Discernment Disasters

It has been about a month since my studies at Luther began. Despite my attempt to make this be right, when Josh half-heartedly suggested we move to California next year a great wind of relief swept over me. The wind of relief abandoned me fairly quickly as I began to panic.... I might actually need to figure out what I should do with my life. One would think that as a student in seminary on the path to ordination I had already figured that out, but, this is not the case. As I began to express the situation to those who have walked along this path with me, nobody seemed to be surprised. In fact, many were just waiting for me to come to the realization that the track I was on may not be the one I am meant to walk. My discernment process started early, but over the last few years it has become less and less stable, perhaps in a good way. My call to ordained ministry has been one that I have interpreted as being temporary, something I would do for a while then go and do something else. I couldn't shake the idea of ordained ministry because it was what I expected of myself, and, what I thought others expected of me. However, I believe I have mistaken those imagined expectations for a calling and, thus, limited my access to what I was being called to "after" ordained ministry. It seems very real and raw to me that my calling is towards something else now. What that is... I may just have to let you know when I get there.

However, my hopes are that it is a ministry of God for God's people. By this I mean that I hope it is a ministry that overcomes the boundaries of religion as an institutionalized practice. One that sees all religions as completely valid ways to interpret the interaction between what is real to us, creation, and that which is present but not fully fathomable to us. Institutionalized religion seems to get one caught up in doing what is traditional and expected of each religion rather than fostering one's spirituality with the tools that have been passed down by generations. Rather than freeing people to live, and really live amongst other life, it offers a doctrine of life that may or may not limit one's understanding of the divine. It seems that the best way to understand the divine is to looks out into the creation one can fathom, where-within the unfathomable divine is present and active. Through different religions we gain access to the presence and interpreted activity of the divine which offers light to our paths of understanding; both our fathomable reality and the unfathomable being of God.

Well, here you have the recent perils of my discernment process (at least a glimpse of it). A couple pieces of irony in all of this for your muses... it was the message of Christ that enabled me to look past Christianity. While I feel as though I am struggling with the identity of being Christian, my identity as a Lutheran still makes sense to me. That is all for now folks. Peace.