Rev. Jenny Lannom on uncovering oneself through community

The Development of an Authentic Self through Friendships

“Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked;
and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons….
and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
among the trees of the garden.”
Genesis 3:7-8

“There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole;
there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.”
Text from an African American Spiritual

Ever since my seminary days I have been fascinated by the first three chapters of Genesis. In these three chapters contain some of the most concise, insightful and poetic storytelling about the human condition ever written. It is a story that has resonated with me and “niggled” at me for decades. The text weaves a beautiful and painful picture of the beginning of guilt and shame in the human condition. The man and the woman in their attempt to be like God, and realizing that they are not, developed feelings that conveyed that they were not acceptable as persons just as they were. Perhaps their shame developed as they compared themselves to God. So begins their attempts to hide (clothing themselves) and emotional hiding has become a legacy of the generations that have come after them.

Personally, I have struggled for most of my life with feeling like I have to “hide” who I am. If I couldn’t be “perfect” (to be like God?) then I needed to appear competent and capable. As I developed into a young person, I felt no freedom to make “mistakes.” All these words in quotations are filled with assumptions for me…one assumption being that there is a “right” way to “be” in the world, and that if I only worked hard enough, I could discover it and do it. Another assumption was that to make a mistake would make me appear “stupid” or “less than” someone else. I lived with the fear and anticipated shame that when others “found me out,” they would judge me negatively and reject me. Out of this fear of not “measuring up,” I lived out of a sense of shame, and was afraid to embrace my vulnerabilities and celebrate my humanness. So I developed ways to hide emotionally…from my Self, from God, and from others. These were deep wounds.

A place of grace for me was seminary, a place where people did see me for who I was and loved, accepted and nurtured me anyway! It was at seminary that I was introduced to CPE. I took a summer unit and then a yearlong program. CPE initially became a resource for addressing my self-understanding and my fears of not measuring up.

One of the things I learned in CPE and was reinforced in psychotherapy is that not only was it okay to be myself, but I couldn’t really be a functioning and effective minister any other way. With the support of caring CPE supervisors and peers, I learned to appreciate what I could offer and began to realize that I did not need to “hide” who I really was. It will probably take the rest of my life to live into that realization.

Two years ago, I was blessed to be invited to join four other ACPE Supervisors to create a “Cohort Group” through Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s College of Pastoral Leadership program.[1] This program is funded with a grant from the Lily Foundation. The College of Pastoral Leadership’s purpose is to invite and empower clergy to create intentional community for support and collegiality. It is out of the context of my experience in the “Circle of Shalom” Cohort Group that my “musings” around the theological issues of woundedness and authenticity emerged.

In her most recent book, Leaving Church: a Memoir of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor writes that as she has reflected on how her life has evolved, a “central revelation...for me (is that) the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human.”[2] This has been my life struggle…to understand what it means to be “fully human” and to allow myself to make that journey. For me as a Christian, this occurs in community where I am invited to be my true self; where I am invited to give voice to my fears, my critical voice, my dreams and wishes, my gratitude for life and all that I have received and all that I have been allowed to give. My cohort group from Austin Presbyterian has been another important context for developing and embracing my full humanity.

Recently our cohort group was on retreat and spent several hours in deep sharing. We caught up on our lives and shared our struggles. Our group has decided that we need to be writing about what we are learning about ourselves as professionals and as persons as we engage the cohort group experience. Toward the end of our retreat, we shared what we had written so far for our articles. This was a rich time to connect not only with my trusted colleagues, but with myself as well. I had come to the retreat exhausted and feeling depleted from several weeks of intense ministry in my CPE center. I didn’t feel self-confident, and my “critical voice” seemed to be throwing a tantrum in my head, judging everything about me incredibly harshly. When I spend time with my creative and wildly competent cohort sisters, I can compare myself negatively to them and begin to feel “less than.” But I did something different this time. I shared how I was feeling. I talked about how I loved them and valued them and how I often felt intimidated by how bright and “together” they seemed. This felt like a huge risk, one in which I “came out of hiding” to reveal my feelings of vulnerability and waning self-esteem. They looked at me, and one by one, revealed that they too had similar feelings from time to time.

The theological concept of becoming fully human has to do with developing a level of authenticity in my life. Authenticity calls me to live into the fullness of my personhood through acknowledging and accepting my vulnerabilities and limitations, and my strengths. Additionally, as a woman, being authentic means that I need to claim my voice and trust that my own inner wisdom can be a valuable guide. I have wrestled with the concept of leadership. From the beginning of my ministry, I have shied away from being a “senior pastor” or a departmental director of chaplaincy – two ways of exercising leadership. I tend to be comfortable with a more “indirect” way of leading…from behind the scenes. One reason for this is that I feel my gifts are geared to detail-thinking and executing a plan, rather than guiding/directing others to carry out a vision. Another reason is I have just been plain scared that I was not adequate to the responsibilities of this type of leadership position and might fail.

Further, I have focused my leadership on developing and implementing a CPE program. My passion is teaching and journeying with those who want to learn more about themselves in ministry. I love what I do! I companion and challenge my students to be the best them they can be in ministry. I use my Self, warts and all, to model what I understand to be an authentic ministry. I set boundaries, give them permission to make and learn from mistakes, and not hide those mistakes from their peers or me. I create an environment where they can trust me not to judge them negatively. Hopefully this helps them learn to trust themselves to be okay, no matter what they encounter in ministry. The experience of seeing students grow and develop into competent and confident pastoral ministers is a joy for me. It is incredibly generative work that feeds my soul. So,I am where I need to be in my career for the moment.

In my cohort group, three of my sisters are directors of Chaplaincy Departments, and two of us are managers of CPE. The three directors engage heavy and demanding institutional administrative duties as a major part of their position. In our two years together, they have shared that they don’t always know what do to; yet they report that this group has given them the courage to “step out” and take the risk to be creative or learn from making mistakes. As I shared my own feelings of fear and inadequacy with them, I have felt their love and acceptance, as well as their tremendous encouragement and affirmation of my gifts. The women in my cohort are inspirational models for me by being authentic and creative in the midst of institutional pressures. They model self-care in a society that suggests, particularly to women, that to care for one’s Self is to be selfish. My cohort appreciates beauty and revels in it, and have taught me to open my eyes, take a breath, taste the wine of life and appreciate the gift of the beauty in my midst.

Their lives and their friendship have been a gift that has buoyed me in difficult times. My relationship with them is like a healing balm that reminds me that I do not journey alone. This balm soothes my need to hide who I am from myself and others. I have learned anew a great lesson from my cohort – that having honest and loving friendships and being in community is my path to becoming fully human: honest, vulnerable, loving, engaging and accepting that life is a gift to be lived and celebrated. I am grateful for the grace of friendship and community that is this cohort group experience!

Footnotes:

[1] I encourage any clergy who are searching for community to gather a group of trusted colleagues and form a cohort group. Contact Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s website at www.austinseminary.edu and click on “Continuing Education” and then on “College of Pastoral Leaders” to apply.

[2] Leaving Church: a Memoir of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor, HarperCollins, New York, 2006.

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