by Matt Nightingale • Find the original article here.
Most of the first ever commissioned Wild Fig ministers.
May I be empty and open to receive the light
May I be empty and open to receive
May I be full and open to receive the light
May I be full and open to receive 1
Leah’s clear, strong voice, accompanied only by my snapping fingers, echoed throughout the 140-year-old sanctuary. When she circled back to sing the simple words and melody again, Joshua added the tenor line. On the third time, I added the baritone. Marissa doubled the tenor line, up an octave.
A sacred hush followed, the prayerful lyrics still hanging in the air, as Eugene stepped forward to start the service. He had trouble even getting through his welcome without getting choked up. This evening had been years in the making, and this moment was weighted with all the pain and joy that had led us here. The eighty or so people gathered there were introduced to the call-and-response affirmation that would become the theme of the ceremony:
We are one body.
We belong to one another.
It’s hard to believe that six months prior to that evening, the Wild Fig Network was only a name to me, something I had heard about in passing but had never taken time to investigate. All of that changed at the beginning of March when Alejandro and I attended the Ember Gathering in Oakland. As I wrote back then, the experience reminded me “who I am, who I have always been, that this beautiful faith still holds me, and that I am called and gifted to ministry. Not only that I am, but that I want to be.” I talked with Wild Fig’s executive director, Eugene Kim—who happened to be an old friend from my former denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC)—about the possibility of credentialing and felt an unexpected surge of hope. Nearly a decade after leaving my church and resigning my ministry credential, could I belong again?
To my delight, yes, I could. I received my ministry credential via email on May 13 and wrote about it here. And then I jumped in with both feet. I began to explore Wild Fig’s online community, showing up to Zoom gatherings and meeting new friends. Four of us started hosting weekly online happy hours. Six of us Californians formed the West Coast Cohort. I joined a Design Team. And I decided that maybe a trip to Chicago for September’s inaugural national gathering was in order.
I walked into the crowded room in LaSalle Street Church’s Cornerstone Center exhausted from my flights, disoriented and late to the Design Team meeting, still rolling my suitcase behind me because I hadn’t had time to get to the hotel. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting. I was quickly greeted, seated at a table near the front, and welcomed into a conversation about what had brought each of us to this moment. Scattered among the people I didn’t recognize were beloved friends from my years in the ECC. As people shared, I put faces to names I had only encountered online, and I relaxed into the familiar rhythm of sharing around tables and then reporting out to the larger group. I began to see the ways God had been at work over the last several years, inspiring each of us to find new ways forward when old paths were no longer available to us. And what’s more, the place itself felt suddenly significant.
We were sitting in a room in Chicago, where many of us had gathered every year for the ECC’s Midwinter Conference. Back in the early 2000s, as I was leaving fundamentalism, those gatherings were more than meetings to me. They opened my heart and mind to new ways of worshiping, diverse perspectives, and a more expansive understanding of theology. In those sacred spaces, I found friends I could trust, and I began to share the truth of my queer identity with some of them, even before I had learned to accept and celebrate it. Long-held theological convictions began to crumble in the light of reality. I’ll never forget the night the proverbial scales fell from my eyes as a dynamic young preacher, Judy Peterson, spoke boldly and prophetically from the platform. I had been trying to believe that God allowed women to be pastors, but that night I experienced and knew that this woman was called and gifted for pastoral ministry. And now she sat at the table beside mine, decades later, my friend and colleague in this new work of the Spirit.
As the gathering officially kicked off the next afternoon, I continued to be moved by the convergence of friends from different parts of my life. There were Tommy and Erin, queer friends I had met since coming out, chatting it up with Denise, Amanda, and Christina, old friends from the ECC. There was Eva, my longtime spiritual director, laughing with Jennifer, who leads a network of spiritual directors I meet with every three months. There was Gary, who has been part of an online “single gay clergy” group with me for many years (although three of us have gotten married along the way!), walking beside Brian, whom I had known as a worship pastor colleague decades earlier. It felt like another example of the integration I’ve been experiencing recently. Walls coming down. Compartmentalization disintegrating before my eyes.
Matt leading an excursion to the Chicago Museum of Art at the Inaugural National Gathering.
Wild Fig isn’t a new organization that just might have room for me too. It’s an interdependent community that I’ve been invited to co-create. We are still becoming who we will be. We are taking risks and making mistakes and learning together. As I stood in the old sanctuary and spoke my vows, I wasn’t trying to believe what I was supposed to believe. It wasn’t about doctrine at all. It was about practicing the way of Jesus. I was promising to root myself in relationship, to prioritize inclusion, to lead with humility and vulnerability, to practice mutuality, to stay creative, and to live in love.
As I led a group of musicians in a song of reflection, I marveled at how perfectly the words lined up with this community’s intentions.
If there is any peace, if there is any hope
We must all believe our lives are not our own
We all belong
God has given us each other, and we will never walk alone
In the shelter of each other we will live 2
There would be much beauty and celebration to follow: handwoven stoles placed around our shoulders, stories, prayers, streamers, applause, group photos, and a dessert reception that would last well into the evening. There would be the long walk back to the hotel, sharing laughter and tears with friends old and new. But for now, I just wanted to rest in the simple words of our liturgical response.
We are one body.
We belong to one another.
1 “May I Be Empty,” music and lyrics by Batya Levine.
2 “Shelter,” written by Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason, and Matt Odmark; recorded by Jars of Clay on The Shelter (2010).
