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.

Spiritual Autobiography for DYVE

I have entered the discernment process for the priesthood in the Diocese of Atlanta, through a program called Discerning Young Vocations Experience (DYVE), designed specifically for young adults (twentysomethings). This is the spiritual autobiography I wrote for my first meeting with that group on Nov. 17. (It could only be three pages, double-spaced, so that really forced me to edit and create something more structured and precise than I otherwise would have!)

When I think back on the wrestling match that has been my Christian journey over the past ten years, the overarching theme could be summed up in one brilliantly concise line from a book called Encountering God, by Harvard religion professor Diana Eck. She writes, "Theological questions are not merely theoretical; they are the life and death questions of real people attempting to live with intellectual and personal honesty in a world too complex for simplistic answers." As I have walked the path of faith, I have always asked tough theological questions; in the early years of my journey, they took the form of philosophical and intellectual speculation and turmoil, while more recently I have asked more practical questions about ways "to live with intellectual and personal honesty" in how I embody my faith.

In college, my journey was characterized by intense intellectual questions as I tried to make sense of my newfound faith in Christ. Though I had been raised Lutheran, I had never been very "into" church until I had a "conversion experience" through a retreat at a friend's church in my senior year of high school, which propelled me into several years of time in nondenominational, evangelical churches. My mindset in relation to my faith at this time was intellectual and rational; the communities of which I was a part thought of faith primarily as belief, as assent to a particular doctrine. I was drawn to these communities for their passion for Christ and spiritual certitude, but soon realized that I personally still had searing questions about God, my faith, and the scriptures. I became a religion major in an attempt to work through some of those questions, but initially the religion courses seemed to raise more questions than they answered. My first response was reactionary – I was determined to "prove" that Christianity was "right." However, after reading many apologetics, I came to the conclusion that there can be no objective proof in matters of faith. And after delving into the study of world religions in my later college years and encountering for the first time people with active faith commitments to religions other than Christianity, I found that my sense of "intellectual and personal honesty" made it impossible for me to continue to hold an exclusivist belief – the idea that Christianity held all the answers and all other faiths were wrong. This was not an easy conclusion to reach when I was involved in communities who believed there are fiery consequences for anyone who does not believe that Christianity has an exclusive hold on truth and salvation. These questions truly were "life and death," in the most literal sense, for me.

After I graduated from college and moved to Boston for graduate school, my faith began to shift, from a struggle with speculative theology about the afterlife to a sense of calling to address the immediacy of human need in the here and now. One of the things that had always compelled me most about Jesus, from the very first time I really cracked open a Bible in my senior year of high school, was his way of breaking down the social boundaries of the day and reaching out to call all people blessed and beloved of God – including those that society and the religious establishment were quick to dismiss or even condemn. Once I had exhausted myself with intellectual and philosophical questions, realizing that they were likely not ever going to be solved and answered entirely to my satisfaction, I focused instead on the practical – on what I could see and hear and feel and know on this planet. And one of the first things I noticed was that people were hungry. And I remembered that Jesus had said something about feeding them.

So began my struggle "to live with intellectual and personal (and I might add, spiritual) honesty" in the world, to live out my values in following Jesus's example, to answer what I began to increasingly understand as a calling from God to reach out to those in need, to assuage suffering, and to promote healing. After running from this call for nearly two years, I finally stepped out in faith and began to volunteer every week with a homeless ministry program that slowly but surely transformed my life. One particular Sunday, after giving lunch to a woman on the street, I offered to give her one of the crosses we wore as a symbol of our ministry with this group. She eagerly accepted, and asked me to place it around her neck for her. Many months later, I realized that this was my first true sacramental act. And in that moment, something stirred deep within me, something that let loose a chain of events that has brought me, two years later, to be entering the discernment process for the priesthood.

I went immediately home and rode a wave of inspiration as words flowed out of my fingertips into my computer, recording my circuitous path to homeless ministry. I shared that writing with friends and mentors, and some of them began to encourage me to think about ordained ministry. The next year, I wound up serving as an intern in an Episcopal church in Omaha, Nebraska, through a discernment program for young adults. I came out of that program with an increased sense of calling to ministry, and at the end of the program felt a strong call to return to my home region of the country, which precipitated my move to Atlanta this summer.

Through all my struggles with my faith, I have stared complexity in the face and refused to acquiesce to simplistic, pat answers in matters of faith. I am always and constantly "working out my salvation with fear and trembling," as Paul writes in Philippians 2:12; constantly wrestling with God, praising and thanking God, arguing with God, and listening for God. I have moved from a faith that was concerned primarily with belief and right answers to a faith that is rooted in compassionate action and is comfortable sitting with the places of uncertainty and complexity in the human experience, fully confident that the incarnate Lord will always show up in those places with us.

A recap of my spiritual journey to this point...

I wrote this spiritual autobiography for the discernment commitee at my church in Nebraska... they are trying to help me discern whether I have a calling to any form of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.

My spiritual journey began in earnest when I was a senior in high school, back in South Carolina. I had been raised in the Lutheran Church, but faith was not something real and personal to me until an experience I had at a retreat at a friend's church my senior year of high school. Some may call such an experience a "conversion" experience or a "born-again" experience. Although I tend to shy away from those words, I essentially had an encounter with God where I realized that God could be a very real presence in my life, and after that retreat I began to read the Bible in earnest, which I had never done before. I was enthralled with what I found -- the beauty in the Scriptures, particularly in the parables of the Gospels and the songs of praise in the psalms.

For about a year and a half, I became wrapped up in an Evangelical community, during my late high school years and early college years. I was certain that I had "found Jesus," that I now knew "the Truth," and that my mission was to convert everyone in the world to Christianity. I often felt a huge burden over the fact that I did not "evangelize" others like I should, and I and a friend who was my "accountability partner" in faith would sometimes sob at our meetings over the fact that people were dying and going to hell because we personally hadn't told them about Jesus. I felt an intense burden, like the salvation of the world rested on my shoulders. I would talk about being "on fire for God" and go to praise and worship meetings where we would raise our hands in a darkened room and deeply and passionately sing praises to God, tears running down our faces, eternally grateful for God's salvation of us, such unworthy sinners. Since early childhood, I had struggled with low self-esteem and often felt I was a horrible person or unworthy of love, so this message of God's unconditional love, which I had never heard proclaimed so strongly or emotionally in the Lutheran church I grew up in, pierced through to my very insecure heart and touched me deeply. I was hooked.

Somewhere along the line, though, my neat little black-and-white world began to fall apart. My sister's best friend's father died unexpectedly when I was a sophomore in college, and my faith simply did not provide a sense of comfort to me during this time. When challenged, my all-too-happy façade broke. At the same time, we were studying about the Holocaust in a European history course I was taking, and the horrors of the world began to bear down on me. Where was God in all this? I struggled with the age-old question of theodicy: how could an all-loving, good God allow such horrific suffering? I simply couldn’t get past this for many years. I became a religion major in an attempt to learn more about my faith and to strengthen it, but courses in systematic theology and analytical approaches to the scriptures only shook my foundation in what I thought was absolute fact. Somehow it all stopped making sense.

Wanting clear-cut answers, I became desperate to PROVE that Jesus was the only way, that my faith was the "right" one, and I went on a rampage, reading all that I could, searching for answers, for proof, for reassurance that Christianity was indeed FACT, and not faith. Eventually, I could find no objective proof that satisfied me, so I felt I had no other choice but to reject exclusivist theology - the idea that only Christians can connect with God or will be saved by God.

This rejection was extremely painful and traumatizing to me. I constantly wondered if maybe I really WAS being led astray by the devil -- how could I tell what was from God and what was from the devil??? -- and involved painful readjustments of my views of God and Scripture. But, my rejection of exclusivism was only confirmed when I had my first real interfaith encounter a year later, with a Muslim student in an introduction to Islam course I was taking. Outside of class, we talked and shared our faith journeys, and discussed how we related to God and how our faith had sustained us (or in my case, failed me) during times of crisis. I simply could not deny that this young man was also in touch with God, with the divine presence, and no amount of "official, orthodox Christian doctrine" about non-Christians going to hell could convince me otherwise.

Also, I began to develop a sense of calling to reach out to the outcast of society. As I began to come into my own understanding of faith rather than a parroted version of someone else's, I began to feel more and more convinced that standing in a darkened room singing praise songs accompanied by guitar and drums was probably not as pleasing to God as reaching out to love and serve those most in need would be. As I read the Gospel texts, I saw a Jesus who lived among the outcast in society, who did not cavort with the powerful and the wealthy, but with those most despised in the society of his time - the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and - heaven-forbid - even Samaritans. I saw a Jesus who said things like, "It will be easier for a camel to go through the needle of an eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:23). Who asked his followers to sell all that they owned - not 10 percent of their annual income, not five dollars in the collection plate each Sunday - but all that they owned, give to the poor, and come follow him. This, to me, seemed to be the heart of Jesus's message about the kingdom of God - the kingdom of God is at hand, and it will be realized as people come to follow him, serve the poor, love their enemies, and reach out to the stranger, the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the socially stigmatized, and the deserted.

The incongruence between Jesus's calling as I understood it from Scripture and the experience of seeing students wearing ridiculously-priced clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch driving to Sunday worship in their $40,000 SUVs that Daddy bought for them, never encountering or speaking with someone who didn't have tons of money and privilege, began to drive me nuts. (And I should be clear that this incongruence wasn't limited exclusively to the Evangelical communities of which I was a part; it was something I found in pretty much any Christian community I had encountered. Maybe the displays of wealth were more excessive in some churches than others, but nowhere did I see a truly radically inclusive community being lived out, a community like what I envisioned the followers of Jesus and the early Christian community to have been.)

My Evangelical friends surely sensed these changes in me, even if I didn't talk about them openly very much for fear of rejection and criticism from them. I began to feel increasingly out of place in the Evangelical community and eventually left it and found a home in a more liberal Baptist church (which was part of a movement in the South called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an alliance of more moderate Baptists who reject the conservative views of the Southern Baptist Convention). By the time I graduated from college, I had become fairly involved in that Baptist church, but I was still a bit unsettled in my faith. The summer after I graduated from college, I lived at home in Columbia, S.C., and didn't really attend church much for that summer.

Part of the reason that I didn't get to attend church much was that I was doing some research for the Pluralism Project at Harvard (www.pluralism.org) about religious diversity in Columbia, and this research entailed visiting ceremonies of the various religious groups in the area. Since many of them had adapted their religious schedules to fit the American workweek, they often had meetings on Sundays (since that's when all the Christians were doing their religious thing). Thus, I often had a Sikh service or a Hindu ceremony to go to on Sunday morning instead of church. This was perhaps also a good experience for me personally, to sort of "take a break" from involvement in church and immerse myself in other faiths and cultures.

I was very open to seeing the presence of the Divine in these faiths, and I did find it there. I sensed God's presence when I was sitting and listening to hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh holy scriptures) recited in the local gurdwara, or when I watched Muslims bow in reverent prayer, in unison, to the call to prayer in Arabic proclaiming "God is great!" I delighted in the many forms and representations of God in the Hindu tradition, especially enjoying a late-night vigil on the eve of Vishnu (one of the deities)'s birth as the baby Krishna, watching the crowd break into jubilant applause, singing and dancing at the hour of Krishna's birth.

From Muslims, I learned to think about disciplined prayer. From Baha'is, I learned to think about racial reconciliation and unity as a part of the divine mandate. From Buddhists, I learned to think about stillness and centeredness in meditation. From Hindus, I learned to think about what it meant to worship God not just as creator and preserver, but also as destroyer, to own the suffering and dark side of life as part of God's very presence in the world. My questions of theodicy that had tripped me up for so long in struggling with Western Christian theology were simply irrelevant for a worldview that did not posit as its starting point that only good things come from God -- and on some level I found this extremely liberating.

I was particularly drawn to one middle-aged Hindu woman, who I thought simply oozed the presence of the Divine. She spoke of the presence of the Divine Mother in all of us and told stories about visiting prisoners at the local prison, of reaching out to the outcast of society, of living out a sense of calling very similar to what I had discovered in the Christian scriptures but which I still at this point was not living out myself.

She was my contact at the Hindu temple and always welcomed me warmly to their various festivals and events throughout the summer. By the end of August, when I showed up for yet another religious festival (this time for Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of new beginnings and remover of obstacles), she welcomed me with a hug, smiled, and said with a laugh, "Is this your church now?" She was half-joking, but it really made me stop and think. Was the Hindu temple my "church" now? Was the gurdwara? The mosque? The Buddhist meditation hall? I didn't even have a church anymore. What was my church? Sensing my hesitancy to respond, she nodded knowingly and revised her statement: "ONE of the churches," she said. I nodded vigorously. One of the churches. Yes. That was more like it.

By the end of the summer, despite everything I learned about God from these various faiths, I knew that I wanted to actively seek out a church and try to find my place within Christianity when I moved to Boston to start graduate school. Despite all my "interfaith" sensibilities and my ability to see the presence of God in other faiths, there was something there that kept me hanging on to my Christian faith.

I struggled a lot in college with traditional doctrines about Jesus -- was he really "God" in the flesh? Was he really born of a virgin? What if I don't think Jesus was God, but an inspired human teacher? At times my roommate (a fellow religion major) and I would joke that if we were honest with ourselves, we probably should just be Jewish, since we were fine with most everything in Christianity except the claims it made about Jesus... and, well, if you take Jesus out of the equation, it's not really Christianity anymore, now is it?

But ultimately, I came to realize that yes, Jesus was important to me. Despite my inability to "prove" the "factual" nature of any of the truths that the church holds about Jesus, I knew that the story of Jesus, the very simple basic story of his life, death and resurrection, had deeply touched me and moved me in a way that nothing else had in my life, and in a way that no other religion had (from my limited knowledge of them). Although I had rejected just about everything that I used to believe or hold dear during my Evangelical days, I realized that I couldn't reject Jesus.

That realization was a very deep and profound one for me. I realized that I had let my frustrations with and anger towards the Evangelical community I had once been a part of obscure the fact that in those communities I had actually found a very powerful and meaningful encounter with God. I loved those communities for their passion for Christ and for the Gospel, for their contagious sense that they really knew the power of the love of God expressed through Christ Jesus, and yet I disagreed with many of their social and political opinions. My problem was that although I agreed more with the theology of the more moderate "mainline" churches, in many of those types of churches I had visited, people seemed to be simply lackluster in their approach to worship, reciting words and turning pages, but not truly WORSHIPPING God. I felt like slapping everyone upside the head and screaming, "PEOPLE!! Do you know what you're singing about?? Christ is RISEN!!! My GOD, act like you understand what you're saying!!" I was not optimistic about my options as I moved to Boston for graduate school and began my church-hunting process.

But, thanks be to God, within three weeks of arriving in Boston, I found the church that I wound up attending for the three years that I lived in Boston -- St. James's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

St. James became my first true church home, in a way that no other community had ever been. It was everything I was looking for in a church -- racially diverse (I had become increasingly impatient with racially homogenous churches after seeing the racial diversity of the Muslim and Baha'i communities in Columbia during my Pluralism Project research and was determined to find a church that was also racially diverse -- I could write you a book about that particular issue but I'll spare you, for now), social justice-minded (doing a number of outreach ministries to the poor and marginalized), and joyful in worship without being "rock band evangelical."

In contrast to the churches in the South, where church was largely a social outing to see and be seen, to keep up with the Joneses (and all their relatives), in "godless," liberal New England, people didn't go to church unless it really MEANT something to them. In the South, people in the churches were mainstream, whereas in the Northeast, people in the churches were a bit countercultural – they were those people on the margins where I felt Jesus himself would have been. I felt that finally, after so many years of drifting and being unsure in my faith, unsure of where I "fit" within Christianity or if there was even a place for me in the faith, I had finally found a community that was the perfect balance between tradition and innovation, between ritual and feeling, and between definitive Christian identity and open-minded and accepting love.

The community at St. James, particularly a young women's small group of which I was a part, challenged me and supported me as I began to finally step out and act on my faith in ways I'd felt called to do for some time but never had the courage to act on. In this stage of my faith, I began to evaluate what really mattered to me and to what kinds of things I wanted to devote my life. I began to take steps to practice what I preached, inspired largely by many people who served as examples to me of living lives of conviction and integrity. I finally acted on my sense of calling to reach out to the poor and marginalized and began to volunteer with an outdoor church ministry to the homeless in Cambridge, an ecumenical ministry of which St. James was a part. My time in Boston was also when I became a vegetarian -- acting on my belief in non-violence and non-cruelty to animals. Interestingly, I found that in beginning to live out the values I held most dear, I found myself less critical and judgmental of others for not living out those same values.

Despite the real ways in which I was challenged and grew spiritually at St. James, by the time I left St. James, I still had a somewhat naïve and limited view both of church and of God. I saw the community of St. James through rose-colored glasses. Everything at St. James was wonderful, everything at St. James was inspiring, everything at St. James was perfect. If at any time I had a problem or issue with something that happened at St. James (which did happen a few times), I felt very comfortable approaching the rector to talk about it and he was always very willing to sit down and talk with me about whatever my concern was. Somehow I managed to stay away from all the arenas of church politics -- the vestry, etc -- and generally avoided hearing any of the unpleasant things that I'm sure did go on there from time to time. Whenever I got some glimmer of the fact that St. James wasn't perfect, like hearing one of my friends at church complain about not liking another church member, I was just entirely horrified ("but EVERYONE at St. James LOVES each other, right?!?!?!?!").

I was thrilled to be a part of that congregation, which I felt exemplified in every way possible what living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ should look like in this human life. I loved that congregation so much that I practically elevated it to a position of idolatry, and a certain arrogance began to creep into my outlook, without my even realizing it -- a self-inflated assurance that only churches like ours were authentically living out the Gospel -- only liberal, gay-rights supporting, pacifist, progressive political activists were truly showing Christ's radically inclusive love for all. In my mind, I began to confuse Jesus with a New England liberal.

I guess that's why God didn't let me stay in Boston to do my discernment internship, as was my original plan. Instead, God brought me to Bellevue, Nebraska, to serve in a church made up almost entirely of military folks!

Church of the Holy Spirit couldn't be more opposite to St. James in a number of ways -- it's much less racially diverse (I had convinced myself that I could never worship in an entirely or mostly white congregation again!), more traditional music and worship than I was used to, ... and this military thing!! During my time in Boston, I had subconsciously received the message that "military" was a bad word. According to the prevailing attitude there, the Iraq war was horrible, the military was horrible, and pretty much everything the American government did was horrible (obviously I'm exaggerating for effect, but this truly was the subconscious message I received). I never heard anyone talking about personally knowing people who were serving in the war. One of the first things I noticed upon arriving at Holy Spirit was the sobering list of "the deployed" that we pray for every week... and at the same time, little to no explicit attention in the prayers for people or countries outside of the United States. This is just one example of how different Holy Spirit seemed to be from St. James. I could almost hear God laughing at me. "You were so sure about the only kinds of places you could find My presence, weren't you?" God seemed to say. "Well, honey, you've got a lot to learn."

And indeed, I did. The first thing I learned is that a warm, inclusive, welcoming spirit is not the exclusive property of New England liberals. I found the same kind of warm and welcoming community at Holy Spirit as I did at St. James. I learned that "military" is not a bad word, and was humbled to realize how much service military people have given our country, with a sense of quiet duty, dignity and honor that I had not seen amongst the pacifist, protester crowd in Boston. I learned that, as always, God is in the business of breaking down my prejudices and stereotypes and showing up in places where I least expect it. I learned that yes, church is not always pretty and nice and happy all the time, but that living with an unrealistic view of church as always happy and wonderful is less spiritually edifying and spiritually healthy than confronting the realities of our brokenness as human beings and continuing to worship together in spite of that fact.

It is hard for me to add a section about my four months in the Resurrection House program to this "autobiography," I guess because it's all still in process; I don't have the benefit of time, distance and perspective on my current state to be able to describe it like I have the other periods in my life. I'm still working through a number of things. I was excited and joyful to feel that I had finally discerned how to listen for God's call, which I believe I did in coming to Nebraska, but I am learning that answering that call will not always bring entirely pleasant experiences, and that some of the most beneficial and important lessons we can learn in life are often the hardest ones. I think I already knew that before I came, but even so, I still have the tendency to want to avoid dealing with more difficult things in life.

Sometimes I have felt that life would be a whole lot easier if I just forgot all about this "church" thing and stopped trying to hold myself to such high standards; I could just go sit around and veg out and watch television with the rest of the majority of the American population. "I don't have to do this," I've thought a number of times. "I don't even want to do this! Why am I even here?" But I am thankful for the structure and discipline of being a part of a program to which I have committed -- that commitment keeps me here on those days when I feel most like running away from all the difficult things that I am being forced to deal with in really spending a year in intentional discernment and coming to know myself perhaps better than I would have ever chosen to, if it were entirely up to me! But I keep all this in perspective by knowing that I will be a better person for having struggled with these issues, and by continually being reminded that God's grace is with me through it all.

Since starting this program, I have been wrestling with confronting some of my own attitudes and behaviors -- namely, my propensity to only interact with people I like or to show favoritism in relating more positively to some people than others and to implicitly or explicitly judge those who don't meet my criteria for approval, whatever that means. I am struggling with wondering how much I could really express my most true, most authentic thoughts and beliefs if I pursued ordination, or if I would have to "tow the party line" to be acceptable to the church. On some level I have always felt like a bit of an outsider, a bit of a "fringe" person to the church... someone standing on the edges, still loving the institution but always critical of it, and I wonder if I would lose the ability to do that or be that in being ordained, or if that attitude/role/position would prevent me from being considered seriously as a candidate for ordination in the first place.

I am learning about the gravity of ministry -- that being a minister means not just celebrating in worship on Sunday mornings, but about being present for people at some of life's most difficult and serious moments. I also am learning a great deal about prayer, silence, and listening -- and about the importance of humility and recognizing with thanksgiving that whatever ability we have to minister to others comes through God's grace -- and continually remembering to turn to God in prayer to ask for that grace to enable us to do the work we have been called to do.