In the mornings we would stay with her, my grandmother used to rise around 10am.  She was a late riser because she was a late drinker and laugh-er and argument-starter, and would often be up to see the clock tick past 1am.

And she would come out in her night clothes, silk usually, paisley as I remember them. And slippers even though it was Miami, Florida.  She called them “house shoes,” and they were for tooling around the house in the morning, or for going out to the back shed to start the laundry.  But nowhere else.  She was a respectable Southern woman, after all.  You weren’t caught in your rollers or house shoes…

And she would come out of her bedroom in those night clothes, pour herself a cup of coffee in a 50’s-style cup that could maybe hold four ounces, and she’d make one egg, over-medium, and sit at the little kitchen bar on a stool.  She’d pull out a cigarette, pull out the paper, light the cigarette, sip the coffee, and slowly eat the egg while devouring the Miami Herald’s front page.

I can still smell it.

Ever since I was a little boy I remember this routine.  I don’t remember it deviating much, unless we had morning plans.  But usually “morning plans” started at 11am at grandma’s house.

That was morning.

She was a woman of routine and I loved her for it. I loved her in it.  I loved her, and she loved it.  Even if it was frustrating at times.

Grandma was also a woman who loved her God.  She had been raised in the church, a Methodist by upbringing, but “a Lutheran by choice,” as she would say.  The pastor of her church, the church where she would become the secretary, came to their door in Miami Springs one day, and as they gave him a cold glass of water he invited her and my grandpa to attend the church he was starting.

And they did.

She would talk about her faith.  Not like an evangelist, but like one who had been evangelized.  Honest conversations.  She saw meaning in everything…sometimes to her detriment, I think.  She’d come out with an illogical statement, how someone’s universe had flipped upside-down because of some crazy thing that had happened years earlier, and we’d say, “Grandma, that doesn’t seem right…”

She’d laugh in this cackle of a person who had smoked since she was sixteen and would say something like, “Well, it doesn’t have to seem right! That’s how it is!”

That’s how it is.

Every pastor I know, including me, struggles with the phrase, “That’s how it is.”  Because our knowledge of theology, our knowledge of the Bible, our thoughts about society and God and how they interact, intermix, and intertwine…it has all changed.  It’s changed from the 1940’s to the 1990’s, and believe-you-me, it’s changed from the 2018’s to the 2019’s.

It’s changed.  And “that’s how it is” never holds up in the future very well.

And so sometimes conversations end up overlapping.  Sometimes new theologians come out of seminary smelling like books and sleepless nights arguing about Tillich, with their box of ideas, and they enter into much more ancient sanctuaries where people hold entirely different boxes.  And as the pastors unpack their boxes, and the parishioners peer inside their own, they see different contents.

And it can cause discomfort. Pain. Hurt. Even, yes, harm.

Faith can change. But it need not be destroyed. Even if it doesn’t seem “right.”

My grandmother was a woman of routine, and a woman of routine beliefs.  The world worked a certain way for her.  And, yes, she could change.  She did change.  She became outspoken for LGBTQ rights and Civil Rights.  She spoke Spanish, and eventually learned how to drive in such a way that we weren’t all scared of her being on the road.

But the changes came slowly, as all change usually does.  And it usually came from her falling in love first.  With people who were gay.  With people who didn’t look like her, talk like her, or even think like her.

But there were some things that never changed.  She conceived of heaven in a pearly-gates, golden-streets sort of way, and that never changed.  And even though that’s not my seminary-trained, science-brained view of heaven, I don’t think I’d ever have wanted to take that away from her.

Besides, it’s not like anyone knows what the afterlife is like, anyway.

So, dare I take that away?  Or could I just walk with her, asking questions, exploring notions, and providing my own perspective as I listened to hers?

Theology is done in the pews as well as in the academy, and pastors need to remember that.  I need to remember that.  And while hurtful doctrines and dogmas can, and should, be torn down like the idols they are, not everything that the newly trained seminarian thinks is outdated has lost its meaning.

Tear down the idols and the isms, but dare we take away everything?  Can we not still sing _In the Garden_ even though the theology is largely crap?  Dare we not use the phrase, “Jesus died for us” even if we have many asterisks next to what the phrase means, and each of us will have a different corresponding footnote?

My grandmother, in her paisley satin pajamas and little cup of coffee had a good routine (though that cigarette was probably not helpful), and even though I had a different morning routine that I thought was healthier, dare I take hers away from her?

Instead, I learned to do my routine, and when she appeared, shuffling in the house shoes, I’d sit down with her at the bar, chatting, laughing, and occasionally enduring her telling me to “be quiet” because she couldn’t read the headlines and talk at the same time.

Conversation led to engagement, love, and yes, change.  For both of us in some ways. Frustrating change.

Things have changed.  And will change.  And even I will change, and the things I was taught will be questioned and reformulated one day.

But if it’s not harmful or hurtful, dare we take it all away at once?  It might be frustrating, but it’s a good question.