The Perils of Vocational Life

 This is great info if you are discerning a vocation: 

I would add or highlight a few points here. One is that becoming a priest, deacon,  or religious is not going to magically fix your personal problems. I saw this so much when I was in the Episcopal ordination process. I saw so many who thought becoming ordained was somehow going to make their personal demons go away, and that's sadly not the case. 

I would also add that you have to develop a difficult type of worship spirituality as a priest. As a parishioner in the pews, your mind can wander. You can take a few minutes during Mass to meditate on the spiritual mysteries or start pondering some point the preacher made in the homily. You can take time to listen to what God might be saying to you in the liturgy. As a presider, you do not have that option. You are constantly having to be mindful of what the next part of the service is. You can take a moment after the homily, but you have to get ready to lead the Creed. You can take a minute after the Eucharist for reflection, but you have to get ready for the final blessing and the recessional out. You constantly have to know what page the next prayer is in the missal because you can't just take 5 minutes to be flipping around in the missal to find the closing prayer because you can't find it.

This is not to say God does not speak to you in the liturgy if you are a presider or a deacon. He can and does. It is simply a different type of spirituality and worship where you have to be ever mindful of what the next thing is in the liturgy. That takes some practice if you are not used to it. That was one of the hardest things for me to adapt to after I was in ordained life. You have to hear God speaking in a somewhat different way in the middle of worship. You can't just get lost in pondering the mysteries.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on the 'Connecticut 6'

For some weeks, I have had several friends (mostly non-Episcopalians surprisingly) wanting me to voice an opinion on this Connecticut 6 (sounds like a fleabag motel) business. If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, for lack of a better term, let me describe it as best as I understand it. There is so much spin going on (from both sides I might add) that I have been having trouble discerning fact from fiction. As I understand the situation, the Rt. Rev. Andrew Smith is the Bishop of Connecticut. Well, at least he has a pointy hat, I do not think he is particularly acting like one. Likewise, as I understand, there are Six rectors of churches (at least they have collars, but likewise are not acting like it) that have applied for DEPO oversight (i.e. another Bishop to oversee them.) The best way I know how to describe the hoohah is as follows: The Feloniously Rev. Smith is trying to defrock the Superciliously Reverend Rectors. Darth Smith claims they have abandoned communion and has shadil...
Read more

My board gaming journey, pt. I

Image
     Something a bit different today than my normal reflections. I thought I would delve a little bit more into a topic that is not necessarily theological in nature. I am a real person, and not some ethereal doctor in an ivory tower who gets to smoke a pipe and contemplate the infinite mysteries all day. So, today, I thought I would delve into one of my personal hobbies: board gaming.      Now, do not tune me out because you hear "board gaming" and immediately default in your brain to your brother overturning a table with Monopoly money flying everywhere because the game has gone on for hours and overturning the table was the only option left other than murder. Most people, including myself at one time, thought of board games as those boring or frustrating games that seem stuck in 1952. You know the usual suspects: Clue!, Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, maybe even more saccharine games like Life or Candy Land, i.e. those games that everyone owned at some p...
Read more

My boardgaming journey, part II

     Last week, I posted a bit on my hobby of board gaming. I was not sure if anyone would read that post, as it is not my usual faire on this blog. For whatever reason, that post got way more views than anything I have posted in a while. For what it's worth, I will continue my little series of monographs on board gaming, as there appears to be some interest.      My assumption for these first few board game blog posts is to start with the basics that I wish I had known when I started getting into board gaming. As I went into in my first post on this topic, I largely blundered into the modern board gaming world quite by accident. I played a lot of video games over the years, but my knowledge of board games was largely stuck in the moldy oldies of my youth like Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue. Probably the most recent game in the board gaming of my youth was Jenga (or the cheap side ripoff I owned called Stak Attack).     Given that background,...
Read more