Monday, July 17, 2006

....like resurrection.... an invitation; it asked.

Sometimes it takes someone to ask the right question or the same question. Over coffee I shared my vocational search with a local Pastor and friend. After hearing my story he asked me if I was pursuing my M.Div. to somehow "repay God for what he had done for me?" I would prefer to call it a "response" rather than payback, but the result is something "...like resurrection... an invitation; it asked."

Practicingresurrection_1I thought having come this far that bringing personal faith and pastoral vocation together would be the next step. But I find myself in a similar place as expressed by Nora Gallagher, "I was meant to remain in the middle for a while, between clergy and laity, a hybrid, a crossbreed, not the one and not the other. An inhabitant of the borderlands, in order to inform not only myself but the church, too. I needed to live out the "priesthood of the laity" to find out how far it could be taken inside the church, and what it might mean outside her walls" (207-208).