About

I was raised as a Southern Baptist, attended a Roman Catholic university for seven years, and made a stop in the United Methodist Church before turning into an Episcopalian.  I’m new at it, but I love and treasure what little time I’ve had so far.  I’m such a noob that I haven’t even been in the church a year – as in started regularly attending an Episcopal parish in September 2009, have since been put to work, and received confirmation in May 2010.  I think I’ve got the best of both worlds: a beautiful marriage of my sacramental-liturgical beliefs on the Roman Catholic side and my beliefs on virtually everything else from the Methodists.  Or as Robin Williams would say: All of the pageantry – none of the guilt.

But that doesn’t pay the bills.  My day job is to teach deaf kids to talk (which also doesn’t really pay the bills so well…) and I love that too. You might wonder how that works out when a person can’t actually hear you talk… their speech must be really hard to understand and they must need lip-reading or sign language to understand you.  That’s what being deaf looked like 40 years ago, but being deaf in 2010 looks vastly different.

With early diagnosis of hearing loss (ideally <6 months), early use of modern hearing technology (cochlear implants and advanced hearing aids), good family support, and all good luck, deaf children can now learn to listen, learn to understand spoken language without visual cues, and use spoken language with abilities similar to or exceeding those of their same-age hearing peers.

Illustration: I brought both of my cats to school for Pet Week.  “Purr” was a vocabulary word for one classroom and that’s kind of a hard word to illustrate, so I toted one of the kitty girls down the hall to their classroom.  You might not believe it, but those kids could hear my cat purr.  Not just feel.  They could put their ear to her and hear her purring before they laid a hand on her and realized they could feel it too. Crazy, huh?  I swear on my prayer book signed by the bishop that it happened.

Turns out teaching deaf kids doesn’t pay the bills so well either.  I switched over to geriatric practice, which pays the bills MUCH BETTER.  As in I can work on getting rid of the debt I have from roughly 10 years of living near or below the poverty line and seminary could be a reality. I now rehabilitate short-term and long-term residents of a nursing facility, which as you might anticipate very frequently entails end-of-life care.  Unfortunately I see some really cool people die, but on the plus side once you’re dead and your death notice is printed, I can say your actual name OUT LOUD in the prayers for the departed instead of saying it to myself in the prayers for the sick.  I get to see some really cool people have a higher quality of life, which is cool by itself.  Bottom line is I have a lot of fun doing what I do, most days I feel like I make a difference for someone, and I finally get paid a reasonable amount for what I do.

So that’s what I do and I love it, but if you hang around long enough you’ll notice that I’m discerning a call to the priesthood.  Why?  Uh… I was hoping we could figure that out together.

As far as where I am in the process, in December 2009 I realized a call to ordained ministry (which I believe to be to the priesthood) shortly after my own immediate priest and friend’s ordination to the priesthood.  I had been tossing around ideas of ordained ministry in my head for at least four to five years, but had never acted because I did not feel a deep call to it.

About a week after my realization I spoke to him and many of my preexisting clergy friends, half-hoping they would talk me out of it.  After all, I just got a stable job (with benefits!) that I enjoy a few months prior, for the first time in my entire life.  I thought maybe talking to my clergy friends who got kicked out of the church in a backhanded way might talk some sense in to me.  Negatory on all counts – it’s only snowballed since then and though I know in the near future I’m going to get hell for a variety of topics from a variety of people, so far discernment has been a wonderful experience.

Discernment has also included confirmation, as I wasn’t a confirmed Episcopalian prior to realizing a call.  Apparently this isn’t a big problem as long as you follow through on it, which I was more than happy to do as I had sought confirmation in the United Methodist Church but not been able to partake due to my age.

I’ve spoken with my rector and have met with a discernment group, but not as a part of the official diocesan process involving paperwork.  I still have a few months left before I can actually file paperwork on that since I haven’t been a “confirmed Episcopalian in good standing” for at least one year and that’s standard procedure.  It’s cool though, because I think a “cooling-off” period gives me some additional time to think about it as well as have a greater length of time over which to show people that I’m as serious now as when it first cropped up.  And because really, nobody should believe an Episcopalian of two and a half months when she says she’s been called to the priesthood in the Episcopal church.

Even though I haven’t given the diocese an official, paper heads-up, the bishop seems to be aware.  [I have my suspicions on who may have tipped him off, but don't let that make you think I'm upset.  If I correctly understand the circumstances under which he may have been informed, I might give the responsible party a hug.]  After he indicated something to the effect that he knows during an informal conversation (I swear, I was just going to apologize for the quick rate at which the cupcakes disappeared), I went ahead and went out with it.  Either he has me mixed up with someone else or he seems keen on the idea.

As of March 2012 the bishop is now officially aware and I am a nobody with a title in the diocese.  I have a discernment committee forming and have been instructed to compile my application for postulancy by the end of the year.

So that’s where we are.