Thanks for the Advocate

Today the Church of the Advocate bid a liturgical farewell to Hugo and me in anticipation of our impending move. Some of the songs that were chosen for today's service were related to the two of us in different ways, including the new lyrics Hugo and I wrote for the hymn "Earth and All Stars" (which I don't think I've ever posted to this blog, have I? I'll have to do that sometime). Since today was Pioneer Day, and since I was cantor, I also slipped "Come, Come Ye Saints" into the service—it appears in the Episcopal hymnal, but the lyrics have been revised to make it less pioneer-y and more generically Christian.

At the end of the service, everyone gathered in close to lay hands on Hugo and I (or to lay hands on someone laying hands on us, like a big net), and there was a final blessing to send us forth. (Hugo and I had had the vicar's family to our home for dinner a week or so before, during which he and I had given her a Mormon-style blessing as gratitude for her ministry.)

The Advocate has been our spiritual home while we've been in North Carolina. I'd been quite active in a Hispanic Episcopal congregation back in Salt Lake City, but then that ended in a contentious way, and when we came out to North Carolina, I wasn't looking for a new church. But Hugo found the Advocate's website, and we liked what we saw. They were a new mission—just completing their first year—and they talked on the website about their commitment to "radical hospitality," which both attracted me and made me nervous: I anticipated we'd be worshiping alongside schizophrenic homeless people. It wasn't quite like that. But the congregation has been rather eclectic, with all kinds of people passing through: young families, seniors, graduate students, gay/lesbian couples, interfaith marriages, multiracial families, Obama zealots, quiet Republicans, prisoners on furlough, a very vocal young adult with autism. Plus a pair of Mormons in exile.

I don't have time right now to gush about the Advocate the way I'd like to. It's been a welcoming community for us during our time here. The Advocate was happy to be my home even when I didn't want to claim it as my home. For the first four or five years, I was standoffish: I was a Mormon in exile, not an Episcopalian, and I guarded that barrier by abstaining from communion. Eventually, I started communing because I didn't feel right holding people at arm's length who were making a point of welcoming me, though in my head I always recited the LDS sacrament prayers at the same time the priest was blessing the bread and wine. When I was being excommunicated, a member of the Advocate's liturgical community, who was also a pretty close friend, called me at home to say that the Advocate was available to help me ritually mark this transition in my life in some way if I'd like that. I didn't take them up on that offer, but I appreciated it.

The Advocate has given me opportunities to use my gifts to serve others and to glorify God in worship. I'm grateful for that. I've been surprised and moved by what a big deal has been made of our moving away. Hugo and I were hardly pillars of this community (certainly not financially: we could have done more on that front than we did, I'm ashamed to say). But people have evidently valued what contributions we've made to the community's life. As I'm writing these words, I'm realizing this can be read as calculated modesty. And I won't deny that my ego derives gratification from the discovery that we're valued. But it has been a genuinely surprising discovery, which leaves me feeling more grateful and embarrassed and sad and ashamed than anything else.

Blessed be the name of my God,
who has been mindful of us,
wanderers in a strange land.
(Alma 26:36)