the process goes on, choosing and sex
Tonight I knew that I couldn't go to sleep without writing this. I had to make some tea, quietly, long after my mother had fallen asleep near the kitchen. She was weak and grumpy from a week of enthusiasticlly and cheerfully overworking herself on what we all feel may be one of her best theater productions yet. As tired as I am, I keep going back to the ideas and reflections flowing from that initial retreat and the memories that have been flooding in, but am feeling unsure of why I am doing this and where, if anywhere, it could lead.
Lately I am operating very mediumistically. I am going between worlds to help where I can, but perhaps that is not the same as the theme here...
Calledness, choseness, annointing - these are all terms that can be rarified excessively. We are all called to something, but perhaps some of us end up taking on roles that especially highlight the primal call of the soul from the upper worlds into this one, so movingly described by koran when it says that only the humans, after all of creation had been asked, responded yes to the call to witness to the Divine, 'Bala shahidina'. Here I will play with how this has manifested in my life and ask whether it is of value to keep some of it or let go of it. More than anything I just want to witness to these issues for myself, even if no one person can.
When I was a boy a woman who had dated my father came up to my father and told him that I had some special role or gift. I remember my father saying to me, when he reminded me of that adding, 'but that doesn't mean you should be a priest!' - a bit of a random thing to panic about, surely? After I was chosen for seminary high school (despite not going) and while I was interacting with men of the cloth from various orders who were interested in having me join their communities in the process of ordination, my mother was getting increasingly annoyed with the suggestion that I might go down such a path.
In particular I remember one night in which I was sleeping next to my mother. I slept in my mother's bed sometimes until I was in high school, I think. no, there was nothing sexually abusive going on there, as far as I recall. it was probably just a bit odd. I remember being in a moment and space in which I was meant to be resting and sleeping and instead I was tossing and turning (I remember my legs moving nervously) while my mother shared with me her aggressive worrying and opposition to me going into the priesthood. I can imagine that she had many reasons for that concern. Not the least of them must have been the unconscious or semi-conscious worry that I might be homosexual. After all, besides all of the scandals in the media about priests with out of control, devious and abusive sexualities, she also had only been close to one priest in her life: her brother.
My uncle is ins some ways a very damaged soul, although the last time I saw him, I felt considerably better about being around him and felt that he was more well. He, in fact, had been sent off to a Benedictine monastery for seminary high school when he was around 16 and had duly entered the priesthood in his early twenties, as expected, had studied theology and philosophy in Rome and eventually took up a monastic life in midwestern community that was largely based on Carmelite spirituality. He was gay. My aunt insinuated that he was 'introduced to it' by the priests and I think she suggested that it was at seminary high school. This was a conversation many years ago. She is now a much more open heart. Of course the suspicions that my mother had were right. I am a gay man.
I think I feared, somewhere deep inside, that wanting to be a priest meant the same thing, although a bit part of my lurking unconscious was also trying to get away from the issue. I understood, to some degree, my sexuality and realized both that I was not suppoed to engage with it and that , as a giving and spiritually-oriented young man, there were many reasons to go into celbacy and priesthood. I remembered meeting F. He was a seminarian and was close to my closest friend's family. He was definitely gay and I knew that. No surprise - he did leave the priesthood to be with another man, some years later. The priest I knew who was heterosexual used to give long lectures to us about the evils of sexuality, sweating profusely at the altar, at times, and he did eventually go on to have an illiciat affair with my same friend's aunt. He left the church in shame. At that time, on a more positive, less conflicted note, I did have one confessor who told me I was too 'scrupulous' about my sins, a very kind man. I also knew a deeply spiritual priest who we did lessons with in my youth group. He was a rigid man in some ways, but also deeply spiritual and he genuinely cared about my spiritual wellfare.
It was at the time of my friendship (discipleship?) with this priest that I began to slip away from the idea of pursuing the priesthood and also moved away from the church itself. One of the last discussions I remember having with a potential Franciscan group went in a strange direction. I remember the man who was a 'recruiter' of sorts saying that I was too interested in a particularly nun who I mentioned a few times, that we were far too identified these days with a kind of tragic femininity. He seemed to also feel that men needed to focus on being men, or something to that effect. Somehow I think he found me a little strange which, to be fair, I was and am.
Oddly enough, two decades later and jsut before thinking this subject over, suddenly I found myself talking to an online aquaintance who was working on whether or not to take vows of celibacy in an Anglican community.
Again, more to come...
Lately I am operating very mediumistically. I am going between worlds to help where I can, but perhaps that is not the same as the theme here...
Calledness, choseness, annointing - these are all terms that can be rarified excessively. We are all called to something, but perhaps some of us end up taking on roles that especially highlight the primal call of the soul from the upper worlds into this one, so movingly described by koran when it says that only the humans, after all of creation had been asked, responded yes to the call to witness to the Divine, 'Bala shahidina'. Here I will play with how this has manifested in my life and ask whether it is of value to keep some of it or let go of it. More than anything I just want to witness to these issues for myself, even if no one person can.
When I was a boy a woman who had dated my father came up to my father and told him that I had some special role or gift. I remember my father saying to me, when he reminded me of that adding, 'but that doesn't mean you should be a priest!' - a bit of a random thing to panic about, surely? After I was chosen for seminary high school (despite not going) and while I was interacting with men of the cloth from various orders who were interested in having me join their communities in the process of ordination, my mother was getting increasingly annoyed with the suggestion that I might go down such a path.
In particular I remember one night in which I was sleeping next to my mother. I slept in my mother's bed sometimes until I was in high school, I think. no, there was nothing sexually abusive going on there, as far as I recall. it was probably just a bit odd. I remember being in a moment and space in which I was meant to be resting and sleeping and instead I was tossing and turning (I remember my legs moving nervously) while my mother shared with me her aggressive worrying and opposition to me going into the priesthood. I can imagine that she had many reasons for that concern. Not the least of them must have been the unconscious or semi-conscious worry that I might be homosexual. After all, besides all of the scandals in the media about priests with out of control, devious and abusive sexualities, she also had only been close to one priest in her life: her brother.
My uncle is ins some ways a very damaged soul, although the last time I saw him, I felt considerably better about being around him and felt that he was more well. He, in fact, had been sent off to a Benedictine monastery for seminary high school when he was around 16 and had duly entered the priesthood in his early twenties, as expected, had studied theology and philosophy in Rome and eventually took up a monastic life in midwestern community that was largely based on Carmelite spirituality. He was gay. My aunt insinuated that he was 'introduced to it' by the priests and I think she suggested that it was at seminary high school. This was a conversation many years ago. She is now a much more open heart. Of course the suspicions that my mother had were right. I am a gay man.
I think I feared, somewhere deep inside, that wanting to be a priest meant the same thing, although a bit part of my lurking unconscious was also trying to get away from the issue. I understood, to some degree, my sexuality and realized both that I was not suppoed to engage with it and that , as a giving and spiritually-oriented young man, there were many reasons to go into celbacy and priesthood. I remembered meeting F. He was a seminarian and was close to my closest friend's family. He was definitely gay and I knew that. No surprise - he did leave the priesthood to be with another man, some years later. The priest I knew who was heterosexual used to give long lectures to us about the evils of sexuality, sweating profusely at the altar, at times, and he did eventually go on to have an illiciat affair with my same friend's aunt. He left the church in shame. At that time, on a more positive, less conflicted note, I did have one confessor who told me I was too 'scrupulous' about my sins, a very kind man. I also knew a deeply spiritual priest who we did lessons with in my youth group. He was a rigid man in some ways, but also deeply spiritual and he genuinely cared about my spiritual wellfare.
It was at the time of my friendship (discipleship?) with this priest that I began to slip away from the idea of pursuing the priesthood and also moved away from the church itself. One of the last discussions I remember having with a potential Franciscan group went in a strange direction. I remember the man who was a 'recruiter' of sorts saying that I was too interested in a particularly nun who I mentioned a few times, that we were far too identified these days with a kind of tragic femininity. He seemed to also feel that men needed to focus on being men, or something to that effect. Somehow I think he found me a little strange which, to be fair, I was and am.
Oddly enough, two decades later and jsut before thinking this subject over, suddenly I found myself talking to an online aquaintance who was working on whether or not to take vows of celibacy in an Anglican community.
Again, more to come...