THERE is a rodent within the prairies which runs so fast that its brain cannot sustain with its body. I even have quite a bit in common with this rodent. For someone who moves faster and speaks louder than most individuals around me, the seek for God’s “still small voice” as I discerned a call to ministry required a radically recent way of searching for.
The discernment of a priestly vocation is the alternative of a secular profession selection. You don’t simply resolve to turn out to be a vicar, train for the position, and apply for a job. You discern a call from God, after which your bishop decides whether it is best to apply to coach (I don’t know concerning the job part yet). The priestly vocation embodies vocatio proper: not self-selection, but divine summons; a voice that speaks through relatively than from you. Yet, without dazzling supernatural signs, how does one distinguish between a passion that comes from the self, and a calling from on high?
I saw that the more fitting my credentials, the harder it was to distinguish between profession progression and God’s call. How enviable, I assumed, to be a burned-out solicitor or melancholy estate agent discerning a call to priesthood! How unlucky to already be a theologian and preacher! I finally understood why my friends from nice Christian homes often regarded my radical conversion with a sort of holy envy, viewing my testimony as in some way more authentic than their gentle amble along the National Trust footpath of religion. The elusive “call” seemed harder than ever to discern.
AS SOMEONE who finds clear shouts of full of life encouragement easier to discover than the “still small voice of calm”, just like the prairie rodent I scurried off to numerous members of the material to ask how they ascertained their calling. The most practical advice got here from my vocations adviser, who quietly hinted that, if one starts saying “yes”, doors begin opening; and, if one does this prayerfully, God guides you thru the appropriate door.
This sounded relatively more kinetic than waiting for whispers on the wind; so I started saying “yes”, and attended discernment groups and prayer retreats, and diligently read priestly manuals aimed toward young men within the Nineteen Sixties — all of the while saying to God, “I do not know how I can train to be a vicar while I home-school my little girls.”
I arrived early to a vocations group held within the airy, medieval rooms of a Cambridge college. Struggling to recline on the medieval sofa, I posed my query about calling, and the chaplain’s response (together with the sofa) made me sit bolt upright: “Ah, yes, your ‘call’ — your Gollum’s ring,” he said slowly, with a smile. From his apparent irreverence, I assumed (rightly, because it turned out) that he have to be on to something terribly profound. Hold your call evenly, he suggested: see it more as light illuminating the trail, not a precious and weighty burden to own, which you’ll struggle each day to give up. Take it evenly and trust the journey.
IN FACT, the levity of the clergy was striking. Like all laity, I assumed the clerical collar was intended to choke the wearer, but I kept meeting such light-hearted vicars that I started to wonder why I’d assumed holiness required heaviness.
I used to be searching for certainty and solemnity in my calling, yet in every single place I kept finding a style of biblical frivolity — priests who assumed that Christ meant what he said about his yoke being easy and his burden light. I had thought that I needed something definite and weighty, but discovered a style of spiritual gravity that flowed upwards.
I shadowed the chaplain at a neighborhood independent school. When barely anyone appeared for the midweek service, I felt mortified on her behalf, but she smiled broadly and explained with inner serenity that she trusted God had brought precisely whom he intended. A number of days later, I interrogated the clever and reverent dean of a terrific cathedral on how he knew he had been called. “I’m unsure I even have been,” he replied cheerfully; and his cassock swayed as he retreated down the nave, giving the distinct impression that he may need been skipping.
IN THE reams of paperwork that my diligent ADDO produced for the bishop, one phrase stood out within the record of our searching conversations: “We laughed quite a bit.” I felt that I had begun to grasp G. K. Chesterton’s statement that “Angels can fly because they take themselves evenly.” I finished approaching my calling like academic research, and gave up consulting my CV as proof of my vocation. I frightened less about personal prophecy and more about establishing each day rhythms of prayer.
Then, there landed in my inbox the world’s most sensible articulation of female priesthood by Alison Milbank, describing how women bring something uniquely feminine to priesthood — mothering to the office itself — and I felt sudden peace that ordination might deepen, not dilute, my vocation as wife and mother.
With this recent clarity, I faced the sensible challenge of the formal process itself. Being vulnerable to motion sickness, I wasn’t overly obsessed with collaborating within the “carousel conversations”: six Zoom interviews comprising Stage One within the formal discernment process. Yet, I passed this stage with minimal nausea, and, in God’s infinite kindness, the feedback got here in loud shouts of encouragement.
THE final stage is a residential conference with the bishop’s advisers, involving in-depth conversations and a bunch activity with other candidates. It plays out as a wonderful inversion of secular job interviews: relatively than compete to outshine others, we were invited right into a space of mutual flourishing, where our authentic selves might be truly seen and heard by the compassionate advisers. It felt fitting, within the closing service, to be instructed to take off my name badge and lay it on the altar. With one voice, the advisers sent us out with a prayer of commission, and at this symbolic climax, I dissolved into tears.
So, I even have laid down my name on God’s altar, my rodent heart drumming its frantic rhythm as I write this sentence, mere hours before the bishop’s decision. Yet we worship a God who makes every grave a gateway; so I trust that, should this door shut, it’ll appear not as a closing but relatively as a compass pointing towards that country where all paths converge, and where we’re, finally, called by our true names.
Dr Josephine Gabelman is the writer of A Theology of Nonsense (Wipf & Stock, 2016). In September, she is going to turn out to be a part of the primary cohort of Ridley Hall’s recent, non-residential pathway, aimed toward making ordination training more accessible to those juggling other responsibilities, similar to employment or childcare.
