboat of idiots. A little rowing team, paddling furiously, sometimes for each other, sometimes for ourselves; and when one of us jumped ship, wed all have to paddle harder.

In 1992, when I started hanging out with the rowing team, as I began to call them, I was working at a downtown club as a standup comic. I was broken and trying to become fixed and only a few months sober. I couldnt afford therapy, so being paid to be caustic and cynical on stage seemed the next best thing. Plus, Im funny when Im miserable.

This isnt exactly uncommon. If you were to gather all the worlds comics and then remove all the alcoholics, cocaine addicts, and manic depressives youd have left well Carrot Top, basically. Theres something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell a truth you can see only from the underside of the psyche. At its best, comedy is prophesy and societal dream interpretation. At its worst its just dick jokes.

When I was working as a comic, normal noncomic people would often say, Wow, I dont know how you can get up in front of all those people with just a microphone. To which I would reply, Wow, I dont know how you can balance your checkbook and get up for work each day. We all find different things challenging in life. Speaking in front of hundreds of people was far less challenging for me than scheduling dental appointments.

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