On (my) complicated (ordination) anniversaries
I was ordained on the first Sunday in Advent in 2015, November 29th. Today is the 7th anniversary of my ordination. I tried to write a piece last year about what a complicated anniversary that is for me. I didn't publish it because it wasn't communicating what I hoped to get across for myself and the tiny number of people who read this blog. I did decide to include it here at least to see the progression between one year and the next.
Let me try again.
I spent the first Sunday in Advent preaching on one of my favorite texts, Isaiah 2:1-5. Every time I read that one day people will not learn war anymore, my throat tightens up with tears. It was my first time getting to preach on it, and it was one of those sermons that surprised even me about where it ended up. It was subtle and achingly hopeful. Writing it, preaching it, was like restoring a piece of myself to myself. Like sighing. I preached it from a colleague's pulpit while waiting to hear if I might one day soon be preaching from my own. Then I took my leave to return to my leave, relieved to sink back down into the nothing on my schedule so that I could get back to writing myself and my book. My mind released to puzzle over how to include something that I had read about gentleness being a key characteristic of the Holy Spirit and how that might fit with my chapter as the Holy Spirit, Opener of Space. (Unwritten and unwritable multitudes lurk in this snapshot.)
On the anniversary of my ordination, I choose to remember:
I am a holy mystery. A disturbance. A conundrum.
I am still breathing. Emptied out. Expectant.
I am whole. Filled and over-flowing.
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| Planted |
From November, 29, 2021
I was ordained on the first Sunday in Advent in 2015.
Today is the 6th anniversary of my ordination. I am proud of the ministry that I've gotten to do. I've gotten to experiment. To provide comfort. To teach the scriptures and muse about the world. I've been entrusted to preach, which is one of the places that I feel most whole.
But every year that number looks too small to hold my tumultuous journey to ordination. I have been ordained for six years. Hidden behind the six, is the void of three years in which I wondered if I would ever get ordained. I graduated seminary in 2012 and failed to stick the landing out of the pipeline. While most of my classmates are celebrating nine years in ministry, I hold my six in one hand and my three in the other.
What kind of a number is this even? What kind of a pastor has never presided over Christmas or Easter? What kind of pastor has never had to submit to the lopsided gait of living a life dominated by the imminence of Sunday, week after week, month after month? What kind of a pastor has spent more time looking for a call than in one?
Remembering where I have been, I decide to mark my anniversary in solitude. Because my number is too small and doesn't stack up the way it should. I thought after I had five years of ministry under my belt, whether it was conventional ministry or not, I would feel like I stood on some firmer foundation. But then I marked my fifth anniversary not just in solitude, but also in isolation while under lockdown with my 1st and 2nd grader while on-leave-from-call.
My husband kindly noted this year, "That number is never going to get any bigger." He is right. My anniversary will always contain a void.
P.S. My ordination anniversary wish is that those involved with the call process would be more discerning about identifying the activity or direction of the Holy Spirit. Because it seems to me that Holy Spirit language mostly pops up when talking about things working out. In contrast, I have heard very, very little identification of the Holy Spirit at work in my situation. If nothing can be said about the Spirit when things don't work, if nothing can be said about the Spirit to those who wait, maybe nothing should be said at all.
