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29 de Octubre 2008
under care
they call it coming under care when you fill out all the paperwork and attend all the interviews and meetings so that one day you can be ordained in the PCUSA.
here is what i wrote to them.
i call this piece
form one:
Questions for reflection
Describe yourself as a person.
I am at my best in relationship. My relationship with my husband and his constant love encourage me to be creative and take risks. My relationship with my church family is built on grace and mutual respect. My friendships are based on compassion and loyalty.
Describe briefly your understanding of what it means to you to be an inquirer. Please include the most important events, experiences, and persons that have prompted you to become an inquirer.
When it came time for me to choose a field for graduate study I wanted, more than to study my other loves (poetry and public education) to study divinity. I chose a seminary that offered a Christian Studies program informed by psychotherapy. I was hoping to finish school in two years with a better understanding of the hearts and minds of post-modern Christians and then write or teach with them in mind. During my first year I met Dr. Patricia Brown who encouraged my husband and I to seriously consider ordination. She explained that ordination enhances the relationship between ministers and church members, and teaches us to be mutually committed to one another in lasting ways.
In January of 2007, I took a part time job as Children and Family Minister. Very early in the interview process I observed how specific pastoral tasks informed my pastors' faiths. Their joy over administering the sacraments of marriage and baptism was (and still is) contagious. The way they struggle over the sermons in text study each week, the way they offer pastoral care, it all seemed mysterious and familiar at the same time.
I wouldn't say that there was one day I woke up and thought, "hey, I could do that!" about sermonizing 300 people. I would say that there are days I show up and feel like I am the luckiest woman in the world because I get to be in church for four hours and I take that notion to be a kind of sign from on high that I was formed to love what most people would loathe about Sunday mornings.
During the first year as Children and Family Minister I came to see my pastoral role as an opportunity to invest in the long-term goals of my young parishioners' families. I came under Dr. Brown's tutelage in order to earn a Certificate in Spiritual Direction. As I learned more about the history of Christian spirituality and my calling to Spiritual Direction I saw that there was a place for my voice to inform the way we go about faith formation in the very youngest members of the church.
Having already extended my time at Seminary an additional year, I figured one more wouldn't hurt, especially if it would run concurrent to my time of discerning a call to ordination. So I signed up to delve into the Biblical languages and take on the task of homiletics. Each day I feel myself growing into the idea that I might one day wear clerics or offer last rites at a hospital bedside. Each day I learn more about the "I" who will do these things and come face to face with another spark of talent, ability, or strength. The more I lean into the call as it takes shape, the more I see it taking on the shape of my self.
Write a brief statement of your personal faith describing what you believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and your relationship to them.
I am beginning to see the Trinity as three distinct notes in a triad chord. Each member on a distinct frequency vibrating, moving everything at once, and yet moving together and bending toward one another, always one, always three. The Triune God is inseparable. God is in relationship, the members of the trinity enable each other to be one, to be what they are as one, but also as three persons with differences, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But this is still very difficult to articulate.
My personal faith, my personhood, is developed in relationship to the One Creator God. And I am, in relationship to God, intended to bear God's glory by participating in the brokenness of creation.
What does it mean to you to be Presbyterian?
I imagine a Presbyterian church that honors tradition, maintains a balance of power between ordained leaders and lay ministers, and has hope for an established polity adapting to the needs of the globalizing, economically, geographically decentralized Body of Christ.
I see the pews of my youth filled with new kinds of families, passing peace and relying in the weekly liturgy to form the faith of their children and inform their daily struggle.
I see the faces of the ordained women and men who hugged me close to their black clerics shirts when I was a little girl, and their robes opened, welcoming like wings behind the communion table.
I see myself at table, praying to thank God for another meal with my church family.
I see the hands of men and women raised in praise or protest votes.
I see the broken tiles and leaky roofs of the buildings that housed the faith of my childhood and mourn that they fall into disrepair because we have forgotten how to fill them with love and grace.
I see myself at session meetings struggling with my elders to look for a new solution to the old misunderstandings that threaten to rend our community.
Describe your current spiritual practices and disciplines.
My week has two high points: Sunday Morning Liturgy and Wednesday evening midweek gathering for classes and choir practices. In preparation for these wonderful and draining hours I rely on long, spiritually refreshing walks with the dog, The Jesus Prayer and The Prayer of Examen. I also meet monthly with a Spiritual Director who challenges me to stop struggling against my visceral responses to the gospel and listen carefully to the children I intend to serve.
Who/what is your ideal role model for ministry? What do you expect in your ministry? What aspect of ministry do you find least interesting?
There are very few children's ministers I would call ideal role models. I find it easier to borrow strength from my seminary community. They struggle alongside me to juggle best practice and disappointment. They build a shelter for my failures, which is, in turn, what Children and Family Ministries should be about. The more time I spend learning from my learning community, the better I am able to hold the failures of my parishioners.
I expect my life of professional ministry to be rich with the kind of joy that breaks the heart. I expect crying babies and sobbing mothers and weeping fathers, and sadness I can do nothing for. I assume I will say or do the right thing sometimes and the wrong thing often but God's grace will meet me in both. I expect a challenge and hope for strength to rise to love whatever God loves and hate only what God would hate.
The list of least interesting parts of my vocation might include seemingly unchangeable, hopeless personalities or budget meetings. But I am painstakingly optimistic that I will manage to treat both with dignity and respect their importance in the life of the church.
What are you doing to maintain your physical and emotional health?
I surround myself with friends who remind me to enjoy myself and my relationship with my heroic husband. Long Vacations are not an option. Instead, I maintain a rhythm of short recesses at coffee shops and always keep up with the weeknight Sienfeld reruns, which offer a reprieve from the stressors that would otherwise engulf me in faithless worrying. And of course: the aforementioned dog walking.
Comment on what have been (are) some of your more meaningful interests and hobbies.
For as long as I can remember I have had what we call in writer's circles "writerly tendencies." The boxes of journals pile up in the basement, the pens and pencils accumulate in the backpack--I'm afraid to be without one. My hunger for books and even academic articles is coupled with an unforgiving drive to fiddle with sentences until the language can't bear the weight of my meaning. There are often bits of paper with scraps of ideas stuck in odd cracks around the house, short stories written in two words or less in the back of my mind and, especially before I learned to type, thick calluses on my writing hand where I gripped the pen too hard for too long. My writing life keeps me company, comforts me when I am upset and deepens my most important relationships. It is the most meaningful of all my talents and interests and, more often than not, enriches my ministry.
How do you plan to finance your education?
I have completed two years of seminary so far by taking out student loans and will continue to do so for another three. I have supplemented the student loan income with my part time job as Children and Family Minister.
help yourself | By crymytinyflood | 10:04 AM
