Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008
Poor health puts St. James pastor into early retirement
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closeThe last funeral that Mary Robinson-Mohr conducted at St. James Presbyterian Church helped put her decision to leave the pulpit into perspective.
Robinson-Mohr recently ended 11 years as pastor at St. James because of migraine headaches, caused at least in part by spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal.
"That last funeral service at St. James was easily one of the hardest I've ever done," said Robinson-Mohr, whose ministerial career spanned 24 years. "It was for a 10-year-old girl who died of complications of childhood diabetes.
"The way the congregation reacted, it was as if one of their own children had died," she said. "It's that kind of church community, the kind of community people seek."
Robinson-Mohr graduated from Whitworth College with a degree in music and religion, and obtained a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton University. She was ordained in 1984.
Question: Would you still be a pastor if you were healthy?
Answer: Definitely. It was an extremely painful decision to quit, but the migraines and spinal stenosis made it just too difficult. It wasn't fair for me to be gritting my teeth all the time, trying to get through things. The congregation was very sympathetic.
Q: What's the nature of your stenosis?
A: It's causing my neck to slowly deteriorate. I had surgery in January that fused three vertebrae, and my headaches stopped for 21 days. But they came back when I started back to work.
Q: Maybe you needed to slow down?
A: There could have been some stress, plus maybe I needed to slow down in general. Just turning around when I'm back out (as a driver) can trigger a migraine headachel. I've tried several medications and now I'm working with the University of Washington's headache center. I'm not part of a classic experiment or anything like that, but I am in a place where I can try the cutting-edge stuff.
Q: Were you always interested in being a pastor?
A: I grew up on Bainbridge Island and I was something of a "church nerd." When I was 7 or 8, while the other kids were out playing fort, I was playing church, pretending then I had my own church. I would call the dogs over and read Scripture to them!
I taught Sunday school when I was in high school. My senior prom was on a Saturday night and I still made it to church for my kindergarten Sunday school class, even though I didn't get home until 2:30 a.m.
Q: Why do call yourself a "progressive Christian?"
A: I got that question off and on at St. James. It comes down to this: How do we show the love of Jesus in ways that bring justice as well as compassion, to take the call to be peacemakers and justice-bringers? How do we act in a multicultural world that's becoming a global village in a lot of ways?
I feel Jesus would be angered by people who use goodness, the Bible, and morality as a club to beat others into submission.
Q: How are you growing spiritually?
A: I've had a lot of people praying for me, and a little of me would love to be miraculously healed. But I'm finding out how one can grow without being physically healed, how you can find grace and joy and meaning in life even though you're not physically without pain.
Michelle Nolan is a freelance writer.
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