Yesterday I heard a phrase that I had never heard before but understood immediately. A retired clergy person referred to having experienced a “stained glass cut.” What he meant was that he, like many people, had experienced being hurt by the Church. There are toxic churches that repeatedly hurt people, but there are also stained glass cuts inflicted when a Church turns away from problems that need to be faced or systems that need to be dismantled. The Church decides to just look the other way. Some churches and some people seem to simply lose their compass of following Jesus, either momentarily or permanently.
Stained glass cuts often catch trusting and loving people unaware and the cut is deep and piercing.
Yes, I know that we could also speak of “academic cuts” or “medical cuts” or “government agency cuts”—we have all seen or heard or personally experienced the pain of being hurt by an institution we trusted or at least thought we could trust. These “cuts” are not restricted to the Church. The truth is that glass, when broken, plain glass or stained glass, can cut and wound deeply.
Many of us somehow think the Church should be different, do better. The experience of a stained glass cut sometimes turns people away from Church or even all of religion.
I get it. There is probably not a clergy person alive who has not experienced a “stained glass cut.” I hope the percentage of wounded lay people is not as great as clergy who have been wounded, but I am probably naive in that hope. In most ways I am an idealist, but I am a realist in knowing that the Church is not perfect. Yet I still find myself expecting it to be better, less petty, more just, more loving.
The key issue seems to be remembering that WE are the Church. That’s right. Us. We. You and me.
The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer states that the Church is the community, the people of God. And how are we to act as this community? We are to promote justice, peace and love. It says so right there in the Catechism.
If you are not a Church person, it seems the key issues are still the same: how are we to act in our community? What would our individual and collective lives be like if we put aside the stones that break windows and worked to promote justice, peace and love?
Justice, peace and love do not cut people. It is when we drift away from this mission that the Church, the community, our relationships begin to fracture. It is when we lose our capacity for telling the truth, for facing the truth (even the hard truths) that we begin to spread broken glass upon the path. When we pretend that everything is just fine when we know it is not.
We are living in a world right now where broken glass seems to be everywhere. We are surrounded by many who seem to delight in shattering windows. When I look at photographs from the January 6 Insurrection it seems no surprise that the floors of the Capitol were covered with broken glass. Those photographs speak volumes about what happened that day, what happens when we lose the compass that helps us find our way to promoting justice, peace and love. We make a mess. Broken glass cuts all of us. The more we insist that broken glass doesn’t exist, the more we bleed, the more the entire community bleeds.
We can be guided by scripture or the Catechism or the Constitution or our own personal moral lodestone—to promote justice, peace and love. To do it every day. We need to recommit ourselves to sweeping up the broken glass and creating windows that let the light of justice, peace and love illuminate the darkness.
We need to do this before it is too late. There are already far too many people bleeding to death along our path.
Thanks for your words. I needed these today!
Absolutely love your writings - you go straight to the heart of the matter. Certainly do miss you!