Another was my confirmation. I don't remember it exactly, but at some point in the January of 2013, I thought "I want to be confirmed." Again, no hesitation, no turning over the idea as a possibility first, nor even this time any obvious trigger. But it was perfect timing, to spend a couple of months going over the basic tenants and scripture of Christianity with the rector before going to St Paul's at the end of March.
My calling was not bolt-from-the-blue. It crept up on me, slowly and quietly, so subtle that when I noticed it, I realised it had been there a while already. I feel like it must have been in my late teens that the niggle started at the back of my mind, but it wasn't until Feb '12, that I got my first small kick from it. I sent this email to my rector:
I'm not sure why I'm writing this email. My friend suggested I talk to you, but it's not that I have anything to decide, or any issue to resolve; I just have an idea, which doesn't really affect the near future, and discussing it with someone who knows what they're talking about seems like something I should do, now that I've thought of it. I kind of want to look at going into ministry. But not now, definitely way in the future, as a second career sort of thing. I've had the notion for a while. Because I really like the idea of being ordained when I'm older; I get the same feeling about it that I do about my choice to go into stage management now - a sense of vocation. But I don't know where this idea has come from, and whether I need do anything about it right now, or what it means that I had the idea in the first place, or whether I'm right to feel like it's a good one. I suppose I'm emailing you because of these questions, and I was hoping for your...advice? Perspective? I'm not sure. But I'm a bit adrift about the whole thing at the moment, and I'd be grateful for some help.
The subject line of the email was 'Adrift'. Because I did feel adrift, finding myself in an unfamiliar boat without sails, paddles or anything on the horizon. My trust in God was strong but that still didn't give me anything tangible to go off. I like tools, proactivity, LISTS. I'm not demanding a definite and clear, detailed plan for the future. Just a vague idea. Even if the plan changes, I just really prefer a vague idea, any vague idea, to absolutely no clue at all.At this point, I felt like the plan had changed but in such a unclear way that my path, "the way I walk in", was totally obscure. As you can tell from the email, I wasn't contemplating veering off the stage management career path, so really the obscurity was whether I was right in that feeling. I had the suspicion that when one got a calling to ministry, you downed sticks and stopped your life, everything, and started again, and I didn't want to do that yet, so was that a betrayal? How could I feel a vocation for two different paths?
My rector arranged a meeting and listened carefully to my babblings and I came away from that meeting reassured that at 19, having just started a 3 year degree course in an industry I loved and had an affinity for, if I didn't feel ready to take steps in response to my calling, that was absolutely fine. My calling subsided back into its habitual place as an ignore-able niggle at the back of my mind.
So I carried on at college, and at church, graduated, without any worry. Sure, at some point way off in the future I would address the call to a second career, a second vocation, and it was a comforting thought. I eventually grew happy in the surety that I would go into ministry in my life; it was inevitable. But for now, be a stage manager, enjoy being part of church in all the other ways I could as a lay person. It would come years and years in the future, when I was a proper grownup....right?
...Nope.
God bless.
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