Staggering Under Burden of Compassion

Barbara Brown Taylor worked long hours ministering to a large congregation in Atlanta, then took the helm of a small rural parish nearby, even as her role and her soul were, as she puts it, “eating each other alive.”

After 15 years at the pulpit, the job, which once fulfilled her spiritually and emotionally, had come to leave her feeling frustrated, discouraged and fatigued.

She interpreted Scripture, presided over numbing committee meetings, hid women from brutal husbands and tended to baptisms and funerals with a gnawing pretense of purity while dust balls, bills and laundry piled up at home.

Once Taylor, now 54, decided to lay down her burden as parish rector at Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church in Clarkesville, Ga., in 1997, she couldn’t get out fast enough. When the president of Piedmont College, northeast of Atlanta, called to offer her an endowed chair in religion later that year, she took it.

Taylor’s recently released book, “Leaving Church,” is a candid appraisal of her transformation from a woman whom Baylor University once named one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world to a member of the flock.

The book, she acknowledged, “is an acquired taste, like single malt Scotch. Some will never like it. Others may appreciate the flavor, age and soil from which it came, and, I hope, take it to heart.”

She shared these and other views in a recent telephone interview from Atlanta.

Though no longer a rector, Taylor remains an Episcopal priest in good standing with the church.

Question: What’s your new life like?

Answer: My new life has much more room for the cycles of the moon in it, meaning there are days I don’t have to go out at all, or be available to anyone but the Spirit. It’s a balance of high and low tides.

It wasn’t always that way. As a church pastor, I had uniform approval and was expected to stand before any group anywhere as a defender of faith, an authorized member of the clergy and a respected author who upheld traditions of the Gospel.

Some of that, of course, was bound to be delusion. But in leaving Grace-Calvary, I lost the identity I claimed for myself as a person with a central seat in the sanctuary.

Q: How prevalent is compassion fatigue among spiritual shepherds?

A: It must be very prevalent. After all, our labor is emotional, not physical, so I can’t imagine it’s not a common occupational hazard. As parish pastors, we learn to suppress or even deny it.... So far, the responses from clergy to my book have ranged from “It is precisely because this work costs my heart so much that it’s what I want to do” to “I’ve got three years to retirement and I’m not sure I’ll make it.”

Q: Why did you pursue a career in ministry in the first place?

A: I wanted to settle down with God, so I married the church. Once I overcame a deathly fear of public speaking, I saw, or thought I saw, an enormous hunger in people for something spiritual that wasn’t divorced from their daily life.

There was a great deal of fulfillment in transforming that experience into words, and in helping people find the kind of nourishment they were looking for.

Q: Wasn’t that a bit presumptuous?

A: What was arrogant about it was to assume I knew people intimately enough to speak to that hunger, to presume to know anything more than anybody else about where spiritual food can be found.

It was a terrible realization. I left Grace-Calvary because my sadness there had lasted a year. I was crying all the time. I couldn’t budge a building program off the ground. God was not giving me a vision.

If someone needed help, I didn’t have any to give. I didn’t even answer the telephone because I was full up on hurt, need and grief myself.

A month of Sundays after I left, I realized I had developed compassion fatigue; I’d been lying on my heart so long it fell asleep.

But there is another church, one I call the “communion of the faithful,” whose faces are known to God alone. I never left that church.

These days, my collar is in the closet on top of my shoes. Although I don’t wear it daily anymore, I put it on once in a while when I go to preach on a Sunday somewhere.

Q: The middle of your book evokes an ominous sense of estrangement. You see your own distress reflected in the needy faces of congregants. Conversely, people tried so hard to hide their own darker natures from you, they treated you, as you put it, like “the Virgin Mary’s younger sister.”

A: That’s the “wilderness period” in the book, when I lost my professional power over others. But in toppling the things I only thought gave me life, I discovered a new strong Spirit.

Until then I was like a physician reading other people’s X-rays and charts. Eventually, I discovered the pulse of God -- ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom -- in my own humanity.

Q: After leaving the pulpit, did you behave any differently?

A: I went overboard. I tried to master the use of bad language. I headed out to the grocery store in dirty jeans and hair flying all over. I quit washing my car and put stickers all over it. One read, “I’m for the separation of church and hate.” Another said, “Born OK the first time.”

Over time, of course, I cleaned up my language, and I’m more kempt in public.

But my tenderness for clergy has never been more acute. I have a deep appreciation for the tight spot they are in. People attack them on a regular basis because they’re mad at God or about clergy abusing their power.

Truth is, although clergy are perceived as powerful, most of the clergy I know best don’t feel powerful at all. That they continue to serve in the midst of all that is remarkable.

Q: How important is attending church on Sunday?

A: I have mixed feelings about that.

Church is essential to keep the old wisdom stories alive and to help individuals form faith and apply traditional practices in daily life. Church can help some people steer clear of pitfalls.

But I also believe God lives in the world and cannot be captured in church on Sunday. It is necessary, at some point, to head out without the roadmap church provides in order to gain firsthand experience of God, and to test the strength of what you trust.

Q: Who is Jesus to you these days?

A: Jesus is a face whose eyes follow me everywhere I go. He’s the lens through which I gaze upon the divine, and the skirt I hide under when I’m afraid. He’s also a guy who’s always asking me, “Who do you think you are, Barbara?”

Q: What’s your response?

A: The answer changes daily. Basically, I’m a middle-aged white woman who’s never broken a bone. I’m a child of God on par with anybody sitting on death row. I’m not as wonderful or important as I think I am, nor as wretched.