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.

Thoughts on the beginning of the fall term

Every September for nearly half my life, I have gone to the store to buy pencils, paper, notebooks and binders, then, more recently, printer paper and ink, diskettes, and, every four years or so, a new laptop. From 2003-06 I was in seminary in Evanston, IL, the first northern suburb of Chicago, and learned very quickly how much the prices of books had risen since I was last in graduate school.

Why do all this expensive schooling? I know my dad, a very down-to-earth farmer (pun intended), was very skeptical of any schooling that did not have a direct bearing on your ability to get a good, steady job. He grew up during the Great Depression, not having the opportunity for higher education, except for one quarter, before finances kept him from continuing. I think he would have been an accountant had he been able to continue, but instead, he took up the work on his father's farm, where days were long, and work was physical and tiring. Where the weather and the farm markets controlled his life in many ways.

But I have expended lots of money for my several degrees (bachelors, two terminal masters degrees and a doctorate), and spent half my life, counting elementary and secondary schools, in educational institutions. In many ways, the preparation to be a priest was the least mentally challenging, but certainly the most emotionally and spiritually challenging. My dad would have understood this education in the sense that it prepared me for a new career, but he would have been baffled why I chose to leave a lucrative career in health policy scholarship to prepare for a profession that pays much less.

If my dad were here, I could only say this to him: God led me to this profession. The priesthood is a calling and vocation, not a program of job training that you necessarily choose out of a list at the career counselor's office.

In fact, if your choice of career is more about money and ego, it probably has little to do with God. God calls us to vocation, while we call ourselves into a career. That doesn't mean we can't be in a lucrative career that is also our calling. I think of any of the human services professions as vocations. And many other professions can be vocations, depending on how we approach them, what we are hoping to do with our life.

Vocation can be hard, for several reasons. Vocation requires listening closely to where God is calling. Our listening can be assisted, however, with the help of close friends, confidantes, counselors, and spiritual advisors. Marriage can be a vocation. Being a lay person is a vocation just as much as being a priest. Both vocations are called to specific ways to be a minister for the gospel and the spread of the word of God. Vocation is responding to where God is calling you to be, using your desires, your positive qualitites, your talents, your very being.

May God's call to you be your heart's desire this day and for the rest of your life.

May this fall term be all that you are seeking.