That is My Job

Blogging has been an interesting thing, but the thing it has done most frequently is to cause me to face up to my identity as a priest. In my 'former life', it was easier - I was a shopkeeper, married happily to a wonderful woman, lived a simple life, went to church, liked fast cars and planes, liked a glass of wine and a single malt, then I went to bed and the cycle started again. I could do all of that - it was eminently do-able.

Priests enjoy many blessings (no pun intended), but we live with something of a curse - the 'why on earth am I doing this?' conundrum. We are priests by the intervention of God (as we believe), and such a rare and precious gift is very often too much to cope with unless you have the ego of an aircraft carrier. Without a blog, I didn't have to think about it much. I did what I always do - put my head down and graft hard so that in some measure I could cause myself to be worthy of this precious gift by effort alone. Pah - as if....

Sometimes the angst and dissonance overflows and as I read back over some these posts I can see how often I wrestle with this stuff. I guess I will have to learn to live with this calling. Don't get me wrong, I love it. However, if someone walked up to you in the street and gave you keys of an Aston Martin DBS and said, 'Here, this is yours' you'd be glad, thank them, have some great times driving the thing, but always wonder how that came about - the 'why me' thing. I doubt you would ever fully resolve it. I haven't, but I have to get on with it. That is my job.

Yes, I am different. That I am sitting here in a dog-collar listening to yet more heavy metal as I write this is odd. That I may be the only sacramental priest in my geographical area (or so it feels) beyond my own Incumbent is tough for me. That I am more traditional in my style and all the while acknowledge the rightful calling of women, homosexual people and anyone else that God sees fit to call to any role in the life of His church makes me a very small minority.

As a new friend from Twitter said, this is my calling. I am sick of stressing about it, and so I am just going to concede that I am here for some purpose, perhaps as yet undisclosed, and just get on with it. This isn't a job that I can stop doing, it is a state of being - a 'new me' in one sense. In fact, I have to also accept that there are beer swilling, heavy metal loving,  sacramental yet tolerant car loving plane admiring Christians out there - and they too have a right to be ministered to. That is my job (among others)

I Just Gotta be Me

I have been thinking about Priesthood, being a Christian, and about being a person in the world today. I was thinking it last week and into this, but this thought process have been brought into sharp focus by a gathering of Curates that I have just enjoyed this last 24 hours or so.

A question raised towards the end of this little gathering was 'Who am I in Christ?'

This question was raised within the context of a bunch of baby-vicars trying to make sense of their newish lives in public ministry, and how best they may do that small thing. It seems that much of what and who we are in our own perceptions is the hinge upon which our work and life swings. Questions about self-identity, the blood-pursuit of Christians to model themselves on the person of Jesus Christ, and the inevitable mopping up after the inevitable failure - all these things dog us as they do all Christians, irrespective of tradition or ecclesiological expression. 

This issue is often right at the forefront of our thinking. In the days in which we find ourselves, we learn of the battle that ordained women are enduring in their claim for full equality with men in the Church. We further learn of the divisions that this is causing between the many lobbies and their members. We are all alive in times that scream out a litany of self-improvment, self-awareness, betterment, sin-purging, de-toxing and so on. Christians are the worst offenders in that, sadly. We have more choices in our lives than ever before. We can be just about anyone we want to be, the choice is ours. The thing about it, my brothers and sisters, it is our right to be whoever we seek to be. 

Those of you who are kind enough to read this Blog regularly (thanks to you) will know that a lot of what is in my mind is about either identity (mine or that of others) and my idolisation of children and childhood (my own kids in the main). The latter, I am fast discovering, informs the former.

Christians spend the large majority of their spiritual time wishing that they were better (in whatever criteria they mean it). The liturgical expression of many Christians hinges on prayerful self-flagellation and 'mea culpas' aplenty - all in the long journey to perfection in the image of Christ. This is, sadly or not, a path to absolute ruin. I am quite sure that I am called not just to be a priest, husband, father and friend - but also to be David Michael Cloake. I am quite sure that I am not called to be Jesus of Nazareth, or the Angel Gabriel. I think my adoration of childhood stems from the fact that at the moment of birth, a person is at their purest. At birth, the human being is as Christlike as it is possible to be. Only as we walk forward in life do we move away from that and in the end we become so divorced from ourselves that we have trouble finding the pathway back. The minute that I resolve to stop trying to be someone that I am not, and turn around to aspire with a whole heart to be the person that I am, will I start to become a fit disciple. As 'me' I am the person made in God's image; as a poor impersonation of someone whom I believe is more Christlike than I, I most certainly am not. 

My prayer for me, for those in my care, for those in the Church and in the world at large is not about who may or may not do this or that (though such matters are important, pressing and painful), but that everyone may learn to be who they are meant to be - themselves.

Authentically, perfectly, rightfully ...

There is a Redeemer, and it ain't me

These words, the lasting legacy of one Charles Hampton, speak to all baby vicars about the way we aspire to live our lives, how we meet that aspiration, and what the aspiration looks like in the first place.

The snippet from the most excellent Calvin and Hobbes makes the inner monolgue's case in clearest terms. We are all, broadly, ordained from former careers - careers that in many circumstances are driven by success, promotion, the 'bottom line', and the abject fear of failure. 

To enter ministry is to take on a kind of topsy-turvy role in this mortal life. We all want to do well, we all abhor failure even more,  and yet for priests - what this looks like is something of a conundrum. Yes, we are to a greater or lesser extent lured by the redeemer-complex of ministry. 

Perhaps it is just me, of course. I want to be the best darned priest that ever put on a cassock, and am fast discovering that to be this figure is to be condemned to immediate failure - not because it is not possible in itself, but because to crave that is to defeat it. To be 'best' is not be found in wanting to be 'best'. Neither is it to be found in wilfull mediocrity or plain ole' crap-ness. It is perhaps more a case of being the wrong question  - oh my head!

I can't handle scripture properly, my prayer life is like a third-hand teabag, my sensitivity lacks a radar, I am grumpy and find it difficult to tolerate fools, I never fully mastered New Testament Greek, my Bible isn't threadbare and full of insightful pencil-comments, I feel like I care far more for liturgy than I do for the 'least of these my children', and yes - I confess here - I am a stinking fraud.

So, with me and the moth-eaten hemp sacking that is the cloth with which God seems determined to work with, I am left to ponder why. Why oh why oh why oh why? So no, the redeemer I am not - but what in the name of Christ am I?