Member Testimonial: Vickie Clark

The story of how I came to be at the Church of the River and what this place means to me really begins a long time before I was born. You, see, I come from a long line of rebels…rebels against petty religious authority.

During the Depression, my maternal grandmother was lucky enough to get to go to college. Her parents scraped together just enough money to send her to the nearby Baptist College and she repaid them by getting expelled three times! I say “expelled,” though they kept letting her back in for the tuition money. You see, the rules the Baptists imposed on the students of the college—particularly the female students—enraged my grandmother and she just couldn’t help but break them. For example, a boy and girl could walk together on campus but they were not allowed to sit down together nor were they allowed to stop walking and stand still in conversation! The boys pretty much came and went as they wished while the girls were kept under lock and key in their dormitories. So, my grandmother found many occasions to break the rules. Three times she was caught and three times expelled.

The first was when she smoked a cigarette on a Glee Club trip. All of the male members of the Glee Club smoked a cigarette, as well, but it was only the female soloist who was sent home for it. The second was when she dared, in the heat of the summer, to go bare legged—no stockings—to class. She always maintained that if her French professor was looking closely enough at her legs to be able to tell if she were wearing stockings, HE was the one who should have been sent home…to his wife. The third time was after she had already met the man who would become my grandfather. He had a car…a convertible…and he invited her to the movies....and she was seen riding in a car with a boy.

On the other side of the family, my father grew up in a fairly strict Baptist household. He was at church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening, and, after he became a teenager, Friday night was required of him as well because the Baptist church had a Friday night youth group for teenagers. My father spent a great deal of his adolescence frustrated by the rules imposed on the teenagers by the Baptist preacher, Brother Huffman. One rule that galled my father in particular was that the kids of the Baptist church were forbidden to dance. Meanwhile, at a Christian church across town, they were holding Friday night dances for teenagers! I don’t know whether my father finally got fed up or if the girls were cuter at the Christian church but he organized a group of kids to walk out of the Baptist Church youth group, walk across town, and join the dance at the Christian church thereby defying their parents, their minister, and, for all they knew, their God. So you can see it’s fitting that I ended up here.

So, my father swore off religion until he met my mother and was persuaded to become a fairly active member of the First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Georgetown, Kentucky. That is the church in which I grew up and I loved every minute of it. I loved my Sunday school teachers, I loved being with my friends, I loved the service projects, but most of all I loved the stories…the Bible stories. The only problem was, it never occurred to me that anyone actually believed them! From a very young age, I operated under this vague assumption that all of the grown ups were in on this ruse to tell us these stories as if they were fact because it was a good way to teach us how to live in the world. It never occurred to me that they believed them. So, you can imagine my surprise when, sometime during my eighteenth year, during a dinner table conversation, I found out that both of my parents believed in God. They actually believed in a Christian God…and I was shocked.

So, I went to college and I discovered atheism which felt both incredibly liberating and terribly wrong. Then I went to graduate school and discovered agnosticism which was a much easier label for me. Fast forward a decade or so…my husband and I were living here in Memphis…not attending church and with no plans to attend church…when a friend of mine and fellow yoga teacher found out she had breast cancer. She needed a surgery and a fairly lengthy recovery period and it was quickly decided amongst the teachers at Midtown Yoga that her classes would be parceled out and her pay check would remain uninterrupted. Because I live downtown, I got her Wednesday night Church of the River class! I had never heard of this place, and, yes, I had a little trouble finding it, but I wandered down here and was immediately struck by the peace and beauty of the setting. I went inside and began to prepare the space for yoga and the titles of the books on the shelves began to catch my eye. There was politics, philosophy, poetry…not at all what I expected to see at a church. And then the people came…and they were lively and bright and open to a new teacher and, in that first class, I quoted T.S.Eliot without naming him and a discussion immediately ensued about T.S.Eliot, about the passage I had quoted, and about whether he was, indeed, one of their own…a Unitarian. As they were talking, I thought to myself, “If we ever did want to go to church for some reason…this would be the place.”

A few years later we decided to start a family and were happily expecting a baby boy. My husband and I actually discussed whether starting a family meant that we needed to find a church in which to raise that family but we decided that between the two of us, we could give our son all of the information he would need…all of the knowledge of religious practices across the globe…so that he could grow up and make his own decisions…the way we felt we had. We also thought, as he grew older, we would involve him in community service projects thereby creating the good of church without actually having to go to church. Then he was born and he screamed for nine months. Before we knew it, we had survived infancy and toddler-hood and were enjoying the laughter and love of having a preschooler but none of the things we had talked about were happening. None of them. And so I came.

invited a friend to come with me…no husbands, no children…just to check it out…and I was here for my child. That was the only reason. Until Burton Carley stood up in the pulpit and spoke…and that man…with his honesty, his wisdom. and his bravery…that bravery that brings me to tears Sunday after Sunday…he changed my heart. He gave me permission to be not a Christian, not an atheist but ME…exactly who I’d always been inside my heart. The difference was that I didn’t have to be me alone anymore…I could be me here with all of you.

I wish I had gotten here sooner. But, I can tell you this: I don’t plan to miss one more minute in the life of this church. I am going to be here--with all of you--raising our children and our grandchildren in this place that is non-creedal, open, loving, and faithful. And I hope you will join me, not just in honoring and celebrating Burton’s years of service to this congregation, but in looking forward with great expectancy and great delight. I don’t yet know exactly what is coming next for this church but I know it is going to be good to miss. Thank you.