In Transition

Not one of my favorite things, transition, but here I am in the middle of one. I just finished my job as campus missioner for the diocese and am now seeking a full-time parish. Some opportunities are there, and I await their fruition.

Waiting is hard. I want to be gainfully employed, even if not remunerated, so I am engaged in several tasks: Working on ideas for health care initiatives for people of faith; writing, especially writing sermons and reflections; reading, especially all the books and journals that piled up during the busy-ness of everyday priestly activities with a parish and several college and other young adults; and finally, discerning the next place God is calling me to be.

That last one is obviously the hardest. Where do my talents belong? Who needs what I can give? How will I know when it is the place and the people with whom I am being called to serve? I think these questions have been the most difficult of my priestly formation. In my previous jobs, there was a job description that was fairly cut and dried and I knew by comparing what I had done and how I had trained whether the job would be a fit and I would enjoy doing that work. It was partly a matter of special academic interests in specific areas of the health care system.

I thought this would be how the deployment of a priest would go too, but alas, not with the same type of visible and discrete discrimination. Or at least not the obviousness with which I had perceived my talents fitting previous jobs in academia and health care.

I don't know why this is particularly--but I suspect there is lots more going on with parishes than they are able to put into a profile that is used to match my talents and their hopes and dreams for their future. If you think of it, you are asking a parish to make concrete what may be foggy to them, or may seem concrete but is layered with multiple hopes, fears, and dreams, some of which may conflict, about their future as a community of faith and the leadership they seek.

Discernment in this context is coupled with much mist and wavering images. The images seem to change and morph, on what basis I am not sure.

The discernment process calls for others to journey with you, in companionship, certainly, but also in advising, listening, helping you hear. So, I am asking several to accompany me on this journey. If you are kind enough to read this blog, and inclined to prayer, I do ask your prayers for me during this time of discernment.

May God lead me into light and the knowledge of God's will for me and for a parish who is looking for the talents I have been given.