I woke up early this morning, which did not surprise me. I still do not know… actually, I do not feel much different than I normally do. The thought struck me this morning that this day has been coming for nearly six years now. These past three years of seminary have been in preparation for this day and the day in six months when I am ordained priest, Lord willing. So, in many ways, this is just the natural outcome of the past three to six years. Like graduation. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t anxious. It all happened too quickly for me to be sad. It was fun and exciting and wonderful to be with all the people with whom I have so closely lived and experience life over the past three years. I feel the same way today – I will be with Lisa and Elaine and we will be fulfilling that for which we have prepared these past years.
I tried praying this morning and nothing profound happened. I feel as if I should be having this mystical experience. Nothing much came. I am just here and there is not much more that I can do or be right now. Silence, perhaps. Just letting things be. Just let things be.

I’m not sure what to think, what to feel, or what to expect. I keep being asked how I feel, whether I am excited or not, or what do I think about all this. I don’t know. Really, I don’t know.
I keep saying that it is all happening too fast for me to really judge what I am thinking or feeling. I honestly do not have any expectations of might happen – I just don’t know. Tomorrow will be a leap into the unknown, despite the stories of classmates of mine who have already been ordained. I just don’t have a good handle of what to expect.
Yesterday’s retreat was nice, although of little help in terms of preparation – at least for me. I keep thinking of the preparation the Roman or Orthodox Ordainands might go through the day or days before ordination. Perhaps what they experience is too far on the other side of the preparation continuum, but we are certainly on the other end. I was asked what I was going to do today. I have spent most of the day reading, eating pizza for lunch, and reading some more. I am getting ready to go to the ordination practice, and then family. I could have spent the day in prayer – do you think that might have been appropriate? But, I don’t know what to pray for – I mean really pray for. I can say prayers, but that isn’t the same. All I can say is, “God, I have no clue what to pray for!”
Am I ready? The Church says I am. Am I ready? My family and friends say they think I am. Am I ready? My seminary says I am. Am I ready, God? I don’t know what the answer is, but tomorrow will happen, Lord willing, and whether I feel that I am ready or not I will have to be.
I’m not getting all mystical, but I just don’t know what will change, if anything. I know I will still be me with all my proclivities and abilities, but everything will change in some way or another. Am I completely mistaken in this? I don’t know. I will see. All three of us will see!

It is an odd thing – the other person of a relationship… the other person of such significance in one’s life. So many times I think to myself, “The most dreadful thing I can think of right now is having to talk to anyone,” or “go to a meeting,” or “listen to someone called wanting to spill-their-guts,” as I am half-asleep, or “over-peopled.” Then, that one other person calls, and I answer the phone. I want to. I am just as tired, just as needful for alone-time, just as whatever, yet I am not bothered by that other person.
I have said that I do not know whether I am cut out to be a priest or not. I have said to friends, other priests, that I do not know whether I could at times bring myself to get up at 2:00 am to visit a family in the hospital as a loved one dies. There are times when every fiber of my being would rebel against such unselfish giving. And they said, “You will.” They said, “You will find the strength.” They said, “You do it because you love those people.” It will have to be God’s enabling! Perhaps, it is something like that person who is so significant in one’s life that you do not mind a call, a visit, a snuggle at the very time when you think nothing in the world could be worse than just that kind of thing.
I arrived back in Ohio today for my ordination to the “Holy Order of Deacons in God’s one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” I had a real sense of dread – not concerning ordination, but I felt that same sense of loneliness that I sometimes felt before heading to New York. I do not want to find myself once again in a place where I know no one and have to attempt to establish new friendships. It is hard at this stage of the game. I do not want to be here alone. I am going to find it very difficult to be away from the one person of such significance that I don’t mind a phone call at the most inopportune time.
Tomorrow, I am on a pre-ordination “retreat.” Then, dinner with the Bishop. Saturday, June 4th, four of us will be ordained Deacons! This is it. This is the beginning of the culmination of the last five years. I have no clue! I also have no job!
Next Wednesday, I have an interview in Toledo for a chaplaincy position. It is a great opportunity for someone – perhaps for me. I just don’t know.

More involvement with free-association…
I graduated with my Master of Divinity degree from The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, New York, NY, on Wednesday, May 18th, at 10:00 am. Amazing. It feels so strange. It all happened too quickly.
My parents left last Sunday after being with me for my official last day at St. Paul’s, Carroll St. Brooklyn, as their seminarian. I preached. I did all right, I suppose. People said it was a great sermon, but I never can tell. I am satisfied. The rector wants me to stay. I would love to stay! I truly fell in love with that parish. Money, of course, like always, is the problem.
Yesterday, Monday, I woke up and realized that the beginning of everything else was upon me. It feels so strange. I watch people with whom I had this incredible experience move away into the rest of their lives. I’m not ready for them to leave. I’m not ready to say good-bye. Their leaving seems swift and I cannot keep track. I know these feelings are nothing new and every senior class goes through this. I missed saying good-bye to Jason and Jodie. I did not get together with Jon before he left for Lexington. I missed completely Elise’s departure, and I only saw Sonia’s stuff being loaded into a moving van.
Yet, I am already into the rest of my life, working, searching for a ministry – the next phase is here. I am in it. I don’t mind it, but I wish we all could stay together as a monastic community generally does. It seems we are just now able to look past our little idiosyncrasies and simply be together. Three years is enough, and it certainly is not enough.
I am still looking for a place to call my own. There are two campus chaplain positions I am involved in – one in Ohio and one in New York City. I would love either of them for different reasons, but I do not know whether either of them will want me. I firmly believe in a right fit for both sides. Rejection for a position is not really a problem for me, but being strung along when the church/rector/committee knows they want a woman or someone 15 years younger than I am.

A rule of life. I think about leaving seminary and this semi-monastic kinda type of place and realize my need for discipline. There were times when I was extremely disciplined. It seems the hardest thing I can do right now – not that I am lazy or unproductive, but those things I know I need to do for sanity’s sake and for peace and to be strengthened for the journey and all that kind of stuff I just am not doing well. Here I sit, typing, rather than doing the disciplines, rule of life, devotional stuff I want to do and need to do.
Is it all about habit? Do for a while, just a little bit of discipline, and it becomes commonplace and – easy. Am I running? No. Am I working out? No. Am I taking my vitamins? No. Am I praying? Not really, at least in private devotions. Am I eating well? No. I’ve done all those things before and even all at the same time. Routine certainly helps, and right now there is no routine.
Soon. Soon. Soon and very soon… Maybe. I have to. There is just no question that I have to.

Stream of consciousness:
I’ve started working at the Church Medical Trust as a fall back if I do not get a position over the summer. A part-time position and I am making more money than I have ever made. Of course, it is in New York, but…
Time is moving so quickly. I have a “get acquainted” meeting this past week in Ohio with a campus ministry organization. I’m encouraged.
Ashton did not do as well as he would have liked to have done at the IHSA nations in Ohio. I don’t care; I am still rather fond of him! He so hoped to be a champion because his family all came to watch him. I think they were just happy to be able to see him!
The closer I get to moving away, the more I realize how much I am going to miss Ashton. I really do not want to be in a long-distance relationship, but I do not know what else to do at this point.
There is a very interesting job possibility on the horizon. It would be really out-side the box. Who knows?
I just feel like writing one-liners.
Nathan and his friend Amelia were watching a rerun of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” when I got home. Remember that? I loved that show.
So much to do.
Another campus ministry position will be opening up here in the Big Apple.
Something has to be done about the Religious Right. Nationalism and patriotism have become their gods. Homosexuals have become their scapegoats. With their focus on both of these things, the can avoid dealing with the profound sins and hypocrisy in their own camp. So much easier to attempt to pull the splinter out of one’s neighbor’s eye than to deal with the plant in one’s own eye!
The very sad part concern the above is that so many unchurched people in this country are beginning to equate the very concept and presence of Christianity with these fundamentalists. The cause of Christ is so harmed.
My friend Amy never did come and visit in NYC. Boy is she going to get it!
I do love Ashton.
I have no idea where I will be living come May 31st. How about that!
My “practice mass,” my final project for my seminary career, went fairly well, except for the two major blunders I committed. I recovered well, however, and that is what counts – well, to some degree that is.
Toledo Campus Ministry Fellowship really has a lot going for it. I’m impressed.
There will soon be an exodus away from the politicized Religious Right associated churches. People will soon realize that “The United States of American” is not paradise, not God’s special spot on the planet, and certainly not worth the millions and millions of dollars being wasted on waging a campaign against perceived evils (which happen to be anything that the Religious Right disagrees with).
I am fairly conservative in most of my theology (I find it easy to believe the Nicene Creed!). I am quite moderate on a good number of social issues. I want to know Truth, not dogma. I would be considered quite liberal on the whole gay issue. Well, I guess also with regard to my belief that everything I consider Truth right now could be completely wrong! I’m not a relativist, but I do not question the fact that I do not know everything, nor could I.
We, as in American, need to be humbled. We are not the world’s salvation. We are not the world’s glorious standard. Even our Christian sub-culture (with the conservative elements claiming that America is just those things) is rife with hypocrisy, gluttony, pride, arrogance, and a complete disregard for the calling to love God first, and neighbor as ourselves. The United States may have a set of principles that do prove to bring hope to many in the world, but those principles are being so overshadowed by our bullying and arrogance that they have a difficult time being translated into a world which is breading religious and social fundamentalism.
The judiciary is not designed to be a rubber stamp of the executive or legislative branches of government. They are meant to be an independent check to both of those branches. The judiciary is meant to be a safeguard from the tyranny of the majority. The cries to “bring the judiciary under control” come from those who either do not understand our form of government, or who are cynically attempting to circumvent the Constitution to seize power. We do not live in a democracy! We have a representative form of government which functions within democratic principles. If we must – we live within a representative-democracy. India is more of a democracy than we are.
I cannot believe that the people I have so closely spent the last three years of my life during this profoundly significant time are all about ready to disperse into all parts of this country. Through the good and the bad, I love these people and have loved this experience.
Enough…

A fellow seminarian told me today that he came across this weblog. I’m always embarrassed when someone says that.
I wonder whether my job search is adversely effected by this weblog and website. I wonder whether I’m googled and whether those rectors or search committees come across this weblog and decide, well, I’m not sure what they may decide.
I don’t think anything here is very controversial. I suspect that some people may think I obsess over certain issues because those issues seem to make it into my writing more than other issues. I don’t know.
There has been a lot of talk among the older seminarians that many of the assistant and curate positions are only being offered to younger people in their twenties and early thirties. A deployment officer told me that a certain position would be inappropriate for me because the rector is only interviewing young people. If I wanted to be snide, I could make all kinds of comments about good Episcopal social justice and age discrimination.
Frankly, I know that curacies are the places younger people should be placed. I also know that I could be a deacon-in-charge of a small parish. What really frustrates me is the prevailing notion that a staff member must be young to be able to work with young people – high school and college age students. This is ludicrous. After all, if we use this line of argument then all the older coaches, teachers, professors, and the like who have profound influences over students should all be replaced with younger professionals, after all older people cannot relate well and attract young students. Right? My parents are in their sixties and work with the very large youth group of their church. The kids love them. Go figure! It has to do with respect and whether you actually like this age group.

I was up this morning at 4:00 am to watch the funeral of John Paul II. I was a bit surprised to see representatives from a variety of world religions seated in the areas reserved for quests. The liturgy was moving, impressive, and awe inspiring – a fitting tribute to this man, I believe. The number of people present and all over the world suggests to me that regardless of what people thought of this man, whether devil, tired old man clinging to power, the Vicar of Christ, or whatever, he had an effect on the world and at least a billion Roman Catholics.
I have not known what to say about his death and everything that has come afterwards. There really isn’t anything I can say that has not been said by so many others. Growing up in a denomination and tradition that was (is) at worst anti-Catholic and at best dismissive of the Pope and Roman Catholicism, I find it remarkable that I am now where I am.
Anglicanism is not considered a valid expression of the catholic faith by most Roman and Orthodox authorities. I really don’t care about that. I am Anglican – not Protestant and not Roman, yet both. We are an expression of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith. Our Eucharistic emphasis only supports this, yet we are other than Roman, other than Orthodox, other than Protestant, and I like it that way.
I fear that the fundamentalist movement that is sweeping the world in all the world’s religions will be the undoing of a strong and honest faith, yet the reaction against the liberal attempt to remake religion as “modern,” “humanist,” “reasonable,” “scientific,” and so forth has failed and only fueled the fundamentalist reaction. For me, honest and historic Anglicanism provides a middle way. But even within Anglicanism, we see the fundamentalist response to a swing of the theological pendulum too far to the left. I have always said that Anglicanism is a mechanism that provides balance, and I hope it will survive to continue the Via Media.
The Pope stood strong upon his principles and was unafraid to proclaim a more conservative and traditional understanding of the Christian faith and more specifically Roman Catholicism. For that, I believe people responded to him favorably. Of course, there are those who despise and hate the man and what he stood for, but I believe they are of the group that is becoming more irrelevant in the circles of faith.
I am not Roman; I do not pledge allegiance to the Pope. I do not think the man or the position is infallible; I do not believe the man is the Vicar of Christ. Yet, he does have a special place among world Christianity and a force in the world over.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Happy Easter!

We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. There is a difference, however, between recognizing the sin, admitting it, repenting, receiving forgiveness, and moving on, and reveling in the sin!
Frankly, too many of us who claim Christ spend far too much time justifying ourselves and reveling in our own sin rather than seeking God’s will and freedom.
This is an affront to the Passion of Jesus, defames the cause of Christ, and is a rejection of the Kingdom of God. Hypocrites! We are all engaged in self-whitewashing. And the people who seek relief and freedom and fulfillment and self-actualization and joy and peace and honesty and integrity all yell HYPOCRITES. No wonder.