Voices of Gratitude: Nancy Hurrelbrink
Good morning. My name is Nancy Hurrelbrinck, and I began attending TJMC in early 2002. I felt awkward here at first: I didn’t know anyone, and I was too shy to initiate conversations in the social hall. What kept me returning were David Takahashi-Morris’s sermons. I remember taking notes a few times, such as when he revealed that, for him, prayer entails not making requests of some problem solver in the sky, but tuning into his own deepest level of awareness.
I gradually came to feel more comfortable here, but my relationship with the church has had its ups and downs. In the spring of 2006, it was at a low point. I resisted coming to services, and I didn’t get involved in any activities. I felt like an outsider and had no idea how to penetrate what seemed like a closed inner circle. But, at the Women’s Retreat that year, I had one deeply satisfying conversation, and that was enough to make me want to recommit. I returned from Seven Oaks prepared to give the church another chance.
But I didn’t bother bringing home the chalice I had dutifully collaged at the retreat. I wasn’t the sort of person who’d want one those things in the house. At this point, TJMC was primarily a social experience for me. I became more involved, volunteering with PACEM and the Green Sanctuary Task Force, growing better acquainted with the church community. It has been particularly gratifying to do environmental activism at TJMC, becoming friends with a wonderful group of people through working together on projects we care about, work that could be so dispiriting to do alone.
I came to enjoy Sunday services, appreciative of the respite from child care, the chance to hear Scott play a piece all the way through. But the church part … ehh. I didn’t feel like much of a “spiritual mama” when I joined the Spiritual Mamas covenant group three years ago.
However, this group has proved to be a wondrous source of friendship and support, as well as spiritual guidance. In sharing our joys and difficulties, our time and talents, we have created a small gift economy, a circle of exchange in which no one keeps track of who’s giving what, whether it be childcare, casseroles, or loving attention, because we each know our turn will come.
I have learned a great deal from the other mamas, sometimes copying their family rituals or spiritual practices. Leading by example, the group has helped me to find my way along my spiritual path, to discover and reach for my truest self. So, a few weeks ago, when I noticed the chalice I’d made at the 2006 retreat sitting next to our flaming chalice, placed there like a lost mitten on a fence post, I realized it was time to claim it and bring it home.
My emerging spirituality has helped me become more receptive to all aspects of our religion, and even those of others. As a parent, I’m grateful for this: just as my three year olds were getting old enough to ask cosmic questions, I was growing comfortable enough to answer them. When they spotted a plastic crèche on our neighbor’s lawn, I was able to tell them about the Nativity without irony, to hold and even augment their joy and wonder at the story. One of them sat motionless during the early Christmas Eve service, spellbound.
Regardless of how I have felt about TJMC at various points, it has always been there for me, waiting for me to figure out how to be part of it, how to open my heart to its lessons. I am relieved to say that, despite my varying feelings of comfort and connection here, my pledge has remained consistent. Regardless of how one feels about the church on a given day, it still needs money to pay for the heating bills, the staff salaries, the RE supplies. So when you are about to pencil in the amount you’ll pledge for the coming year, I hope you will tune into your own deepest level of awareness about who you are and what this church could be for you.
Thank you.