For those of you who are not regular readers of my blog or have missed my recent posts in social media about my spiritual journey, I am aspiring to become an Episcopal priest. It is a long journey. Over the past year and a half, I’ve been praying and seeking discernment on exactly what God is calling me to. This weekend, I went on a discernment retreat with over a dozen other people aspiring to the priesthood as well as the bishops and members of the Commission on Ministry in the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.

It was an intense and wonderful weekend and I’m finally getting a moment to write down some initial reactions to the weekend.

It is tempting to think of this weekend as a long job interview, or perhaps part of the selection process to join some special group. To a certain extent, it may make sense to think of it this way, but I believe this misses something much more important. The discernment weekend, like so many other parts of the discernment process is a beautiful gift. It is a special time together, to help one another gain a clearer sense of how the source of all love wishes us to share that love with one another.

At one point, I spoke with a fellow aspirant about how the weekend was going for him. It seemed like he was struggling. It seemed like to him it was a job interview that wasn’t going well. We talked a little bit about times we’ve interviewed people in a current work. Later, I had the opportunity to share a quote from Winnie the Pooh.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.”

I invited him to forget about the job interview and instead wonder what exciting new thing he would learn about himself and God’s love for him today. Later in the day, a member on the Commission on Ministry challenged him to think in a new way about how God was already using him and he had an aha moment. It felt like the Holy Spirit had worked through my words and the words of the priest to help draw my new friend a little closer to God and to each of us.

There wasn’t any one thing that I can point to as an aha moment in my own experience. Perhaps the closest was in a discussion with the bishops when a fellow aspirant who had not been raised Episcopalian talked about her ambivalent relationship to bishops. It led to a great discussion about different ways of being a bishop or priest, what we bring to the role, and what the role brings to us in terms of the institution, our culture, and the expectations others place upon us.

In my mind, I thought of my interest in applying my understanding of Judith Butler’s ideas about performativity to identifying as a Christian in a post-Christendom world, to identifying as an aspirant, and perhaps someday identifying as a priest. I’ve touched on this before, and I expect to come back to this many times in my future writings.

One theme I often return to, and I spent a bit of time talking about this on the retreat is how communications people think about primary tasks. In communications, we should always go back to the mission statement. For Episcopalians, that catechism has this great line:

The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.

How would my becoming a priest help the church restore people to unity with God and each other in Christ? It felt like the weekend helped me deepen my thoughts about this as I spoke with various people on this subject.

Yet the weekend wasn’t just about talking about this idea. It was about living out this idea. I came away feeling as if I had been drawn even closer to God. I felt as if I had been drawn closer to others seeking to strengthen their relationship with God. It has been a wonderful experience.

As part of the ordination of a priest in the Episcopal Church, a candidate is asked,

do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?

This weekend reaffirmed my belief that I am called by God to the priesthood. Over the coming week, the commission will meet and deliberate on whether they believe that I and the other aspirants might also be called by the Church to the priesthood and if the bishops should invite us to become postulants.

Now, I wait prayerfully to hear what the Spirit is saying to them.