BARBARA SCHLACHTER

My wife and I just returned from a Celebration of the Life and Ministry of The Rev. Barbara Jeanne Hartley Schlachter. It was a wonderful and moving and oh-so-fitting service to honor Barbara. She and I served together at Christ Episcopal Church in Cedar Rapids. I hope our mutual ministry was fruitful to the people we served. But for me, personally, in a word – or five – Barbara pushed my comfort level.

I was not alone. I think all her life Barbara pushed peopled into their uncomfortable zones, places in their minds and hearts that, at that moment in their lives, they would rather not be because it meant that they would have to deal with truths they would rather ignore and for which they found excuses and then, heaven forbid, change.

Barbara, of course, on so many issues, was ahead of her time which is the reason why she made so many uncomfortable. We liked the way things were; and if pushed, especially we in the Church, could find some theological reason why we believed what we believed. For what we did not see or refused to see was that those issues were power issues that were masquerading as theological issues. That’s the way it has always been, hasn’t it? What Barbara did was force us to take off the mask and see what we did not want to see and face the truth, uncomfortable as it was to do. That was her way all the way through her life. She refused to allow us to hide behind the mask that was hiding the truth.

And she did not care whom she offended. The truth is the truth after all. When the Church tried to bar her and her female colleagues from ordination as priests because the Church could – and did, she stood tall until the church, ruled by males who liked it that way, could no longer try to use false theology to hide behind their mask of power. She pushed the Church’s comfort level when it needed to be pushed.

When she and Mel became a clergy couple, no one knew what to do with them. “We’ve never done it that way before,” they said. “How are we going to work this out?” they asked. “Figure it out,” Barbara and Mel said, “because we’re here to stay.” And the Church did, much to the Church’s benefit, I might add, even though it took pushing the comfort level of so many, especially the bishops who did not have a clue what to do.

At Christ Church Barbara started a women’s group she called “Women of Excellence.” The name drove me up the wall. It pushed my comfort level. Don’t ask me why. It just did. But it made my chauvinism face the truth that women by nature are excellent and I had better get comfortable with it. (I have, my excellent wife making certain of that!)

The Church and the world are a better because of Barbara’s life and never-ending ministry. She pushed the comfort levels of so many of us when we did not know they needed to be pushed and forced us to come out from behind a mask that tried to justify our beliefs and actions and made us change. Thank you, Barbara. Rest in peace.