Interview with the Rev. Kristine Johnson

The Rev. Kristine A. Johnson, Rector, interview 10/15/20: “I guess I see the role of the church as not having changed. If we're not teaching people to love God and love our neighbor all the time, we're not going to do it in a pandemic. And if we are doing it in a pandemic, that's what we need to do when we're out of the pandemic.”

Karin Forno (KF), interviewer: How about some background on who you are and how you came to be at St Mary's?

KJ: I'm Kristine Johnson and I have been here a little over a year. My first Sunday was September 29, 2019. I first became aware of St. Mary's last April when I saw your advertisement for a new Rector. The pictures were amazing and particularly the picture of the Annunciation Window on your parish profile. That's always been a really special story to me. So I applied for the job and … I really feel like I was called, like it was a true Holy Spirit thing, and I hope that people here feel that way, too. I was delighted to come and try something new. It’s my first time as a rector.

So how has the pandemic affected just your everyday, day to day life?

Day to day it hasn't had that much of an effect … really the day-to-day difference is that I can't go visit people to the same extent and I don't spend nearly as much time in the office. It hasn't been hugely disrupting any more than moving across the country!

So if you think about the course of the pandemic so far to this day, can you trace an evolution in your feelings or experiences, your thoughts?

I would say it's cyclical . . . immediately as we were locking down, I was first concerned about my family because I have a daughter in San Luis Obispo and a daughter who was in New York at the time. What was going to happen with their schools . . . it was just very concerning. And I was very concerned about the church. I didn’t want to put anyone at risk. And I knew that it was super important to be there for people, but I felt I didn’t know people well enough to know what was going to be helpful. So there was a period of pretty high anxiety, I guess. It was immediately painful to stop our Lenten programming and to realize that we were not going to be able to spend Easter in the church.

I tried to find a way to pivot that was authentic to who I am and who this community is and to sort of resist all of the pressures to do other things, to do what everybody else was doing or provide the end-all be-all Easter experience.

The internal struggle actually continues to this day, how to keep true to myself and to this community and not worry so much about what other people are doing, because you could always do more. The question is, “what is the best thing we can be doing and how can we do that?” I would say, I go through cycles of anxiety and peace. And when I'm able to really be centered in the Holy Spirit, it’s very peaceful. I know that whatever we're offering and whatever we're doing together is good for a community of people that wants to love God and love our neighbor. And as long as we're doing that, all of the other stuff kind of doesn't matter.

So I’ll be centered, and then some period of weeks will go by and something will happen or I'll hear that a different church is doing something different or, you know, someone in the congregation will mention something that they've seen somebody else do. And I'll have that moment all over again. But I mean, that's not really a bad thing. I think we should always be looking at what we're doing and why we're doing it. What is it that we need to do and how can we do that? I think that's true in the church. And I think that's true in life as well. Seeing what relationships hold up under that kind of pressure and which ones don't and which relationships are life giving and which ones are not?

For a lot of people in ministry, there's a lot of opportunity to not feel that this is a life-giving profession right now because it can be kind of life-sucking. But I think that we need to constantly be looking for what is life-giving.

I was just thinking, too, as you were saying, that . . . as you said before, you know, isn't that a little bit like that, always, you know, when you're in ministry . . . some relationships take it out of you. And some relationships give back. And you have to kind of guard yourself closely. I think.

That is true all the time, and I think we usually don't pay attention to it because we don't have the underlying level of anxiety we have now, which is not only the pandemic, but also the political situation in our country. There's this higher than normal background noise. And so that makes everything seem that much closer to the surface, right? I think if anything, this could teach us important lessons for times when our anxiety is lower, that we can still choose to do the things that are life-giving. And we don't have to go back to being stress cases all the time.

How do you see yourself and the role of the church right now?

I guess I see the role of the church as not having changed. If we're not teaching people to love God and love our neighbor all the time, we're not going to do it in a pandemic. And if we are doing it in a pandemic, that's what we need to do when we're out of the pandemic.

I know that we have much more steady attendance now, and I don't know whether that's because people are not traveling or because it's easy, because they don't have to get in the car and come here or even walk out of their front door. We have small group offerings that are probably better attended on Zoom than they would be in person. But I think the role of the church doesn't change.

We have had a Clergy Zoom meeting every week since the pandemic started. Yesterday we were talking about how we can be a faithful presence in the time of an election. And my question is, if we're not a faithful presence all the time, what are we doing?

So I think it's been very centering. For me, I'm much more clear about the role of the church and much less concerned about kind of the extraneous things about the church. You know, we're feeding people and we're providing a place on Sunday morning where you can come and be spiritually fed.

I may know the answer to this or a form of the answer. But how do you imagine St. Mary's in the future? Do you think the pandemic will change us permanently?

I think the church is always changing or should always be changing, and we are changed by what happens around us and within us. The church has survived for two thousand years and faithful people of God have been around way before that through all kinds of changes and tribulations and trials and joys and wonders. And in every age, the church’s struggle is to be relevant to people's lives and help them live faithfully. I have no idea what it's going to look like in the future. My hope would be that it's a joyful people. People are affiliated with the church because it gives them a place to practice being in a healthy community playing by God's rules and not necessarily by the rules of the world. And reaching out to love our neighbors and to figure out who those people are.

I sort of hope that the church will feel less bound by its physicality and realize that it's really just the people, no matter how beautiful our buildings are and how historic--it's just a place. I think our relationship to the space will be different. And I hope our relationship to each other and to our broader community will be different. I'm more curious about the people that are not part of our church community, but are part of our community and how we might be a light--a beacon of hope and a place of peace. I think we are known for that. A place of help for sure. But I would hope that even more people, if they confronted someone in need would say, oh, well, I've heard the people of St. Mary's will help you out. 

I'm full of holy curiosity about what that “church” is going to look like in the future and all we can do is just take the next faithful step.

 So how do you still see uncertainty?

I am convinced that certainty is an illusion anyway, right? I was thinking about this on the way over, actually. I'm a new priest in a new call, in a new place, and everything is new. So one more new thing doesn't bother me. You know, it actually has taken away some of the barriers to ministry, because whenever you enter a new place, you're coming up against the way we've always done it. Even if it's only been done for two years, “we always did this.” And that is not even an issue right now. Nobody's done this.

We're always living in uncertainty, and as I said before, the only thing to do is just take the next step on the path. I mean, it's a wonderful image to just imagine a path in the woods, on Jack’s Peak or somewhere where all you can see is about the next 20 paces and then it either goes uphill or downhill or around the corner behind a tree. And you have to trust that the path is there. But worrying about what it's going to be like is not going to be helpful.

It’s not like I never worry or never think about the future with anxiety. But I'm pretty well able to say, OK, I'm going to let that be dealt with in my subconscious in a weird dream or something. And today I'm going to focus on today. What can I do today? What do I need to do? And even then, you might not get something that's super important done.

That’s where faith comes in. The idea that God knows what's going to happen does not comfort me as much as knowing that God is with me, whatever is happening. God will help me. Whatever is required. If all that can be done is just to grit my teeth and bear it, God will be with me in that space. It's not important for me to believe that God has a plan. Because we think of plans as being very specific. And I think God has set a direction for the history of this planet, and then God's not in charge of every single thing. There are forces acting against God. Actively. Evil exists and evil spirits exist and evil systems exist and they are working against God. And so whatever God’s dream for the universe is can’t come in its fullness as long as that evil is working against it. I think we have a choice every day about whether we listen to the voices of evil in our lives and in our societies or whether we listen to God’s voice. And we have a choice which voice we act on.

Is there anything you'd like to do that you're not doing now either because of the pandemic or, during the pandemic for whatever reason?

The hardest thing right now is actually Thanksgiving. We were supposed to go to Ohio and celebrate with our friends who came here last year. That's a 30-plus year tradition that will not happen this year. And that is what is on my heart right now as we enter the holiday season is all of the people and all of the tradition. And even if your family is really difficult, those are touchstones in our lives. When your traditions are interrupted, what do you do instead? How do we give thanks? And knowing that, you know, in Advent we're going to be waiting and Christmas isn't going to be the end of that waiting. I think that will be hard.

So, what then has been the most difficult thing about the pandemic for you?

I think the most difficult thing for me is seeing people suffer, and having very little I can do, really. There are people in the parish who I can't visit, and who don't really engage well on the phone because they don't hear well or they don't have someone to help them. It's been really hard to gauge what’s going on with people's lives, without seeing them come out of the door after church and have that 30 second conversation or look in someone's eyes and know that they need a phone call or just a hug.

A huge part of ministry is being sensitive to what's happening in people's lives. And for some reason, and I'm not alone in this, people do not call unless it's an emergency. They don't just call to say I'm feeling kind of down or can you help me sort through this feeling. They don’t call unless it's: “I am in a crisis and I need to talk to you.” But there are so many things I think that would not get to that point, if we could just have a five-minute conversation. So that I think has been the hardest is wondering if there is silent suffering going on out there that we might be able to alleviate a little bit.

You know, it's hard not to be able to bless people with my hands and that's where some of the main tools of a minister are useless right now. I mean, simply sitting with someone. It's fraught. A lot of people don't feel comfortable doing that.

What has surprised you the most?

The thing that just popped into my mind was this Wednesday morning when I was here with Sarah unloading food from the food pantry, and the president of the food pantry showed up and was talking to Sarah. And between them, they figured out how to get food to the school drop off sites so that we could feed six hundred more people. Sarah's been trying for a year to figure out the logistics of how we could piggyback on distribution to students and help their families as well. And in one moment it came together. I mean, that's just a beautiful Holy Spirit surprise. I would have never seen that coming. It was not scheduled.

And not only did that moment happen, but then the volunteers that were needed, a lot more volunteers came forward just with an invitation. Oh, my gosh. How are we going to do this? And the Holy Spirit opened people's hearts. And the next week we were doing it. I mean, it was just incredible. And so I guess the surprise is that there are still new things that can happen. God is always doing a new thing, and we just need to let ourselves be open to that.

So maybe this piggybacks on that, Has anything been positive about the pandemic?

I think there are lot of positive things. As I said before, kind of this stripping down to the essentials. I think it's been really positive. I think seeing people care for each other has been positive. Generally, in this community, there’s been a great spirit of love and care. I think the feeling that we're really all in this together. We're all kind of in the same boat. We understand that in a way that we might not normally.

I've heard a ton of people say that the Zoom worship is really life-giving for them. And particularly coffee hour. People have gotten to know each other who normally wouldn't have talked to each other at coffee hour. So I think the community has grown closer. And so I’m curious: people who have not been participating, what do they think their relationship is with the church? How do they see their future in the church?

I think it’s positive that we're being forced to reevaluate what's important. I have a spiritual director that I work with every month. And I said pretty early on to him that I think the church has been needing to change for so long. It's been in decline and people have been wringing their hands about it. And we've got this opportunity to completely do things differently and explore new things, basically risk-free. Because you're not slaughtering any sacred cows. And so I think we've been able to try some things and that has been positive. And the response has been positive.

It's been said, “never waste a crisis.” I'm hopeful that these things that we've been doing in the pandemic are not seen as just a stopgap, but that they're seen as an evolutionary step to what we will be in the future, that we're building a new path. We are not in a holding pattern, waiting to get back to the old thing. How can we take the best of what was and add what we’re learning? It's going to take all of us harnessing the creative energy of the Holy Spirit, to build on the positive things we’re doing, as well as picking back up the good things that we have done before. So I think a big challenge as things go “back to normal” is to continue to preach that nothing's ever really normal.

Update Feb 7 2023

It is kind of fun to look back and have this record of what was going on and how I was feeling about it at the time. I still believe that nothing is ever really “normal,” that what we perceive as tradition is in fact always changing. Sometimes that change is subtle, sometimes it is sudden. St. Mary’s has done a remarkable job adapting and thriving in this pandemic season. We have worshiped and worked together. We are still learning how to better love God and our neighbor, and practicing doing both. The ties that were strengthened during our time on Zoom remain our strong foundation. We are still finding our way, and as long as we are looking to the Holy Spirit for guidance, that is a good place to be.