Keeping Our Center ~ Day 30

I’ve been digging through some old paper work and I found some notes and reflections from seminary that I thought you might find amusing, if not interesting. I took a class in seminary called Empowerment. It was supposed to help us understand our spirituality and grow. The first day of class we were asked to give two words to describe our call to ministry. Well, I came up with three: absurdity, skepticism and faith. Imagine how inadequate I felt when the others in the class were talking about passion, caretaking, discipleship, and all kinds of other wonderful, religiousy words. Nevertheless, I’ve revisited these words a few times over the years, and I still think they are accurate. Allow me to share my thoughts on these for the next few days.

Becoming a pastor was absurd for many reasons, not the least of which was that I had NEVER been on a church committee (blissfully ignorant), I had never been in a Sunday School class and the only one I ever taught was for pre-schoolers (the sanitized version of Noah’s Ark was pretty easy), and I hadn’t read much of the Bible either. Talk about clueless.

Then there was the absurdity of ditching any sort of normal career for a vocation in institutional religion, and dragging my family into something completely unknown. Someone should have had my head checked. Oh, wait, they did that before they gave me an appointment in a church. 

This week after Easter, I find myself reflecting on the absurdity of Jesus himself. I mean, this guy had some awesome things to say, and lived with a depth of compassion that I’m not sure I can ever fully emulate, but he got himself killed! And the disciples who shared his messages after his death risked their own lives preaching about a resurrected dead guy.

Plus, the world itself is pretty absurd; full of misplaced priorities, injustice, scary viruses, unnecessary suffering, inequity, and any number of things and opinions which simply make no reasonable sense.

Over time I’ve come to realize that we are ALL called to minister (to be helpful, kind, and compassionate) in the midst of the absurdity. Jesus did. The disciples did. Millions of people have since then. It’s just part and parcel of the whole spiritual gig.

Love & Light!

Kaye