Journey Home - 2

Last year, I started to read a Brene Brown book on vulnerability.  I think it's called Daring Greatly, but the main point is that the book was like walking through ripe thistles. And I  could not do it, so I stopped, and yes, said it was a dumb book. Saturday, when I revealed to Shannon that I was resuming Plan B, we had a speculative conversatinon on what Spiritual Direction would look like for nerds. And I said, it would look like a Brene Brown book. Then I explained who she was, TED talk, the crossover fame for nerds.

So yesterday, being out of book, I picked this one back up again. And I truly think it is a mark of positive progress that I am finding the book to be engaging and relevant. Not only that, but resonant. I'm pleased to discover that I am in truth coming out of the fog of the last several years and that I am still me.

Another interesting thing I ran across yesterday was something that was stuck in my drafts folder on this blog. It was a captured comment by Jean, perhaps the most honest feedback I got from my committee, or at least the feedback that was relevant, unlike the mess that came back at the Thursday meeting. She said that they didn't know what kind of priest I was, so they didn't know what to do with me.

I can work with that. Seriously, that probably describes me in a nutshell the world over. The thing is, as devestating as the whole last year at St David's was, it never did devestate me in the heart. I never stopped knowing my own priesthood. I never stopped knowing God. I just really stopped being able to go to church. I really stopped being able to express my own calling, because I had found that messy square hole and thought my round peg could slide in. (I am going to work this metaphor into the ground this month. Poor pegs.)

Well, my priesthood isn't the calling to bureaucracy. And I think that a lot of the priesthood in the church is the bureaucracy. Which is fine, since I said to the dismay of people who thought they were spiritual, that this is a really important aspect of keeping the gospel alive in the world. But I don't think that is what I am doing here. Plenty of people, more than enough people, can do that. And honestly, I think God has the whole death and resurrection of the institution under control, I probably am not needed in that department.

So, on to figuring out what midwifing I am to do.