Proclaimer Blog
A pastor’s wife’s tale
One book I return to often is Garrison Keillor’s Leaving Home, his whimsical tales of life in a mythical Minnesotan town called Lake Wobegon. One story I’ve just re-read focuses on Judy Ingqvist, wife of Lutheran pastor, Dave. I’m not Lutheran, but this particular excerpt did make me think of the talks I’ll soon be delivering at the PT Summer Wives Conference. And it might give a married pastor pause to think about how things actually are for his wife right now.
The Ingqvists bought their tickets to Florida two months ago, Pastor Dave and Judy; at least that’s what she said. They’ve missed the Annual Ministers’ Retreat three years in a row because the civilian leadership at church can’t see why their minister and his wife should cavort in the tropics in January. She can see about three reasons, but she can’t tell the Board because it’s more than they want to know about a minister: it’s hard work to stand up and say what people don’t really believe but want to think they do; and it’s tough when a man of faith suffers from depression in a town where nice people are expected to be upbeat. For a few days on Captiva Island, at the Chateau Suzanne, around the blue kidney-bean-shaped pool, cool aquamarine in a forest of deep green and fabulous birds of brilliant plumage, some pale plump Lutherans will sit in the sun like lumps of bread dough and say forbidden things. Oh, the luxury of truth when you come from a town of storytellers! The luxury of sitting in sunlight, clasping a gin-and-tonic, wearing two articles of clothing that allow the world to reasonably assume you are a woman, lighting up one of your ten annual cigarettes, and saying openly to other ministers’ wives, “It has been hard this year.”
Of course there’s no pool like that at Hothorpe Hall, and I’m ignoring his comment about sun-bathing American Lutherans! But I’m guessing a number of women at the Conference will gain some relief from simply telling another woman, “It has been hard this year.”