Some days I think, "Yeah, I'll probably wind up as a priest." I just get this sneaking suspicion that that's where I'm headed.
I love wearing the robes (oh, excuse me, the alb), love being a part of the liturgy (I literally get teary-eyed sometimes just watching people come forward for communion. I LOVE that. And that's been pretty consistent for the past several years, throughout my time at St. James. It's been a lasting love of the Eucharist, not just a momentary, fleeting moment of being touched or whatever.) I love being involved in the life of the church. I love doing activities and just being there. It was like that at St. James and it feels the same way here (although I must admit it's a little strange not having a life outside of the church -- like, an actual job I have to go to or anything in the 9-5 world.)
But then there are those things I fear would be stumbling blocks for me in my path to ordination:
* My views on other religions. Can I be a non-exclusivist in my theology and be a priest? Does the very fact that I'm asking this question belie the fact that I still think exclusivism is the only "true" Christian perspective?
* My tendency to want to shake things up. Tradition? Whatever. LOL. No, not "whatever," but like... do I give it enough credance to be accepted/taken seriously by the church as a candidate for ordination?
* The "priestly powers" thing. (i.e., that only priests can say the words that consecrate the Eucharist, or that priests can "bless" things.) I just don't buy it. I'm coming more and more to buy the consubstatiation/transubstantiation thing (that is, that the bread and wine actually either become the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist, or that the "real presense" of Christ dwells in the elements after they have been consecrated. That the Eucharist is not merely symbolic, a mere symbol and remembrance of the "last supper," but an actual SACRAMENT, a physical vehicle of God's grace in the world.), but to say that only a priest has the "magic words" or "magic powers" to do this is just... ehh. "Oh, the priest won't be here, so we have to do Morning Prayer instead of the Eucharist." What? AHHH!
* Some of my other theology:
i.e. -- I don't believe Jesus "had to die" on the cross for our sins, to fix some kind of cosmic imbalance or to appease the wrath of God. "Just say no" to substitutionary atonement! But I don't know just quite how I understand his death. As a victory over death -- the resurrection. But the death itself as having salvific power? My money's on the resurrection, not on the death. And why, then, did he have to die that way?? I don't know. I guess this is where I'm glad I'm in a high-church, sacramental place where I can say stuff like, "Oh, it's a mystery." I mean, it's interesting, this need to explain why or how. We do the same thing with the human deaths we encounter in our own lives -- trying to explain why that person was taken from us... when I think we just really have to rest in the uncertainty of not knowing why, but knowing that the powers of death have no hold on us anymore. I mean, we don't have to understand the specific details or significance of Jesus's crucifixion and death to know that he was resurrected. Maybe we should just accept the crucifixion and death as a fact (the suffering and all), just the way lots of crap goes down in the world every day that we don't have explanations for... and yet, somehow even without those explanations, we can still see evidence of and affirm that life triumphs over death, that "even when we're most sure love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway" (to quote from Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.)
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