Video: Another affirmation

My calling - the starting point

I've not had many bolt-from-the-blue moments, as my mother calls them. One was going to church. I noticed a sign next to my hostel in Australia for a baptist church, and the thought popped into my head - "It's Sunday tomorrow. I'll go to church." Just like that, on a random road the other side of the world, my church life began. 'The Road to Agnes Water'. Not quite as catchy as 'Damascus', but there we are.

Another was my confirmation. I don't remember it exactly, but at some point in the January of 2013, I thought "I want to be confirmed." Again, no hesitation, no turning over the idea as a possibility first, nor even this time any obvious trigger. But it was perfect timing, to spend a couple of months going over the basic tenants and scripture of Christianity with the rector before going to St Paul's at the end of March.

My calling was not bolt-from-the-blue. It crept up on me, slowly and quietly, so subtle that when I noticed it, I realised it had been there a while already. I feel like it must have been in my late teens that the niggle started at the back of my mind, but it wasn't until Feb '12, that I got my first small kick from it. I sent this email to my rector:

I'm not sure why I'm writing this email. My friend suggested I talk to you, but it's not that I have anything to decide, or any issue to resolve; I just have an idea, which doesn't really affect the near future, and discussing it with someone who knows what they're talking about seems like something I should do, now that I've thought of it. I kind of want to look at going into ministry. But not now, definitely way in the future, as a second career sort of thing. I've had the notion for a while. Because I really like the idea of being ordained when I'm older; I get the same feeling about it that I do about my choice to go into stage management now - a sense of vocation. But I don't know where this idea has come from, and whether I need do anything about it right now, or what it means that I had the idea in the first place, or whether I'm right to feel like it's a good one. I suppose I'm emailing you because of these questions, and I was hoping for your...advice? Perspective? I'm not sure. But I'm a bit adrift about the whole thing at the moment, and I'd be grateful for some help.

The subject line of the email was 'Adrift'. Because I did feel adrift, finding myself in an unfamiliar boat without sails, paddles or anything on the horizon. My trust in God was strong but that still didn't give me anything tangible to go off. I like tools, proactivity, LISTS. I'm not demanding a definite and clear, detailed plan for the future. Just a vague idea. Even if the plan changes, I just really prefer a vague idea, any vague idea, to absolutely no clue at all.

At this point, I felt like the plan had changed but in such a unclear way that my path, "the way I walk in", was totally obscure. As you can tell from the email, I wasn't contemplating veering off the stage management career path, so really the obscurity was whether I was right in that feeling. I had the suspicion that when one got a calling to ministry, you downed sticks and stopped your life, everything, and started again, and I didn't want to do that yet, so was that a betrayal? How could I feel a vocation for two different paths?

My rector arranged a meeting and listened carefully to my babblings and I came away from that meeting reassured that at 19, having just started a 3 year degree course in an industry I loved and had an affinity for, if I didn't feel ready to take steps in response to my calling, that was absolutely fine. My calling subsided back into its habitual place as an ignore-able niggle at the back of my mind.

So I carried on at college, and at church, graduated, without any worry. Sure, at some point way off in the future I would address the call to a second career, a second vocation, and it was a comforting thought. I eventually grew happy in the surety that I would go into ministry in my life; it was inevitable. But for now, be a stage manager, enjoy being part of church in all the other ways I could as a lay person. It would come years and years in the future, when I was a proper grownup....right?

...Nope.

God bless.

The last two years before the start of this blog

I can't believe I have a personal connection with a
globally recognised British landmark!

I got confirmed into the Church of England on Easter Saturday, March 30th 2013, at St Paul's Cathedral, London, by the Bishop of London, The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres. (see previous blog for my journey before then.)

In preparation for my confirmation, I didn't have the schedule to be able to fit in conventional classes with the other candidates in a regular slot each week, so I had one-on-one sessions with the rector, and she gave me the homework. Thus started my spiritual journal, a little green leather bound notebook that lives in my handbag for any moment I feel the need to put my thoughts about all things religious and spiritual onto paper.

This was another tool in my religious arsenal and is still an essential part of my relationship with God. Since the confirmation homework, I've had arguments with myself within its pages, taken notes during talks or sermons or from books, questioned God, there's a section where I clarified for myself what I thought about "Me, Christ and casual sex" - it's basically the place I can do extempore prayer. For me personally, I have to write it, rather than think or say it, otherwise I use structured prayer. But I've been historically terrible at getting into the habit of things like morning prayer as well!

After my confirmation, I carried on my involvement at my church St James' Piccadilly, helping where I could around my degree course in stage management, and in the last year, around my career as a freelance deputy stage manager.

It was easier at college, as we never worked on a Sunday, and Christmas/Easter time was school holidays. But the slow dawning of how important church was becoming to me was highlighted at Easter in my third year, a year after my confirmation.

I was invited to join my friend on his uni's Alpine Club annual trip to the Isle of Skye. I won't regret going, it was a glorious experience, with some wonderful people, and I climbed my first Munro, but it was over Holy Week. I left on the Saturday before, and returned late on Easter Saturday, so I missed Palm Sunday through the Easter Vigil, turning up exhausted for the 11am service on Easter Sunday, and got a surprise.

Easter morning is better than Christmas, it really is. The joy and excitement is just explosive; St James' decorates the beautiful wood/stone interior with greenery, and puts out its gold plate; at least three members of the congregation will be handing out small chocolate eggs; there's professional singers backing up the choir so it sounds loud and angelic; everyone is happy, wishing each other 'Happy Easter!" with hugs and grins, and every hymn and sung response feels alive.

Easter Day 2014, I just couldn't get into the spirit of things. Without the build up of Holy Week - processing around the church with a real donkey, singing 5 part harmonies for the tourists on Piccadilly on Palm Sunday; the sacred space of The Three Hours on Good Friday, noon til 3 with music, readings, meditations and silence, contemplating the Cross; going to St Paul's for the majestic evening service followed by going to St James' for supper; sleeping in the nave, taking an hour to maintain the vigil in the candlelit side chapel; waking early to go into the grey dawn garden and take the first Eucharist of Easter with bread baked the previous night; processing with song into the church to the font; crying at the beauty of the rector singing the Exsultet; walking down to Piccadilly Circus with drums and whistles and bells, handing out chocolate eggs; returning to church for a cooked breakfast and a break before choir practice - without all that as run up, I was emotionally at just another service, and could not tap into the feeling all around me.

I was gutted. As I said, I'm not going to regret going on the trip, but it taught me just how much being able to connect to my faith through church had become important to me.

I've had various other frustrations over the last year, like I couldn't go to the Three Hours again, and that was a factor is a decision I made in the summer. I had been writing in the journal whenever the moment suited me, but in a bid to always have something I felt addressed my personal faith, as well as going to church in my community faith, I set myself the challenge of writing just two of its small pages every week, collecting my thoughts about the Sunday I had had. First entry 2nd August 2015, 9th Sunday after Trinity

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But, you'll cry, you haven't mentioned your calling yet! It's there in those pages back in August - when did you get the call? Isn't that the POINT of this blog??

All will be answered in my next post! My storytelling instincts have led me to first set the scene, establish the background, the bones on which the true flesh of this project will be built. The little I know of the discernment process is that it understandably personal; the church cannot assess my calling unless they can get to know me. Who am I? Hopefully I've answered the relevant basics of that question in this and my last post, at least as in depth as necessary for this blog.

Coming next will be a meaty dissection of...THE CALL.

God bless