Video: First chat with the curate

I covered pretty much everything I wanted to say in this video, which is why it's a bit long.

Today is a bad day

Continuing the week's theme of existential crisis, I realised last night that I am pissed off that God kicked my calling into gear in September. I'm pissed off because since then I have been feeling more and more overwhelmed, and it's all because of this vocation/calling/discernment thing. It's like a smog that has descended onto my life and clouded everything that I thought I knew and scrambled my coping mechanisms.

Life was pretty good back in August. I had got together with the man I had been in love with for years in my first proper relationship, I had improved vastly at doing my job since graduating the year before, I had been employed consistently during that year, I was managing to see friends, I had found new things out about myself by going against my expectations, I was flying high at church...

There was a vague plan, a basic map of where my life was going and how I was going to manage it. I've already talked about not worrying about having a plan, but I've got to be honest, since September, I've felt the loss of the security increasingly, until now I basically feel swamped, overwhelmed, unable to cope.

I don't know how to juggle my calling, my work, my relationship, my family, my friends, doing the groceries, and the laundry, deciding what to wear in the mornings, applying for the next job, daily reading, prayer and reflection, developing my prayer life, doing my hair every other day, cooking, eating, washing up, times to get up, to leave, to arrive, transport issues, looking after my friends when they need me, which shoes cause blisters on which part of my foot, feeding my landlady's cat when she's away, keeping up with the news, TV, Youtube, Facebook, doing a diary entry every Sunday, finding somewhere to live after February, remembering to text my mother occasionally, learning my music for choral evensong, two of them in fact...

Yes, I'm no different to every bugger on planet earth. As my boyfriend said last night, it's called having a life. But the smog of my calling has destroyed the balance. My world is uncertain, and just getting on with things doesn't feel like enough any more. I feel like I'm teetering, off-balance and barely holding on, for the first time in my life.

I like doing things 'properly'. I feel most secure when I feel like I know what I'm doing. And God's curve ball has knocked the confidence out of me. There's no manual, no how-to guide, no 'proper' way to do this discernment process. Bloody London diocese doesn't even give you a basic idea of how it might go. From a deep down, irrational, emotional place inside me, I am extremely uncomfortable because if I don't know how to do it properly, how will I get it right? And if I keep going, and don't do it properly, that irrational feeling tells me I'm not going to be okay; I'll have messed it up and I can't start again, and this big important thing in my life that I've been on this comprehensive, step by step process towards will be a mess. It'll be all over the place, an organic, disorganised process, which means I might miss something.

When navigating, I have no sense of direction, and in general I forget things easily. Doing a process properly, with a clear understanding of how to do it, ideally written down, is how I manage. That's how I cope. God has stripped those options away from me for the thing that for years I have felt my life leading up to. If I'd had the 7 more years that I had expected I would get before following my calling to ordination, I might have felt prepared. But, like cantoring on a Sunday morning when I've only been told I am on the Saturday night, my inner knees are knocking, I'm in fight or flight mode, I'm terrified I'm going to fuck up, and I can't check out, I can't give up, I can't just not do it.

Without the safety net, it feels inevitable that I'll forget something, do something wrong, whatever it might be, and it'll irreparably fuck everything up. And then just like that, it's goodbye ordination, hello what the the fuck do I do with my life?

It's different to the prospect of being rejected for ordination itself. If I have gone through the process 'properly', done all I can to the best I can, then sure, I can accept that my calling wouldn't be to ordination. It's the prospect of a rejection based on an incomplete picture - if I miss something, or do it wrong, my petition will be a false representation; and missing out on what could be the way I should live my life, failing to achieve God's will for me, but only because I made a stupid mistake - that is a thought I cannot bear.

I know logically this is nonsense; I know my anxiety isn't based on anything rational, and the truth is life doesn't have a manual, and the discernment process is organic in nature. If it's God's will, it'll happen, whether I feel prepared or not. I should have faith and trust in God, and rely on God's strength.

I still feel overwhelmed.

I still don't understand why it's happening now.

I'm still worried I'm going to mess up.

Today is a bad day.

Video: What I was born to do

(I'm writing this assuming you have watched this video and those videos that are linked in it.)

As hard as it is to think about God's plan for us, it is a very human thing to try and gain a sense of perspective, especially nowadays when we have a greater scientific understanding of the 14 billion years of spacetime, and therefore also of the seeming insignificance of our own 80ish years on one small part of this single planet. Add in millennial issues of what counts as success - as The Circus Spirit are discussing this month, how relevant - and often finding it difficult to deal with failure, either trying too hard or not bothering to try at all, and it's unsurprising that I find it a tough subject.

We want an obvious goal in life. That would make it simple. My rector Lucy likes to tell of someone who told her it was easy - Job House Man Car. Tick all those off, and well done, you've succeeded at life as far as she was concerned. But there is very little that is one size fits all, and so we can't really make it simple.

Do I need to figure out what my list is to tick off for success? On the one hand, having a clearer understanding of what I want out of my life and what I think will make me happy will help guide my decision making, give me something to aim for as a starting point, and who says I can't keep adding things to the list? On the other hand, would I be able to cope with failure, if I were to be so bold as to articulate what I want? It would be hard to shrug off failing at something that I had given the significance of being an official thing to achieve in life.

Have a plan for my life vs. take it as it comes. I suppose I fall into the former camp because I don't just want to wait for opportunity to knock, I want to get out there and be proactive in my own life - "You're supposed to be the leading lady in your own life, for God's sake!" to quote the film The Holiday. If I'm going to do that, then I must have something aim for - proactivity is powerless without direction. If I need something to aim for, doesn't it seem best to
- aim for what is most important
- aim for what makes me happy
- aim for what makes others happy
- and aim for what makes the world a better place?

That's summarised by the Great Commandment - love God, love your neighbour as yourself.

- God is most important, for God is Love and Love is at the centre of all things; so aiming for God is to love God.
- If I do that, I'll be aiming for what makes me happy, because I'll be going in the right direction, going with the grain of the universe and living a life of love, which I've always been drawn to. Love gives us connection to the people and world we live with, which is what gives life meaning.
- Love your neighbour as yourself is literally aiming for what makes others happy, from a place of love that is based on self-love
- and this is the divine game plan that will bring the kingdom of heaven, ie. make the world a better place.

My current thinking is that God wants me to a priest, and I agree that this is an opportunity to make me happy, others happy, and the world a better place, in small ways anyway. So it seems like a good plan to direct my decisions over the next few years.

Was it what I was born to do? The character who sings this song, Campbell, wants to be the captain of her cheerleading squad, and lead them to victory at the national championships. She sees this as the one achievement she was 'born to do'.

But that opportunity is taken from her. She's moved to a new school that doesn't have a squad. Sadly, she still thinks it's the entire point of her life, so she lies and cheats to make the dance crew into a squad to take them to regionals then nationals, in an attempt to achieve her raison d'etre. She can't accept the failure so she ends up ruining burgeoning friendships when her deception is revealed.

But there are two characters with better perspective and more maturity than her, and show her where she went wrong and what is really important. Randall explains how high school is not the be-all-and-end-all of life (shockingly) and there are much bigger dreams to dedicate your life too; and Danielle, seeing that she and her crew have got something out of the cheerleading they've been doing despite the deception it was based on, gives Campbell a second chance, giving her a different reason to compete.

They go to compete, but they ignore the rules, forget about winning, and just be themselves, expressive, excited, a crew that loves being with each other and excelling at what they love together. They don't win and Campbell's old team do, but Campbell realises that she won is everything else that matters.

It's a daft show, with great music and a lot of comedy, but that story dealing with not getting what you dreamt of, and realising you don't have to be restricted by your own expectations of your life - that's deep, man.

How do I know I've succeeded? Do I need to know what I was born to do to do it? Do I need to do it? Campbell's story can say several things. You might be wrong about what you were born to do, and if that's the case, it's not the end of the world. A goal is not bigger than the life you have already, especially the people and relationships in it, and should not take precedence over them. Understanding where your life is going is a process, and it's helpful to gain perspective, so you aren't narrow minded and restricted in where life takes you, which in turn restricts your opportunities for happiness and success.

It's counter intuitive, but by not letting the 'goals to succeed in life' that you might have gain too much importance, you will have to greater chance at succeeding in life.

For me? I can't let go a vague plan and some ideas of what I want. That plan is based on ideas of who I am, going back to Hank's video. I have labels for myself too, but he's right that really, we can never be sure of who we are. To paraphrase, I am a story I tell myself, which means it's subjective, incomplete and a little bit of a lie; not just what I was born with but the result of many factors, including the expectations from others and myself. The plan can't be sure because who I am is not sure. The plan cannot be consistent, because I am not consistent.

So I should give up wanting the plan to be sure and consistent, and give up living like the expectation of how I live my life is the only factor. I want to be doing a good job becoming the kind of person I want to be; but these wants and ideas should just be tools, not boxes.

Video: New Year's Resolutions

I hope I can get somewhere with the second one. It's so ingrained in me, such learnt behaviour, such an integral part of my vocabulary. And like I said, the other options like crumbs, goodness, oh shucks, sound so crappy, they aren't attractive alternatives.

Bible should be interesting in bigger chunks than usual readings. Here come all those "begats"...