The next and last part of discernment is ahead of me and starts in a few weeks. I will be working with the priest at a local parish in kind of an on the job training mentorship. This should be fun. I will vest (dress up in fancy altar clothes) for every service, go to vestry and liturgy commission meetings, help plan worship services, be present during the preparations for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, learn about picking music, etc. I've only ever done any of these activities at my home parish, among friends , so this experience will be a lot like when a priest moves to a new parish as an ordained leader, but without the pressure (yeah right!).
My informal Christian training is also starting to take on a new flavor. By this I mean the daily training that Jesus is providing me through prayer and reading scripture. I am happily drifting a bit away from doing things out of a sense of duty and towards doing them for the joy of the activitiy. Especially scripture has become a lot more attractive in it's own right. I guess there are millions of people who are drawn to the Bible like magnets, but it isn't always like that for me. Recently I was reading in Isaiah about the way that Israel turned away from and betrayed God. You can see right there in the passages all the fraility of mankind and our tendencies toward self absorption leading into sin and then subsequent self loathing. If we could be happy thinking about ourselves all the time then I suppose I'd be a lot happier than I am!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment