Now, where was I?

I find it difficult to believe that I've neglected this blog for nearly four years.  So much has happened in the intervening years.  In December of 2004, on the Eve of the Feast of the Nativity, my wife and I were chrismated and brought into the Orthodox Church.  About two weeks later, my wife gave birth to our second son on the eve of Theophany.  My two boys were baptized and chrismated in February of 2005 and our whole family had become "one" in the Church.  

Several months later, I was tonsured as a Reader by Archbishop Dmitri (OCA, Diocese of Dallas and the South).  Since that time I have served as a Reader, an altar server and a choir director in our small parish in Toccoa, Georgia.

It has truly been a rich and wonderful experience as a new Orthodox Christian these past four years.   It hasn't always been a perfect, easy-going relationship with others in our parish, but we have had the chance to embrace reality and to wrestle with our own passions.   Things have had the opportunity to get "ugly" as they say in the South.  But with that ugliness, we have seen so much good blossom and grow.   

And now, my wife and I and our kids are looking to our own future apart from this community that essentially "birthed" us into the Faith.  I am considering (with my Bishop's blessing) applying to attend St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in the fall of 2009.  This will mean enormous changes for my family.  We have been located in Toccoa since I moved here to attend college in 1988 (I was 17 and married wife three years later).   We have a house here.  We have a church family here.  It is comfortable being here.  It would be easy to stay.

I grew up as a pastor's kid.  My dad was a protestant minister for about twenty-five years.  It was not an easy life for us kids, always moving from place to place, and never really feeling settled anywhere.  I have enjoyed the sensation of stability over these last two decades.  I saw how hard it was to be a pastor and I swore I would never follow in my dad's footsteps.

I still was repeating that oath as recently as three months ago.  I was given a promotion at work, which was the answer (so I thought) to my growing dissatisfaction with my working life.  What followed was frustration, and a realization that maybe I was looking to the wrong things for satisfaction.   That maybe I had been looking to the wrong things for a long time and hadn't even realized it.

Enter my brother Lee suggesting that Kate and I join him and Amy as they went to St. Vlad's in November .  They had cemented their plans to attend the seminary, with the intention that Lee pursue the priesthood.  They really wanted to see the seminary, meet with faculty and students, and generally prepare themselves.  We were to go as their support team.  

I was eager to go for a second visit to St. Vlad's; my first visit having been in January 2006 for my friend, Fr Christopher's, ordination.   It was a surprisingly wonderful experience, not that I expected to have a bad time.  But I went away with a nagging feeling that I might have some unfinished business with the seminary.

Back to 2008...Lee asks us to make the trip with him and Amy, we agree.  And then, even as I renew my oath in the "I'll Never Be A Pastor" club, a scary thought dawns on me: maybe that's where my calling is.  Maybe that is the root of my dissatisfaction.   And suddenly, this trip to New York seemed to be taking on all new, unexpected dimensions.  For the first time, instead of saying "No" to the pastorate, the priesthood, I was saying, "Maybe..."

Our trip is still two months away.  We are trying to deal with what we are increasingly seeing as a "strong possibility" (attending seminary) turning into a "strong desire".  Much to our surprise.  We have moved past the "wow" stage in our contemplation and are starting to look at the cold, hard facts.  We will be far away from Katie's family (a definite hardship for her especially, but for all of us too), we will be moving from our parish, and the only town the boys have ever known.  We will have to give away, sell, throw away or store everything we own.  We will have to sell the house, which has been in Katie's family since the early '80's.  We have so many memories tied up in this place.

But at the same time Katie and I are really sensing that change is in the wind for us, regardless.  It seems that no matter what the outcome of our trip to St. Vlad's, we will be making some big changes in our life.   One of which may be that I will have to give up my membership in the "I'll Never Be A Pastor" club.  And if this happens, no one will be more surprised

than me.

I wonder how strange that sounds to other people.   There is a real "positive tension" (to steal a song title from Bloc Party) that I feel in such statements.  My priest and I have discussed this idea of a calling to the priesthood at some length.  Of his own calling, he has said, "If there was some way that I could have avoided it I would have, but I simply couldn't".   I am starting to wonder if I am in the same boat.  I have never desired to be a pastor, but maybe God wants to use that anti-desire for His own glory.   The priesthood?  Who knows.  But to bring glory to God is everyone's calling.  My I answer my own calling fully and willingly.