Dear sisters and brothers in Christ whose journeys are somehow intertwined with mine, the peace of Jesus, the Christ be with you. It is a tradition within parts of the church for postulants to write to their bishops four times a year about their journeys. I am not a postulant and I have no bishops, but still I feel compelled to write.

I am starting my second term as a seminarian at Church Divinity School of the Pacific. I am currently in the online Certificate of Theological Studies program, but God willing will change programs to the lo-res M.Div program in the near future. This term I am taking Introduction to New Testament and Church History II. I am particularly interested in both of these classes in thinking about how our understanding of God and God’s Church changes over time. I have also recently joined a formation group and I’m looking forward growing with members of this group.

The resolutions of the 233rd Convention of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut provided an interesting glimpse into some of these changes in our day as it looks at what it means to be a member of the clergy in good standing, including, “a future with even more novel forms of ordained ministry“.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a priest. In my previous ember letter, I wrote about reading Carter Heyward’s book, “A Priest Forever” and finding that her description of an Ontological Priest fits nicely with parts of my journey.

Recently, I participated in the Trinity Institute and this has further shaped some of my thinking. Jose Antonio Vargas talked about what it is like to be undocumented in America. He is here without the necessary papers because of what seems to be broken policies and bureaucracy. It limits what he can do. In light of Heyward’s book and my own journey, I feel like I, and others I’ve met during my journey are Unordained Priests, in a manner not unlike how Vargas is an undocumented America.

Another speaker at Trinity Institute was the Rev. Elizabeth Edman who spoke about queer theory and the idea of disrupting binaries. My eldest daughter is just completing her Master’s Degree and about to start her PhD in gender studies in Japan. We have many interesting discussions about queer theory and while I won’t claim to be any expert, I’m very interested in disrupting binaries. In particularly, there is the queer/heterosexual binary, and there is the clergy/laity binary.

The Episcopal Church in Connecticut uses “Guidelines for Mutuality” that seem to me to encourage this disrupting of binaries by urging participants to avoid either/or thinking. Yet I wonder, how much are we using either/or thinking and maintaining binaries as we think about the roles of priests and laity and who can become a priest? Can we try on (to use another one of the guidelines) new ways of thinking about the priesthood. Here, I return to some of my studies where the early church and the reformation church explored ideas of what the priesthood is.

In part of our journeys we may talk about bi-vocational priests. Yet I wonder if that is at best a half-hearted attempt to disrupt the clergy/laity binary. I have thought of myself as a bi-vocational seminarian as I work full time and attend seminary online. Yet perhaps, we need to recognize that many of us are called to many things in our lives. As the Great Litany says,

That it may please thee to inspire us, in our several callings, to do the work which thou givest us to do with singleness of heart as thy servants, and for the common good

Perhaps we should be talking about being multi-vocational.

So, perhaps this ember letter is coming out as a queer multivocational unordained priest.

I wrote the beginning of this while I was on a silent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery in New York. At matins the light shining on one section of the choir caught my attention, perhaps similarly to how the unconsumed burning bush caught Moses attention. I sought the source and found that it was from sunlight streaming in through a stained glass window over a statute of Mary.

While the image in the stained glass window was most likely the annunciation, it seemed for me at that moment that the image was of the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth when they were both pregnant. I stopped to ponder this.

In what ways am I Mary? What will I be giving birth to? In what way am I Elizabeth and who are the Marys in my life? How do we honor this in those around us? Perhaps some of us should hold a baby shower for Mary during the feast of the visitation, where everyone is invited to bring gifts symbolizing the ministries they are struggling to give birth to or nurture.

With this in mind, Bishop Glasspool’s article in The Episcopal New York entitled “Call the Midwife!” caught my attention. It echoed some of the same things I was thinking about.

Another part of my journey includes the Eastern Orthodox Church. I have been trying to make it to vespers Saturday evenings at local Orthodox Church. My youngest daughter has developed a strong interest in the Orthodox Church and is hoping to be baptized into it this year. Likewise, I continue to regularly worship with seminarians from Andover Newton at Yale stirring my childhood Congregational tendencies.

So where does all of this leave me? Perhaps all the more like Mary; a little confused, frightened, unsure, and yet willing and excited about what the miraculous annunciation meant. As who I am changes with whatever is growing inside of me, planted by God, I am seeking out the midwives and relatives. Will you be an Elizabeth, Ann, or Brigid to me? How can I be an Elizabeth, Ann, or Brigid to you?