Thoughts on spiritual direction.

So I realized when I was back in Seattle that a lot of my anger and anxiety that I was feeling about St. Mark's had disappeared. It was a huge relief, a weight lifted. And I started thinking about that. I went to spiritual direction today - with the (overly?) erudite spiritual director I'm still feeling conflicted about - and realized that part of what was going on was that I had learned to parse my anger about the wretched track-to-ordination system (I mean, seriously, asking for my Pap Smear? SO invasive!) from the actual people I love. In Seattle, there wasn't much space to separate out my feelings, since church was the only place I got to talk about God (hello, secular friends! I still love you even though we never talked about the biggest thing in my life!) and I couldn't quite figure out which parts of me were mad at God, mad at my process, mad at life, mad at my church (where, even though I've been there for years and served in a wide variety of ministries and supposedly they are commissioning me for ministry, I still get welcomed in the morning with a handshake and a blank look and a cheery "Welcome to St. Mark's!" Uh, thanks.). And, of course, I was supposed to be utterly grateful for the mere chance to beg for a place at the table (as the lady said to Jesus, even the dogs get to eat the crumbs...). It all coalesced to make me feel frustrated. And I did a stupid thing: I started identifying that frustration with individual peoples and ministries at my parish. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They love me. I love them. We support each other and laugh together. It's the system that is wearing. The system where no one tells me what's expected of me, where my paperwork is, who I'm supposed to report to. The system that offers no pastoral support for people defending their very real calls to ministry (because of the supposed state of our eternal gratitude, as mentioned before). And then they get mad when I'm not psychic. Sheesh. But when I went back, I had a little epiphany. And the feelings fell into their proper places. And I am really glad for that.

I have started thinking more intentionally about these things in part because my dear friend Carolina, one of the most beautiful/glowy/holy people I've ever met, told me that over the break she realized she can no longer pursue ordained ministry. She can no longer do it because the process is destroying her relationship with God. And I had sudden pang of very real sympathy - realizing that I didn't always feel as far away from God as I do now, that I didn't always have such a hard time praying. It was about in the middle of my process when it started to fade, when I was experiencing a serious amount of classism at St. Mark's (they really assume everyone has some kind of middle-class job that can support all the meetings and volunteer service and paperwork and doctor's appointments that the process requires, some kind of job where you don't lose much-needed paid-by-the-hour rent money for trying to make meetings on time or meet with your mentoring priest during the day or paying for required shrink visits, some kind of job that lets you say, "Yes, I will be there whenever you need me" so as not to incur stares that imply "Are you REALLY serious about this?" Well, yes, I am, but I also need to eat and buy gas and I'm already working a 60 hour work week and the little one has what we think might be the chicken pox but sure, yes sir, I'm all yours even though you have never once asked me how I am). Again, with the conflation of God and church, I started feeling like since the process was so lonely, God must be somehow leaving me, God also somehow thought I wasn't trying hard enough and was too much in the service class to be any good, even though I was trying and trying, and, as the Lark can attest, crying. I was wrong. God was still there, good old eternal magnet that God is, calling me back to God's warm breast whenever I was ready to recognize that the churchly struggle was not God. (Apologies for the mixed metaphor.) The work that my spiritual director has been doing with me - nudging me back to prayer, particularly unashamed unabashed petitionary prayer - has been really helpful in this. God and I are going to be OK. That's an excellent thing about God: you come back, and you always come back to joy.


I am also starting to think that part of my frustration with my spiritual director is that he was not counselling me. Well, I think maybe if I need counselling and crying and emotional catharsis, I need a real live therapist. I think he's actually doing a good job as a spiritual director, asking how everything I tell him affects my spiritual well-being. No one has done that in ages. (And yes, OK, he finishes my sentences too often for comfort and overthinks things and talks a bit too much but we are working together to unlearn these things.)


Sigh. Folks, I'm sorry I'm so grumpy. Also, today I was supposed to hear back from the folks at Swedish about my Clinical Pastoral Education, and they didn't call and I have eaten too many pieces of toast and feel really unwanted. It's the worst feeling, that no one wants you. It does resemble that loneliness felt during my process - that I have a call, I want to serve, I do good work, I work hard, but it's not exactly being reciprocated. It's worth it. Right?