Discerning with the Spirit

This weekend, I come to an important step in my process of discernment of what I believe to be a call by the Holy Spirit to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. Wow, what a sentence.

For the last several months, I’ve met virtually with a cohort of fellow discerners, and this weekend we’ll gather at the Cathedral in the next step of our discernment process. We’ll meet with the Bishop, members of the Commission on the Ministry of the Baptized, the Standing Committee, and spiritual directors, along with other supporting lay people and clergy. Together, we’ll listen to the Holy Spirit and discern as best we can what the Spirit is calling us to do next.

In this process, we’ve written spiritual autobiographies for the Bishop and teams to read, and I have to tell you that I’m so proud of my faith journey, so grateful for where I am, that I’m just dying to share it far and wide.

Here’s where I’ve been, where I am, and where I sense God is calling me next.

Where have you been?

I was baptized into the Episcopal Church as an infant, and I am ever grateful that through infant baptism we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. I believe that sacraments, like Holy Baptism, are outward, visible signs of inward, spiritual grace. I firmly believe that God’s grace is constant and abundant--but also that sacraments are efficacious. They do what they set out to do.

A few years after my Baptism, my family began attending a Southern Baptist church. At home, I was experiencing intense abuse of many kinds at the hands of my stepfather, who also struggled with opiate addiction. At church, I was told I was a sinner over and over. I knew on some level that I didn’t deserve abuse, but something about the theology I was receiving made me feel as though if I prayed more and sinned less, that all of the pain I was experiencing would go away. 

As soon as I was allowed to walk to church, I returned to the church where I was baptized, St. John’s Episcopal Church, and enrolled in confirmation classes. We learned about the sacraments, the Holy Trinity, the Book of Common Prayer. My grandfather, my true father figure, was my confirmation sponsor. As I grew older, I grew away from the church, and when my grandfather died my junior year of college, I considered myself an atheist. Grappling with his death without any framework of belief (I was not an atheist who had built such a framework) was devastating. 

On the anniversary of his death, I returned to that same church, in his honor, still an atheist. I came back the next week. And the next. And the next. It was then that I learned that faith is a muscle, and if you exercise it, it will return. 

I grew more involved with the church, and when I was 25 I felt a call to ordained ministry. I met with my priest, who asked that we meet with a larger group from the parish. Just a few days before our meeting, I was hospitalized for bipolar disorder. The Holy Spirit had more healing and growth for me to do before pursuing what I thought to be my call.

I moved to New York and lived the life that many New York twenty-somethings live--staying out too late at bars, drinking too much, and generally paying little attention to taking care of my emotional or physical well-being. I left an abusive relationship and was housing insecure for months. But I never stopped going to church. I woke up, rolled off of whatever couch a friend was kind enough to let me sleep on the night before, and got myself to mass. I didn’t have a home church--I would find whichever church was the closest, and join in the Holy Eucharist. 

It was a shock to my new boyfriend, now husband. He’d met a person who partied hard and loved to talk radical politics--and who stumbled out of bed every Sunday for church. 

We married and settled into an Episcopal faith community we loved, where we baptized our first two children. I began serving as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, and feel even more deeply in love with the sacraments. We moved to Santa Fe and joined St. Bede’s where our third daughter was baptized. All of this time, the call, the one from my 20s, maybe the one from that confirmation class, didn’t go away. But I was always too busy, starting a new endeavor, or otherwise too overwhelmed with life to do anything about it. Mental illness continued to plague me. 

Healing from mental illness and coming to a place of equilibrium has involved decades of work. It has involved trials of medications, lifestyle changes, building a toolbox of coping skills, and many, many hours of therapy. It, like faith, is a never ending journey. I am so grateful for the grace of God that has fostered that healing. 

Where are you now?

In the fall of 2022, I knew I could no longer ignore God’s vocational call. I spoke to our rector, and we discerned that I should enroll in the 2023 vocations course. And here we are!

I’m the mother to three children, ages 10, 8, and 5, and just celebrated 12 years of marriage to my husband. I work as a communications and strategy consultant for progressive candidates and causes, like civic engagement, economic justice, and addressing the climate crisis. I serve on the Vestry, as a crucifer and occasional thurifer, and in the Children’s Ministry at St. Bede’s. I volunteer in the community, and I also serve as the President of the Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education. 

But that’s a list--it doesn’t really describe where I am. When we started the vocations course, and even through most of our discernment groups, I felt almost unnervingly content. How would I make room for what God was calling me (and, I feel, calling pretty loudly) to? In late summer of this year, I brought a resolution before the school board that would end the practice of conquistador visits to the schools, celebrating the Spanish Conquest of Santa Fe. In doing so, I created an inflection point in my own life. After eight and a half hours, over two nights, of public comment, much of it personal attacks on my character but much of it also pain and fear of the growing gentrification of Santa Fe, I felt undone. I lost work. Friendships ruptured. 

I lit candles before the meetings, spent hours in the days before on my knees in prayer. I called upon the Holy Spirit continuously through the meetings to help anyone in that room see me as a human being and not an enemy. In the days immediately following, I felt betrayed. But I also saw that God was creating space in my life where there had not been space before. That feeling of contentment, of fullness bursting at the seams, was revealing opportunities for growth. 

I still feel a deep contentment in my life. And I don’t feel as though I need to fill holes left by pain from recent events. But I feel more space for my family, for my friends, and for my church community, more space for learning about people and about how to listen deeply. In needing the love of my family, my friends, and my church community more than I had in many years, the Holy Spirit has revealed to me a level of care for myself that I had been overlooking in the rush to do everything for everyone else, for every member of my community. 

Where am I now? I am here, surrounded by, and with more capacity for, love. 

Where do you sense God is calling you next?

I’ll start this section on the future by going far into the past. I am descended from both the colonized and the colonizer. Many of my ancestors arrived in what is now the United States from England in the late 17th century, no doubt sitting in the wooden pews of some of the stunningly beautiful churches on the East Coast. But the other part of my family, citizens of Choctaw Nation, were forced to migrate on the Trail of Tears from Mississippi to Oklahoma, and converted to Christianity from their traditional beliefs. 

As I mentioned earlier, I experienced spiritual trauma as a child, but it was nothing like what Indigenous people experienced in boarding schools or through forced conversion, or what Black people trapped in chattel slavery with the Bible used to explain inhumanity must have felt, or the trauma of any number of marginalized groups, at the hands of the Church. My experience with the Episcopal Church has been incredibly healing, and I have seen the same for other women, for same-sex couples, for people of color, and for Indigenous people. We have a message of hope and love, of full inclusion, of the tremendous welcome of God. But we have work to do. 

I’ve long been interested in the work of reconciliation, and work of reconciling the Church (big C!) to those whom it has hurt. But it’s not shame and blame. It’s building up a radically welcoming community of love--not only within the Church, but with our reach into the community. It is actions, not statements. It’s breaking down barriers of race, class, gender, language, and age by rolling up our sleeves and doing the work. I am ready to do that work and I am hopeful that I can lead others to the work, through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

I also believe that we can use the Church as a transformational and liberatory institution. Though fellowship and social relationships are critical to building love within the church, and coffee hours are sacred (truly!), the church is not a social club. It is the body of Christ. 

I feel that God is calling me next to be a full participant in the liberation of all, through the power of Christ, wherever within that it is God’s will for me to be.