No Perfect Time: Brief Essays on Life and Faith

By Jeffrey A. Nelson

A young pastor walks into his first church, and immediately begins discovering what it means to do ministry among an imperfect community while being imperfect himself. In this series of essays, he processes some of what he's learned along the way about leading a spiritual life, parenthood, writing, and theology.

Author and minister Jeff Nelson shares his earliest memories of the church's ugly side, his struggle to process the death of a college friend, his first experiences as a father, and his unfolding understanding of faith and discipleship. He does so with an honesty that seeks the spiritual while acknowledging the mess.

No Perfect Time is not a book of hard and fast answers, but of experiences that serve as glimpses into what life and faith are meant to be about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey A. Nelson
• Release date: Mar 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005025021

Jeffrey A. Nelson

Rev. Jeff Nelson is ordained in the United Church of Christ and serves on its national staff after 15 years as a pastor. He is also a certified spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition. An active writer and blogger, his writing has appeared at New Sacred, the Christian Century blog, the Shalem Institute blog, The High Calling, and The Englewood Review of Books.

Book preview

The Meeting

The door opening causes a small bell attached to the frame to jingle. No one looks up, as the scant number of patrons and workers remain fixated on their own tasks and conversations. I stomp some of autumn's excess moisture off my shoes before moving further into the room, navigating around a few tables to reach the counter.

The barista, a younger woman with a lotus tattoo on her wrist and a streak of red in her dark hair, greets me with a soft smile and asks, What can I get you?

I look up at the chalkboards listing the options, glancing out of the corner of my eye to spot the one with whom I am meeting before ordering a mug of the house blend. After paying, I make my way over to the window table where my partner sits by himself.

He's dressed in a grey turtleneck sweater over dark blue jeans, his black pea coat draped across the back of his chair. It's all familiar to me as I remove my own coat and arrange it on my own seat. I sit across from him, nursing my drink as he does his. He doesn't acknowledge me during any of this, his eyes focused on the black liquid in front of him.

I am content to wait, choosing to study his face in the meantime. His glasses help mask modest circles under his eyes, betraying a fatigue that I'm sure I'll hear about when the time is right. His hair, which I once knew to be dark brown, now has hints of white sprinkled on the temples.

The silence persists for a while longer as the acoustic version of a Regina Spektor song starts playing over the speakers. This seems to be what brings him out of his revelry.

A while ago, somebody told me that I was a good writer, he begins without looking up. It was a silly thing I was doing at the time, writing stories based on a wrestling character I'd created. E-fedding, they called it. I was considered one of the best storytellers on that website for a little while.

He takes a sip of coffee. Eventually, I didn't want to write like that anymore. But I took the feedback to heart, and started writing in other ways. I figure, hey, I just started my career. I should write about that, use the internet to process my first years, connect with others, all that stuff.

I nod. I know this story. But I’m curious where he's going with it.

He takes another sip, running his thumb across the rim to catch a wayward drip.

"It was great for a long time. A long time. I kept getting feedback, even got myself some notoriety here and there. That was a little freaky. But I liked it. I figure hey, I gotta keep this up. I gotta keep my audience. Keep writing, keep contributing to the conversation, blah blah blah.

Once I stop, they disappear. And then what?

A couple walks past the window, and this breaks his monologue for a moment. He takes another sip and I do the same. Something the barista says to another customer causes him to glance over his shoulder, then he faces back toward the table. For the first time, he looks up at me.

At some point, doing stuff the same way gets old, you know? Writing the way I did...I don't need to write that way now. I'm on my second gig, I'm not the new guy on the block any more...

He trails off, as if trying to find how to phrase his next thought.

It's like...it's like that Beckett quote. 'I can't go on. I'll go on.' You know? I write, I want to stop, I keep going, because I really don't want to stop. You know? That's, like, the nature of a discipline. Right?

He falls silent for a time, savoring a few more sips, his gaze following people passing by the window. Finally, he focuses back on me.

It's ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, I think I complain about this every few weeks, don't I? 'I don't want to, I want to, I don't, I do.' You get tired of it, I get tired of it. On and on and on it goes. And what changes? What do I end up doing about it? I can't not write. I can't. I have to.

He holds my gaze for a few moments and I wonder if he wants me to respond. My mind races to fill the silence as he leans back in his chair. He raises his glasses so that they sit atop his head and folds his arms. I try to buy myself time by taking another sip, watching the window, playing with a cuticle on my left hand.

Just as my mouth starts to open, he leans forward again, still looking directly at me.

There's so much out there, man. Books, music, having kids, the church, this new spiritual direction gig. What am I complaining about? Seriously. I should just suck it up, because that's what real writers do. So if I want to keep pretending to be a real writer, I have to keep going.

I nod, stifling a laugh.

I dunno. Even the most dedicated ones feel the need to just sweep all their papers and stuff off their desks, right? Be all like, 'the hell with this, I'm gonna go raise pigs,' or something. It happens to all of us, whatever it is that we do. But then the next morning we wake up, make the coffee, and go back to work.

My lips start to move, but he keeps going.

Well, whatever. Sometimes I just need to hear myself talk it out, you know? There's a lot more to write, a lot more words. Back to work, back to work...

His voice trails off as he looks back out the window, nodding to himself. He starts tapping his finger on the table. Both these actions become more intense the longer our silence lasts. The traces of a smirk form on the corner of his mouth.

For as long as we sit together, he doesn't say another word. I make it to the bottom of my drink. He just keeps watching the street, tracing his mug handle with his finger. I stand, don my coat, and walk my empty cup back over to the counter, where the young woman gives me the same polite smile as earlier. I open the door, once again tripping the bell. He still sits and watches, though what he notices is known only to him.

A Post About God

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, everything was formless; a swirling, chaotic void. But God interacted with the void, shaping and ordering it. God commanded the light and the darkness, the waters and the sky and the land, the birds and the fish and the animals, and eventually humanity. God took that swirling primordial soup and fashioned something from it. And God called all of it good.

Was God finished? Did God never create anything after calling it all good? No. God kept creating, shaping, and ordering. Stars and planets and entire galaxies formed, and some eventually burned out or began again after ice ages or collisions. God created a dynamic universe, full of novelty and change, our own galaxy expanding and contracting, our own earth experiencing shifting plates and the circle of life that is basic to all of existence: life, death, rebirth.

Humanity, it turned out, is a dynamic species. We learn, we've developed, we've advanced in technology and knowledge. Some may argue that we haven't advanced in wisdom, others--maybe the same ones--will argue that we've certainly advanced in sin. As we've discovered how we may ever better make use of this world's resources, we've also discovered more efficient ways to oppress each other. And as we've come to value our advancements for good or for ill, we each in our own way have elevated some of them to god status: money, power, violence, technology, and on it goes.

In one case when this was so, God was on a mountain with Moses. Moses, it turns out, had been on this mountain for quite some time. He'd been on that mountain with God for so long, in fact, that the Israelites began to worry, or forget, or become bored. They decided that they wanted a new god, one that they could see and that would bring them joy. So with the help of the priest Aaron, they fashioned a calf out of gold, saw that it was good, and began to worship and revel.

God saw the calf and decided then and there to wipe out these people, this fledgling nation, for their disobedience. God decided to start over with a different people; God would find a new nation through whom the world would be blessed.

When Moses heard this divine resolution, he stood up to God. He said, You made promises. You made a covenant. They're not keeping their end right now, but you must not forget your end. You brought these people out of Egypt, and it can't be for nothing.

God looked again at these people dancing, singing, drinking. God looked at this aspect of God's dynamic creation and still saw that it was good even though they'd taken their own path. This was always a possibility: this turning away, this disobedience, this waywardness, this elevation of the wrong thing.

And God changed God's mind.

In the Hebrew: repented.

Turned around.

Reoriented.

Refocused.

God changed what God was going to do.

The people didn't get off free that day. They still had to answer for what they'd done. But it was due to God changing for that to happen. Rather than being wiped out, God changing made it possible for them to change and for their formation to continue.

Some want to believe that God only seemed to change God's mind that day. Or that maybe God was just testing Moses' leadership or had set up the people to teach them a lesson. But none of that is in the story. The only actual detail is that God changed. Those that have certain theological interests to protect try to argue otherwise, read back into what's written, quote confessions at length as if sheer density of words will make up for what they want to be there but isn't.

All that is there is that God changed.

In this shifting, dynamic, expanding and contracting world, there are new ways for God to remember God's promises. There come new ways for God to apply these promises in the midst of three-dimensional situations filled with joy, suffering, healing, wonder, anger, injustice. There is no one way to address the swirling mix present in each moment. There come new ways for God to interact and keep covenant with this creation which God still calls good.

The concern is that if God changes, then there is nothing constant about God. If God is not outside of our world, not the great Immovable Mover, then it's not really God. And in a world that is always shifting, always changing, seemingly every bit as chaotic as it was before creation began, we cry out for something constant, sure, and steadfast.

Is there anything constant about God?

Two chapters after the golden calf incident, it is proclaimed that God is a God of steadfast love. Constant, unchanging, steadfast love.

God's love for creation is constant. God's concern for redeeming what seems lost and restoring what seems broken is constant. Every situation calls for this love and concern, but not every situation calls for it in the same manifestation. At times the Israelites needed love in the form of manna to eat, at other times they needed love in the form of being forced to face their idolatry. Love does not look the same in both instances. God needed to change for love to be made known.

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