Jesus silhouette

Wow. My last post was December 14th, 2008, and even that one was after spotty blogging. I'm not sure why I am so resistant lately to blogging. Not sure.

This has been quite a time. And yet, from the outside, life has continued as usual. My daughters continue to grow in beautiful ways; I go about my daily tasks as always...but it has been a deep time of discernment. And in thinking back with the calendar, I am dumbfounded that I have been in "discernment" for years now. Sometimes I think if it takes me this long to discern a call, then it's not a call. But on the other hand, it's just taking me time. It's like I have to shed some layers and grow some new ones before I can take the next step. My committee has stuck with me all along.

The latest conversation we had was the age-old "process" question of what do you need to DO that you can't DO unless your ordained. This way of phrasing the question is impossible for me to answer. Because my sense of call to the priesthood is much more about personhood...about BEING a priest more than DOING priestly duties. Of course, I am drawn to the priestly duties, yes, but this is not my way of expressing the call. But people seem to harp on this.

I've also been in therapy and it's been uncomfortable but good. I think. It is very hard for me to be real and not self-conscious in the room with her. I know this is normal, but it is squirmy time.

But I've been doing a lot more work in my particular church and it's been wonderful! Full of joy and challenge and creativity. But it's not enough. I have the opportunity of preaching on pentecost and I think I have to say yes, but SCARY!!!!!!!!!! I know it's not about me. Most certainly not. But when everyone knows I'm discerning a call to the priesthood, it's hard to just do the job up there and not try to come across "well."

We are still in the aftermath of the november fire, but all is fine. Just still dealing with insurance companies and an inept dry cleaning company that lost a lot of our things. But they're just things.

I miss reading the blogs of others and I look forward to doing that again. I'm going to try.

We just had a wonderful intergenerational beginning of Lent. We were tired of the separation of "adult ed" and the "children ministries" so we combined them. It was a big experiment...will the children be bored? distracting? distracted? Will the adults be engaged? Will anyone show up who isn't a parent. and it worked! We played around with the parables, acting them out in different ways...improvisationally on stage, in small groups of threes....it was just great. And we had a huge silhouette of Jesus up at the front where people were invited to place post-its with questions. There were no answers given, of course. But the community posted there questions on the silhouette of Jesus and then we broke bread. That's church, isn't it?