Next right things

On being ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church

Last Friday, I squealed when the following invitation arrived in my email inbox:

Because in another two and a half weeks, I will lay prostrate on the cold concrete floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for a couple of minutes and then be ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church a little while later.¹

The story starts in March 2020, when I met over coffee with our rector. I think I’m supposed to be an Episcopal priest, I said to him. I don’t remember whether my words came out as a whisper or a confident shout, because a week later the world shut down and all my really good declarations took a back seat to a bigger crisis, a greater need. I wouldn’t fully enter the discernment process for another year or two, a process that has been far from singular (which is to say my decision alone), but has instead involved the thoughts and voices of dozens of other people along the way.

Of course, I see how the story goes back even farther: to a young girl who found a home in the church and then to a middle school youth pastor who wondered aloud if I might want to be a pastor when I grew up. Although her words never left me, I discarded her thoughts and declared the pastorate TOO NERDY. In high school, I dreamed of becoming a broadcast journalist (because, cool), even though an aptitude test my senior year told me a cruise ship director was the best fit of a vocation.

In another life I became a high school English teacher, and then worked yet another decade as a nonprofit director for an outreach ministry before pursuing the writerly, speakerly² life. In all of these places, I played the role of pastor and guide, even if I lacked an official title or designation. Along the way, I left the evangelical world, and I don’t know, came to believe that God welcomes everyone at the table. Gay and straight, female and male (and nonbinary too), black and white, rich and poor, in each one of those dividing monikers, the most glorious of inclusions happens — and it’s one that doesn’t require a defensive posture or fighting stance.

Because it just is. Because we humans just are.

When people ask me why (“No really, why and how, exactly”) I was drawn to the Episcopal Church, to a place that would make my Baptist grandfather roll over in his grave, it’s something I can’t always explain, even if I’ve come up with an answer or two along the way. I could tell you the story of sitting in a Seattle Public Library branch, writing an essay, and hearing a still small voice say, “Look up an Episcopal church in your zip code,” and then typing Episcopal church, 98115 into the browser and discovering an Episcopal church less than a mile away that just-so-happened to have a midweek noonday service starting in half an hour, and then again hearing that voice say, “Go to that service,” and then packing up my laptop and my books, and going to that service, and never looking back.

But I could also tell you about a couple of best friends who called the tradition home and a “Top Ten Reasons to be an Episcopalian” t-shirt that I secretly bought off the Internet but didn’t dare wear in public because I worked for Young Life at the time. Or I could tell you about how I loved the embrace of mystery and uncertainty and of not always having an answer for why we believed what we believed³ — of sometimes saying, “I don’t know,” because we just don’t know and actually being okay with it. I could tell you about going to services and relishing in simply hearing Scripture read aloud, in figuring out what I thought instead of being entertained and having ancient words dumbed down for me. And maybe I could even tell you about eating the bread and drinking the wine for the first time in this particular setting, within this tradition, and thinking, this, this is it, and never not cracking a smile during this time, because God, this pinnacle point is celebration and gift and community, and this is what it’s all about.

But here’s the funny thing: the discernment process is exactly that. It’s discernment, a process of grasping and understanding and, well, discerning, not just on my part but on the part of dozens of other humans. I can feel like I’m called to the priesthood, but those who are coming alongside me — who’ve been tasked with coming alongside me, entirely to help me discern this call — may not feel the same way.

Just as the outcome of becoming a priest when I grew up was never guaranteed — and still is not, I should add — it’s felt like a lot of what Emily P. Freeman calls next right things. There have been hiccups and tears, sure, but also joy and elation, and then questioning and wondering in the very next breath, and isn’t this part of the process of discerning, of figuring out all those next right things?

I don’t always know what’s going to be next, except for the next right thing. I think I’m going to keep writing and preaching, and maybe even someday, be honored to break apart that bread and that wine myself. I think I may spend time as a hospital chaplain, but perhaps I’ll also find a calling in a parish setting — either way, being one of those nerdy pastoral types my thirteen-year-old self fought so hard against.

Whatever it is, next right thing is the only thing I can lean into these days.

Pray for me?

Yours,

C.

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If you live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, you’re welcome to join me in person on June 6th. If you want to catch the service online, here’s the link to the livestream.

1. If you’re looking for religious musings, gardening insights, or a book review, that’s not going to happen today. Let me indulge in a personal essay as I prepare for my vows?

2. I’d like to make this a word.

3. You saw what I did there.