Mariann Budde
9 min read ⭑
“I want people to know that it’s possible to have a robust, living faith in Jesus and, in the classic words of Marcus Borg, not be a jerk; that it’s important to both listen deeply to those who see the world differently and pray alongside each other as the sinners we all are, and also to speak out when justice requires it.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
The city I consider home is Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we lived for 18 years and raised our two sons. We go back at least twice a year and plan to retire there. About a mile’s walk from our house is Cafe Ena, a stunning beautiful Latin American-themed restaurant with a French air. It’s both simple and elegant, a bit on the pricey side, so we save it for special occasions, although I always manage to come up with such an occasion when we’re in town.
The food is great, but it’s the feeling of the place I love, and the warmth of the owner/chef and his staff. I have beautiful memories of family celebrations, heart-to-heart conversations over a meal with friends, and one memory in particular of dinner with our younger son when he was a senior in high school. I feel as if I’m stepping into another country when I’m there — a glass of red wine, good bread, whatever the chef recommends and the company of those I love. A bit of heaven.
St. John's Church
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?
I’ve had some of the best experiences of my life on bicycle tours. Our first was in Costa Rica as a family when our sons were in high school. There I learned that mountain biking is a bit beyond me, truly — I couldn’t bring myself to ride downhill fast over rocky terrain, which our guide insisted was the safest way to go.
In later years, my husband and I discovered a small tour company that led us on road bike trips in Nova Scotia, Ireland and Newfoundland. While I love to ride, I confess that my sense of adventure is tempered with gratitude for relaxation at the end of long day’s ride. God bless the tour guides who take our gear from one destination to the next by car while we ride on.
It’s also on my bike that I have some of my most powerful spiritual experiences — not on the tours, but close to home, when I need to work something out. There’s something about a long ride that clears my head and opens my heart.
Once I rode a 10-mile loop near our house six times as I tried to decide whether to walk away from the sources of greatest pain in my life or to accept them as part of the call of my life. I rode and cried and talked to myself for hours. Finally, near the end of the fifth loop, the burden on my heart lifted and I knew the answer — I was to stay, not leave and see the struggle through.
Riding my bike is also the way I can simply let go — something about the rhythm of it, the terrain, the exertion. I’m not that much of an athlete, but there’s something about a bike ride that restores my soul.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human too. We're just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So, what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
Exploitable weaknesses — where to begin? I have a pretty high need for order and cleanliness in my physical surroundings, and it isn’t just a preference, but more of a compulsion. I’m not sure where it comes from, but it goes pretty far back in my life. Something about disorder became a source of shame. So I sometimes fixate on physical beauty or material things as expressions of worthiness, which is definitely a weakness. But tending to my physical space is also the way I get to a place of inner calm where I can do my work, or a way to clear my head. My need for order and cleanliness makes it challenging sometimes for my family to feel at peace around me. On the other hand, the house is almost always clean.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
Well, I’m a bishop in the Episcopal Church, and that means I spend a lot of my time doing whatever I can to help mostly small, traditional churches adapt and thrive in a world that isn’t that interested in who we are anymore. But I care about the Episcopal Church and what it stands for in this world — a faith that cherishes both mystery and science, tradition and progressive thought, orthodox faith and acceptance of doubt, devotion to Jesus and openness to the spiritual truths of other faith traditions. We also were among early mainline denominations to take a stand on Civil Rights, GLBTQ inclusion and the ordination of women — at a time when those stands cost the church a lot because of the culture wars raging in our own congregations.
But then again, we can be really boring, so I’m trying to breathe life into dry bones and do what I can to give rising leaders what they need. I want people to know that it’s possible to have a robust, living faith in Jesus and, in the classic words of Marcus Borg, not be a jerk; that it’s important to both listen deeply to those who see the world differently and pray alongside each other as the sinners we all are, and also to speak out when justice requires it. Most of the time, I try to find words and story that allow people to hear the Spirit of God speaking in their own hearts.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it's God when it happens?
The other morning I was sitting in the living room feeling the weight of inadequacy and grief. I don’t always write in a journal, but I was jotting a few things down and then a feeling came over me and I wrote a sentence that felt like a word from God. It’s been a tough year in our family, as it has for so many in 2020. My mother had been in an assisted living complex that had become like a prison, and we made the decision to have her live with us. It was the right thing to do, but I’ve struggled with her presence here. The sentence that came to me was: “You have spared your mother the horrors of confinement — thank you.” I felt seen and loved.
Another morning I lay on the floor doing my morning exercises and I started to cry — deep, wailing cries. When there were no cries left in me, I felt the warmth of love and a quiet call simply to get up and carry on.
Finally, in perhaps the most public moment of my life this year, when I saw President Trump standing in front of one of the churches of the diocese I serve, I felt this pull inside me to do something, to say something. It felt like a summons. Those are some of the ways Jesus comes to me. And I am grateful.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called “nonspiritual” activities?
Restoration for me comes in physical activity — walking or biking or doing yoga in the early morning. Morning time is sacred — I like to rise early and take my time, puttering a bit, gathering thoughts, getting exercise, making coffee and on my best days, sitting quietly in a chair. That’s not to say that my mind is always still in the morning — I am often distracted and restless. But it’s a sacred distractedness, a holy restlessness.
The other restoring time is in the aftermath of hard work completed, when I feel tired in that good way and free to surrender all that’s still waiting to be done and rest. Again, walking or biking is the best way for me to experience the release. Lately, and this may be a function of getting older,
I can also find restoration in a 30-minute nap in the middle of the day. Who knew?
I also find renewal in reading, particularly memoirs of people I admire. There’s something about being allowed into the inner life, complexities, and even contradictions of another life that let me breathe a bit easier in my own skin. Finally, I would say that a heart-to-heart conversation with a friend goes a long to renew my soul — a deeper connection than casual conversation and one in which I feel seen for who I am.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff too. What are three of your favorite resources?
I find incredible inspiration and beauty in the poetry and prose of David Whyte. I continually go back to his written and spoken word. You can find all of his material at davidwhyte.com. One poem especially speaks to my heart. It’s called “Coleman’s Bed.” Here’s an excerpt:
“See with every turning day, how each season makes a child of you again, wants you to become a seeker after rainfall and birdsong, watch now, how it weathers you to a testing in the tried and true, admonishes you with each falling leaf, to be courageous, to be something that has come through, to be the last thing you want to see before you leave the world.”
I also go back time and again to the wisdom of Benedictine nun Joan Chittister and especially her book, “The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages.” Here’s a quote: “Even our weaknesses take us to God if we let them. It is a very liberating thought: We are not capable of what we are to do but we are not doing it alone and we are not doing it without purpose. God is with us, holding us up.”
One final book that I re-read recently, the novel “St. Maybe” by Anne Tyler. It tells the story of a young man named Ian who believes he is responsible for the accidental death of his older brother, and when his brother’s wife dies, he drops out of college to help raise their 3 orphaned children. He finds a faith community, Church of the Second Chance, a group of misfits if there ever was one. It’s a story that stays with me and allows me to embrace my life of misfits and second chances. In one exchange between Ian and the pastor of Church of the Second Chance, Ian says something to the effect that he doesn’t want to waste his life. The pastor replies, “This is your life, Ian. Lean into it. View your burden as a gift. It’s the theme that’s been given you to work with. Accept that, and lean into it. This is the only life you’ll have.”
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it's done for you.
The resource I’m clinging to these days is Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s brief, but so powerful. “I am confident of this: that the One who began a good work among you will see it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ” (1:6). “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself” (2:6,7a). “Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12,13). “Rejoice in the Lord always, Again I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone" (4:4,5a). And more...
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So, give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I am at the 10-year mark of my work as bishop, and I don’t know what the future holds. My work as bishop is to further the health and vitality of the congregations in my care. But the fact the I’m even writing for Rapt Interviews suggests that there is another dimension to my work. Every once in a while, my public ministry and my writing reach a broader audience and I’ve been encouraged to write for that audience. So I am, in the form of a book that may take a year, or longer, to complete. Right now, I’m stumbling along, but it is at the heart I care most about. It’s working title: “Decisive Moments: How We Learn to Be Brave.”
Often it’s during the hardest moments of our lives that we hear the voice of the Comforter most clearly. It’s when our emotions are raw and tattered, and we have no idea what’s coming next — those moments when we feel so lost that all we can do is simply open our hands to God in surrender. Then he speaks. No matter how small his message is, it’s always exactly what we need. Do you need God’s still, small voice to speak to your situation right now? If so, don’t hesitate any longer — take some time right now to simply be still and listen.
Mariann Edgar Budde serves as spiritual leader for 87 Episcopal congregations and 10 Episcopal schools in the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties. Mariann is committed to the spiritual renewal of Episcopal congregations. She believes that Jesus calls all who follow him to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being. When not working, you’ll often find her riding her bicycle, cooking dinner for friends, or visiting family.
