Monday, July 14, 2008
Being set apart
First - and briefly - Moo's off to Birmingham for a few days, and had to get up at 0500. So I took Miri into bed when she got up around 1200, and she took nearly an hour to get to sleep. She woke up at 0555, but Jo managed 0710: a real sleep in.Second - and the main point that I wanted to make - is the question of what it is to be set apart. To agree to be set apart, and to accept one's vocation. I'm not pretending that I'm special: in many ways, quite the opposite. It's about accepting the fact that I'm not any different to anyone else. The vocation is partly to a realisation of brokenness and an acceptance of it. And I'm really surprised how different things feel since ordination. I really didn't expect that to be the case, but I'm constantly surprised by how different things feel, and how much I think about what I do, and also how it might appear to other people. But I'm also struggling with the fact that I'm not taking on the full-time ministry, and I didn't think I would.
It's not that it feels wrong not to have done so, but in many ways, it feels like it would have been easier to accept a full-time vocation. That way, I'd know what I was committing to, how my time would be taken up, who I am, and how I would appear. Being out of clerical dress would be a unusual, and being in "mufti" the abnormal. But putting on clerical dress is "special", and the decision to do so says quite a lot, just in itself. And deciding to wear other dress where people might expect me to more "clerical" is a decision, too.
I'll keep thinking, and writing. And praying.
I think it is more within that the changes take place.The outer garb is simply a sign of the inner calling, you've carried that calling for a long time now :-).
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