Catching Up

It's been a while, again--this'll be kind of a random post.

Sheer joy at the inauguration of President Obama!!!!!!!! That this country is ready to have, as its representation to the world, someone who is not white, is a huge source of hope for me. Things CAN change. And, as an old romantic and an old feminist, it did my heart good to see the closeness between him and Michelle Obama. Who is everything one could dream of in a First Lady: drop-dead gorgeous, brilliant, accomplished, honest, and, with her husband, very attentive to their children.

Completion of second unit of required 4 of clinical pastoral education (CPE). Now I'm in the third. I look to a time when this will be over; it's expensive, good learning to be sure, but wearying. I need the four units to make myself at all plausible as a chaplain.

Grief as well as joy and pride as seminary classmates proceed to ordination. It's so complicated; never have I been so sure that my choice was right, but that doesn't mean I have to like the consequences. At core I do experience a call to ordination, a sense that ordination is somehow a piece of who I am. I don't know if, or how, I will find it...

Have been hanging out once per week at the Episcopal Cathedral--there is an Evening Prayer service followed by Eucharist each weeknight, and since weekends aren't feasible, I've been going there, usually Tuesdays. It's a very small group and many aren't all that friendly, one senses they are there for a time of meditative worship and soul-feeding rather than community, and that's something I understand quite well. Now I know one fellow's name--big progress! The most friendly person I've encountered is the Dean and Rector, who is sort of both CEO and pastor of the cathedral parish, and a very outgoing fellow. No doubt a politician as well, one doesn't get to be Dean and Rector of a Cathedral parish without some skills in that department, but I like his warmth and humor. He's asked me to read a couple times at service, and that feels like "coming home," and brings both deep sadness and deep joy. The services are liturgical and beautiful and I do sense the possibility that this denomination, problem-ridden as they all are, could be home. The rub? I don't know that the Colorado Diocese currently implements the procedure for endorsing lay chaplains, which I would need if not ordained, and ordination? I can't imagine that as possible, and if I could imagine it as possible, I imagine it would require many more years of preparation...

Meanwhile I have friends pursuing ordination in UCC, which does ordain for chaplaincy, and is theologically open, and etc. And its ordination process is said to be more sane than others, although not everyone agrees. I don't know much about it at all.

So much to learn, so little time!!!!