The Vocation of a Summer Shrimp Boil
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This week I am the 79th General Convention of The Episcopal Church. This is my first convention and already – half-way in – it has been a wild and wonderful ride. One of the things that gets talked about a lot at convention are the inequalities between the ordained and unordained leaders of our church. About the worth of ones vocation. I have been thinking a lot about these things recently, in part because of my work for Baptized for Life.
“It seems to me that much of the proper work of the church and spirituality should be discerning and empowering people’s actual gifts. There doesn’t seem to be much discernment of gifts, even in seminaries, as to whether one really has a gift for Christian leadership, reconciling, healing, preaching, or counseling. (Most priests and pastors were ordained without ever having led a single person to love, to God, or to faith; and many do not seem to have a natural gift for this.) We seem to ordain people who want to be ordained! We can be educated or trained in offices and roles, but true spiritual gifts (charismata) are recognized, affirmed, and “called forth.” We do not create such people; we affirm and support what they are already doing on some level.” – Richard Rohr
For my tenth birthday I threw I sleepover. 20 girls came. 20 girls from different parts of my life – neighborhood, church, school, girl scouts… It was amazing. My mother, who was 7 month’s pregnant with her fourth child, made us homemade popcorn at midnight and pancakes for breakfast. For entertainment we watched a movie on the VCR my dad had rented from the grocery store, and he gave “rides” in his old fashioned desk chair, by spinning each girl until she fell out of the chair. There was also lots of hair braiding and giggling, games of M.A.S.H. played and ghost stories told. There was even some witnessing going on. As I remember it me and some of my church friends “led” one of my school friends to Christ. Of course in retrospect who’s to say if we led or pushed, witnessed, or benevolently bullied. We were 10. And Baptist. And it was the 80’s.
When I was ten my favorite things were Martha Stewart’s book Entertaining, Amy Grant’s album Unguarded, Mary Lou Retton and all things church. I was also madly in-love with Randy (er Randall) Goodgame (whose sister broke her leg falling out of tree at that aforementioned birthday party). Thankfully I believe that my adoration went unnoticed by Randy (er Randall), and we left Florida and moved to Alaska before I could suffer the humiliation of being officially rejected by someone with perfectly feathered hair.
My love for Mr. Good Hair was not the only thing I left in Florida. I also left my love of gymnastics, probably in part because I could never get past round-offs in tumbling.
But my love for Martha Stewart, (now vintage) Amy Grant, Church Work and the Work of the Church remained. In fact they remain still. Primarily the Church and the Martha parts.
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Two weeks ago I was away from home working on a new AMAZING project all about vocation and baptismal identity. During the week I set tables, and gathered flowers, and led prayers, and we all told stories about how we saw the Spirit of God moving among us and through us.
Saturday morning I returned from that trip and by Sunday evening I was at it again, setting tables and gathering flowers. Our family, along with our church Small Group, hosted a Shrimp Boil to welcome our new priest and his partner. We gathered around one long table covered in newsprint and flowers from the garden, ate amazing food prepared at home, prayed, laughed, and shared stories about faith, and asked questions of each other about where we feel Christ’ leading.
“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
I get a lot of questions about whether or not I am going to become a priest. People like to make helpful suggestions regarding my calling or vocation, which I understand. People see leadership qualities and they jump to the most visible option. Why? Because we have built a system – it can be argued intentionally or unintentionally – that has done a lot of work to raise up, educate, and empower the priest and pastors, and much less to raise up, educate, and empower the laity. (By comparison a similar thing happens to smart kids in school – we place them on tracks to become doctors and lawyers and engineers, as if those careers are the only ones worthy of intelligence or nurturing.)
But if you follow the the advice of Rohr and Palmer, if you look back at that 10 year old girl throwing the birthday party, living for church life, reading Martha Stewart under her blanket with a flashlight, trying to explain the love of Jesus at her birthday party, I think you can began to get a sense of what my life has always been telling me.
If you look at my books (especially A Homemade Year), if you look at the work I am doing for Baptized for Life, Forma, and Episcopal Relief & Development, at the work I am doing in my local parish and in my back yard, and if you look at the work I would do whether I got paid or not, I think it is safe to say that my life is telling me what truths I embody, what values I represent.
If I look at what I am doing, what I have always been doing, what I will most likely always do, then my vocation lies solidly at the intersection where gathering, organizing, celebrating, storytelling, and translation converge. If you look at where my great joy meets the worlds deep need, I think it is in my ability to help people see, identify, understand, and celebrate the outward visible signs of inward spiritual graces right where they are -at home, in church, in their neighborhoods, in the world – in order that they may experience the deep joy of knowing and being known and loved by God and each other.
The ways I do these things varies with the job with the event, with the mission, with my season of life.
Before I came to convention the way I lived out my vocation, my calling, my baptismal identity, was by hosting a Shrimp Boil for some of my faith community.
A few days ago it was by handing out eggs filled with Silly Putty for Forma and asking people “how were you formed?” here at #GC79.
Then on Saturday it was by helping coordinate and execute the Way of Love Revival for General Convention – using both my storytelling and event-organizing skills to help gather people together in order to share the Good News.
And then this morning, this Tweet exchange had me laughing:
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You see, my life has always been telling me what it is about.
The Way of Love Revival was just an extension of what I have always been doing.
The Shrimp Boil was just an extension of what I have always been doing.
The words I share are just an extension of what I have always been doing.
Whether or not I ever have a collar, my vocation will always be what I have always been doing.
It will always lie in the place where gathering, organizing, celebrating, storytelling, and translation converge – in order that people may experience the deep joy of knowing and being known and loved by God and each other.
We all have callings, we all have vocations. Some come with collars, some come with titles, some are straightforward, and some are cobbled together out of the mess and the holy in our everyday lives. And some, if we are lucky (and not allergic to shelfish) come with Shrimp Boils and revivals.
Amen and amen.
*For shrimp boil instructions check out the St. Jame’s chapter in A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together.*
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