The Adventure Chapter VIII: We Begin the Specifically Spiritual Bit

A week or so ago the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton posted on Facebook an essay from the August 21, 2013 issue of The Christian Century magazine called "Boxed In" by M. Craig Barnes writing on the Faith Matters page. All but the first two paragraphs are behind a pay wall, I'm afraid, but if you have Facebook, and you type in Elizabeth Kaeton under "search", you can page down and find the article, I'm sure.

I'm way behind in my reading of The Christian Century. I'm a subscriber, and I read the article on Facebook, before I read it again, today, in the paper edition of the magazine itself. It helped me understand a bit more what is going on with me spiritually.

Today as I led the people in praying the opening Collect, or prayer, at Saint John's Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut, I noticed that I was - there was a time I would have said "entering into the prayer in a new way". Now I know better. I was reading the words and entering something beyond the words, behind the words, through the words. I was somewhere I have not been aware of being, and yet, I can't say that, really. Because I've been aware of something like it the past couple of days.

Photo credit Lois Keen

I've noticed when I read a motto on a Facebook post - for instance, "Let your light shine so brightly that others can see their way out of the dark", or "Sometimes this is all you need" written across a photograph of a path in the woods, or one of Bp. Steven Charleston's wonderful daily meditations - where I would normally think "That's nice. I think I'll share that", I'm now processing the words, seeing myself in them, doing them, seeing the implications of them in a way I wasn't doing just a week ago.

I have written that I'm looking on these months until December 31 as a sabbatical, the one I never got around to taking. Today, reading again the essay in The Christian Century, I found myself thinking, "This is what a sabbatical is about." No exclamation point. Just, "This is what a sabbatical is about."

M. Craig Barnes is president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He begins with the Benedictine way of accepting a new novice. The novice enters a room, asks Christ to receive him and to not disappoint him, then he is asked to take off his street clothes and put on the habit. His street clothes will then forever live in his closet along with his habit. It is a sign of his vow freely given. Every day the novice can choose which habit to wear - to put on the monastic habit or regain his street clothes and return to the world.

Barnes wants us to remember this as we reflect on the vows a clergyperson takes and the life we take on as he writes about burnout.

There are a lot of things that a pastor rubs up against as they live out their profession - the late night calls to the hospital, the annoyances of a problematic wedding, the number of funerals, the administrative stuff. But these are not the things that mark burnout. Burnout is when pastors begin to "think they are stuck in the church" with no way out.

As I read that line, I thought, "Hmm, I never did feel that way. I never felt stuck. I had times when I read the want ads and considered working for Borders, or as a teller in a bank. But I never felt I had no choice except to stay in the priesthood. Not in an enduring way. The occasional moment, but not a pervasive sense of being trapped."

The next paragraph that caught my mind was this: "It isn't that hard for a pastor to leave a congregation and get a job with a nonprofit organization, seminary or church bureaucracy..." Well, yes, I thought of that. "But these extensions of the ministry of word and sacrament change little about the pastor's identity. The real problem is what to do for the pastor who envies the calling of the lawyers, doctors, butchers and candlestick makers."

Aha! And here was where I knew I never wanted to be, or want to be, anything other than what I am: A priest in the Episcopal Church. The punch line came with the closing sentence: "What the church desperately needs is for its leaders to freely choose the habit of pastoral ministry as a means of being drawn closer to God." Light Bulb Moment!

That is exactly what has been slowly happening to me ever since that fateful Friday on the way home from vacation and I found myself saying to myself that I was on my way home to an adventure.

I have never felt close to God. I wanted to be, but only because I thought I was supposed to be. I knew that probably it was because of things experienced in my childhood. I had accepted that I might be this way for the rest of my life, at least on this side of life. And yet, here I am, drawing closer to God. And in drawing closer, I have felt free to explore as many ways of serving God as I might want to. I see that I am free. I have the freedom to choose how I live out my vocation. The street clothes are, as Barnes points out, and never were, "meant to be a judgment," a sign of failure. They are a sign of freedom. And each day I choose the habit rather than the street clothes.

Photo credit W. Newlin Keen, Jr.

I am drawing deeper and deeper into this adventure. In Sunday supply I am finding again the joy I have in celebrating the Eucharist, in preaching, in leading people to God in Christ Jesus. Today I found that I rejoice when I lead worship in Spanish - there's a feel of the words in my mouth that draw me ever closer to God through the people of God. And the options open to me as a priest are becoming endless.

All of which is to say that something is happening to me. It is not all hearts and flowers. There are some briars in there and not every path is smooth. Today the deacon told me that when something wonderful happens it will probably be among the most needy, who can't give me a living. So be it. He also said that just meant I'd also go among those who are least needy to get them to pay for work with the most needy. Ya gotta laugh at that one! I'd need new skills for that, but, then, is that not exactly what I did in my first call, as curate at the Cathedral of Saint John in Wilmington, Delaware when I went to civic clubs and gave speeches and wrote grants to raise money to fund my work as director of the cathedral's children's community center?!

But at the core of it all is the sudden awareness of drawing closer to God. I'm not used to this feeling. I wonder where it will go.