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Wow.

Perhaps I should explain.

I went to visit yesterday – toured the facility, sat in on a class with James Cone (an expert on liberation theology), attended a midday service put on by the Queer caucus, then talk to students, and finally the dean.

To say I am impressed is an understatement. I rather feel like this has changed my life.

I don’t know where I’m going… don’t know what I’m called to do in my ministry.. but I do know that I want to at least try it. And so, I am starting the application process.

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I got the confirmation of my visit to Union Theological Seminary today, and after Carl noted that I’d be attending a class with James Cone, I looked him up – he’s quite well known in theological circles for his work on liberation theology. Carl was jealous, and it made me happy to know I was going someplace where such a significant person was going to be speaking – to me.

I spent some time again at the site, viewing videos, reading bios and syllabi, and the more I look, the more I want to be part of this.

I just don’t konw if I’m MEANT to be part of this. And that, my friends, is the big question.

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Last Monday evening, I had one of those odd days that ended in tearful,  lamentful, “I am a worm” prayers… long wails about how horrible I am, how no one could love me, how unworthy I am. but as the tears subsided, I was led to find the old Methodist hymnal I have kicking around here. I opened it to find this hymn:

Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me;
Place in my hands the wonderful key
That shall unclasp and set me free.

Refrain

Silently now I wait for Thee,
Ready my God, Thy will to see,
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine!

Open my ears, that I may hear
Voices of truth Thou sendest clear;
And while the wave notes fall on my ear,
Everything false will disappear.

Refrain

Open my mouth, and let me bear,
Gladly the warm truth everywhere;
Open my heart and let me prepare
Love with Thy children thus to share.

Refrain

Now for me, this meant I needed to listen, maybe, more than lament. I needed to stop complaining and pleading, and simply contemplate. So I started listening.

Listening led me to realize I had to at the very least explain to my sister what’s going on. So on Tuesday, I told my sister I was considering a formal path to ministry. She was loving and supportive, and it led me to think that I needed to concentrate a day on this.

Wednesday, after assuring myself I had no definite deadlines to meet, no work I HAD to do, I spent the day considering the question of formal pursuit.

I read the websites of several seminaries. I made first steps to actually take a course – online, at Starr-King in Berkeley. I made an appointment to visit Union Theological in Manhattan.

And I prayed… rolling over and over in my head the words “I fear the knowledge that if I romance you / I may lose what I hold dear. Be compassionate with my hesitation / as I measure the cost of loving you.”

What is the cost? Losing my preconceived notions? Losing the beliefs I think I have? Losing love? I did determine that if I lose the man I love over this, he wasn’t the right man at all. I would miss him, but it gave me a bit of solace.

It’s now a week later. A session with my spiritual director leads me to understand that the other lesson in “Open Mine Eyes” may be that God’s pointing me to, at the very least, speak about my faith, speak and share the love I know to be at the heart of it all.

I talked with Carl about the choices before me, and determined that while the decision to go the path of formal ministry is mine alone, where/how/when is a question that involves the people most important to me.

I don’t know what the answer is. I am still searching. I am scared to death, about all I might lose. I am scared that if I don’t do this, I’ll regret it. I am scared on a practical level. And mostly, I am scared of what God might really be calling me to do.

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So…today is my 46th birthday.

About 9 years ago, a friend suggested that your birthday was the perfect time to assess… to name something that was truly a success, something that you learned, and some new vision or hope you developed.

Success

While you’d think keeping my business open and growing would be the item on the list, I think my biggest success is having actually reconnected with God. It was a long time coming… overdue, you might say… but to have regular conversations, to begin to feel a regular presence, to be open to learning how to love God… that is a success.

What I Learned

If I had to pick any one thing, it’s that I am already in ministry, and that the real question is what form it will take next. That’s surprising and humbling – but it makes me rethink what we all do; could it be true that anyone who does any work in the name of their faith is a minister? Maybe that’s what ‘shared ministry’ means…

New Vision/Hope

I seem to have a new vision for a future, that involves reaching more people with my ideas about grief, adversity, possiblities, faith, worship, deepening. I don’t know what the shape is exactly, but I know it’s tangible.

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Today, I attended the first retreat for the Wellsprings UU Spiritual Deepening program – a ten-month program of spiritual practice, spiritual direction, and spiritual deepening. Along with 19 other UUs in the Capital Region, we will explore together deeper questions of faith, belief, and a call to action.

For me, it feels like a beacon of hope – as though, if I open myself up to the mystery and allow the process to work, I might discern some answers and a sense of where I am headed next.

My commitment to myself is to be open to the still small voice within, to allow God to speak, to allow for GOD’s answers, not mine. It’s scary – and I am afraid of disappointment and disillusionment. But I also know that if I am open, and have no expectations, the answers may come.

Ten months – certainly not that long in the grand sceme of things, certainly long enough to allow some of my questions to be answered, or at least be pointed in the right direction.

The journey begins…

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So many things I wonder…

 I wonder about Union Theological – here’s a link to the tour video; it’s in the first few seconds that I saw in living color the sanctuary I have imagined in decades of dreams and meditations (although on second look, I see this one is enclosed with glass whereas my imagined one isn’t…but the rest of it’s the same).  

I wonder about my thoughts even ten years ago, when I said “if I didn’t get an MFA, I might get a masters in something like religion or theology.” I didn’t see myself in any type of ministry before, but I definitely had the thoughts about furthering my education in religion.

I wonder if I’m insightful enough; I am constantly amazed at how good the ministers in my life are at deep thoughts, compassion, saying the right things, etc. I fear my gifts in that are haphazard at best.

I wonder about my business – will there be any meaningful work after this current project is complete? I don’t see anything on the immediate horizon and that scares the hell out of me.

I wonder if this is just another in a long line of attempts at making meaning. You look at my resume, and I have done a bunch of very different things – and whether they lasted a year or five, I haven’t seemed to stay with any one thing for very long. If I turn away from publishing, after realizing how much I love it, am I just continuing my fickle ways? And what happens in five years after I try ministry? Do I walk away from that for the next cool ‘calling’?

I wonder, if I’m not meant to go into traditional ministry, what my path would be, given what I know, what I love, what I appear to be good at. And more to the point, how will I figure it out? Do I make it up as I go along? That’s not exactly been working out well for me so far…

 I wonder if I will ever figure this out or if I’m (frustratingly) meant to always been in nomad mode – wandering, waiting, wondering, never truly finding home – and of all the thoughts I wonder, this is the one that makes me the saddest and angriest. I’m tired. So tired. I’m tired of wandering in the desert. It hasn’t been 40 years…yet…but we’re nearing that. How long, oh lord, how long? What other mistakes do I have to pay for before I finally get to rest? How much more penance must I do? What else do I have to do to satisfy God? What else do I have to do before I get a little relief? One little answer? One hint that maybe there is a home somewhere for me? I’m so tired of wondering and wandering and worrying and waiting…so tired…

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I feel unsettled today… wondering which way to go, how to proceed, how to parse the publishing business with the sense of call to ministry, and how/if this relationship will both grow and fit into whatever the choice is.

Of course, there’s the possibility that a choice never needs to be made – that I can sustain both a thriving business and some form of lay ministry that doesn’t require I give up anything.

But I get the sense that that is serving two masters… and I don’t know if I have it in me to do that.

And… there is the question of memory. Do I have the mental ability to go back to school? Can I retain enough to pass tests? And after that – would I have the mental ability to serve people, remember their details, help them?

And of course there is the question of money. I am not making enough now to support myself; how can I possibly expect to have enough to go back to school?

I ask myself, why is this even on the table… there are no practical reasons to think about it. On paper it is a non-starter.

And yet.

Something keeps drawing me to think seriously about it. And then… wanting to find the path that works, maybe in lay ministry of some sort.

I worry that the paths available to me in the UU are limited – ministry, religious education, music, governance. I don’t know that what I want to do fits in anywhere, and that worries me a little too.

I know I want more. I want to serve. I want to preach. I want to heal. I want to answer God’s call.

I just don’t know what that is.

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What is it about the ocean that feeds my soul?

I recently spent several days on the Florida coast, soaking in the sea air, the sand, the surf, the constant and relentless rhythm of the waves, the ebb and flow of the tides. I swam, splashed, gazed, and absorbed.

And in some ways I feel nourished.

Now I’m not, in general, a nature-feeds-me kind of gal. And yet, I can feel my soul soak in divine goodness from the first whiff of salt-steeped air.

I know that I come to the ocean for answers…or at least to explore questions. High on my mind are questions about my future – which path do I take? What do I do with a growing need to serve my religious community, which on one level is in sharp contrast with my growing publishing business? How do they fit together? How do they fit with this growing but still uncertain relationship? Can my spiritual path be in concert with, rather than in opposition with his?

Truth is, I have an incredibly hard time seeing the future. I don’t know what it is I want on a practical level – although I know what the emotional/psychological vision is. I spent a good hour bobbing in the waves, wondering and thinking, and seeing no answers.

Except – I know I am letting go of a fear/belief that I will die early. And that in itself is an answer, I suppose.

But I digress.

I do feel nourished…rested, fed, and at the very least, ready for the next thing. I just wonder what that will be.

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Don’t make friends with an elephant trainer unless you have room in your home for an elephant.– saying of the Sufis

O Blessed one, you whose voice calls me
to the sacred path of the pilgrim,
I wish to seek you with all my heart.

Yet I am often half-hearted in that desire
when I realize the cost of such a quest.

My life is rather comfortable and well-ordered
and fits me like an old shoe.

I fear the knowledge that if I romance you
I may lose what I hold dear.

Be compassionate with my hesitation
as I measure the cost of loving you.

I have read in the holy books
and know from the lives of the saints,
that you, my god, come as purifying fire
to burn away all that is not true.

I tremble at the thought
of you consuming those things that I love
and even my prized image of who I am.

Yet, I also want to know you more fully;
help me to embrace the awesome implications
of my inviting you to enter my life.

Enlarge my half-hearted love
with the ageless truth
that if I seek your kingdom first,
seek to be fully possessed by you,
everything I need shall be given me,
and happiness beyond my wildest dreams
shall be mine.

Come today, Creator of elephants and saints,
and be my friend.

– Edward Hays

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I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

 – David Whyte