Continuing the Great Adventure to Holy Orders - Two years into training

The actors training alongside me at drama school used to say that their experience of their time there was akin to being broken into small pieces then reassembled bit by bit. I've got to say, my experience of theological college has been very similar.

In my BAP paperwork, I said my hope was that “my formation will be an anvil to God’s blacksmith”, but it’s more like my formation is the workshop for God’s mechanic. I’m up on the axle stand, and I am being sort of taken apart in an act that is actually creative rather than destructive. Some parts are taken out of the whole and worked on separately, or replaced entirely. Some parts are being serviced, renewed and polished, revealing the potential that was already there. Enhancements are being added, new buttons put into the dashboard to access new features, but the essence of the car is not changed. Same colour, same design, same history, same owner, but renewed purpose and updated manual.

Hopefully, this is a similar process to the one described in Colossians 3, that we have "stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator". Only time will tell.

I'm coming to the end of my second year as an ordinand, and I have one more academic year to go. I have started conversations with London diocese about curacy, but I have yet to be told if I will be released or not. I have another jam-packed summer ahead of me, including 4 weeks in a parish, and hopefully some placements with military chaplains, but also I've scheduled some actual 'holiday' time, which is better than last year, as well as personal spiritual retreat. Next year, I will write a dissertation, and finish my BA degree, as well as prepare to move and start curacy.

It is so weird to still be here, in Durham, at Cranmer Hall. Not that I mean I'm surprised I haven't been kicked out, but it's just unusual for me to be in the same place with the same people for so long. And even though the community make-up has changed, and it'll change again come October, life is all still basically the same, and that is very unfamiliar territory for me. I might be talking about curacy, but it's still a whole year away; the future has never been so far. Suddenly I'm the one radically changing, not my circumstances. Since coming to Durham, I have gotten two tattoos and a motorcycle licence, and that's just scratching the surface. 

I have delved into the Bible in a way completely unknown to me; I have settled into my relationship with God in a manner unfathomable before; I have realised a passion for writing prayers and preaching which has astonished me; I have fought against more biphobia than I have ever experienced in my life; and I have truly picked up the mantle of my future and set it on my shoulders.

But I'm still up on the axle stand, I still feel like I'm in pieces; my capacity to love is growing, my pastoral ability is being enhanced, my vocabulary has been almost replaced it's so different, my commitment to being a Church of England Anglican has been renewed, my potential as a leader has been revealed, and new features include obscure biblical references and unlikely friendships have been added. But at the moment I do not feel like a cohesive whole, and parts of my life and my self sit around me, only strung together by the barest of threads.

The same as this time last year, my mental health has not be so good, making this lack of cohesion harder to bear, but I've made it to the end of term, and now I have a series of interesting projects and trips over the summer to recharge me to get through the last three terms of my degree. And God is constant through it all.

I've still got a year to go, and details of my future to confirm, so I have hope and faith that I will be made ready in time, and I'll set down off the stand ready to hit the throttle into curacy, to warm up the tyres and get to grips with the upgrades, so that I can journey well in the rest of my life in ministry. I am in pieces but not in despair, and I am being held by the Spirit, the college, my friends and my family.

LGBT ordinand

A sermon by a bisexual ordinand

 in a school chapel, 

speaking on LGBT history month.*

*including my story, bisexual nuns, Peru, Frida Kahlo, and textiles.

Video has no visuals, just the audio, as I was at a school, so cannot show the footage that includes the children. My audio equipment failed, so the sound is just the inbuilt camera mic - I recommend putting on the subtitles (button bottom right of the video) to follow more easily.

Video: Going to see the bishop

For those who are astute, you'll notice that this meeting and video took place on Ash Wednesday and I am posting this quite a way into Lent. Apologies for that; I'll lay no excuses.

But it does mean I can tell you the good news that I have a BAP date! I'm all set to go in June, so these last few weeks have setting off on the epic adventure of the paperwork involved, which I might cover in a later post. I'm also arranging to go see colleges, so it's feeling really  real!

So watching this video several weeks later in the knowledge of the certainty of my BAP, here are the points I want to remind myself of:

• Remember that BAP examiners are real people rather than the 2D constructs in my head
• I should probably practice one-on-ones a bit more
• Make sure I prep reading my paperwork beforehand
• Reacquaint myself with 'what a priest is'
• Work on my answer to 'where are you ecclesiastically'

I'll hopefully be catching up with a few more posts soon.

Exploring my doubts

Doubt is not something I want to put words to. Admitting that I have doubts about my calling is quite painful. But doubt is an important part of faith. I don't think a lot of people really realise that. I know for example I've had an argument with my boyfriend about the nature of faith - he thought is was something you feel and not based on evidence. I countered that he was describing blind faith, and I did not recognise his definition as the faith I have.

Faith is not always blind

Blind faith is 100% convinced, but true faith has real conviction because it constantly doubts. Why have faith in something if you haven't reason to? I have doubted pretty much every part of my faith, including the big ones like do I believe in God. I like going back to the very Jewish idea, which I think Anglicanism embraces very well, of arguing. Arguing with your faith, interrogating your scripture, contemplating other possibilities. Moses (Exodus 4) immediately springs to mind as someone who directly shouted at God, questioned God (Exodus 3), and in the New Testment, the Apostle Peter wavered in faith (Matt 14); even Jesus had moments, eg. at the Mount of Olives (Luke 22), and I considered not even mentioning Doubting Thomas as the obvious choice.

These doubters were all true role models of faith. And so I feel stronger for being able to follow their example, and speak out about my doubts, to face them head on, in the never-ending struggle and journey of faith.

***

I have worried that I am deluded. Most of the time it makes so much sense to think that I am 'destined' to be a priest, then I scold myself for being so arrogant, then I worry that not feeling special is a sign that it's not a true calling, but surely modesty is better than self-grandeur...

It gets a little cyclical, and I end up feeling lost and guilty. Okay, so confront it, what if I am deluded? (Forgetting the possibility of being deluded that there is a God, and concentrating on the possibility of being deluded that I feel a calling from God). I have been getting more and more religious, so is thinking there's a calling just part of my very thorough way of doing things and being a priest seems the obvious way of 'doing religion thoroughly', and that's the real reason I'm doing it? Does it feel right because it feels like the way to do that part of my life 'properly'?

Okay, I might have a calling, but what if I'm called to something else? Being ordained and being a full time priest is just one of many callings for Christians. I might be copping out of the hard reality of juggling Christianity and other parts of my life. Many people, most Christians in fact, live out their faith whilst in full time secular employment, why do I feel I have to put my Christianity as not just my religion but my job, and not just that but a community role, a life vocation?

Surely I'm not the right person to represent the Church and lead an example of Christ-like living. I've never been naturally a 'people person', and a lot of people find me too loud, boisterous, direct and intense. I have very liberal attitudes to things like sex and relationships that many in the Church would probably object to, even though I go about my love life with as much care to Love God as much as Love Neighbour as any other part of my life. But part of me worries that I'm just wrong. I think I'm doing good not evil, that I'm living conscientiously, trying to not sin, but what if I'm wrong? I swear, take Christ's name in vain, get drunk, shout at my family, buy nice things, don't give change to beggars. There are people in the world who genuinely think I'm a bad person; there's at least one I can think of who probably actually hates me. That doesn't sound like a priest.

No one seems as enthusiastic about it as me. Is their support just politeness? There's a lot in the literature about other people affirming your calling - nope. One crazy stranger, that's all I've had. Not my priest, my boyfriend, my family, my friends, no one has positively said they think it's a good idea. I'm not trying to criticise them - if that's how they feel, I certainly want them to be honest. So if they are, if I'm in the minority of one that thinks I could be a priest, how likely is it that I'm the one that's right?

I have no issues with my human sexuality

Let's look at the Criteria again (see also previous post) and what I can't do or haven't got.

• Others have not confirmed my inner conviction.
• I have barely any spirituality; I generally never sit in prayer to God apart from reading other people's words. Nor have I done any Bible study. I don't see how the world and others have been affected my practice of prayer, and frankly I have serious issues with the notion of 'the power of prayer'. I've never understood how spiritual practice 'sustains and energises'.
• I've struggled with maintaining appropriateness in professional relationships - I'm a flirt, blunt, emotional. I'm an out bisexual - whoops, Issues of Human Sexuality.
• People don't follow me, my leadership skills leave a lot to be desired. How can I offer an example of faith when I feel culturally compelled to not mention God so as not to make atheists uncomfortable?
• I feel anger and fear about mission, a distinct mistrust and aversion to evangelising.

***

So what do I doubt about my calling? I doubt that I'm called at all, I doubt that I'm called specifically to be ordained, I doubt that I'm the right type of person to be ordained, I doubt that I'm right to disagree with my support network, I doubt that I can fit the criteria for being ordained.

And it is terrifying. I hate having doubts. I have so much conviction, assurance and excitement about my calling, it knocks at my core to express doubt. I've used this metaphor before: I have a bedrock of trust in God, on which are pillars of faith, holding up the foundations of my soul, on which the building of my heart sits, in the infusing cloud of my brain. Doubt is lightning spearing from that cloud, and rocking the whole structure. My emotions get knocked about and chaotic, my soul ripples and sends shockwaves through my faith, and my trust is holding firm but not unwobbled.

***

If you want to read the positive side of this argument with myself, read the post Reasons I think I'd make a good priest/want to be priest.