I BURIED JOAN CRAWFORD

Jonathan Sinclair Carey recalls his two-year

secondment as a student priest in New York; all human, and inhuman, life was there

I BURIED Joan Crawford. To be banally exact, I helped to bury her while I was a divinity student in an East Manhattan church back in the 1970s. That ecclesiasti- cal undertaking somehow never found its way into my curriculum vitae. But the memory returned to me on a recent fleet- ing visit to New York City.

There, I paused in front of the church where I became initiated into human nature: New York human nature, to be more specific. Part of the three-year Mas- ter of Divinity (M.Div.) programme, required towards ordination by most American Protestant denominations, entailed what was called 'field education'. So every weekend for two years I commut- ed from the Ivy League village of Prince- ton and its New Jersey mock-Gothic ivory towers to the inner-city parish of Upper Manhattan. It was different.

On my first Saturday in 1975, I got off the bus at the bustling Port Authority. Among the crowd of humanity was a pigeon. It was pecking at something with keen determination. A used condom.

Welcome to New York, I thought, aware of the creature staring back at me instead of at the all-too-young bagwoman who suddenly swooped down and added that prophylactic prize to her earthly goods. She smiled triumphantly, the pigeon look- ing furious; but sight of both was soon lost in the blurred pastel of passing mankind and omnipresent flying rats.

After a narrow escape from having my pocket picked on the subway, I arrived at the New England-style brick church, its steeple with requisite nesting pigeons con- trasting sharply in architectural style with the skyscrapers. The white-haired, thrice- married minister, who had been shepherd to his flock since 1959, greeted me and showed me round, producing an enormous ring of keys as every door seemed to be locked: to the sanctuary, to all the offices, even to the bathrooms. Somehow the tra- ditional Reformation imagery of the free- dom of the Christian took on an ironic dimension. Few had keys to this concrete kingdom.

That first afternoon he officiated at a 31-year-old yuppy's memorial service: a suicide — a single woman and stockbroker he had never met, a body he would never see; only a name, now a memory with painfully unanswered questions for the bereaved. The minister invited me to sit at the back of the memorial chapel and observe a pastoral exercise in healing.

`From what I have learned,' the minister intoned, looking tastefully sombre in his Harvard preaching gown, 'Susan was always there to help her friends. She was cheerful, encouraging, kind.' The 20 or so yuppy mourners listened attentively while he waxed eulogistic. 'But,' he suddenly demanded, looking directly at them, where were you when she needed you?' The dead silence in the chapel overcame the living. You could have heard a tie-pin drop, with all its attendant Calvinist angels pausing in their danse capitalistique.

Continuing, the minister all but declared that no man, or woman, is a Manhattan island unto him- or herself as he exhorted us to care for others: as in Love Thy New Yorker as Thyself. Care? In New York? Easier preached than practised, I thought, wondering if I should nickname him Father Teresa — or St Sisyphus.

That first weekend I slept on the sofa in the minister's office. His nocturnal bene- diction upon leaving me — 'Don't wander around the church at night' — was a warn- ing from experience. 'You never know who might be prowling around.' He patted my arm, smiled and closed the door to this inner sanctum, turning the lock afterwards, of course. Somehow the biblical imagery of a thief in the night came a little too close to home, or to church, as I tried to sleep, hardly feeling snug in the arms of Mor- pheus or in Abraham's bosom. The next morning finally arrived and with it my first Sunday service. Self-con- sciously attired in black clerical gown for the first time in my life, I was introduced to the congregation and read the first lesson. After the service, I stood with the minister greeting people when a woman came UP, her face wearing a livid expression. 'You're a sexist!' she declared loudly, pointing at the minister. He looked honestly perplexed and asked why, in a pastoral voice, trying t°_, look sympathetic. 'You used the word humanity in your sermon — and it has the word man in it.' She turned and stormed off. 'Welcome to the ministry,' he whis- pered to me with a cryptic smile, noticing the look of disbelief on my face. Somehow' attending West Point Sunday School — as my father, grandfather, two uncles and 3 cousin had before me — hadn't prepared me for this.

The minister, though, explained later that Katie was one of the crosses he had to bear. 'Every church has them,' he said' rolling his eyes, 'and they're always there when you don't need them.' He also noted that when congregation! rank ministerial attributes, sense ,/ humour is always primary, preaching skills much further down the list, on a par with mere intellect. A Shakespearean jester is, more likely to succeed than a biblical fo°,' for Christ. 'They want you bright — but not too bright,' he suggested. 'And always try to preach as if addressing the person ' either side of the listener. Much safer• was further told that more than one minis- ter has taken out clergy malpractice /1011: ance — just in case. Even a sermon can be grounds for slander. Nothing, no one, 1 sacred in New York. Especially in a church. I remember tile sexton David hovering somewhat nervoasi3d? outside my office the following weekei,, while I talked to a person who had Wa'r; dered in from the street. David had been there 40 years and had long ago beofst both street- and church-wise. After InY urn pastoral counselling session lasting tear, minutes, which consisted of giving the man a voucher for a hamburger across rp_e street, David pulled me aside and told nice. never to invite a stranger into mY ota, Too easy to get mugged or, in other siwto tions, accused of rape. David failed notice his own indecent assault upon or innocence. eks But nothing surprised me as the we 0. and months went by, and I, no lorgrs, I sleeping on a sofa but in parishioo as guest-rooms, tried loving New Yorkers_dj myself. Hardly easy. Or safe. An occasiole, man or woman on the streets might sin at me and — dare I be so honest? couldn't decide if they recognised me fro church or were 'cruising'. After all, New Yorkers do not look others in the eye unless they want something. Responding was therefore always a delicate matter. The last thing I needed was a fatal attrac- tion or, even worse, an offended parish- ioner.

Not that I found sanctuary in my own office. There was the time the well-dressed blind man wanted to talk to a minister (these encounters invariably ending up in my lap). He asked if he could put his hand on my leg while we sat there, just so he'd know where I was as he talked about his loneliness and handicap. If only his hand had stopped there. David hadn't prepared me for this situation — or for when the man stood up and showed himself out. There are none so blind as those who can see.

There was the time someone pulled a gun on me. Princeton didn't teach us how to cope with this sort of thing in the intro- duction to pastoral care and counselling course — or offer any Protestant casuistry as to how to handle the situation when Linda the lawyer tried repeatedly to find me alone in the church, and then lifted her skirt.

One of my Princeton classmates, who went through the same 'field experience', eventually left the ministry after one night hearing a knock on his Boston apartment door and, upon opening it, finding a perox- ide-blonde parishioner attired only in a raincoat provocatively fondling her breasts and moaning softly, 'Take me, Reverend.' This tall, dark and handsome, disillusioned hetero-Presbyterian closed the door quick- ly and broke into a cold sweat. David is now a banker and professed druid with what he calls his 'savings ministry' in North Carolina, far from Puritan New England. Considering the rising number of cases of alleged ministerial sexual abuse, whether of women or little boys, he was indeed a man of principles.

At the end of the first year came my first sermon: 'On Being'. It was delivered with all the passion and pedantic hubris of the divinity student, with a bit of fear and trembling mixed in. Try to be humorous, I seriously reminded myself, imagining Moses delivering one-liners between com- mandments. Yet New Yorkers treated my ethereal discourse more as grounds for a viva voce. At the coffee hour afterwards, the philosophy professor lectured me on ancient Greek philosophy, Thomas Aquinas and Wittgenstein. 'Too simplistic,' he said with a quiet shake of his head, stir- ring his tea in the styrofoam cup. The chairman of the psychology department at a local college took me to task for failing to consider phenomenology and Zen Bud- dhism. 'Too simplistic,' he said.

`Too complex,' most parishioners moaned about my 15-minute homily. I merely wondered whether Moses, Jesus, or Billy Graham would have had a chance with such critics, simultaneously keeping one eye open for Crazy Katie, as the staff had nicknamed her long ago. Fortunately, she was preoccupied with the minister on the other side of the church hall, no doubt talking about my sermon. Several pigeons watched me from the outside window- ledge.

The minister and I discussed my perfor- mance later. After informing me that stud- ies indicate that the psychological stress on a preacher equals that on a test pilot, he shattered any illusions of my homiletical brilliance by suggesting that the congrega- tion was probably daydreaming about what I'd be like in bed rather than focus- ing on my discourse upon the sacred. I had never considered myself a phallic symbol before. (No wonder Linda kept smiling at me during the sermon.) I stiffened, metaphorically speaking, with embarrass- ment. And, yes, Crazy Katie had been talking about me, as the minister admit- ted, actually insisting in no uncertain terms that I should replace him. Immedi- ately.

The minister eyed me suspiciously, as if some conspiratorial coup d'eglise were underfoot. St Jerome came to mind — a 2nd-century comment he had made about how all priests were suspicious of other priests. Still true, it seems. And Katie. I had never even spoken to her and now she wanted me as her minister.

Later, a friendly nurse in the gynaecolo- gy ward of one of the local hospitals explained the clerical facts of life. Accord- ing to her, many female patients fantasised more about seducing young chaplains than young doctors and medical students. After all, we were the proverbial forbidden fruit. But my sense of being a sex symbol didn't last long. Within the hour, I visited a patient who matter-of-factly blew her nose on the sheets as if this were the done thing. And then came the greatest revela- tion: going in to comfort another woman after learning her baby had not survived. `Thank God the bugger died,' she replied candidly, stubbing out her cigarette. 'I didn't want no more kids anyway.'

Truman Capote once remarked that what he relished about New York City was that you could have seven sets of friends and be assured their paths would never cross. Certainly true. I could never adjust to the number of people found dead in their apartments several days later, or even weeks. Or to the unaccountable suicides, like Susan's, or the tragedies, like the Har- vard Business School graduate-parishioner who on paper had everything to live for but who jumped off the tenth floor of his apart- ment building — and lived, sort of. What to say to his wife and her little boy? Or to someone with inoperable cancer? Parents of a newborn with dreadful birth defects? Or parents robbed of their baby through cot death? I began to understand what Martin Luther meant when he wrote that a person becomes a minister not by studying and praying, but by living and dying and being damned. There were some joyous occasions shared in the congregation's daily life; they include the 87-year-old parishioner who wondered how long he should wait after the death of his wife of 62 years before marrying his childhood sweetheart. `Michael,' the minister said, 'at your age, how about two weeks?' Two weeks later, he pronounced them husband and wife, and they processed slowly down the aisle, canes in hand, to live — briefly — happily ever after. Four days after graduation, 5 June 1.971,' I was ordained, at the age of 26. The prece- dent of Princeton Seminary preached. The- ological dignitaries gathered for the laying-on of hands. The professor of psy- chology, resplendent in academic gown like the others, represented the congregation and delivered an address worthy of any annual meeting of the American PsYclIcr; logical Association (`too simplistic,' I told him afterwards with devilish grin). All I had to do that day was deliver the benediction, carefully penned on my left palm — just in case. At the end of the ser- vice, I stood in front of the congregari°11' slowly raising my right hand for the tradi- tional Aaronic blessing, 'The Lord bless you and keep you. ' It was a powerful moment. I could easily understand why my classmate Mark, a Balii; tist, fainted mid-benediction at his °vi ordination ceremony the following vveci, and had to be carried out while the congre- gation sang 'God of the Prophets, Bles Thy Prophet's Son'. Fortunately in mY ensre: no palm-prompting was necessary. Afte, wards, Crazy Katie berated the semia% president and informed me that I was tu,n, devil; Linda caught me off guard, and the minister welcomed me to the ministrY the last time. Seventeen years later — just recently ---eits I stood in front of that church agatn!,.,,/ doors locked. The building with its fairnO, spire and feathered incumbents hadn changed, although my own fleshly shows increasingly sad signs of weathern My minister had retired, his successor ti; survived some sex scandal, and God ° knew what had become of Crazy Katie, Linda and the other 998 parishioners. My New York experience still haunts me. If only I had the confidence of my tenth great-grandfather (who had been one of the first four Puritan divines in Boston, Massachusetts) and his congrega- tion when they triumphantly 'Voted, that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; Voted, that the earth is given to the Saints; Voted, that we are the saints.' I've experienced too much through the years to feel quite so certain and Puritani- cally Correct, at least about our being saint- ly.

Now there must be some saints out there, given that there are over 1,200 reli- gious bodies within the United States with some 400,000 clergy leaders. Roman Catholics account for one quarter of the Population and there are over six million Jews. But nine out of every ten churches in America are decidedly Protestant, ranging from such mainstream denominations as the Methodists and Presbyterians to the obscure Process Church of the Final Judg- ment, St Joseph's Indian Reform Church, and the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predesti- narian Baptists. Many of their churches have spires of one type or another; how inspiring they are is altogether another matter.

Two divinity school catalogues with their course offerings seem to indicate that saintly living has become decidedly more complex, if not unrealistic. Recently, Princeton Seminary's Center for Continu- ing Education offered 'Doing Ministry with Difficult People', taught by an organi- sational psychologist. As the course description states:

One of the perennial problems faced in parish ministry is the onslaught of difficult people. This event will address skills on how to work with a dozen specific situations, as well as ways to shake the awful temptation to 'fix' difficult personalities.

So much for recognising the realities of others, to include Katie. And so much for my years studying theological ethics if one clergyman, who prefers to style himself a `pastoral psychotherapist', has his way when he argues adamantly that 'there's right, there's wrong, and there's real'.

Attending to God's business has also become big business. Other Princeton mini-courses include 'Run the Church the Way You Run the Company?' and `Choosing to Serve People More Effec- tively: Marketing for Congregations'. More than one minister these days has graduated as a Master of Business Admin- istration, giving entirely new pastoral meaning to accounting for your sins.

Then there is the California divinity school with its right-on curricula, to include 'Adolescence: You'll Know Who I Am by the Song that I Sing', 'Aids and the Church', 'Spiritual Dimensions of the Les- bian and Gay Experience', and 'The Theol- ogy of Organic Cooking'. Where theology was once defined as 'the science of living blessedly forever', it has now become con- cerned not only with basic survival and finding our daily bread but with ensuring it's tasty and nutritional too.

One course has especially caught my eye: `Animals as Spiritual Teachers'. As the cat- alogue entry states:

This course will ask such questions as where do the animals fit into our experience of the holy? As stewards of the earth do we have a moral imperative to animals? Through lec- ture, guest speakers, discussion, reading and writing we will reflect on the spiritual lessons animals have to teach us.

I thought again of that long-forgotten pigeon pecking at that condom and how that bestial encounter, or 'spiritual lesson', began my quest to understand human nature and human acts (pace St Francis). Pigeons taught me something during my training in New York City, but only indi- rectly. It was through encounters with human beings — whether Susan, Katie, Joan Crawford, or any and all of the street people or parishioners, saints and sinners alike — that I learned what ministry really meant, even if I still don't understand human nature and the many modern theories regarding it, which are decidedly for the birds.