Tabernacle United Church - Philadelphia Progressive Presbyterian UCC

Hey Tab Family,

If I’m really going to let go of some of my shame, I feel like I need to confess a few things first.

Namely, I have to tell y’all that lately I’ve been daydreaming about running away. I’ve been feeling pretty claustrophobic these days. I have caught myself drifting into a place of pure imagination, where I build a tiny house in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by rain and grey skies, bees, flowers, vegetables, and chickens, where the temperature rarely climbs above 70 and most importantly, where I’m in a different time zone, on a coast opposite of a majority of situations I feel trapped in. I dream about packing my bags and leaving.

So when Katie talked about putting our baggage on the converter belt in the airport this past Sunday, I felt a little relieved. Because thankfully the image ended there. We didn’t hop on the plane only to be met at our destination by our shame, ripe and ready for us to drag it everywhere we go.

Our baggage is going to follow us everywhere unless we acknowledge it so we can then simply (or not so simply) let it go. There’s a song by the Avett Brothers called “The Weight of Lies” that goes:

“The weight of lies will bring you down
and follow you to every town
‘cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there.
So when you run make sure you run
to something and not away from
‘cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere.”

And shame is certainly one of the big lies we’ve been fed our entire lives to the point that now we willfully choose to ingest it ourselves. It weighs us down. It stops us from reaching our growth potential, from connecting honestly and fully with each other. It stops us from having truthful and vulnerable conversations geared toward growth and healing because when we operate from a place of shame, we will always downplay the truth of who we are– that is, we are beloved, we are capable, and our worth isn’t predicated on our perfection. And if we see ourselves through a lens of shame, we get to clothe ourselves in the illusion that we are hated, incapable, and unworthy. In that sense, we sort of give ourselves a free pass to be crappy to other people, and we let other people treat us like crap, until we construct a worldview of sheer garbage. We expect the worst because we believe we are the worst. Isn’t that convenient…

But isn’t it also burdensome? Couldn’t we just put it down, pack it up, and let it go?

I think that’s what my shame makes me want to run away from– it makes me want to run away from my potential for growth. It makes me reject the fact that I am beloved, capable, and worthy. It tells me that if maybe I can just try to pretend I’m those things, I can get away with never really allowing myself to be great, and to actually embody those things. I can sidestep the honest and vulnerable conversations that would actually push my relationships into freedom. Lately, I’ve been lying to myself in my daydreams of homesteading in central Washington, pretending like freedom from my relationships and their complications is somehow more desirable than freedom in my relationships when I choose to let go of my shame and be vulnerable. To let go of my shame and be great.To stop telling myself how wrong or bad I am. Or that other people are.

What if instead of eloping with my shame to my little microfarm in the PNW far away from it all, I could instead confront my shame, stare it in the face, stuff it in a vacuum bag and suck all the air out and toss it in a suitcase? What if I could let my shame go? What if I could throw it on that conveyor belt, send it off, turn around and walk out of that airport without hopping on the flight? What if I’m great? What if we could put down our baggage and realize greatness in each other? What if we could expand instead of contract, be curious instead of critical, repair instead of punish?

Listen to the “Weight of Lies” by the Avett Brothers here, and feel free to share what bits of shame you might be shipping off these days, so I can pray for you as you navigate that process.

Best,
Taylor Silvestri (they/them)

Dear Tab Family, 

What a joy and a blessing to have Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart join us this past Sunday. I was struck by the invitation to us all to “tend to the wellbeing of our faith” while we listened to the sermon, and the stark truth that yes– some of us are tired of the cost of discipleship. 
I am often tired. As someone with chronic pain, I don’t go a day without fatigue. Lately, I’ve been especially tired. If I’m being honest, I’m tired of bouncing around, place to place and workplace to workplace. Prior to thinking seriously about answering my call to ministry, I moved over a dozen times in less than ten years. I have spent this time trying as hard as I can, to put down roots somewhere. To feel at home someplace. To find a place to lay my head and rest for a moment.
And what a gift, for Rev Naomi to bring attention to another truth: that Jesus was homeless. That Jesus did not have a physical home base to rest. I find myself, having spent my entire career thus far, putting up with being driven to overwork, over-produce, over-extend, and push myself beyond my own natural capacity to labor for institutions that name me replaceable, to give grace endlessly to the people that populate positions of power at those institutions when they make excuses for each other, and attempt to gaslight and explain away the insidious ways they exploit my labor, and steal my time. 

That will happen, though, when I forget this one simple truth I have been letting rattle around in my soul since Fall 2020, and that I received again in the sermon this past Sunday: my home is inside of my own body. I am never outside of my home because I carry it in me. I carry home everywhere I go, because my home is the divinity God placed in me the moment She breathed life into these very bones of mine.

I have a divine right to work from home. Try as it may, the antichrist that is a society built upon the exploitation of our labor, the violence enacted on our bodies and our spirits, the evil that is capitalism will not make itself a bed in my home, and it cannot stop me from demanding rest. It cannot rip me from my own body. And everytime it tries, I can return to the promise of my baptism, and the promise that there is always more life. There is always more life.
And I guess if I wanted to give it all up, submit my resignation to the vocation of justice-seeking and grace-giving and repair God calls me to, I could. I could hang up my hat and punch out and instead give myself fully to the institutions that insist I am not allowed to rest, that insist I am nothing beyond the labor they can squeeze from me, that insist I have no home outside of what I can produce for them.
But then I wouldn’t get to be at home here, at Tab, with all of you. I wouldn’t be able to rest and rejuvenate with you all whom I love so deeply, you all who have given me grace, and allowed me to live more fully into the home of my own body. 

Let’s take a breath together, and reflect on these words from Rev. Naomi:

“I demand the time, Jesus, to do something about the domestic wreckage that following Jesus has brought to my life. I demand the right to love myself and my people, without being impugned for doing so. I demand the both/and, to work fully for God during the day, and binge-watch Jeopardy with my wife every night. I demand to work from home.” – Rev Naomi Washington-Leapheart

Today, I invite you to check out The Nap Ministry, and explore rest as a divine right and a form of resistance: 
WordPress: https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @TheNapMinistry

I also invite you to listen to The Grateful Dead’s cover of “I Bid You Goodnight.” As a child of two Deadheads, this was one of the songs my parents would sing to me before bed, and the Dead would often close shows with this song during the late 60s and early 70s. They revived it again toward the end of Jerry Garcia’s life, starting around 1989. This version is from a show in October of 1989 in Virginia. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8gNgiCWlYg&ab_channel=LoloYodel
In grace, 
Taylor M. Silvestri (They/them)