Thirty-one years ago, on July 25th, 1993, I knelt on the hard brick steps in the sanctuary at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley, Ohio as the bishop of the Southern Ohio Synod pronounced me a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I rose and faced a congregation made up of parents and children and friends, professors and seminary classmates, some already ordained; of members from the first church I’d ever belonged to, members from the church I’d recently joined, members from my internship congregation, members from the church that had called me to join them in ministry, Epiphany Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.
The people of God gathered in that time and in that place to witness and proclaim and add their voice to mine in making promises, to God and to each other. My mom and dad came forward and placed the stole they’d gifted me over my shoulders, the deep red color a sign reminding us of the Holy Spirit’s presence.
I presided at communion for the first time, my hands shaking as I lifted bread and wine, my voice unsteady but clear. “This is the body. This is the blood. Do this in remembrance.”
Afterward, there was cake and punch in the seminary cafeteria.
Over the next 14 years I served 3 different congregations, then left ordained service and worked the following 7 at our local domestic violence and rape crisis agency. In that time I also earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, picking up the thread of my very first calling — being a writer.
My sense of the numinous came early, my need to write about it soon after. When I was twelve I heard the voice of God. It came to me on a September afternoon in a field of dry, rustling grasses at the top of a small hill, arriving on a warm wind and in the song of a solitary bird. It was like a doorway opening, a revelation that just behind our world was another, happening around us all the time.
That day changed everything — even all that came before was changed, as if that moment of inbreaking wonder caused time to flow all ways at once.
What I sensed so keenly from that young age was that life is transitory, our days fleeting. Now 71 years old, I look back over a journey that from close-up seemed at times to be haphazard and zigzagging, but peering down this longer lens of accumulated years I can see what might have looked like meandering has really been me following the same series of questions in circular, spiraling paths: What does it all mean? To be alive in this slipstream of time? To be here together, holding aloft our “brief candles?” To suffer and to heal? To despair, to hope, to mourn, to celebrate, to love and be loved? Who are we to be to each other? Who are we to be to the world?
And Who — or What — is behind the Veil, and what does it mean that the Other World, whatever that is or means, keeps breaking into ours? Because it most assuredly does.
All of this is to say…well, I’m not totally sure, to tell you the truth.
Each year I mark this day with a good deal of gratitude and sometimes a small bit of sadness. It was an amazing, beautiful, challenging, sometimes frustrating, often wondrous 14 years, and it remade me in the way having your DNA altered might do. I’ve never looked back regarding my decision to leave ordained service. It was right and necessary, given the challenges and reconstructing my own faith has undergone. Still, I was mightily blessed to have journeyed so deeply and meaningfully with so many remarkable people, and to have been part of ministries that changed people’s lives in profound ways. My thanks to all who were part of that.
Onward into this new-old calling, my journey as a writer, but I didn’t want to let the anniversary day pass without acknowledging it. Thanks for listening. I do so very much appreciate your company here.
Love this one . You often express what I feel . But your words are better😘
I've thought much about calling. How short my time here is, and what have I been called to do? Like you, my "calling" has changed more than once. I even contemplated attending the seminary in my 40s (but I recognized this originated from a sort of aimless wandering than a true calling). Reading this post reminds me that we are free to change directions, no matter our age. Inspiring!