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Here humans craft and share their personal, compelling, beautiful, sometimes difficult 17 minute story of when God got real in their life and how that experience changed them. Following their story, they consider with host Sarah Hollar how their experience continues to affect them in their relationships, their sense of self and their way in the world.
Welcome, friends. I hope this listen finds you in a good place.
I hope you're holding on to your sense of your belovedness, your innate value,
and your gifts for navigating your current life situations.
As you hear this story, you may ask yourself, like many others,
is God really in the details, the rules and regs of organized religion?
Are the funds and energy required to support the institution of church where
we find the promised peace that passes all understanding?
Or is it in the solo journeys we best experience the grace and essence of God.
Our storyteller Tamara discovers the realness of God in a charged church convention
where faithful folk scrutinize the manual on ministry,
which they ironically, affectionately called Mom.
Later on, in a pre-dawn Sunday morning, while folding laundry,
trying to find something to say in her sermon, she has a different encounter.
Is it mom or a tie-dyed t-shirt or both or God gets real.
As a pastor, hearing God, or my other understanding or believing in the reality
of God, well, it wasn't always a given.
Sometimes believing that a God, or God, or a Holy Creator, or some entity that
I would say is God exists, or maybe even is real, is more struggle than I want to admit.
Becoming a pastor in my early 40s i attended
three years at a theological seminary attaining
the ever great master divinity degree this
meant reading scores of texts from people across the
ages who seemed to know who god is and
they talked about god as if they were completely sure that
god exists sitting in these classes listening to and conversing with classmates
and professors about their own beliefs and understandings of a presence known
as god the insurance for me in these instances of a god well it seemed plain.
Most of the time until it didn't this way of assurance in a god and the ability
to discuss my own theology or my beliefs about a real god does not always translate well even within
groups of us trained theologians struggles come learning about the dark nights
of the soul became serendipity for me connecting across the oceans and the ages with sister Teresa st.
John of the cross and even more modern Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr.
Among others as I was assigned their writings these These people offered assurances
to me that the reality of God meant even when God is silent,
even when horrors are exposed and tragedies continue,
God is present.
God is real.
For me, these God experiences have come in unexpected moments and places.
One of the roles as pastor is keeping up to date on policies and practices.
Accomplishing this standard task meant my attendance at our large denominational gathering one summer.
The large gathering of the whole denomination in one space and time for us was
called and is called a synod.
At this gathering, I believed it prudent and professional to attend the 8 a.m.
Service session, speaking to the updates on our Manual on Ministry.
Affectionately known as the MOM, the Manual on Ministry was created for both
the local church and the people wanting to serve the church.
It offers all of us guidelines with a range of questions, a variety of questions
that might at one point or time come onto the table. Here's just a few.
What are the requirements for becoming a pastor?
Is a pastor and a minister the same thing?
What training is required for becoming an ordained minister?
What does it mean when you are a minister in good standing?
Is there a bad standing? What ongoing and continuing education is expected?
Where is it offered?
Do lay ministers have any special requirements for limitations?
And the questions expand beyond these, obviously.
Assuming that this session would be quiet with low attendance and a bit bleary-eyed
meeting, well, I grabbed my travel coffee mug and I headed over to the space.
My first clue that my assumptions were incorrect.
This space together was one of these large, huge ballrooms, and it was exploding with people.
It wasn't just a small breakout room. the people
literally were overflowing from this it was
huge just imagine the biggest ballroom we've ever seen
as a little country kid and there were hundreds and maybe
even a thousand people in this room who knew that this was to be a raucous room
of several several hundred people ministers want to be ordained ministers non-denominational
staff in the normal everyday church folk who care who their ministers are and
what training they have And aside,
this latter group of people are some of my favorites.
These normal church people, who they're willing and eager to shepherd their
ministers while they seek to fulfill their own role in the greater church with the big C.
So that morning, I shimmied into the room looking for any possible seat that might be available.
As a solo traveler, there is often a single seat available if you are willing
to step narrowly into the row with plenty of excuse and pardon me's.
And so with my coffee in hand and elbows tucked in, I found myself wide-eyed
and astonished about a third of the way back from the front,
not too far into a row of nice enough looking people and in full view of the
entire crowd with a simple swivel on the head.
It seems the commotion on this given day was a reworking of the basic requirements of ordination.
Would we as a denomination continue to require a Master of Divinity degree?
How much and what type of history and polity classes would be required with
or without a Master of Divinity degree?
It would be evolving to become a lay minister who was called as a solo pastor
of a smaller congregation.
They seem easy enough questions to me.
The challenge, it seems, is that these big divinity degrees cost a sizable sum of cash.
In today's economy and church setting, most seminary students are racking up large amounts of debt.
The local church settings are often rural and small without the budget to pay
a living wage to someone seeking full-time employment to pay off a school loan.
You understand, I hope that I am distilling the conversation way down for this
brief story, a story about listening for God's voice,
a story about the realness, the aliveness and the full on presence of God.
The conversation in that ballroom lasted for more than an hour almost two and most likely probably,
would have gone on if there weren't a myriad of other sessions
and topics happening across the convention center that morning
that also deemed worthy of
our attention emotions flared within
the room voices raised the numbers
of people who lined up at the microphone stand in
this place to voice their hearts their minds and souls was
very varied and I know I shouldn't have said
very varied but there you go it was diverse and these
people that will kind of it what they would they would do a full of emotion and
with outpourings of experiences many from
the small rural churches but they didn't exclude
the inner big city churches some of those churches in
their hundred twenty sixth year even the brand
spanking new churches less than five years old people whose passions were for
those who may who we name as reverend well these passions were varied those
who expected ministers to have an understanding of both the greek and the hebrew languages.
To those being well versed in
the writings of theologians from carl bart to
sally mcfay to meister eckhart and then right literally i mean you begin to
think about what are the qualifications of a pastor are and there are many diverse
skill sets you know maybe we need those to have the gift to sit and to listen
with grace whether in a hospital room a kitchen table,
a prison visitor center, or a park bench.
And then we go on being able to listen with empathy.
What is empathy? And do we all have it? Do we not?
And then on top of all of these emotional relational skill sets and theology skill sets?
Well, what about the skill from business acumen to fund the nonprofit business
and budgets and payroll that comes along with most churches?
That too is warranted somewhere.
In the midst of all these potential skill sets is also the ability and acumen
to design and lead a worship service complete with an 8-10 minute sermon of profound insight.
Unless, of course, your church expects the 19-22 minute version of a deeper profound insight.
Sometimes, when I think about it, I wonder who would ever want to even consider becoming a pastor.
Especially, what was I thinking when in my seemingly more adulthood years of
my late 30s, I believed it was my next calling.
Had I really heard from God?
Was God real? Or was I one of those hearing voices that only sought to embolden my ego?
Returning from Synod that summer, I found myself at 4 a.m.
Folding my laundry on a Sunday morning, wondering one more time what a sermon
would look and sound like on this particular Sunday.
Sermons, you know, you might think they should be, but sermons are not one of
those parts of my job that came easily.
Often I found myself awake at 3.27 or 4.11 a.m.
On a Sunday morning, knowing that a group of people will gather in a few hours at 11 a.m.
With expectations that words will somehow magically come out of my mouth,
declaring things about God or God's teachings or ways to experience God.
With this synod experience fresh on my mind and the conversations of who and
what is a minister swirling within and around me, the shirt on the folding table
exclaimed, It's just love.
In that moment, with my hands touching a cotton tie-dye t-shirt,
wear bold black letters on top of a yellow bullseye surrounded by red,
green, and blue bands of color,
proclaiming, It's just love.
God got real.
All people are ministers, Tamara. All people must proclaim and be love.
It's not about a degree or classes or professionals or checking off a set of boxes.
I am love. Proclaim that this morning.
When god got real that morning i found it a great opportunity to expand the
conversation oh hey god so if it's just love about love for love and through
love well then tell me about the mosquito than that and it's an off wise what
do these pesky creatures have to do with love.
With humor the resounding chuckle replied keeping you humble making sure you
remember that love may need an extra effort.
Making sure you know that love is not judgment.
Love is tough. Love is incredulous and wild.
Love is pesky. Love bites hard and stings.
The impacts, those impacts, though they last far longer than the immediate bite or sting.
And then, well, just because I I can't help myself in these moments of reality
and realness and experience of God.
I asked, so how do I fill up 10 or more so minutes saying that you're just love?
Again, the humor arrived. The chuckle quite unexpectedly pointed to the shirt and said, wear it.
Reveal it. From under your black clergy shirt.
My eyebrows raised and I scoffed. i don't wear my black clergy shirt with a
white collar to church that shirt is only for parades and such in the wider
public when i need to show up looking like a minister and you know that that
guard is not worn by me in my church you did not create that kind of church.
And this time the reply was serious today i need you to be both.
Tamra a real person and tamra a real minister,
when god got real i too had to get real courage was evoked within these moments,
are you suggesting that i do a strip tease in my sermon today again the humor arose,
love infiltrated my heart in ways that opened to the lunacy of a pastor in front
of a congregation while the people
were sharing with their neighbors their understanding of being a minister,
to remove my white collar from my neck unbutton my black clergy shirt and taking
it off to expose the hidden tie-dyed t-shirt underneath that exclaimed it's just love.
When god got real i remembered again that love is one of the craziest things i have ever known,
that there really is no judgment only mercy that grace surrounds and fills every poor and every,
present space that there are no fixes there are no do-overs needed because grace exhales,
releasing all the pent-up fears into a puddle of joy.
When God got real at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning while folding clothes,
the actual long-lasting touchstone of God solidified.
When I actually performed the striptease during my sermon later that morning,
walking into our space wearing my clergy shirt that day with the white clerical
tab intact, the looks, the jokes, and other comments, Let me know that indeed
the realm I had entered into that morning was different.
When our exceptional pianist added impromptu appropriate music as she figured
out what I was doing when I was in buttoning my shirt, was God's wink and nod
affirming my own response.
Over the course of a few decades, I don't remember too many of those sermons
that I gave over the course of 10 years, but this one will forever be etched in my being.
Thank you, Tamara. It was a pleasure. Good, good.
Thank you for your time and your story.
Yeah, it was an honor. I was happy to be asked.
When I was listening to your story,
I was thinking about the story of you going to your denomination's big meeting
where the issues of institutional sustainability and governance came up.
And you went with interest and enthusiasm, and that wasn't the place that God
got real for you. Correct.
And later, in the early morning of a Sunday morning,
under the pressure of coming with the Word of God expressed,
people waiting for that, and it's still being unfolded in your mind.
Folding laundry.
You had this encounter with a t-shirt that read, it's just love.
And then a humorous encounter, a really playful encounter with God.
And you took that playful encounter And for you, it was an incident of God being very real.
Completely. And you acted on it. You acted on it. And it had some freedom and some likeness to it.
And what that brought up in me was for 12 years, I was a Girl Scout leader.
And I had the same girls from the time they were five or six until they were
18. And we would camping.
We would camping a lot. And when they were young, when they were little,
we would go to a Girl Scout camp and do platform camping.
Cool. and we would truck in lots of equipment, cooking equipment,
lots of toolers, lots of craft things for our time, lots of sport equipment.
And it was camping. Yes. And it was valuable and it was fun and it was exhausting.
Absolutely. It was. That's a lot of work.
And when they were in high school, We would do camping where you carried everything on your back.
We didn't go to a camp. We'd go to a state park and we would park a long way
and hike and hike and hike.
Whatever we could carry was all we had.
And it was a little trenuous maybe, but it was so free and we did not leave exhausted.
There were merits in both. Absolutely. Right? There are merits in them.
And what I heard in your story was what you often hear when people talk about,
I'm spiritual but not religious.
Because if you're religious, that comes with some things.
There's some expectations and some things to maintain and sustain.
And the spiritual is sometimes when you just show up all by yourself and it's just you and God.
So I'm curious about, because right now you're no longer pastoring a church.
Correct. I'm unemployed.
Well, okay. That's fantastic.
That's a really interesting perspective that people would probably like to know more about.
But in this context, what is it that are you missing?
Are you aware of it's not the same in your relationship with God not being embedded
in a religious community? Mm-hmm.
Yes. So one of the things that I definitely know that is a void in my life is
the communal understanding of a weekly commitment to join together.
And so for me, the institutionalized church, the gift that it has and that it
has the potential to be and is for many,
is you know up that on any given Sunday, you're going to show up and there's going to be, you know,
Joe Ed and Mary Sue and Rebecca there and you
know that those people that show up every Sunday and
they're going to offer you a smile and a hug and they're
going to say how are you doing and depending
upon your relationship with them many of them you can
be completely honest and say it was a
hard week and you know that you're going to get a
hug and you're going to say I'll pray for your sister and
so that piece of the institutionalized church
that is the body of christ for me you
know there's the thing where you put your fingers together and you make
a steeple and you say this is the church and you open the doors and here's all
the people and your fingers go up that for me is church when i think of institutionalized
church and that gigantic synod that we went to you know to decide well who can
be a pastor of this church?
It's because of those people, right?
And I can feel the emotions are in double my throat because the tears come because
it matters how we as humans come together in community,
specifically for me, how we understand the God in the mix of that and who God
is calling us to be in community.
And so when a group of people say, we want to gather as a spiritual community
where we believe in an entity that is holy and sacred that in itself is holy
and sacred and so that greater understanding of community is a huge void that I don't have and,
I miss it. I definitely miss it and know that there is a chunk of me that is a gaping hole.
Probably, I would probably say it like that.
So then, without that community, where are you finding an encounter?
Where is God getting real for you? Where are you encountering God in your sort
of solo part of this journey?
So I've been on a solo sojourn since January of 2024, and literally I've been
all over the world in a variety of countries and across the United States as well.
I've been on the Pacific coast and I've been on the East coast.
And for me, God is real when I stay present in those moments,
whether it's checking into a hotel and in having a friendly banter back and
forth with the woman behind the counter before I know it, we're talking about her son.
Before I know it, she's saying, I don't have skills for this.
And I'm like, did I say I was a pastor? or are we just having this conversation?
And I'm joking about that, and I'm not.
Because I think when we show up and we understand that every moment of every
day has the potential to encounter a holy and a sacredness that's in that moment, it's Mr. T.
It's the tiger calf that's out on the front step, right?
It's the newborn calf that I bottle fed last week.
It's the family members that you haven't seen in 10 years, and you're driving
through, and you say, hey, can I bring you lunch?
And they're like, yes. And then you think that you're going to go and see two
cousins, and before you know it, they've called everybody and eight of your
cousins that you haven't seen in 10 years show up.
And so it's these moments of unexpected holiness that when you are intentionally
open to the holy in those moments, the holy shows up, God shows up.
And for me, when I use the word holy and sacred, for me, that is God getting
real in those moments and God becoming real in those moments.
And not that it's every moment of every day.
And there certainly are moments when the energy buzzes and you know that there's
a deeper presence in those moments.
And that's how I would say that.
One of the things that I've been really curious about um,
Some of us do not come from a tradition where we have been encouraged or modeled
how to speak about our experience of when God got real.
And even though there is a gospel call to that,
some of us find it awkward or not proficient at it.
So I'm curious, I ask my storytellers, how has this experience been for you?
Thinking about it and telling it and sharing it out beyond your intimates, giving it to the world.
You know, when he first offered me the invitation and I thought, well, that's fun.
And then I thought, and which one would I tell, right? And which story would I tell?
And I did one that was most recent, I think, that was later in my life.
And then our children specifically, I think, because I think my assumption is,
and we all know what assumptions can do to us,
is that people just assume that pastors have it all together and pastors have a direct line to God.
And we don't. It still is a practice.
It still is an intention. And I know there are plenty of days wearing this mantle
as pastor of pastor that I could be no further away from God than, you know,
everybody else that doesn't have any understanding that there's a God out there
because we get so busy and our lives get busy.
And so for me, A, deciding which story to tell.
And then that was that piece of that.
And then B, like when I was telling the story and writing the story, it didn't just pop out.
You know, like I knew a piece of the story, but then to really delve into the
story and what were all the meaningful parts of the story, it was refreshed within me.
And literally when I was writing it, like tears fell from my face.
And I thought, what's going on here, right?
And in that moment of when I realized it was about getting real in a variety of things.
Understandings of God like God got real but then that forced me to get real,
because humor is one of those things that I was raised
with it is a part of me I think
God is play and God is humor and that is
a regular way in which God shows up with me and for me and through me and there
is also a seriousness this underlying that humor and that play and so feeling the both end of that um.
It was affirming and it reminded me of my original call to be pastor and even
in these days when i'm on a solo sojourn discerning what my next call is what
my next vocational call is It was a nice,
solid reminder of this is my call.
And having a greater voice to continue telling those stories of the reality,
the grace, the love of God is definitely a core part of who I am.
And to never shirk from that opportunity, because it really is an opportunity
to offer that love, to offer that grace.
And that's just the normal part of me.
Maybe not normal, but it's been embedded within me for decades, right? Yes.
And so just to accept that and to not shirk from that gift.
Is that the right way to say that? I'm not sure.
What came up for me in that is that I'm often saying this is not accidental.
Where and how we encounter God is not accidental. You know, we are,
God has wired us to interact with God in this way and to pay attention to that and to trust it.
Yeah absolutely that that that trust like i literally did
a strip cheese you know and the piano player sandra she's
just hysterical so she's playing the striptease song in
a worship service in a christian church you know and it was humorous and i think
when we trust those moments and then we're actually able to either act on them
or tell about them you know other pieces of us open up and for me the truth
shall set you free which is one of jesus is saying and that's a piece of that freedom from me.
It's a liberation and a freedom that really only comes when you trust that encounter
and act upon that encounter.
That's good stuff. That's good stuff.
Thank you. You are more than welcome. I was very happy to do it.
Thank you, listeners and subscribers. Thank you for your time,
attention, and ponderings.
I invite your comments and reviews I also invite you to share your story of
when God got real Send them along to sarah at whengodgotreal.com,
Until next time, breathe and be well.