Hi there friends,
For me, the month of November is always associated with dying. I blame the decade I spent at a religious magazine where our November issue was where we placed all of our articles and essays on death and dying. And certainly, the timing is right for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the northern part of that hemisphere. A step outside and the passing away of late summer’s and early fall’s bounty is apparent to all the senses. Leaves crunching underfoot. The smell of wood smoke in the air. The crisp air and the waning light.
And while it’s been a while and it’s maybe odd to come back at you after a couple quiet months with a reflection on death of all things, that is what I have to offer you in this edition of my Substack! I’ve been wanting to share a story about something that happened in my church in the late summer and in this part of the season, the time seems just right.
Like many in the religious profession, I read those articles about the decline of religion and the follow up articles on the subsequent loss experienced culturally with a bit of a knowing nod, a great deal of sadness and anxiety, and a touch of indignant self-righteousness—but even that flare of ego is largely thanks to the grief. The thing is, I know well what people can experience when they count themselves members of a church, active or semi-active or at the level of a two-four times a year active. I see people grow personally. I see them establish lifelong bonds with others, across gender, generations, and race and culture. And I see them care for each other in their time of need.
Jessica Grose’s series of newsletters on religious “Nones” a couple months ago for the New York Times’ section eventually got to this point. People long for community in our culture of increasing isolation. I concur. As a culture are increasingly isolated and isolating and church (or mosque or temple or gurdwara, etc.) is a pretty good place to find community. Marketers know this longing well and now use it to build brand loyalty and ultimately sell products. Just look at all those companies, from those making media to those making exercise bikes, whose consumers are now “community members” with cute names to symbolize their “belonging.” Heck, even church growth consultants (a real thing) will talk about framing coming to church in terms of “belonging.” But what Grose and, indeed, no one seems to ever talks about is the sort of thing that happens at the end of life. No one ever talks about the kind of care you receive even in death when you’re a member of a church .
This occurred to me a few months ago after the death of a member of my church who I’d been providing pastoral and spiritual care for several months on his deathbed. This man had no living relatives left. He died under the assumption that no funeral would be possible because of the costs associated with one. His end-of-life plans had been made years before I arrived at the church: he’d purchased a space in our church’s columbarium and made arrangements with a cremation society. Even when I asked him about a funeral, he wasn’t interested in talking about it.
And yet, my small, faithful community responded to the news of his death in the most tender and full-hearted way. Almost immediately following the announcement, there was an email inquiring about whether the clergy would plan a solemn requiem mass alongside an offering of a not small amount of money to hire the musicians so we could. Another person offered to pay for the flowers. And another person said they could prepare food for a reception following the funeral.
I ended up preaching on this very thing at the funeral (if you’d like to read the text in full, it is linked here), which I called “resurrections sightings,” glimpses into the great beyond which we cannot know this side of our lives. The answer to the question, what happens when we die cannot be answered in full, but when you are a part of a religious community, it is possible to know what happens in part because of the time-honored traditions associated with caring for and mourning the dead.
Now, I don’t mean to make this into an argument for getting thee to church. But maybe it already is. Or at least something worth honest consideration. Get thee to a community that demands a certain kind of accountability, even if just to show up and maybe purchase the flowers for the altar once in a while even on the Sundays you were thinking you would rather skip. Get thee to a community where you are on the hook for the pot of soup for community supper even and especially when you’d rather eat a bag of chips for dinner while staring out the window or at a trashy reality show (just speaking from experience). Get thee to a community that requires your presence because what you “do” for them is tangible but also it’s simply your presence they desire.
It’s not that there is a contractual element to belonging, even though, often, that’s how being a religious adherent gets presented. The parishioner at whose funeral wasn’t able to offer much more to the parish other than his presence. And that was enough, though I don’t want to say enough, because his presence was a grace. And still, because it’s just what we do, he was sent off with pomp and circumstance. (That said, when I gathered and went through his belongings from the nursing home where he died, I glimpsed a record of his giving to the church and the percentage of his income he gave would put many of us to shame.)
Most people don’t know a church like that, I know. I’ve listened to people first hand tell me that they can’t find this kind of belonging anywhere. There’s always something wrong with the community they’re trying to be a part of. To that I have two responses, one for those who long for a community and haven’t found it and one for those of us within in them: 1. Perhaps living with what is wrong with the community is exactly what we all need to be more comfortable doing. Enduring the pinch points and frustrations is not the same as experiencing trauma and silently suffering. And, 2. Considered in this way, maybe the decline of religious institutions as we know them then isn’t such a bad thing. Perhaps we just need to die to our old ways and find new ways to offer glimpses into resurrection, into something that lives just out of sight in the great beyond.
Book News
Mason Menenga had me on his podcast A People’s Theology to talk about meaning making, bread, and how these two things are intertwined for me.
I also appeared on the New Evangelicals, which was very cool! We talked a lot about the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism in general (the umbrella under which the denomination I serve in falls), as well as bread of course.
Please continue to support The Sacred Life of Bread by leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I’m planning to do a little giveaway promo after Thanksgiving on Instagram, so if you don’t already follow me, I’m @memugi. Clearly, I have never followed a strategy for BUILDING AN AUDIENCE or INCREASING ENGAGEMENT because I struggle to write newsletter with any kind of regularity (not for a lack of hustle), but I still think it would be cool to top 500 followers?
Also, if you would like to have me on your podcast, get in touch. Even if you have 5 listeners! Let’s talk!
Things I’ve been listening to, reading, watching, cooking and eating
True to form, I have a menu and grocery list finalized for Thanksgiving, and did so exactly 10 days out. I’m not even hosting. But I am making to tarts (this one that I could probably make in my sleep and this one for the GF folks), dinner rolls to serve with compound butter, a rice stuffing for the gluten-free people I love (will probably wing this recipe), and perhaps (probably) a cocktail. I was going to skip the cocktail, but I have a bunch of already squeezed lemons hanging out in the freezer, taking up too much room, so I think it’s time to make a bittersweet lemon syrup in said cocktail. I’d love a recommendation if you have one.
Also, I cannot stop watching Call the Midwife. I had to stop watching when I was pregnant ALMOST 10 YEARS AGO, and only recently decided to return to it. Look, I usually watch TV that doesn’t make me feel my feelings, but I will stan this show until the day I die, even if every single episode makes me cry. And the Christmas special in the Outer Hebrides! A friend commented to me that this should have been made into a spinoff. Agreed.
I am like half a decade late to this party, but have you ever watched Art Cooking? I was late to an appointment this morning in part because I lost track of time watching the one on Van Gogh. These videos are so fun and interesting. If the majority of the content available on the internet is like open bags of stale Doritos that have been sitting out for months, this stuff is like a pot pie, fresh from the oven. Nourishing as it is tasty. Makes you wonder why you don’t have it all the time.
God Talk is an occasional newsletter about seeking and making meaning out of life in the modern world. God is in the name but belief is not required for reading.