MY CALL
My call to ministry has always been with me. We have been in lively conversation, the kind that includes misunderstandings as well as moments of connection and clarity. We have moved closer together and further apart and closer together again. At times, I have tried not to listen and at others desperately leaned my ear towards it. Sometimes it has softly and gently led me onwards and sometimes it has hit me over the head and yelled at me. For most of my life, I didn’t have the willingness to hear my call, the language to describe it or the understanding to follow it. It has been a complex relationship, one that has evolved and deepened over time.
When my mother was ordained into ministry, she was pregnant with me. Many denominations use a laying on of hands to bless those being ordained. My mother knelt on the alter to receive this blessing from family, colleagues and friends. As she tells it, she expected something earth-shaking to happen. She expected a divine moment like she’s studied in the Bible. Instead, I simply moved in her belly. Since I have never been able to determine exactly where my call began within the life that I remember, this moment can be seen as an origin of sorts to what I have always felt. Perhaps in this moment the power of the many hands blessing my mother, by extension, blessed me. Perhaps I was always called to ministry, since before I was even born.
While I heard them for as long as I remember, the early stirrings of my call went mostly unnoticed. I often did not acknowledge hearing or seeing what was loud and right in front of me. When I did begin to open myself enough to connect with my call in some way, I said no. I argued that I was too young. I refused because I was an actress and was going to live my life on the stage and screen. And perhaps most significantly, I didn’t want to “become my mother.” I told myself that I was not fit in any number of ways, or that there were so many other things that I wanted to do. I thought that I was not worthy of such a lofty task and besides I didn’t believe in that kind of Jesus anyhow.
Through all of the refusals I was becoming more and more involved with church leadership and actively engaging in theological formation. At 12, I defiantly denounced Christianity and began practicing Wicca. My mother, not willing to give into my dramatic acts of rebellion, asked if I would like to offer a Wiccan blessing before dinner. Thwarted in my original intention, I continued to practice while learning about other faith traditions and teaching Sunday School to the 2 year olds at my Christian church (where I was free from many theological quagmires). It was almost as if I was creating my own version of UU religious education.
In my teenage years, as I got more involved in Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) and church leadership, others started verbalizing suggestions that ministry may be the path for me. This proved more of a deterrent than anything else, though, given my rebellious nature and I pushed those suggestions aside or laughed them off. In college, the idea of ministry arose now and then. I shoved it away. I still wasn’t ready to hear it.
Answering my call was an awakening. It took slowing down and really listening deeply. My call had kept getting louder, but I had refused to hear it, I just made my life louder, too. Until something shifted within me and I realized that I needed a change. At that point, I stopped, I sat down right where I was, and I listened as hard as I could. And I heard myself screaming, I saw my path towards ministry and I felt the pull of seminary. It was undeniable and overwhelming. Before long I was making plans to start seminary. I didn’t really stop to think, there was something deeper making the calls.
Accepting my call was a homecoming of sorts. It was almost like putting on a comfy pair of jeans that fit perfectly. It was just like finding the right congregation where you feel at home. It felt like finding a place of belonging.
I have been uncovering my hidden relationship to my call ever since deciding to answer it. It was with me all along, under the surface enough that I could often ignore it. We are selective in what experiences resonate with us, but looking back over my life it was always there.
Almost a year before my own ordination, I heard my mother’s story of her ordination. I don’t remember ever hearing it before, though my mother swears that I have. Given how strongly I now connect with this story, it is clear that in these other times I was not ready to receive it. It was only after much spiritual work that such a story would resonate with me so deeply. Only after having tested my call and after having put down such strong roots to my identity as minister could such a story feel so right to me.
My close relationship with my call now resides so deep inside me that I cannot imagine that it wasn’t with me before my birth. I am humbled and awed by the gift I have been given in being called to serve this faith that I hold so dear. My call has been growing and evolving and being reborn in me again and again.
I have not always felt connected to my call, and like the dark times when I have forgotten that I am always held by the Love of the universe, these have been some of my hardest times. It is when I feel my call moving within me and tenderly pushing me onward that I feel most alive. It is when I am with a beloved community of free religious seekers that my heart sings. I can feel it in my bones that I am called to this kind of ministry.
As it has been becoming clearer and clearer how ministry was always my path, traits that used to seem disjointed somehow morphed into a clear picture of myself as minister. I am a seeker, and I embrace the lifelong learning and growing necessary for ministry. I am an artist and a storyteller, expressing what I see of humanity and of the divine in new and creative ways. I am an activist, standing up and working for justice wherever I can. I am a fierce lover, building community through intentionality and compassion. I am a catalyst, stirring things up and inspiring transformation
When my mother was ordained into ministry, she was pregnant with me. Many denominations use a laying on of hands to bless those being ordained. My mother knelt on the alter to receive this blessing from family, colleagues and friends. As she tells it, she expected something earth-shaking to happen. She expected a divine moment like she’s studied in the Bible. Instead, I simply moved in her belly. Since I have never been able to determine exactly where my call began within the life that I remember, this moment can be seen as an origin of sorts to what I have always felt. Perhaps in this moment the power of the many hands blessing my mother, by extension, blessed me. Perhaps I was always called to ministry, since before I was even born.
While I heard them for as long as I remember, the early stirrings of my call went mostly unnoticed. I often did not acknowledge hearing or seeing what was loud and right in front of me. When I did begin to open myself enough to connect with my call in some way, I said no. I argued that I was too young. I refused because I was an actress and was going to live my life on the stage and screen. And perhaps most significantly, I didn’t want to “become my mother.” I told myself that I was not fit in any number of ways, or that there were so many other things that I wanted to do. I thought that I was not worthy of such a lofty task and besides I didn’t believe in that kind of Jesus anyhow.
Through all of the refusals I was becoming more and more involved with church leadership and actively engaging in theological formation. At 12, I defiantly denounced Christianity and began practicing Wicca. My mother, not willing to give into my dramatic acts of rebellion, asked if I would like to offer a Wiccan blessing before dinner. Thwarted in my original intention, I continued to practice while learning about other faith traditions and teaching Sunday School to the 2 year olds at my Christian church (where I was free from many theological quagmires). It was almost as if I was creating my own version of UU religious education.
In my teenage years, as I got more involved in Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) and church leadership, others started verbalizing suggestions that ministry may be the path for me. This proved more of a deterrent than anything else, though, given my rebellious nature and I pushed those suggestions aside or laughed them off. In college, the idea of ministry arose now and then. I shoved it away. I still wasn’t ready to hear it.
Answering my call was an awakening. It took slowing down and really listening deeply. My call had kept getting louder, but I had refused to hear it, I just made my life louder, too. Until something shifted within me and I realized that I needed a change. At that point, I stopped, I sat down right where I was, and I listened as hard as I could. And I heard myself screaming, I saw my path towards ministry and I felt the pull of seminary. It was undeniable and overwhelming. Before long I was making plans to start seminary. I didn’t really stop to think, there was something deeper making the calls.
Accepting my call was a homecoming of sorts. It was almost like putting on a comfy pair of jeans that fit perfectly. It was just like finding the right congregation where you feel at home. It felt like finding a place of belonging.
I have been uncovering my hidden relationship to my call ever since deciding to answer it. It was with me all along, under the surface enough that I could often ignore it. We are selective in what experiences resonate with us, but looking back over my life it was always there.
Almost a year before my own ordination, I heard my mother’s story of her ordination. I don’t remember ever hearing it before, though my mother swears that I have. Given how strongly I now connect with this story, it is clear that in these other times I was not ready to receive it. It was only after much spiritual work that such a story would resonate with me so deeply. Only after having tested my call and after having put down such strong roots to my identity as minister could such a story feel so right to me.
My close relationship with my call now resides so deep inside me that I cannot imagine that it wasn’t with me before my birth. I am humbled and awed by the gift I have been given in being called to serve this faith that I hold so dear. My call has been growing and evolving and being reborn in me again and again.
I have not always felt connected to my call, and like the dark times when I have forgotten that I am always held by the Love of the universe, these have been some of my hardest times. It is when I feel my call moving within me and tenderly pushing me onward that I feel most alive. It is when I am with a beloved community of free religious seekers that my heart sings. I can feel it in my bones that I am called to this kind of ministry.
As it has been becoming clearer and clearer how ministry was always my path, traits that used to seem disjointed somehow morphed into a clear picture of myself as minister. I am a seeker, and I embrace the lifelong learning and growing necessary for ministry. I am an artist and a storyteller, expressing what I see of humanity and of the divine in new and creative ways. I am an activist, standing up and working for justice wherever I can. I am a fierce lover, building community through intentionality and compassion. I am a catalyst, stirring things up and inspiring transformation