On Getting Ordained

Last week I posted my ordination invitation to my Instagram stories, which is not a tool I use often, but I felt—not unlike coming out—that I wanted to make sure everyone (even all the people I don’t know anymore) knew about this event in my life. I feel proud. But, I added the caption “like, just my whole life in the making” to the invitation and it’s that part that I’ve been reflecting on and which I’d like to say a few things about now.

Because, I confused myself, saying something like that. I haven’t been waiting my whole life to be a priest. I only learned about the sacraments a few years ago. I don’t look at other priests performing sacraments and wish that it was me. I have no idea how to give a Blessing to someone. I only entered this process because other trusted voices told me I should. And, to much surprise (to me, anyway), I have, slowly and not at all gracefully, found that this path has taken me to the place that I always wanted—to the center/the core of where I have felt the thread of God and my own desire pulling me my whole life. I can tell you with certainty that I did not know I would find that here, in the priesthood.

This is perhaps why I have had so much anger and frustration, and reluctance to walk this path—it felt so serious and final (and in many ways it is!). Only in hindsight now do I see that I needed to air—to release—all the excuses, impediments, feelings of betrayal, frustrations, anger, as if headed towards death itself. Kicking and grasping for air along the way because, well, I was scared—unclear on what made me me, and so unsure if I would lose that self in this process. I believe, now, that all of this reluctance and anger was because deep down I knew it was the path to what I sensed was my truest self. Thank God for all the good and gracious people around me who, mysteriously and faithfully, kept saying “yes.”

I was recently asked what had surprised me the most on this journey, and my answer was and is very simply: that I’m here—that I found myself in this process and that I want this. I have a long road ahead now, learning what this is and how I will inhabit it, but I’m in the door and shocked that I’m happy about it and that it feels good. Learning how to do all the stuff of it will come in time.

There’s a big part of me that wishes I hadn’t written that caption to my ordination invitation because while it’s true (I do believe that this is my whole life in the making), it’s not the whole truth. I haven’t been called to be a priest my whole life—this is not something I pursued for its own sake (it’s very possible that there are other paths I could have taken to get here)—but the priesthood, I believe, is an answer to a question I have asked myself and wondered about my whole life. “Self under self, a pile of selves I stand/Threaded on time, and with metaphysic hand”*—in getting and being here, I sense that this pile of selves that is all of me is seen, honored, and commissioned/Blessed to be.

So, I’ll be there on Saturday, fully and with immense gratitude and humility, and with doubt and certainty in equal measure—which is, I believe, the fear of Truth, my truest self, that is God.

Emily

* from Norman MacCaig’s poem Summer Farm