Going Further: why are you here and why now?

See this post for an intro to this series.

During their meeting with enquirers, DDOs and Vocations Advisers will want to listen carefully to the vocational stories of the enquirers and to tease out from the enquirers their response to two key questions: ‘why are you here?’ and ‘why now?’  

Why are you here?
My life has been leading towards an inexorable future, and I fully embrace it. I am meant to be a priest, and I want to be a priest. Church is where I belong, and I want to continue the tradition, and also improve it, and provide humanity with the tools for living their lives as God's children; give them liturgy, show them wisdom, encourage dialogue and thinking about divine, philosophical, and ethical matters. I'm not wired to be able to prioritise my relationship with God without having it tangibly at the centre of my life ie. as my job, and my very identity, but it has become my priority to serve God in the best way that I can do, so I must arrange my life accordingly.

I feel such a desire to be a priest, but my calling is more than that. There is a resonance, a rightness to it, like my soul has finally been plugged into the universe and powered up. I think I would be good at it, with the right training, practice, and focus. I've always thought I would become a priest, and when the time came to put my feet on the path, I was overjoyed, terrified, unsure of the exact path ahead of me but sure that ordination was on it somewhere along the line. I think it would suit me, and be the best way for me live to the fullest - "The glory of God is a human being fully alive" (Iranaeus).

I want to nourish people's souls, even if they don't realise it. This is my part of the Church's mission to a tangible expression of God's love to the world, and becoming a priest is the best way for me to do that - it's the only way I'll fully realise it. A constant theme in my life has been stories, and I am called to use stories, listen to stories, be in stories, tell stories, spread stories, explain stories, absorb stories, nudge stories. It is by changing the stories in and the story of the world that we end suffering and bring about the next chapter - the kingdom of God.

Being a priest is the best way for me to do that in the most important context, in people's spiritual lives, their most intimate and personal relationships - with God, others, and the world. A priest has that place in people's lives. People expect you to hear their stories, you're allowed to tell stories, it's not surprising for a priest to get stuck in and change the story; your life is dedicated to the greatest story ever told, you represent that story, people look to you to get to heart of stories, and share the stories that matter. The epitome of that is reenacting the story of the Last Supper in the Eucharist, and meeting Christ at the very human setting of a shared meal. It would be amazing to have authority and duty to introduce people to Christ. It is one of my greatest joys to learn, discuss, teach, and expand my and others' horizons.

It's also important to me to express my identity, and the most important part of who I am is being a disciple of Christ. We are called to evanglise, and I think I am best suited to convey that by my unapologetic identity in devotion to following Jesus. I want to communicate the mission of spreading the good news in people's lives by trusting God to work through me, and being a priest gives me the context to do that. My gift is focus, so it makes sense that my job, and beyond that, my full-time identity, is a religious context, to put my focus to God's work. I want to have the licence to be truly enthusiastic about God and Christ, to really let my geek flag fly. I love God, and if my life can be spent in God's company, doing God's work, spreading God's love, being used by God, every day all day, in my favourite place or with lots of different people, challenged, tested, and maybe in the end doing something that has meaning - that sounds like true happiness.

Why now?
God has always been in my life. When I was a child, it was just obvious, a definite truth I didn't think about. My parents didn't tell me God existed or didn't. But when I read my children's illustrated Bible, I loved it. When I went to a CofE primary school, I learnt the Lord's prayer, said grace, went to church for harvest and Christingles; and it was great, and I wasn't really thinking about God but the worship was positive, and I wanted to keep going to Christingles after I left that school.

I realised as a teenager that I needed to start thinking about things a bit more clearly because we were studying different religions. I came to understand that I had a relationship with God through Christianity as a default setting rather than conscious belief, and that wouldn't do. At that point I actually acknowledged my faith in Christ specifically, rather than as just the version of a story of God that I went along with. I learnt about the variety of beliefs and worship styles and built a picture in my head of what sort of Christian I was, and out of the blue decided to wear a cross to publicly express that. 

God has been working my life in this step by step way the entire time, starting as the distant Father. When I started at SJP, I really started to get to know God in Christ, in fellowship and discipleship. Now I think I'm getting to know God the Spirit, a much longer, deeper process that is wakening my spirit within me. 2015 was a tough year in my spiritual life because I was building my stage management career and kept missing things at church, kept failing to develop a prayer life, and the worst point was not going to Holy Week, and feeling no sense of jubilation Easter morning.

It was at the point at which I tried to buckle down in my SM career that the heavens moved. I was not meant to establish a secular career. One day in September, I got a spiritual kick up the backside, the doors opened, and boom, NOW IS THE TIME.

I had always known this would happen. I recognised my sense of calling at 16, very clearly understanding and instantly accepting that I would end up a priest, eventually, one day. But God's schedule was not the one I had anticipated. The call, the kick, the moment that now, NOW I was to seek out my second and ultimate vocation, came much earlier than I thought. But in the grand scheme, it makes perfect sense that I drop everything and begin the next part of my journey.

My spirituality is blossoming. I've gained 8 years of personal development from my first vocation as a stage manager. I've received 5 years of parish experience and religious development. Continuing in theatre would have pushed my faith to the sidelines. And now the perfect opportunity to begin in ministry itself as plopped into my lap, to be the PA at SMITF. The reason I'm here now is because God has called me now, and God has called my now because it is the right time in my life.