1) I absolutely know I am going into the right field. The more into this I get in practice the more sure I am. The more inspired I am. The more I actually feel CALLED to ministry...
2) I feel like I am going to explode from an internal sense of pressure.... stemming from my vocational calling and intensely frustrating lack of resources and infrastructure available to me as someone in an alternative and religiously plural faith.
I have so many ideas, so many things I want to offer the communities around me, and yet almost no way to make it a reality - financially. I have so many different types of meetings/group direction I want to offer - grief, women empowerment, devotion, prayer & ritual - most of which utilize the divinas and then group sharing and co-creating of reflection questions and processing.
But I don't have the time or place to do any of this... because I am trapped in my 9-5 job (and school although I feel like could be grouped in with vocational work). I am trapped in this job because our society really only has infrastructure set up for the faith an ministry within major religions.
I am not a Christian.... if I was - I would already have a ministry job. I would have multiple options and means of finding ministry jobs. Hell - that job might have even paid for my seminary degree!
But what church is going to hire a pagan? What church wants to appeal and serve "others" in the community with an explicit anti-proselytizing understanding - the goal simply to present and provide support to all people in the community; even if not specifically members of the church?
People should not have to PAY to come to a weekly reflections group on grief. People should not have to pay to attend a women's group.... these are all things churches offer for free. But if I have any hope of supporting myself I would have to pay... Why should people outside of Major organized religions, especially Christianity, have to pay while their better supported counterparts do not?
The uneven access to support - both for those in need of services and those wishing to provide services - is something that makes me so incredibly frustrated I feel like my head will explode.
I have a non-profit I want to work with. But it is too new to actually hire someone full time, so I know is not ready to provide the infrastructure I would need. But as an interfaith Spiritual director, I can't find something that DOES have the infrastructure. As a solo practitioner, I have to charge for the ministry I want to provide.
Its frustrating, its demoralizing, and its not fair. I have long said I would be a minister if I was a Christian... (by that I mean working in ministry - not preaching on a Sunday). I am now finding my way to ministry anyway and the same damn obstacles that prevented me from thinking it was possible are rearing their heads.
How do I balance this obvious obstacle and sense of injustice over the lack of resources with this burning passion I have? The closer I get to getting my degree, the more tension I feel. Saturday night I was just overwhelmed with it. Life would be so much easier as a Chrsitian, with so much more opportunities, and community support - all missing because I connect to the divine in a different way.
Faith and Ministry should not have such high barriers for those in alternative faiths or those seeking to serve people of alternative faiths (or lack there of). But it does. And I don't know how to reconcile it.
3) I am becoming so inspired and impassioned for this work that I can coming up with so many ideas, feel called to read so many books and broaden my perspective, and it’s hits a brick wall - my day job. I have been so encompassed by my call to ministry that it is actually causing problems in my day job because I am so “distracted”.
No comments:
Post a Comment