Drowning in living water?

My last post might read like the flailing of a drowning man. I'd been testing the waters for many years in my early spiritual life, then I jumped into the pool a few years ago. Soon--and some might argue too soon--after I joined my church here in Dayton, I began exploring a call to the priesthood. Being dismissed from that call, I struggled and finally was led toward the vocation of theologian. But I still felt like I didn't belong, and it was exactly like the first time I tried to swim. Only today did I realize that--my spiritual director has always been helpful!

When I was about ten years old (I think), I went to the pool at Bomberger Park, near downtown Dayton. I went up on the slide, and slid into the pool. I had never really learned to swim, but I went down the slide anyway. Into the water I went. Under the water I went. I flailed about, surfaced, and went under again. Finally I came up a second time, and I was able to relax and stop flailing.

So it has been with my spiritual vocation. Over the last year, I've been flailing about in a pool of living water (or the Holy Spirit). I've been trying to grasp for anything I could reach, to support me spiritually. All the while, the water has been there, waiting for me to stop flailing about, to stop resisting and just allow the water to support me. In learning to swim spiritually, I have to let go of whatever I've been trying to grasp, let myself float in the Spirit, and then finally take the first tiny stroke of swimming.

What does this mean for me? Well, I've been grasping for the ordination process for a while, first in trying to become a priest and later in arguing with my bishop about the process. While I think there is still something seriously wrong with the process, it is the nature of an institution. I really feel through this vision that it's time to let go, to stop flailing about, and to allow myself to be supported by the Holy Spirit.

I am being called to the vocation of theologian. That means I'll sometimes be at odds with my church--but if a voice speaks in the wilderness and no one hears, does the voice really speak? So yes, that may mean I'm called to be the outsider voice that reminds the church what it means to be the church.

If you're swimming by holding onto the bricks in the side of the pool, are you really swimming? The bricks form a home for the water, but they are not the water. Likewise, the church buildings and hierarchies form a home for the Holy Spirit, but they are not the Holy Spirit. Like the mystics of the early church, I am called toward the spiritual core of my faith, not to the hierarchy that forms its boundaries.

Realizing that, I also realize that in the father's house of many dwelling places (John 14), my ministry takes me far more often outside into the fog than even in the foyer. What a perfectly vicious little circle I brought myself into when I titled this blog... :)