soulwerker

On the wall above the computer stand in the office afforded me at Trinity Church there are two framed pieces of paper. They represent well over five years of individual, familial and communal effort. These efforts include (but aren’t limited to) more meetings than I care to recount, moving three times within thirty-six months, three academic years of residential professional education, plus the investment of time and energy (plus big chunks of money!) by literally hundreds of people who all were a part of the journey called “the ordination process”. In less than a month, I will observe my ninth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. Six months prior to being “priested” (to use the parlance of the trade), I had been ordained as a (transitional) deacon. So I am already well into my tenth year in ordained ministry — a life of service to the Episcopal Church and (hopefully!) to God.

There are plenty of denominations that do not require the formal education of their clergy. Many denominations have little, if any, regularized process in which potential clergy are examined (spiritually, psychologically, vocationally and plenty of other ways!) as rigorously as aspirants to Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church. In fact, these days, with a couple of clicks on the Internet and a $25.00 processing fee, anyone can get themselves “ordained” — complete with a certificate suitable for framing — in just a few short minutes.

In a frame, on a wall, in an office, one professional certificate looks remarkably similar to another. And for the record, in the entire time I’ve been doing this work, no parishioner has ever asked to see the “proof” that I’ve been ordained. Perhaps such certificates aren’t proof for curious parishioners anyway — maybe the only way the paper means anything is when the person whose name is printed on the paper takes the words on the paper to heart and does her/his best to put those words into practice in his/her daily life.

For whatever reason, this morning, I reread the verbiage in “the business end” of these two certificates. This is not verbiage made up on the spot — it’s actually the same for everyone, regardless of diocese, theological particularities or political leanings. After the preamble, which names the ordaining Bishop, date and location of ordination and the order to which I was ordained at the time, my name appears in bold lettering and then follows: “…of whose pious, sober and honest life and conversation, competent learning, knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and soundness in the Faith we (meaning the Bishop) are well assured; he also having in our presence freely and voluntarily declared that he believes the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation; and having solemnly sworn to conform to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church…”

None of this language is about personal preference. All of it is about living a particular life of virtue, grounded in a particular body of knowledge (the Christian Tradition); conformed to a particular way of being “Church” (doctrine and discipline); all wrapped up with the personal agency involved in making a lifelong commitment “freely and voluntarily”, then sealed in an oath of solemnity. It’s enough to scare the hell out of me every time I read it.

And maybe that’s the point. Not necessarily to frighten/overwhelm me, but rather to remind me that this life of ordained ministry isn’t a career. It isn’t a profession. It isn’t about compensation packages and pension plans. In a world where the goal is having big goals, ordained ministry (in spite of all the high-sounding verbiage) is about nothing more or nothing less than living each day with the intention of embodying a way of being called “Christian” — living publicly, for better or worse, as a disciple of Jesus, while other Christians can choose (if they so desire) to keep as their faith/religious practice as private as possible. I know beyond a doubt I cannot always live up to the standards printed on those ordination certificates. I’ve failed too many times over the past nine-plus years to be convinced otherwise. But for today, I’ll give it another go — so that my life gives witness to Jesus;  so that this vocation of ordination is more than a white collar around my neck and framed words on a wall.

A few years ago, in a casual conversation with a Lutheran clergy person, I received the following pearl of practical pastoral wisdom: “Good administration is good pastoral care.” The clergy person then offered a well-reasoned (and I suspect well rehearsed) argument to buttress his assertion. While I can’t remember all of the nuances of the ad hoc presentation, the gist was something like this: “If the database is up to date, the bulletins are well-produced and error free, letters go out in a timely fashion, e-mails and phone calls are returned within twenty-four hours, then an air of competence is established in which parishioners are able to relax in the knowledge that their clergy person is taking care of the parish, and by extension, each one of them.”

I had never thought of pastoral competence as something that could be measured by e-mails or such. I had been taught about sitting with people through the dark night of the soul, offering last rites, taking the sacrament to the shut-ins, listening to people struggle with the problems of living life in a culture that is increasingly isolated, aloof and pressurized. In seminary, we were taught to consult the Scriptures, the Book of Common Prayer, the “Anglican Divines” and/or other sorts of overtly spiritual material within the Christian Tradition to assist us with our work. Who knew an error-free Sunday bulletin was the goal?

Nine years on in this joyous vocation, I have spent my fair share of time sitting in a desk chair for hours at a time — doing the sorts of things my Lutheran friend described in our brief chat. I’ve gotten a bit quicker with responding to e-mails and a lot less chatty when speaking on the phone. The trick to begin a good desk jockey, it seems, is to move briskly from task to task without ever appearing to be in any sort of hurry. I’ve not quite mastered that trick just yet. Volume of boxes checked in a day “counts”, even if for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of being a slacker.

I’m fortunate. On the whole, the parish I serve is understanding, supportive and encouraging. The folks here know that hours sitting with people in the midst of their difficulties is more important than perpetually sitting at a desk, office door open to heartily receive unannounced visitors, with two hands furiously pounding out meaningful, theologically astute and prompt e-mails, while my ear is glued to the phone giving a non-judgmental listening space to the caller on the other end of the line, while simultaneously conducting reviews of the latest cost-saving methodologies to help balance the budget.

As ludicrous as the previous (very long) description of a “desk jockey priest” may have sounded, the reality is most clergy folks I know worry about the things they know are daily being “left undone”. We are usually overdue on at least some administrative tasks. We are frequently guilty of inadvertently forgetting to properly announce this or that important event with sufficient lead time to insure maximum parochial participation. More often than not, we are the unintentional choke point in the life of one or more organizations within a parish as the people in those organizations wait for a word from “Mother” or “Father”. And yet, when deployed to do what we were trained to do, many of us are compassionate, insightful and prayerful (sometimes even managing to offer a bit of “wise counsel”!).

So, after spending the better part of today cranking out e-mails, writing reports and returning phone calls, I finally looked at my “to-do” list. I managed to check a few boxes. I hope that “good administration” does make for “good pastoral care”. I’m done being a desk jockey for the day.

But no promises! There still may be a typo in Sunday’s bulletin!

Perhaps I started in the wrong place. My previous post proposed the importance of speaking the language of faith “out there” — beyond the relative security provided by the walls of a church building. I believe I inadvertently skipped a step. I assumed Christians (of the “Mainline” variety) are actually fluent in the grammar of faith. I assumed the reticence to “speak a word” on behalf of the Gospel resulted from a lack of courage or commitment. I now believe those assumptions were probably mistaken.

What if the real reason we speak so tentatively (if at all) about our faith is simply because we haven’t learned the vocabulary? What if we don’t talk because we don’t know what to say? Or how to say it?

What if, instead of being ashamed of our linguistic awkwardness, we began to think of our parish communities as “language immersion classes”? What if we began to speak (however tentatively!) the foreign language of faith, hope and love with our fellow parishioners? What if we began to experiment with “speaking Christian” in our congregations? What if we actually began to take the risk of talking about how we see God at work in our lives? After all, as “church folks” aren’t we assuming our fellow congregants are at least vaguely sympathetic to such conversations?

As I thought about these questions, I began to reflect upon the noticeable absence of  overt “God-talk” in my day to day life as a priest. My life is lived, for the most part, INSIDE the walls of a church building! Meeting after meeting. Phone call after phone call. Newsletter after newsletter. E-mail after e-mail. Task after task. Liturgical season after liturgical season. Parish activity after parish activity.

Within the life of a congregation, all sorts of stuff gets done (Thanks be to God!). But…do we ever take the time to offer such good work to God? If there’s any place left where it should be safe for Christians to “speak Christian”, it should be the local parish community.

And yet…I wonder. I wonder what would happen if we took the risk to talk about God within our parishes (yes, with one another!)? Would we learn to apply the lessons of more  quickly?  Would we be better attuned to seeing the work of God in the world? Would we be better able to articulate the hope for the faith that is within us?

I honestly don’t know what the results would be if we Episcopal “church folk” suddenly began to speak overtly about prayers answered, needs met, hungers fed, illnesses healed and new life received. Who knows how the Holy Spirit would move next? I certainly don’t know the answer to such a question. But I’m waiting to find it! What about you?

For two and a half months, my “uniforms” (black clerical shirts with accompanying white, plastic, wrap-around, detachable collars) hung in a closet at home. From July 15 through September 30, I wore all manner of shirts, but nothing that would outwardly identify me as a clergy-type. And a funny thing happened. The longer I walked around incognito, the more I wondered how much I had come to depend on the uniform to identify me — not as a clergy person, but as a Christian.

What does it mean to be “overtly” Christian? Is it the accumulation of approved Christian trinkets — bumper stickers, wall plaques, art work or a plethora of crosses? Is it the repetition of recognized Christian phrases and buzzwords? Is it the ability to quote Scripture (citing “chapter and verse”) fluently and frequently?

At this point in the discussion, a good many of my mainline Christian friends will offer their favorite saint’s wisdom on this matter. Thank goodness (at least for Episcopalians!), Francis of Assisi is purported to have said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words.”! Thanks be to God, indeed! We’re off the hook! We don’t have to actually say any words that are uncomfortable to us, or make anyone uncomfortable around us! Now that all we have to do is “behave/serve/minister like Jesus”, and we needn’t ever mention his name!

Really? That’s it? I’m not so sure.

What about you, dear reader?

“How does it feel to be back ‘in the parish’?” 

“Now, tell me again, how long have you been ‘in the parish’?”

“After all your travels, are you finally getting settled ‘in the parish’?”

“Now that you are back ‘in the parish’, what are the goals you’d like to accomplish for the remainder of your time there?”

These questions are more or less representative of the sorts of queries I’ve fielded over the past five weeks. The themes of the questions are good ones to ponder. After so much time away, how does it feel to return to the daily duties of pastoral work? What’s it like to leave a group of people and then return to them after a period of time? What changes have occurred? In them? In me? How does the amount of time invested in this relationship of  parish and priest yield something fruitful — for both parties individually and collectively? How does the relationship move forward toward a future together that’s not simply a recapitulation/revisitation of the past (the death-dealing boredom of “more of the same”)?

And yet, even though I’ve used the phrase “in the parish” myself through the years, lately I’ve found I’m increasingly uncomfortable with it. The phrase is a quaint euphemism reminiscent of our Anglican heritage — where “the parish” was a geographical area with definitive boundaries, within which a church building (with its dutiful vicar, of course!) was situated for the benefit of all residents in the lands surrounding it. Thus to be “in the parish” was like saying, “I live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.” One could, quite literally find the parish on the map.

While the church building for Trinity Episcopal Church can certainly be located on the map, my presence in that building six days a week does not constitute being “in the parish”. In fact, most of the real “action” in parishioners’ lives takes place outside the building. Their lives are mostly invisible to me (and their fellow parishioners) with the exception of brief interactions every few days after a liturgy or at a committee meeting here and there — and greatly depends upon what they are willing to share of their lives.  Further, people who are part of the parish church called Trinity, Wauwatosa, don’t just live in Wauwatosa. They reside all over the Milwaukee metro area. Well over 50% of this congregation lives outside the city in which the Trinity Church building is situated.

I recognize I’m being nit-picky. Beyond such persnicketiness though, I think I’m simply becoming resistant to the notion that “the parish” is an entity that exists outside of/beyond the people and relationships that comprise it. “The parish” as a group of people has changed over the course of the time I’ve been here, and will continue to change, even if we’re not altogether aware of the change occurring. “The parish” isn’t solid (like some would say bricks and mortar or territory are), rather a parish church is the fluid chaos of people, brooded over by the creative force of God’s Holy Wind, the Spirit.

I will allow that the phrase, “in the parish” could be shorthand for this chaos of humanity. Parish life isn’t about programs, protocols, organizations and activities. Parish life, for me, is about knowing and relating to people’s stories and how those stories are woven together in the story of the Gospel and embodied as a community of the faithful. If that’s what some of those questions are asking, then I can say without reservation, “It feels GREAT to be back ‘in the parish’!”

Years ago, when I interviewed with the Vestry and other parish leaders of Trinity, Wauwatosa, I recall saying something like, “I don’t want a parish to ‘work on’, I want to ‘work with’ folks who want to grow in their love and service of the Lord.” This is still a calling for me. I am grateful to be “among” this parish of people who daily surprise me with their laughter, their generous hearts and the ways they continue to cultivate my growth into this vocation of priesthood.

NOTE TO READERS: Please read my previous post “Scheming for a Sermon — Part 1” before embarking on this one.

Thankfully, as the morning sun eased up over the horizon today, I had a sermon. By 11:45 a.m., the sermon had been shared with the folks who were in worship this morning. And now, it’s time to let go of the latest effort and move on to the next one. Another sermon is “due” in a few days and there’s no time to dally or dither. My fellow schemers need to hear the Gospel…in all of its clarity, with all its simplicity…even if it means such hearing will require us to act accordingly!

The text for this morning’s effort was Matthew 5:1-11 (the Beatitudes). Today was also All Saints’ Sunday (complete with Holy Baptism). I also needed to make some mention of the fact folks would be receiving a pledge form in the mail in the next few days as we look toward Commitment Sunday on November 20. Whew! No wonder I couldn’t get it all together! So, anyway, what follows is the result of all of the wrangling. I still think it’s too clunky, but for today (with apologies to “SK”), it’s the best I could do.

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“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”  — Soren Kierkegaard

I’m not sure I altogether agree with “SK’s” viewpoint, but I’m certain of one thing — no matter how easy/difficult it may be to actually understand the Scriptures, the challenge of communicating some of that understanding to a group of folks gathered for a Sunday morning liturgy remains for clergy everywhere (me included!). There’s nothing I would like better than to whip up a moderately meaningful, reasonably cogent (and mildly entertaining) sermon in a few hours, give said sermon, forget about it quickly and move on to the next thing on the pastoral list. Presently though, I seem to be going backwards in the “time required for preparation” category. I think I’m devoting more time to such efforts now than when I began preaching a few years back!

Somewhere in seminary, I remember hearing a professor give the following ratio of preparation to preaching. He said, “It takes about two hours of study, reflection, writing, editing and re-writing to produce one minute’s worth of preaching. According to this metric, a twelve minute sermon equates to twenty-four hours of work.” The professor assured us that the more experience we procured the more efficient we would become at the task, thus reducing the amount of time required to prepare a passable sermon.

After this past week, I think I need a remedial homiletics course! At first I couldn’t think of a theme for the sermon. Then I couldn’t develop a plot trajectory that would somehow get all of the disparate parts of the sermon to “talk to” each other. Everything seemed “clunky”. Poor sentence structure. Serpentine thought processes. The sermon seemed to be trying to do “too much” one minute and not really accomplishing much of anything the next. Whole paragraphs were written, re-written, tweaked, re-read and deleted. A sermon that had been “mostly done” by Friday, was nowhere-near-done by Saturday morning and was thoroughly scrapped by Saturday evening. Thank God I get an extra hour as a result of the switch back to Standard Time!

Given “SK’s” comment, I have to wonder: underneath all of this homiletical angst, am I really just a scheming swindler? What are the ways I want to escape from the simplicity of the Scriptures? How do I  hide the obvious messages contained in the Bible under the tarp of exegetical complexity? Aggravating questions that spin in my head incessantly…even when I beg myself to “let go and just write the durned thing!”

“O God of grace and glory, deliver me from my self-centered scheming. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear the clarity of your Good News for all people contained in the words of Holy Scripture. I ask this in the Name of the Eternal Word, Jesus, Son of Mary. Amen.” 

I’ve worked at some sort of job since I was fifteen years old. I’ve mowed lawns, cleaned apartments, painted houses, pumped gas, mopped floors, scrubbed bathrooms and shingled roofs. I’ve sold newspaper advertising, encyclopedias and insurance products of all sorts. For a while I was a Fuller Brush guy. I even tried my hand at working in retail as one of the original cadre of booksellers at the first Barnes and Noble store in Jacksonville, Florida.

I’ve worked every shift — days, evenings and nights (and after working the night shift for six months, I know why they call it “graveyard”!). I’ve worked every major holiday. For the year I worked in the gas station, I worked 15 hour days Monday through Friday and then finished the week with a 10 hour day on Saturday (for a total of 85 hours/week @ $3.50/hour with no overtime pay). I was able to survive during this time because I lived with my sister “rent free”.

Through the years I’ve been unemployed and underemployed. Sometimes I was working two or three jobs simultaneously. I have only rarely had jobs that routinely provided the “weekend off”.

As the “Occupy” demonstrations continue, from time to time I hear folks critical of the demonstrators say, “Those people need to get off the street and get a job!” I suspect there are some of the “occupiers” who’d like nothing better than to have a job to go to. And my guess is, that, in some cases, their unemployed status isn’t for a lack of effort to find work — any sort of work — but for whatever reason, at this moment, there is no work to be found.

This is a difficult time in our country for many. The unemployed. The underemployed. The folks living with the stress of knowing their jobs could vanish or be shipped overseas at any moment. I don’t have any answers to the difficult questions posed by this continuing economic situation. But I don’t believe such answers will be discovered by simply yelling at each other.  I think we will actually need to take the time to listen to a point of view that may differ from our own.

Call me naive, but I really do believe most folks in this country desire the dignity of having work that pays a living wage. Perhaps the people who are making those seven figure bonuses forget the “little people” who make their bonuses possible. I’m pretty sure many of the folks in the work of government have forgotten they were elected to serve both their constituency and the ideals foundational to this country (not just worry about how to get re-elected).

I keep thinking that I ought to take some sort of concrete action, but I honestly don’t know what sort of action that would be. Maybe my own desire to take action is similar to what has fueled both the “Occupy” demonstrations AND the Tea Party Rallies. Maybe standing on the street with placards or talking into microphones represent our collective desire to be part of a conversation which so rarely takes the time to invite our input or bother to thoughtfully listen when the input is offered. Or maybe people simply want to feel like “words and witness” can make a difference in a world where circumstances so often seem to be beyond our control.

As for me, my work takes place amongst a constituency of about five hundred souls who gather somewhat regularly on a little corner in a moderately-sized suburb of a smallish metropolitan area in the Upper Midwest. We rarely have tea parties and we mostly occupy church pews. At the end of each liturgy we pray some version of “and now (God) send us out to do the work you have given us to do with gladness and singleness of heart.” Our work is that of proclaiming Good News — through words and actions — in our homes, neighborhoods and schools…and at our places of employment (if we’re fortunate enough these days to have such a place).

Sometimes, my particular work as a clergy person doesn’t look much like work — a few e-mails, some meetings, a dinner here or there, more meetings, talking for a few minutes every couple of weeks. Unlike painting a house or shingling a roof, it’s difficult to stop at the end of the day and see what’s been produced. Unlike farming, the harvest shows up in parish life in little ways, here and there, rather than intensely and abundantly at the end of a growing season.  But, this is the work I have and it’s my job to keep at it. This job includes (at the very least) praying for those who don’t have work, for those who seem to be making a handsome profit at the expense of those standing in the unemployment line, and for those who are charged with the creation of a just society through the governmental process. Most days, I don’t know how to most effectively pray in the midst of such complexities. On days like today when I feel the least able to make any sort of difference at all, I’m called by this peculiar vocation to do the work that doesn’t look like work and trust such work will be enough. Today I pray God will help me do both — work and trust.

As a child (indeed until I became an Episcopalian) I had never heard of “All Saints’ Day” or the “Feast of the Holy Name”. November 1 was simply the day to sort out the haul of Halloween candy from the night before. January 1 was the day my family sorted through the remains of Christmas decorations and stowed them away for the ensuing eleven months. As a child, I experienced both days as sad occasions — no more trick-or-treating; no more Christmas presents. Both days marked “endings” for me.

Even though I was raised in a Christian household where church attendance, Bible reading and personal devotion were strongly encouraged, there was no overt connection between the home, school and work calendars and any sort of “calendar of faith.” My ignorance as to the significance of November 1 and January 1 was the result of an unintended alliance between secular America and austere Protestantism. One of the interesting aspects of this country is our ability to gut holy days (i.e., “holidays”!) of their historic connection to the sacred and recast them into a profit-driven marketing opportunity with all of the surgical precision of eviscerating a pumpkin to bring forth a Jack-o-Lantern. For hardline Protestants the call to live “beyond this world” meant not paying much attention to the world we were living in and salvation was purely an individual matter without much thought to how God’s wholeness is reflected in the diversity of the “blessed company of all faithful people.”

All Saints’ Day celebrates the “great cloud of witnesses”, who surround us in ways beyond our knowing (Hebrews 12:1). This holy day reminds us of our connection to the community of those who have gone before us. Some of those saints are remembered for their mighty acts or robust dedication. The identities of the vast multitude of the saints, however, have long since been forgotten. To celebrate All Saints’ is to confront our dependence and transience.  We didn’t come to faith through the triumph of an individual choice, but rather, we were gifted with the Faith through faithful people who said their prayers, raised their children, lived their lives and died in the hope of the Resurrection.

The Feast of the Holy Name proclaims the scandal of particularity — that God, the Creator takes up residence within creation and  lives the divine life from the inside of a tent of flesh and blood. On January 1, the Church calls us to receive the God who dwells in the vastness of eternity but who, nonetheless, takes up time and space in human history. For Christians, this enfleshed God has a name — (“above all names” according to Philippians 2:9) — “Jesus”. Christians say that because of the birth, life, ministry, death and Resurrection of God-with-us, humanity is taken up into the very life of God’s Self.

All Saints’ and Holy Name don’t get much attention. Most parishes move the observance of All Saints’ to the Sunday following November 1st in recognition of the challenge inherent in getting people to attend a worship opportunity during the week. Observing Holy Name mostly occurs every few years when January 1 happens to fall on a Sunday (New Year’s Day is simply too much competition). But, I think it’s significant that the last two months of the calendar year are bookended by these two holy days.

We live our lives within this dynamic interplay between community and individuality — at the nexus of All Saints’ and Holy Name. Jesus was given his name at the time of his circumcision. This name was not merely an identifier . The act of naming simultaneously set Jesus apart and connected him to all of salvation history — the Covenant between the Hebrew people and God, the Exodus, the Exile, the Return. All of those stories were part of Jesus’ story, just as the stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection have become part and parcel of our respective stories. When we baptize people, we say their names, recognizing their uniqueness as individuals even as we submerge them into the community of the faithful — the Church — the Body of Christ.

These two holy days are poignant reminders that love does surround us on every hand. We were loved before we were even born. Loved by people who would never see us or know us — the saints who passed the Faith from generation to generation until that Faith finally landed within us. Yet even as we take our place within that cloud of witnesses, we are also loved in our individuality and uniqueness — loved by the God who knows each of us by name.

Last evening, a few dozen parishioners gathered at Trinity Church for the promised ‘Sabbatical Show and Tell”. They graciously endured the rector’s flawed slideshow (yup, I’ve got MUCH more to learn about Keynote and all things presentation software!). They respectfully listened to me prattle on about my various travels over the course of the ten weeks (July 15-September 30) I was absent from my regular duties at the parish. When I finished the presentation, they expressed appreciation for the event, even if they were uncomfortable for having sat on metal folding chairs for far too long. The gift of sabbatical is now, officially, “in the books”, but the gifts I received from the experience remain.

I have resolved to hold these gifts as sacred. I am committed NOT to knowingly or unknowingly stash them away under a pile of supposedly urgent activities so they are forgotten like a superfluous Christmas present from a distant relative. The gifts I received — in experiences, renewed relationships and lessons learned (and re-learned!) — are gifts for sharing. In the end, I think what will separate this sabbatical from just an extended vacation will have much to do with the ways in which I share these gifts with others during the months ahead.

Preachers spend lots of time “telling” people stuff. It’s part of our job. And people expect us to do such telling even when they disagree with us, or can’t understand us, or ignore us altogether. After all, we live in a world flooded with “telling” — advice, reports, studies, orders, directions, commentaries, editorials, articles and surveys abound. Plenty of people — family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, experts of various sorts, government officials — are vying for our limited attention spans in order to tell us something. Preachers are just one more group of people with lots to say, hoping to find an audience willing to listen them for a few minutes once a week.

I am a preacher. The task of doing such an audacious thing (St. Paul called it “foolishness”!) is part of my job. But, preaching is only part of my job. “Preacher” is one of many subcategories underneath the heading of “priest”.

The question I pondered for the entirety of sabbatical was, “What does it mean for a priest to exercise the ‘cure/care of souls’ in a 21st century context?” There wasn’t a day during the two and a half months I was out “sabbatical-ing” that I didn’t think about that question. I thought about it sitting on the rocky shores of southeast Ireland. I thought about it walking along the beaches of Lake Superior, North Carolina and Florida. I thought about it while walking the Way of the Cross on a hillside in Los Altos, California. I thought about it mile after mile as I biked through southern Wisconsin. I thought about it as I read book after book — whether I was reading on my back porch or in airports or in the library at Duke University. I talked about it with fellow priests, seminary professors, friends and anyone else who was willing to engage in even a brief conversation about this thing called “priesthood”.

I’m getting clearer on the question now, even if I don’t have a ten-point plan for becoming a more effective priest. The alluring temptation, of course, is that such a plan exists and can be found. The further temptation is to actually believe such a plan, if implemented, would solve the fuzziness of a vocation which, in the final analysis (using secular criteria of course!), is neither practical nor necessary.

We priests are, indeed unnecessary to the extent we believe our “telling”, in and of itself, has much meaning. Telling, it seems, only has an impact when the person doing the telling actually embodies her/his message. On plenty of occasions over the past nine years, I’ve been much better at giving a message than living the message in real time. It’s often much easier (and less time consuming!) to say something than to live something. Taking the time to embody Good News will only serve to make me less useful in a culture that demands productivity, accomplishment and measurable results. But how can I espouse to care for the souls of others when I don’t invest time caring for my own? How can I talk about love and community and vulnerability and healing and wholeness and not give some sort of evidence in my daily life that such things are truly important to me?

The sabbatical is done. I’ve been back “at work” for a full month. How am I giving witness to the gifts received? How am I a different priest than I was on July 14, 2011? I can’t yet answer these questions, either. I am, however, quite convinced (“convicted” even!) that my real work as a priest involves a lot more showing and a lot less telling.