The end of the first year of seminary is approaching. This week we were asked to reflect on how we have grown in regards to our Identity, Power, and Vocation in Community.
Identity Questions: Most of the growth I have noticed in this area is in changing myself. I started this year as someone who was hyper-productive, self-critical, and intensely tied to identities (my work title, as a mother, competent, etc.) I struggled with fierce independence and struggled in asking for help. While working on these is an ongoing process, I have made great strides. I have gained clarity on how I want to exist within my activism and community organizations in ways that are better aligned with my faith. I feel more calm, more centered, and more flexible. My faith feels more grounded and my spiritual practices more robust and consistent. A big surprise in my learning about identify in this course was in my ability to be more in touch with the erotic. Reading from Weaving the Vision and Pleasure Activism brought me new insight as to how being a spiritual person includes embodiment.
Power Questions: My main takeaway is that shared power is the only way forward. The idea of the rugged individual, dynamic leader is no longer relevant for me. My path forward is in ministerial teamwork, shedding privilege, and community collaboration. My relationship to power is now grounded in my relationships with my own identity and the Divine. As I release self-hate, self-judgement and learn to relate to myself with grace, love, acceptance- I step out of the patterns force fed to me by systems of oppression. Living into my truths and finding areas to align thought and action has created more space for using my courageous theological imagination.
Vocation Questions: My vision for my ministerial calling does not exist yet, but it is beginning to take shape. The work I am called to do is bound to innovation and because it will be co-created in community, it will remain dynamic and adaptive. I am not interested in a cookie-cutter idea of ministry that is replicated anywhere. I am seeking a ministry that is emergent within unique situations and communities. I know it includes creativity (performing arts, visual arts) and micro-community focus and includes Restorative and Transformative Justice. I also feel a pull to be a ministerial presence to serve the “Nones,” those who do not identify with a particular denomination or faith tradition, because I believe that spiritual care, growth, and exploration is essential for everyone, including atheists, agnostics and those who have walked away from mainstream religions.
Community Questions: My community is shifting and growing. My learning and growth have been in more inclusive and expansive ways to engage and build community no matter where I go. Deep listening, validation, and compassion are the seeds needed to grow any healthy garden of community. My skill at connecting to others, even with the limits of the pandemic, continues to evolve. Expansive, creative theological imaginations and extravagant, wasteful, God-sized amounts of love and compassion, accompanied by humility and curiosity are part of the formula for how to be in my communities. This class has been a huge benefit in providing me the language and research to better understand and articulate beliefs I have long held, but needed to clarify.
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