Hypothetical "Morning Prayer" Sermon

Today I preached for the first time in my homiletics class. The assignment was to write a 3-5 minute sermon for a Morning Prayer worship service. The goal was to aid people in their prayer/meditation on the Scripture that was just read, not to give a longer sermon like one would at a Eucharist.

I preached on the Gospel lesson from today in the Daily Office Lectionary, Luke 14:25-35.

* * *

According to the picture of Jesus we receive in the Gospels, he wasn’t much of an advocate of “traditional family values.”

You know what I mean. The “good Christian family” some churches like to talk about, the kind we’re all supposed to have: a spouse (of the opposite sex, of course), and beautiful and well-behaved children, whom we love more than life itself. If we’re good Christians, our family will be the most important thing in our lives, right?

Not according to Jesus.

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus chastises would-be followers who want to delay following him for reasons that seem reasonable and even honorable by the “family values” standard – one man wants to first bury his father, another wants to go and say goodbye to his family. But Jesus will have none of it. “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60), he says to the first man, and to the second, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

Jesus calls us to follow him with single-minded devotion – we cannot love anything more dearly than him if we want to truly be his disciple.

Singer/songwriter Susan Werner captures the essence of this call to single-minded devotion in her song, “Courting the Muse.” In it, she personifies the “muse” that inspires her writing. The song goes like this:

Well I lit up all the candles and I turned out all the lights
And I waited up all hours, but she did not come by last night
She is beautiful as music, but jealous to the bone
And she will only love you if you love her alone

She used to sleep beside me in my narrow single bed
When I took public transportation, I was badly under-fed
And she loved me more than a lover, more than anyone I’ve known
Yes, she will truly love you if you love her alone

But then came some fame and fortune, and I got to feeling pleased
And I paid her less attention as my situation eased
So she left me for a busker on the Spanish steps in Rome
And I could see that she loved him cause he loved her alone

Now every night I light the candles, and I pray that she’ll return
For I have learned the double lesson that all her suitors learn
Don’t get too much lovin’, don’t care what you own
Cause she will only love you if you love her alone

People of many religious faiths have observed that “double lesson” that Susan Werner speaks of – that emotional attachments to both people and things can block us from being open to the inspiration that is waiting for us if we devote ourselves fully to God. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that God will only love us if we love God alone, the Bible certainly portrays a God much like Susan’s muse – “beautiful as music, but jealous to the bone,” demanding our exclusive love and trust.

Jesus invites us to follow him at the expense of all else because only in doing so can we truly come to know the love we so often seek from other sources. If Susan’s song were about today’s Gospel reading, perhaps it might end like this:

Don’t get too much lovin’, don’t care what you own.
‘Cause you will only know love if you love him alone.

Love (Kahil Gibran)

My dear friend Valarie Kaur gave me a copy of Kahil Gibran's The Prophet once as a gift, before I ever met my husband. It turns out that my husband owned multiple copies of this book, before he ever met me. It's been one of the books we've turned to for inspiration, and I keep it out on "display" on my bookshelf in the house. The past few days, every time I walk into the room, the book is lying on the floor. I keep putting it back on the shelf and arranging it where it belongs, but it keeps falling off again. Finally, tonight, I thought perhaps this book was jumping off the shelf in order to tell me something. I opened it and read these words, and felt inspired to share them here:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

-Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

Don't Ever Let Anyone Tell You Seminarians Don't Have a Sense of Humor

After the headline below appeared in the Herald Chronicle (Winchester, Tenn.), an unfortunate re-wording of a Sewanee press release...

Author Of Book Beatified By Pope

The Rev. Dr. Benjamin King’s highly acclaimed book, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, chronicles the life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, a 19th century cleric and theologian who bent church history and reshaped his own philosophy to please the popes of his day. To that end, Pope Benedict will beatify Newman on Sunday, Sept. 19 during a four-day visit to England and Scotland that starts on Thursday, Sept. 16.

King, assistant professor of church history at The School of Theology at The University of the South, made the case that Newman’s public image and writings were the work of his own careful manipulation...

THIS appeared in the hallway at the School of Theology...

A shrine to the blessed St. Ben

Notice the "offerings" -- a package of Earl Gray tea and a scone -- Ben is from England.

Solidarity with the Muslim Community

Tonight, my husband and I attended an iftar (breaking the fast meal) sponsored by the Sewanee Muslim Students' Association (MSA).

After learning of an act of arson against a proposed mosque site in Murfreesboro (just an hour's drive from Sewanee, close to Nashville) on August 28, and hearing this incident mentioned by some of my friends and colleagues in the interfaith community around the country in their recent emails and messages chronicling the anti-Muslim backlash around the proposed mosque in Manhattan near the site of Ground Zero, I realized that I could not simply sit back and let this issue pass me by.

Vandalism at the proposed mosque site reads, "NOT WELCOME."

Since leaving Harvard Divinity School (where I studied world religions) and leaving the staff of the film Divided We Fall (on anti-"Muslim" hate crimes after 9/11, which affected Sikhs and others as much as Muslims), I have become increasingly disconnected with what's going on in the "interfaith" and "religious diversity" world. I'm now at an Episcopal seminary, studying to be a priest. We don't have any classes on world religions. Islam was mentioned in our church history course last year, and our "creeds" class gave us an opportunity to compare our beliefs with Jews and Muslims and to dialogue with some members of the community, but that has been the extent of the "interfaith" experience here. We talk about how "open" and "diverse" we are as a seminary because we have some Methodist students here amongst the Episcopalians, and because we have some non-Episcopal faculty on staff.

I am actually glad I am in such a strongly Episcopal world in terms of being formed into an Episcopal priest. I am learning about my own faith and context to a depth that I have not done before. There is a camaraderie in knowing that almost all my classmates are going into the priesthood and will be my clergy colleagues in a few years. But the number of my conversations with members of faiths other than Christianity, and really even with denominations other than The Episcopal Church, has dramatically decreased since being here. In fact, it wouldn't be happening at all if it weren't for the connections I'd formed before I came here.

It was tempting to allow this debate and controversy to pass me by, knowing that my colleagues out there at the Pluralism Project and the former film crew of Divided We Fall were already mobilizing to show solidarity with the Muslim community. After all, I had 50+ pages of reading for Episcopal Church History, and a Scripture passage to memorize for preaching class, and Spanish vocabulary to learn. But then I stopped and thought -- what is the point of being here at seminary if not to grow closer to our Lord Jesus Christ, who spent his time among the outcast and marginalized? How am I following His example and allowing Him to live in me if I am not in some form or fashion standing in solidarity with the American Muslim community during this time?

So, I decided to do something. On Monday, I sent an email to the students, faculty and staff of the seminary, asking, "What can we do to respond to the Murfreesboro arson?" I immediately got several responses from faculty and students saying they had been thinking about this issue as well, so I suggested we meet as a group at our Tuesday community lunch the next day and discuss this question.

One of my colleagues reminded me that the Sewanee MSA (Muslim Students' Association) was hosting an iftar this week -- and that having some seminary students attend that event might be a first step to showing solidarity with the Muslim community on campus.

So, we went. Having been to several iftars before, I was looking forward especially to the good food. Unfortunately for me, I wound up at the end of a very long line, and all the vegetarian food was gone by the time I made it to the table! Everything was scraping bottom, and there were still at least 40 people in line! It was clear the MSA hadn't expected this many people to attend; the president said this was the largest turnout they had ever had. "This is a wonderful expression of solidarity," he said, "especially in light of what has been going on around the situation in New York and the fire in Murfreesboro. It really means a lot to us that you are here."

My husband and I had a lively dinner table conversation with several non-Muslim undergraduates who had come out to show their support and to learn more about Islam. There were several seminary students and faculty there, the university chaplains, and several community clergy.

After this event, I find myself wondering... how could we, as a seminary, form closer links with the non-Christian communities that are living right here in our midst? We may not be a "cosmopolitan" place, in this small town on top of a mountain, but we fool ourselves if we think "diversity" exists only in Chattanooga and Nashville. There is a Muslim community here, and I'd be willing to bet only one or two seminary students knows any of them personally. So much of interfaith bridge-building has to happen quietly, behind-the-scenes, before there's some crisis event. I wonder what we can do along those lines, moving forward...

Year Two, Week Two

I am now in my second (or "middler") year of seminary. This fall, I'm taking classes in Episcopal Church history, pastoral theology, preaching (a.k.a. homiletics), and New Testament. I'm excited to be getting to the specifically "priestly" aspects of my theological education -- discussing what it means to be "ordained" in pastoral theology, reflecting on the practice of preaching in homiletics class.

I'm also taking a course in Pastoral Spanish, teaching me the basics of Spanish as well as vocabulary and language of Christian faith and the Book of Common Prayer -- things I would need for ministering in a Spanish-speaking context. Taking Spanish has been "on my list" of things to do for quite a while now, so I'm very excited to be taking this class and that Sewanee offers this as one of their three language offerings to seminarians (the other two are the biblical languages, ancient Hebrew and Greek).

CPE in Alaska: An Overview

Edited from an on my experiences in CPE that was written for The Trumpet, the monthly newsletter of Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, Ga. (my sponsoring parish).

This summer, I am doing CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. I chose to do CPE in Alaska because my husband lived here for nine years, but I had never been to Alaska. Spending a summer here would allow me to get to experience this area that was a big part of his life. It also helped that when I called last fall to inquire about CPE, I discovered that the program at Providence sounded like a really excellent program – and it is.

The CPE program here supports both residents and summer interns. There are five CPE residents who are here for at least one year each (two Catholic priests, a Baptist minister, a Methodist minister, a Disciples of Christ minister, and a Presbyterian lay person), and six of us summer interns.

The Spiritual Care staff at this Catholic hospital includes a Catholic priest, three Lutheran pastors (two ELCA, one Missouri Synod), a Methodist deacon, a Russian Orthodox priest, and a United Church of Christ minister. There is also a professional therapeutic musician on staff, who plays the harp for patients who are in pain or dying.

My CPE summer internship group includes four other seminary students (two Lutheran, one Methodist, one Presbyterian) and an Evangelical Free Church pastor who is considering making a career change from parish ministry to hospital chaplaincy and will continue after our summer unit to do a year-long residency. We are wonderfully diverse in our theologies and perspectives on life, and bring a rich variety of experiences to our group interactions. I believe I can speak for all my colleagues in saying that the experience has been a tremendous growing process for all of us.

Our CPE group and our supervisor, Fr. Al (far right).

Each of us summer interns is assigned to a particular floor that is our primary area of responsibility as a chaplain. I am on the first floor of the hospital, which is the maternity center: labor & delivery, prenatal care (for women with pregnancy complications), the mother-baby unit (post-delivery), and the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). I spend a lot of my days greeting new mothers in the Mother-Baby Unit and congratulating them on their new babies – a nice treat considering so many people are in hospitals for not-so-happy reasons! I also support families of babies in the NICU and women who may be stuck on our prenatal unit for months, every day another day closer to a viable baby who will be able to survive if born early.

In addition our floor duties, all the chaplains take turns carrying the spiritual care office’s main pager, where we get requests for chaplains and general pages about emergencies to the ER. I also work one overnight shift per week (Tuesday nights), when I am the only chaplain in the hospital from 8:45 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. and I must respond to any and all calls that come over the pager for a chaplain. So far, on my night shift I have done everything from sitting with a family after the death of their father to making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for a 6-year-old boy in the ER (I happened to have PB&J in my office since I eat it for lunch every day). You never know what you will be called to do as a chaplain!

Additionally, since this hospital is an explicitly faith-based organization, there are daily prayers over the loudspeaker at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Chaplains take turns saying these prayers, and I have used many prayers from the Book of Common Prayer’s Daily Office over the hospital’s loudspeaker this summer. There is also an ecumenical worship service on Sundays at 1 p.m. that the CPE interns take turns leading. I led a service in mid-July in which I used the New Zealand Prayer Book and music from Taize and the Iona Community to create an atmosphere of calm, centering meditation.

Overall, CPE has been a wonderful learning experience for me. I had been a bit wary of CPE since I generally get queasy and anxious in hospital settings, but I have been handling it much better than I thought I would. The experience has also helped me develop my prayer life, and I have begun to say the Daily Office more faithfully than I have in the past. I find that this practice has increased my sense of calm and inner peace, even in the midst of difficult situations.

I am learning new communication skills for supporting and being present to people and am working on “taking myself out of the picture,” so to speak, and focusing instead on the patient I am with and their words and feelings and thoughts, and opening myself to God’s direction. Although I certainly do not feel a call to hospital chaplaincy at this point (bloody trauma in the ER is still not my thing!), this experience has affirmed yet again my calling to parish ministry and has helped me to develop skills and confidence for that calling.

I feel an inner transformation taking place, slowly but surely, as I am being molded and “formed” into a priest. As I reflect on how much has changed for me in the past year since I started seminary, I feel much more confident that the entire formation process as a whole (discernment groups, seminary, CPE) will guide and mold me into the priest God is calling me to be by the time I graduate from Sewanee in 2012.

Sermon: Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C

This sermon was delivered at the Our Lady of Providence Chapel at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, AK, as part of a Sunday afternoon worship service I led during my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education).

This afternoon, we heard the story of Mary and Martha. Women in the church often encounter this passage in Sunday School classes or women’s retreats in which we are asked to reflect on whether we are “a Martha” or “a Mary” – which is church code language for asking whether you are a “Type A” personality, organized and task-oriented, or a “Type B” personality, more carefree and process-oriented. The assumption is generally that both are equally valid ways of being, just different, and your task for the retreat is to find which type of woman you are.

But I don’t think that’s what’s going on in this passage at all. It seems pretty clear to me that Jesus is not saying that both Mary and Martha’s ways of being in this passage are equally valid. He says, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

The “better part” that Mary has chosen is to sit at Jesus’s feet (which was the position of a disciple) and to listen to his teachings. Martha, in contrast, is busily rushing about the house getting things done. She was probably doing all the appropriate things a woman would be supposed to do in that culture to prepare for a house guest. In the passage from Genesis, we get a glimpse into ancient Mediterranean hospitality traditions – preparing a meal, washing the guest’s feet, offering the guest a place to stay. There is a lot of work to be done to offer proper hospitality to a guest.

So is it bad that Martha wanted to do these things? Not at all. Jesus critiques Martha not because she is task-oriented, but because she is “worried and distracted by many things.” We have no way of knowing from this passage whether Mary was really a “Type B” kind of person; maybe she was just as task-oriented and organized as Martha at times. The point here is that Mary – whatever her habits or personality type – has not lost sight of the forest for the trees, so to speak. She has not gotten so caught up in preparing for Jesus’s visit that she forgets to actually enjoy Jesus’s visit and spend time with him – as her sister Martha has done.

Can you relate to this story? Have you ever found yourself so caught up in the details of what you are doing that you lose sight of the big picture? Are you so “worried and distracted by many things” that you forget to take time for God in your daily life?

The good news for us as Christians is that the spirit of Christ dwells in us and works through us – so we no longer have to carry the burden of feeling like we have to do all the work! As the apostle Paul writes in his Letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:19-20). Paul is describing what happened to him at his baptism, when he died to sin and was born to new life in Christ and the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. Being a Christian is about allowing Christ to live in us. We don’t have to do all the work! Christ in us will do the work, if we simply allow him to. If we give to Christ those things that worry and distract us and allow him to work on them instead of us, we will be freed to worship and learn from him as Mary did in our Scripture reading today.

What things are you “worried and distracted by” today? I invite you into a time of silence to reflect on that question. During this time of silence, I invite you to write down things that are distracting you from spending time in God’s presence. After this time of silence, we will sing the words of Psalm 46:10 – “Be still and know that I am God.” As we sing, I invite you to bring your pieces of paper forward and put them in this bowl of water, symbolizing your giving them over to God. As you watch the water begin to dissolve the strips of paper, imagine your worries dissolving in the abundant waters of God’s love.

The adaptable cat

Doro having fun with his favorite toy, a paper bag, in our new (temporary) home in Girdwood, Alaska. This little guy made it all the way from Tennessee to Alaska (by way of Oklahoma), including a pretty long plane ride. He's such a good travel kitty.

The promise of new life

Sermon: Third Sunday in Lent, Year C

Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, Ga.

This morning, we heard the familiar story of God’s call to Moses, of God’s appearance in the burning bush. (Exodus 3:1-15)

I am in my first year of seminary at Sewanee, and with my fellow first-year students, I have been studying the Hebrew Bible in depth, through two classes in the study of the Old Testament with professor Becky Wright. One of the first things Becky taught us in class this past fall was how to recognize certain “forms” in the Old Testament narratives.

The story of the burning bush is a “prophetic call narrative.” Not all biblical prophets have the story of their calling by God preserved in writing, but for those who do, it follows a pretty standard pattern throughout the Bible.

There are four parts to a prophetic call narrative: First, there is a theophany. That’s a fancy scholarly word for “manifestation of God.” (As Becky always tells us, you can’t just say “manifestation of God,” because you have to use big words that nobody understands so you can prove you’ve been to seminary.) In the case of Moses, the theophany is the burning bush. The theophany itself is not the main point of the story, but serves as a means to get the person’s attention. Exodus 3 is not primarily about the fact that God can make bushes appear to burn without actually burning; God’s conversation with Moses is the real point of the story.

The second part of a prophetic call narrative is the announcement of a task for the human being. God or God’s messenger says to the person called, “I’ve got a job for you,” and then proceeds to tell the person what it is. In biblical call narratives, God never calls someone just to be a prophet, but calls him or her to a specific task. In the case of Moses, it’s “get my people out of slavery in Egypt.”

The third part of the prophetic call narrative is the person’s objection. The biblical prophets ALWAYS voice an objection in response to God’s call. Moses says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Remember, Moses’s mother shipped him off down the river after he was born to save him from the Egyptian king’s intent to kill all male Israelite children, in an attempt to curb the Israelites’ population growth, since they were becoming more numerous than the Egyptians themselves. Moses was taken in by a daughter of the Pharaoh, and raised as an Egyptian. So although he was an Israelite, he was not recognized by the Israelites as being part of the people of Israel. Given his history, Moses felt he was not the most appropriate choice of a prophet to speak to the Israelite people.

And the final part of the prophetic call narrative is God’s answer to the person’s objection. God’s answer is almost always, “I will be with you,” which is what God says to Moses in Exodus 3.

As I listened to a lecture on this material in a classroom full of future priests, I saw heads nodding and knowing smiles around the room. Objecting to God’s call to us? Yep, that sounds familiar! “Who am I to do this?” is a familiar refrain among would-be priests.

But the part that was particularly interesting to me was the bit about the specificity of God’s call. According to the patterns we see in the biblical prophets, God does not call people to simply be a prophet, but to do some particular task. I wondered about the implications of this for those of us who claim to be called to the priesthood. We often talk about being called to “be” priests, as a role, as an identity. What does the biblical notion of call say to us? What if we are not called to be something but to do some specific thing in service of God? If God calls us to a specific task, to what has God called me?

If I ask myself that question, the answer has to be that I am called to serve people who are homeless or in extreme poverty. If I think about my own “prophetic call narrative” – or perhaps I should say “priestly call narrative,” it would probably go something like this:

“Tracy was traveling in Turkey, studying the religious history of the Mediterranean region as part of her bachelor’s degree in religion at Furman University. She came to Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to her in the form of a young girl living on the street. The young girl approached Tracy and the other college students with her and pleaded with them for food. When the Lord saw that the students did not give the girl any food, he made the little girl to grab the leg of one of the students. When the Lord saw that the students still did not give the little girl any food, the Lord’s anger burned against them, and the little girl picked up a shard of glass from a nearby bag of garbage and held it up menacingly. Although she could not understand any of the Turkish words the girl yelled, Tracy heard the voice of the Lord speaking through her:

“I have observed the misery of my people living in poverty on the streets,” said the Lord. “I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them. So come, I will send you to speak to them on my behalf, and to tell them that I love them and to deliver them from their bondage.”(cf. Exodus 3:7-8)

But when Tracy heard the Word of the Lord, she was terrified, and left that place, and fled to Boston, away from the Lord. (cf. Jonah 1:3)

But the Lord found Tracy, and appeared to her again, in the form of men and women living on the streets in Cambridge. As she passed by them on her daily walk to class, the Word of the Lord came to her again:

‘If you love me, feed my sheep.’ (John 21:17) 

‘Whatever you did to the least of these, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:40)

Finally Tracy answered the Lord, saying, ‘Who am I that I should go these people on the streets? I don’t know what to say. I’m not good at this. I’m scared.’

And the Lord said to Tracy, ‘I will be with you.’”

Later, in the midst of serving the poor through the Outdoor Church of Cambridge, I sensed a call to explore the possibility of ordained ministry. When I served as a parish intern in Omaha, Nebraska for a year, I found that I loved the life of the parish; I loved preaching, I loved being in community, I loved leading study groups, and I loved being the center of attention. Wow, this job was really cut out for me! I moved to Atlanta, went through the formal discernment process, and now I find myself in seminary at Sewanee.

But somewhere in the midst of all the churchy formalities, I lost touch with that original sense of call. Is God really calling me to “be” a priest, or is God calling me to listen to the needs and concerns of the poor, and becoming a priest is merely a vehicle for me to pursue those ends? As nice as it is to imagine a life sitting in my parish office going about the daily routine of a parish priest, I know my calling is more specific, and that I am called to always be outside the walls of the church. I am sensing a return of that call in my life these days, and I hope to do the “field education” part of my degree at Sewanee with an outdoor church for the homeless in Nashville, called “Church in the Yard,” that is very similar to Church of the Common Ground here in Atlanta and to the Outdoor Church of Cambridge, Mass., where I first began to discern my call.

My time at Sewanee has been very valuable for putting my call in context. I am lucky to have many professors who constantly seek ways to make our classroom study relevant to ministry on the ground. For example, in the same class I have already mentioned, I am working on a paper assignment that asked us to write about how we would lead a Bible study on Isaiah in a hypothetical mission parish in Des Moines, Iowa, made up of people like those described in a New Yorker article on the working poor that we were assigned to read as part of the class. One of the reasons I chose Sewanee was because of its focus on training parish priests for the actual day-to-day aspects of parish ministry, for its way of making seminary education relevant to the “real world,” and it has certainly delivered in that regard. I am constantly reminded that I am learning not just for learning’s sake, or for my own personal edification, but because I have been called to a very specific task for which I will need the knowledge I am gaining during this period of study. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that none of the biblical prophets went to seminary, and I realize that a seminary education does not give me or anyone else a monopoly on understanding God’s call or God’s message for God’s people.

In fact, I believe that God calls all of us in the body of Christ to specific tasks in specific times and places. I believe God has called each one of you. Maybe some of you know for sure what God has called you to do, while others are less certain.

I invite you all to go home this afternoon, take your bulletins with the Scripture readings in them, and sit down with the story of God’s call to Moses in Exodus 3. Think about your own “prophetic call narratives.” How and where in your life has God called you to a specific task? Re-write the burning bush story, as I did earlier, putting yourself in Moses’s place and replacing the burning bush with whatever “manifestation of God” in your life has triggered your sense of call. What did God say to you? What did you say to God? Is God calling you to do something specific right now?

Whatever it is, take time to hear God’s response to the inevitable objections that will rise within you. “I will be with you” is God’s response. According to the Bible, it is always God’s response to our objections. Whatever it is that you feel called to do, whatever it is that seems impossible and out of your field of expertise, God will be with you. And if we believe the promises of Scripture, we know that “with God, all things are possible.” (cf. Luke 1:37)

Amen.

Snowwoman

Snowwoman my husband made for me while I was home sick yesterday and today.

Today's sketch

The mirror on the dresser in our guest bedroom. (Notice a "household theme" in my sketches so far???)

"I have called you friends."

From the Wednesday morning Eucharist today, the Feast Day of St. Matthias:

"[Jesus said,] ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name." (John 15:12-16)

Today's sketch

A confession

In the spirit of the season of Lent, I have a confession to make.

I have never really had a sense of God's abiding presence in my life.

Sure, I get flashes of insight from time to time; I've heard a "still, small voice" within that has guided me when I've prayed for discernment in my life; and there are moments when I truly feel a sense of God's presence: when I'm singing with a group of people and we finally hit that note at just the right pitch and in just the right tempo and chillbumps run down my spine; when I'm walking through the woods and I feel the wind at my back or my eyes are opened to new life sprouting forth from the earth; when a moment of deep pain turns into a moment of solidarity between fellow human beings on this planet. But I don't walk around on a daily basis feeling like God is right there with me, that God is my closest friend.

In college, I had a roommate named Susan who had a sense of God's abiding presence in her life. I could tell this just by looking at her and observing her on a daily basis. Each morning, she would wake up and read her Bible, and just the way she opened the book and fingered the pages exuded such love and devotion that I could tell that she was enraptured in a conversation with her Lord. Whenever something was really troubling me, I could go to her and ask her to pray for me, and in the deep sincerity in her voice I could hear her connection with God. When I asked her to pray for me, I knew she would do it. She was a true intercessor.

During my college years at Furman University, I was a part of some on-campus religious groups that I would characterize as "Evangelical." There were many people in these groups who had that same aura about them that Susan did. In fact, it was precisely that that drew me to them. I knew they had something I didn't, and I wanted it.

But I never got it. In fact, my feelings that I was lacking something in the spiritual department were a big part of why I had never even considered that I could be called to ordained ministry until others started to suggest it to me during my time at Harvard Divinity School (I'd gone there not to pursue ordained ministry, but with thoughts of being a religion reporter for a newspaper or a documentary filmmaker, or a high school teacher of religious studies). Compared with these people who seemed to be so in touch with God, I felt I wasn't a "good enough Christian." Certainly I could never be a leader in the faith!

Eventually I drifted away from the Evangelical communities, largely because I felt some of their views, both theologically and politically, did not jive with my understanding of who God is from the Scriptures. (Isn't that the age-old story of schism in the church??) To use the words of Diana L. Eck, who became my professor at Harvard Divinity School and my boss at The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, I did not feel I could live with "intellectual and personal honesty" within those communities.

Although I drifted away from many of the friends I'd made during those years, Susan and I remained close. Many years later, I asked her about this sense of God's abiding presence that she had. She responded that when she was growing up, she was the "odd one out" in school since she was a Charismatic and not a "normal" (for her hometown) Methodist or Baptist. Many of her friends did not understand or approve of some of her church's practices, like speaking in tongues. So Susan couldn't rely on a sense of "normalcy" or "givenness" in terms of her understanding of God. She had to turn to God as a personal presence. She talked to God and sat with God and was comforted by God. God became her friend, an "ever-present help in trouble."

Yesterday, I had a meeting with my spiritual director in which I explained to her the struggles I have had over the years with maintaining any kind of regular prayer life, and with my sense of a lack of God's abiding presence in my life. My spiritual director responded by telling me I should talk to God more as if God was my friend. "You develop a relationship with another person by spending time with them," she said. "You have to do the same with God."

As I listened to her, I was struck by how similar this advice was to what I had heard in the Evangelical communities, and realized how, despite some of our political and theological differences, we are really not so different as Christians. The bottom line is the same -- to get to know God, spend time with God. Spend time reading Scripture. Spend time in prayer.

In some ways, this similarity made me a bit uncomfortable. Here again, I was confronted with my lack of a real, deep, two-way relationship with God. I can hide this better in the Episcopal Church than I could in the non-denominational, Evangelical communities, because most Episcopalians don't walk around talking about the time they spent talking with Jesus this morning, but here it was, all the same.

To cover up for my lack of a sense of God's abiding presence, I had begun to scoff at people who said they had one -- especially if they used the "friendship" language. "Jesus is not your FRIEND," I would think. "He's GOD -- transcendent, majestic, etc." I laughed condescendingly at the lyrics to one of my favorite songwriter's takes on the Lord's Prayer -- "lead us not into temptation / and deliver us from those who think they're You," she sings. One of the verses pleads to God to "deliver us from the politicians / who drop your name in every speech / as if they're your best friend from high school / as if they practice what they preach!" The song is indeed very clever, and I think makes a good point -- but a lot of the reason I identified with that verse was the bit about "as if they're your best friend from high school." "Hummph. Please! Right!" I'd say condescendingly, thinking about "those people" who say God is their "best friend" and how "silly" that is.

But then I found myself in an Episcopal priest's office, confessing my lack of sense of God's presence, and she was telling me to think of God as my friend.

Um.... whoops. As usual, God was serving me up a nice dose of humble pie. Why does God have to be so good at that???

When I explained my background, a lot of what I have just shared here, my spiritual director backed away from the "friend" word. "If that bring up bad memories for you, don't think in terms of that language. Find an image or a metaphor that works for you."

So this is my task this Lent. How can I develop a deeper sense of God's abiding presence? How can I spend more time with God? How can I just "be" with God, have a conversation with God? I'm exploring ways that this might work for me. I hope to be able to share some positive results. Your prayers would be appreciated.

Today's sketch

A jar of marbles, given to me by one of my professors at Harvard, who was in charge of the Program in Religious Studies and Education (PRSE), in which I participated (a program that trained teachers how to teach about religion in a public school context). She gave these jars of marbles to everyone at the end of our course of studies, saying that she had one on her desk to remind her that all her students are unique (the marbles are all different colors, although you can't tell that from my sketch).

Today's sketch

The footboard of the bed, with a knit winter hat hanging on the edge of it.

Lenten discipline

As part of my Lenten discipline this year, I am going to revive a tradition that my husband and I started this past summer. We would spend 15 minutes twice a day writing -- me journaling, and he working on his songwriting. It was a way of creating a framework to support the things we wanted to be doing but didn't always find the time for.

I've decided I want to revive this tradition during Lent, since we slacked off from it after I started school. Instead of just journaling, though, I'm thinking I could also use the 15 minutes for some time of creativity -- sketching or perhaps even trying my hand at some poetry (something I don't usually do!).

Here's a sketch I made this morning of our cat.

Ash Wednesday

"Ash Wednesday"
A poem by T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

I'm Sensitive

My sister, Ashley Wells, is about to release her debut album, "Mama's Skirt." Tonight I was listening to some of her music from the past four or five years, since she first started performing and making amateur recordings of herself playing in her bedroom and emailing them to her biggest fan -- her sister. ;o)

As I was listening, I came across a version of her singing "I'm Sensitive," written by singer/songwriter Jewel. I really resonate with the lyrics to this song and think there's something of the Gospel in this...

I'm Sensitive
by Jewel

I was thinking that I might fly today
Just to disprove all the things you say
It doesn't take a talent to be mean
Your words can crush things that are unseen
So please be careful with me
I'm sensitive, and I'd like to stay that way.

You always tell me that it's impossible
To be respected and to be a girl
Why's it gotta be so complicated?
Why you gotta tell me if I'm hated?
So please be careful with me
I'm sensitive, and I'd like to stay that way.

I was thinking that it might do some good
If we robbed the cynics and took all their food
That way what they believe will have taken place
And we can give it to people who have faith
So please be careful with me
I'm sensitive, and I'd like to stay that way.

I have this theory that if we're told we're bad
Then that's the only idea we'll ever have
But maybe if we are surrounded in beauty
Someday we will become what we see
'Cause anyone can start a conflict
It's harder yet to disregard it
I'd rather see the world from another angle
We are everyday angels
Be careful with me
'Cause I'd like to stay that way

An Irish woman in Cambridge

On Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005, I placed a cross necklace around the neck of an Irish woman living on the streets of Boston, and my commitment to serving the poor took an unexpected turn.

For the past nine months, I had been volunteering with The Outdoor Church of Cambridge, a spiritual community for the homeless in the Boston area, which takes the church to people who either cannot or will not enter traditional churches. Each week, we met in a large public park and held an outdoor Eucharist, followed by a community lunch, provided by the “indoor” churches of the area. We would then journey through the streets of Cambridge on foot, offering lunch and Communion to whoever looked like they might need it.

Although I had been struck by Jesus’s solidarity with the poor and marginalized from the very first time I began to read the Bible for myself during high school, it had taken many years before I was able to muster the courage to respond to Jesus’s call for his followers to do likewise.

The first time I attended the Outdoor Church, I had to bite back tears as I stood around the rickety metal push-cart that held the simple altar linen and wooden cross, while the minister recited these words as part of the Eucharistic prayer: “Out of your desire to draw us into your infinite love, 
Jesus was born into the human family 
and remained with people who were outcast.”

For years, I had run from my sense of calling to solidarity with the marginalized, while verses like, “If you love me, feed my sheep” (John 21:17) and “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40), rang in my head. As I stood at the Outdoor Church that day, I knew I was where God had been calling me to be for quite sometime.

But it wasn’t until nine months later, in one particular encounter with a woman on the street, that I began to suspect that there might be more in store for me than lay ministry in this field.

On the afternoon of Nov. 20, we were making our rounds through Harvard Square as usual. A woman approached us as we were speaking to one of our “regulars” and we offered her a sandwich. She was totally blown away. “You’re giving these away? For free? Are you for real?!? Why are you doing this??” Two of the other volunteers explained that we were part of an outdoor church. She still kept asking why we would do such a thing – apparently the word “church” doesn’t automatically conjure up the image of four people wandering the streets with coolers full of sandwiches, cookies, and juice.

I was reminded of 1 Peter 13:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” I spoke up and said to her, “Because Jesus tells us to feed those who are hungry, and to give to those who are in need. That’s why we’re doing this.” She was completely amazed, utterly thankful, said she and her husband were “starving,” and called him over to get a sandwich from us as well.

As I watched them eat, suddenly I felt drawn to give her one of the cross necklaces that was the symbol of our ministry. I approached her, explained that the necklaces were worn both by the ministers and the parishioners of our outdoor church, and said that I would love to give this one to her.

And then she did something I didn’t expect. She asked me to place the necklace around her neck for her. As I did so, something stirred deep within me. Many months later, I realized that there had been a sacramental nature to that act. I would come to feel similar stirrings when I offered a chalice to someone at the Communion rail, saying, “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”

I cannot overestimate the significance this one encounter had on my sense of calling. Seen in the larger context of my work with the Outdoor Church, it was the catalyst that moved my lay volunteerism into a life’s vocation. While teaching me valuable lessons about coordinating grassroots ministry, my time with the Outdoor Church also solidified my sense of what it means to be the church in the world and deepened my experience of Christ’s presence in my own life.

Alaska!

I received a phone call today letting me know that I have been accepted into the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program at Providence Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska, for summer 2010. So, if all plans fall into place accordingly, we will be spending the summer in Alaska!

Praise the Spirit in creation

We sang this hymn this morning at our community Eucharist (Wednesdays are our "Sundays" here at the seminary). It's a truly beautiful hymn, #507 in The Hymnal 1982 (the official Episcopal hymnal).

Praise the Spirit in creation
Breath of God, life's origin
Spirit moving on the waters,
Quickening worlds to life within
Source of breath to all things breathing
Life in whom all lives begin

Praise the Spirit, close companion
Of our inmost thoughts and ways
Who, in showing us God's wonders,
Is himself the power to gaze
And God's will, to those who listen,
By a still, small voice conveys.

Praise the Spirit, who enlightened
Priests and prophets with the word;
His the truth behind the wisdoms
Which as yet know not our Lord
By whose love and power in Jesus
God himself was seen and heard.

These are just the first three stanzas (not "verses" -- as I'm learning in my "Singing the Word" class, hymns have stanzas, not verses, because they are poems) -- I loved the opening stanza and also the third one that acknowledges that even the "wisdoms which as yet know not our Lord" are inspired by the Spirit.

Biblical ethics?

It seems that my Basic Christian Ethics class will be giving me the most food for thought this semester. This week, in the first part of a section on "The Bible and Christian Ethics," we considered the role of the Old Testament in Christian Ethics. As part of our reading for Monday's class, we were assigned the following passages of Old Testament texts for reading:

Exodus 20-23 (The Ten Commandments and other laws)
Leviticus 20:6-26 (the "purity laws," including the infamous anti-homosexuality passage)
Deuteronomy 5:1-21 (The Ten Commandments again)
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (Israel's instruction to teach the law to their children)
Deuteronomy 10:12-13 (Summary of the law: What does the Lord require of you? To love and serve him.)
Deuteronomy 13:6-11 (Commandment to kill your children if they lead you astray from the worship of the one God.)
Deuteronomy 20:10-20 (Guidelines for war against other nations, including an injunction to kill all the people in the towns they conquer, but not to kill any trees!)
Deuteronomy 22:13-30 (Laws about sexuality, particularly about the importance of women being virgins when they are married -- the penalty is death if they are not.)
Isaiah 1 (The prophet denouncing the empty ritual of the temples as having no meaning because the people have turned away from God.)
Amos 5:18-24 (More condemnation of empty ritual - "I despite your festivals; I take no delight in your solemn assemblies")
Micah 6:6-8 ("What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.")

Among these passages, we find some real gems of "biblical ethics" -- for instance, in the passage from Exodus, we are told that killing another person is grounds for the death penalty. But killing a slave is grounds only for punishment, not death for the slave-owner, and only if the slave dies immediately. If the slave survives for a few days after being beaten and THEN dies, "there is no punishment, for the slave is the owner's property." (Exodus 20:21) How are we to apply THIS Scripture in today's world?

Or what about Deuteronomy 13:6-11, which instructs parents that they should kill their children if they worship any gods other than the God of Israel? So should modern-day Christian parents kill their children if they decide to convert to Hinduism or Islam?

At the same time, however, within this collection of sometimes horrific laws, there are also laws that I consider morally commendable, such as the prohibitions against lending money at interest (Exodus 22:25-27), and against oppression of "resident aliens" (Hebrew: gur, meaning one who is unable to be at home due to war or famine -- a modern-day equivalent would be refugees or undocumented immigrants, according to our Old Testament professor Becky Wright), since the Israelites were themselves once aliens in the land of Egypt (Exodus 22:21).

So what to do with these texts? How do we construct a consistent biblical ethic based on Scripture? Do we simply "pick and choose," throwing out the passages about killing one's children and keeping the passages about not oppressing refugees? What does it mean to say that this text is the "Word of God"?

Many of my classmates did not seem troubled by the difficult passages in the Old Testament, making comments about taking into account the time and context in which the Old Testament was written, and using analogies of human development to say that the earliest Old Testament laws were given to the people of Israel in an early state of development morally and that today we have progressed to a higher state of moral being in which we are able to understand and interpret more nuance than people were then.

But these arguments seemed hollow to me. For one thing, the idea that humanity has progressed over linear time (often associated with "modernist" thinking) was somewhat disproved by the atrocities of the 20th century, including two World Wars and the Holocaust. And it seems inconsistent to me to on the one hand talk passionately about how we should take more seriously some of the Old Testament teachings on economics (the idea of a Jubilee Year where all debts are forgiven, the practice of keeping the edges of the fields un-plowed and left for the poor to eat) while at the same time arguing that we should not pay attention to those parts of the Old Testament that seem offensive to us today.

For one thing, not everyone is agreed about which parts of the Old Testament are offensive. I find the so-called prohibitions against homosexual behavior to be offensive, but many Christians do not. The Evangelical churches I was a part of in college would criticize this kind of approach to the Bible for using "man's judgment" to evaluate the worth of "God's Word." Who are we to question God's Word, they would ask? And in some ways, I am still asking this question.

I suppose I am looking for a consistent way to read the Scriptures, and I want to be up front and honest about what standard I am using to evaluate them. If I want to say that certain passages are not in keeping with what I know about God and God's will -- well, where did I get my ideas about what God and God's will are like? I suppose I got my ideas about God from reading other passages of Scripture (like Micah 6:6-8 and many of the Gospel texts), but other parts of it come from my own inner sense of right and wrong, of what is good and just.

I guess I can be thankful that I am a part of the Episcopal Church, which approaches faith through the "three-legged stool" of Scripture, tradition, and reason -- not the "sola scriptura" (or "Scripture alone") of Martin Luther and the later Reformist (Protestant) churches. That at least gives me grounds to bring my own reasoning (in the context of the wider Church community) to bear on the Scriptures, rather than feeling obligated to take them all literally, at face value, and try to follow every law and regulation within them.

Sound familiar???

In preparation for my church history class on Wednesday, I'm reading a passage from John Jewel's An Apology for the Church of England, written during the English Reformation to defend the Church of England against the charges of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church.

As I read this passage where Jewel defends the Church of England by comparing the Roman Catholic Church's accusations against the Church of England to the erroneous statements about the early Christians by the larger pagan community -- both based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the community (either the Church of England, in Jewel's case, or the early Christians, in his historical example) was really about, due to lack of knowledge and understanding and interactions with the stated "opponents" -- I couldn't help but think about the situation of Muslims in America today, who are often accused of many things, erroneously, by those who simply do not understand their faith and practice but criticize from afar.

If you're familiar with this modern phenomenon, does any of this sound familiar?

18. And, whereas they pretend we have departed from the unity of the catholic church; this is not only odious, but though it is not true, yet it hath an appearance and similitude of truth in it. But, then, not only those things which are true and certain find belief with the ignorant multitude, but those things also which may seem probable; and so we shall ever observe that crafty and cunning men who had not the truth on their sides, have ever maintained their cause with the resemblance of truth; that those who could not dive into the bottom of things, might be taken at least with the show and probability of their arguments. Because the primitive Christians, our forefathers, when they prayed to God, turned their faces towards the rising sun, there were some that said they worshipped the sun, and that it was their god. And because they said, that, as to their eternal and immortal life, they lived on nothing but the flesh and blood of the Lamb without spot, meaning thereby our Saviour Jesus Christ, envious men, the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose only business it was to render the Christian religion by any means hateful, did thereupon persuade the people, that the Christians were impious men, that they offered human sacrifices, and drank man's blood. And when the Christians said, With God there is neither male nor female, that is, that, as to the obtaining of justification, there is no distinction of persons; and did salute one another commonly by the names of brother and sister; there were not wanting some who slandered the Christians thereupon, and said, they made no distinctions amongst them of sex or age, but acted like beasts. And when they met frequently in vaults and secret places, to pray and hear the gospel, which sort of private places and meetings had sometimes been made use of by conspirators against the government; there was thereupon a rumour spread abroad, that they conspired together, and had secret consultations about murdering the magistrates, and subverting the government. And because in celebrating the holy communion they made use of bread and wine, according to the institution of Christ, they were thought by many not to worship Christ, but Bacchus and Ceres; because those heathen deities were worshipped by the pagans with a like rite, with bread and wine. These things were then believed by many, not because they were true, for what could possibly be less so? but because they had a kind of resemblance of truth, and by that show of truth were fitted to deceive them.

The Bottom Dollar

In my Basic Christian Ethics class today, we discussed Anthony Trollope's novel, The Warden (1855). The story is concerned with a priest in the Church of England who receives a large sum of money for a position in which he actually does very little work, while the old men in the almshouse or hospital (modern equivalent: nursing home or assisted living facility) that he oversees remain in a basic level of poverty. The position was originally created by someone's will, who left a fixed sum of money to the men in the almshouse and decreed that the extra generated by the lands owned by this man should go to the priest in charge of the hospital. Only problem is, when the will was first established, the land was mostly farmland, generating a small income. At the time the novel takes place, it is 400 years later, and the land is now suburban land that has been developed and brings in a huge amount of rental income -- so the priest now receives approximately 10 times the amount of a normal priest's salary, while the situation of the men who are the beneficiaries of the will has remained unchanged.

Discussing this ethical situation has gotten me to thinking about the role of money and salaries in priests' discernment of their calling. Our professor informed us that the Church of England now has a system in which all priests are paid the same amount, and it's barely enough to live on. In the American Episcopal Church, however, the salaries of priests vary quite widely, from barely enough to live on in some smaller parishes to upwards of six-figure salaries in some of the wealthy and endowed parishes. So what happens when, as a priest, you are job-hunting and you find that there is a $35,000/year job serving as the rector of a very small parish in a poor part of town, where you will be the only staff member of the parish, or a $150,000/year job serving in a wealthy urban parish where you will be supported by a staff of 20+ people, including four other priests to share the load of priestly duties (celebrating Eucharist, preaching, visiting people in hospitals, leading adult education forums, etc)? Which position would YOU hope you would get, if they chose you? But what if God is actually calling you to serve among the poorer population, even if it means more work and less money? It seems to me it would be rather convenient to take the money question out of the equation -- if we had a system like the Church of England, where all priests were paid the same amount, we could focus solely on the job and the sense of calling rather than worrying about our salaries.

On the other hand, I could see this creating a problem much like the problem in the education system in America -- teachers are paid so low wages that no one is willing to take on the jobs for the amount of work they require. People always say of the so-called "helping professions" that "you don't do it for the money," and consider this to be a good thing, thinking that one's motivation is somehow more pure if money is not part of the equation. But there's also a problem if the people serving in these positions are not able to maintain a reasonable standard of living.

Thoughts?

Revival of the Blog

I first began this blog in 2006, during my Episcopal Service Corps internship year in Omaha, Nebraska (Resurrection House). The idea was to chronicle my year of vocational discernment there, and wherever that might lead me.

Three years later, I am a junior (first-year) seminarian at Sewanee: The University of the South, and a Postulant for Holy Orders (for you non-Episcopalians out there, that means I'm in the second of three stages on my way to ordination as an Episcopal priest). Somehow, in the midst of my actual discernment process for the priesthood once I moved to Atlanta, I stopped keeping up with this blog. It seems now might be a good time to revive it.

I will attempt to post fairly regular reflections on my journey to the priesthood, and God willing, once I am ordained, I will continue to use this space to reflect, since I will never NOT be "seeking the call."

For now, I will be posting lots of things retroactively. As I write this post on Jan. 22, 2010, I have not updated this blog since the fall of 2007. I'm going to attempt to "fill in the blanks" now and post-date the entries for easy recovery later.

Grace and peace be with you, and thanks for reading.