Those Damn Flowers, A Story for The Moth

How a young pastor thought he learned what was important — and it wasn't him

Last night, I hoped to make the stage at The Moth StorySlam in San Francisco, but it was not in the cards. 10 great stories were chosen from “The Bag,” and even though I was not selected, it was a great night. I am so grateful for those who showed up on the off chance I got picked. Thanks fam!

I will try again* should the theme make sense, but here is the story that I was going to tell on the theme, “Oblivious,” about Lucille Tobiassen and the incident about The Flowers.

Lucille and Those Damn Flowers

FIRST SENTENCE: 30 years ago, I received my first full-time job. I was invited to be the pastor of a church here in San Francisco. Now I didn't know a lot back then, but what I did know was that the most important thing about this entire relationship was ME.

The Setting

This all changed one Monday morning. I was in my office recovering and exhaling from the Sunday before when I heard this knock on the front office door.

Boom. Boom, Boom.

And then I heard Lucille Tobiassan's aggravated voice, “Is Bruce here?” Now if you are unfamiliar with OG Church Ladies, she didn't use Reverend or Pastor. There was no honorific or title used. She called me by my first name. At that point, I knew I was in trouble.

Introducing Lucille

Lucille was a traditional church lady. When she came to church any day of the week, I rarely saw her not dressed to the nines, complete with a classy church lady hat. Lucille had been around a long time. She was one of the team that invited me to be their pastor. I think she prided herself on raising unruly new clergy. I still remember her taking me out to the narthex, the lobby at the back of the sanctuary. And you could see pictures of all the previous pastors. There was a portrait of each and underneath there was a small brass plaque with their name and the year their time as pastor began and ended.

As she introduced me to each pastor, we finally got down to the end and just after the last pastor, Betsy Massey she said to me, “And Bruce, someday your picture will go right there.”

In an attempt to charm, I said, “Well, Lucille, how long is my plaque going to say I was here?”

Without a pause, she said, “We’ll see.”

So this is the Lucille that came knocking.

Lucille Comes to My Office

Knock, knock, knock, “Is Bruce here?”

Earhawking from my office, I heard our church administrator, Inga, get up to answer the door. Now it’s important to know that in church world, the church administrator's primary job is to protect the pastor. Inga opens the door, sees that Lucille is in no mood to play, immediately gets out of the way like the parting of the Red Sea, gestures towards my office, and says, “He’s right back there.”

Inga, the traitor, was far more scared of Lucille than me, which is fair.

I hear Lucille coming. It's a long hallway, so it feels like forever.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Now I am new, I don't really know what I'm doing, and I am scared to death. So, with not artistic embellishment, I kicked the door closed on the off chance that she would walk on by.

This did not happen.

Thump. Thump. Thump. “Bruce, are you in there?”

In another sign of my courage, I legit considered not saying anything and pretending I was gone.

But I didn't. I was going to adult up and deal with the conflict ahead. I was new, but I did know about office dynamics. So before I invited her in, I moved behind my big wooden desk. I put this big ass piece of furniture between this so that she knew that this was my office and that she could not come in here and start getting all up in my face. I wasn’t going to come into my house and tell me what to do. Behind that desk somehow, I became He-Man, Master of the Universe.

So with as much bravado as I could muster while sounding casual, “Come on in.”

The Conflict

Lucile comes in, and she says to me, no greeting, no small talk, “Bruce, do you know what happened on Sunday?”

And I was like, “No, I don’t know what happened on Sunday,”

“You have NO idea what happened on Sunday?”

“No”

“You have no IDEA, what happened on Sunday?”

As if, if she emphasized a different syllable each time she asked me, I would magically remember what happened on Sunday.

Now, to be fair, I had done a lot of wrong things on Sundays. I think within my first couple of Sundays, I swore from the pulpit; keep in mind that in the mid-90, saying “pissed” was swearing. And one I walked into the sanctuary with a cup of coffee, which was strike number 1. I needed somewhere to put my coffee cup down, and the closest level surface was the Steinway piano.

I still remember as I started to put my cup down on it, I heard the choir gasp. I seriously thought they were gonna have a collective coronary. I recalled my hand and there was this collective exhale of relief, “Ahhh.” So of course, seeing what would happen, I did it again. I moved the cup back towards the piano and away again Gasp, Exhale, Gasp, Exhale because you know, I thought it was funny.

So, there have been things I've done, but this Sunday, I could not remember anything. I didn't swear, I didn't say anything inappropriate. I legit didn’t know what happened on Sunday, so with finality, I said, “Lucille, I have no idea what happened on Sunday.”

Lucille says to me, “Bruce. The flowers were in the wrong place.” Now I understand that for some people, the flowers in a space are important, but I am not one of those people, so before I could stop myself, I said to Lucille, this long-time member and respected Elder of the church.

I said,” Lucille. I don't care.”

Now, have you ever tried to put toothpaste back in the tube after you've squeezed it all out? It just gets worse. Lucille was livid. She was like a cartoon character. She turned bright red; steam was coming out of their ears in such magnitude that her fancy church hat was slowly levitating above her head.

We just got into it. Both of us lobbing insult after insult and judgment after judgment until she stormed out.

The Change

Now, Lucille eventually became one of my greatest champions, but not then. I remember I needed to go somewhere and breathe, so passing Inga, who was doing a terrible job of pretending my office had not just been used as the octagon, I went into the sanctuary and I sat down, one to calm down, and two, because I needed to see, “Are the flowers really in the wrong place”

So I went and sat down and looked at the flowers; yes, they were off a little bit.

And then I had this realization, damn Bruce. You're an asshole.

Now what you don’t know about Lucille is that she had been a member of this church for 50 years. Over those 50 years, her children and grandchildren were born and baptized. She had seen friends married. She had celebrated their greatest joys and grieved their deaths. And every Sunday, Lucille would come into the church early every Sunday morning, far before any of us staff and she would get the flowers from the office. She would take them into the sanctuary and place them in the center, just in front of the communion table, and even though there was a water ring on the carpet , which designated where that had been placed for decades, so would walk to the back of the sanctuary just to make sure. Once she was satisfied, she'd come back, put some water in, not too much water, and then go sit with her husband Marty, right side, four pews back.

And for the past 50 years, not only have they known belonging amidst this community, but for 50 years, she experienced the holy and the divine through the lens of those flowers. Now, we can argue all day about what's truly important for any community, but at that moment, those flowers were important to Lucille. And the person who was supposed to nurture and cultivate a community of caring, love, and justice. The person who was supposed to nurture and love her just told her, that, not only that he didn't care, but that what was important to her didn't matter.

In that moment, sitting in that sanctuary all alone, I learned what was important, and it wasn't me.

LAST SENTENCE: Now, one could argue that 30 years later, I still don’t know much, but what I do know is that because of that realization, I became a better pastor, a better partner, a better parent, and a better human being. And it's all because of Lucille Tobiasan and those damn flowers.

Thanks for taking the time to read this story. I have told it over the years, and it never ceases to amaze me how oblivious I was.

*First sentences of other stories I am working on . . .

• First Sentence: I came flying over the fence only to see my mother, arms crossed, waiting for me as if she knew all along what I had done.

• First Sentence: I'm not sure what happened, but there I was, naked, sitting in a closet, eating a bag of potato chips.

• First Sentence: There I was, literally climbing the walls of the hospital hallway, and I’ll I could think was, “Please let me die.”