Changes (Or, How One Deals With Having Her Mind Blown on a Weekly, if not Daily Basis)

I’ve been thinking about what, exactly, is my call in the last few weeks. Even more so since Pantheacon.

When I applied to PSR, I knew that I was going to be a Hospital Chaplain. Period. End of story. I think that certainty lasted about two and an half months into my first M.Div term.

Then Jesus came back into my life. Or, I could say, I accepted that he was already in my life and never truly out of it. Then He truly blows my mind by asking me to be His priest.

So, there I was. I was this Wiccan Christian hybrid spiritual being, who just had her mind blown by the deities in her life, and nothing was certain anymore.

A few weeks ago, just when I had convinced myself that this is something that would add to my oh-so-certain Hospital Chaplaincy future (ha!), the gods decide to throw another baseball at my head.

(My 4M buds and I have some other, um, more colorful ways of phrasing this, but I’ll stick with the baseball metaphor.)

The possibility of Ordination. In an organization that recognizes me as a “dual citizen” without freaking about it. In an organization that is just as passionate as I am about radical inclusion, and the faith and love that is the message of Jesus Christ. In an organization that also recognizes my wife as who she is to me, and as clergy, and her full self. In an organization that wants to learn about me, my Wiccan background, and work on the capital “I” interfaith level.

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about ordination at a church level. I always thought about it on the Hospital Chaplain level. It wouldn’t negate me doing chaplain-like things, but it will encompass all of my passions and talents in ways that I don’t even know right now.

I look at what we did at Pantheacon, and I realized I’ve already been doing this work. I accepted 3rd Degree in my tradition. That meant I put out my shingle to the universe that I’m ready, willing, and able to do this work. So, last year, I moved to start change in the pagan community. Three Sundays ago, and through the last year, we continued to create change. I was there, and I had a role in that. Three Sundays ago I helped create change in a room full of people who weren’t sure about the future. Who weren’t sure what would happen right then, but all of us wanted change for the better.

I decided that I could do it, and that it was the right thing to do. I decided to take the protector/warrior role because I knew I could do it, and that everyone in that room needed to be safe in spirit and body.

And now, to have an opportunity to do this work in a scale that I can’t even really wrap my head around right yet?

It’s amazing.

It’s humbling.

It makes me speechless and fills me with awe.

It is the Fool, the Magician, the High Priestess, the Hierophant.

It is magick, love, and faith.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” — Thomas Merton (Read by Lee recently in services we did together.)

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