Call waiting: a journey to ordination

AS I WAS GROWING UP, the church was my one constant in a changing world. I was six months old when my father, a foreign correspondent with United Press International, was called to cover the story that would dominate the next decade, the Vietnam War. My mother and I flew from South Carolina to join him in Tokyo, then in Thailand, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong and London before finally returning to the U. S. when I was in the ninth grade. By that time I had already lived in seven countries and attended 11 schools.

I loved the church as a child because it was steady. In all those countries we worshiped as Anglicans, and the ritual and rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer let each new church be old again, and as dependable as lukewarm tea after services and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Church was a port of comfort in the stormy seas of expatriate life.

When people ask, "What made you want to be a minister?" my first response is, "I didn't." I didn't want to be a minister because I hoped to be rich. After four years of capitalist reeducation at high school in the United States, I wanted to be a political science major with an economics minor; I also registered for Mandarin Chinese. I was going to take my international upbringing in a much more lucrative direction. As the 1980s stock market soared, I believed not only that my plan was impressive-sounding when parroted to my parents' friends at cocktail parties, but that it really would make me rich. But just for fun, I allowed myself one course in the history of religion. Just one.

By the end of college, I was a religion major with an acceptance letter to Yale Divinity School. There had been no thunderbolt, but there had been the nurture of my church over the years, a church that encouraged me to think and to ask deep questions of God and the world. I'd been stimulated by courses on the history of Christianity taught through the lens of feminism and Marxism, and by bright students of all faiths and no faith duking it out with intellectual rigor. A rich undertow toward social justice in every class echoed the Sunday school lessons of my youth. And the more I got caught up in that undertow of social justice, the more I seemed to be pulled back toward theological education.

I knew I wanted to study the church, but I had no inkling what it might mean to lead one. I could barely put together the words to name a call to ministry. The best I could articulate was a rather vague "call to divinity school." Still, that acceptance letter gave me a new talking point at my parents' cocktail parties.

That summer I had an internship at a national newsmagazine. Having been the editor of my college newspaper, I expected a plum assignment in the news section. I was shocked to hear that my spot would be in "advertising and marketing."

"You mean, writing about advertising and marketing?" I asked.

"No, you won't be doing any writing. You'll be working in advertising and marketing, on the business side of the magazine."

"I can't believe you're working with the bean counters," my dad, the lifelong journalist, grumbled. In my romantic vision of myself, I wasn't a bean counter but instead a summer sojourner in a strange land, like Jesus, who ate with the tax collectors and sinners. My father and his journalist friends were the Pharisees who complained, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." By now, you can guess who, in all my humility, I was in this narrative.

At the end of the summer, I spoke to a new interim priest at my father's church and told him of my plans to attend divinity school. He responded with very little enthusiasm, pointing out that I had advanced upon all this without the help of my church, that I was venturing out to divinity school alone, and that I had skipped the ecclesiastical steps toward ordination. He asked me about my call to the ministry, and I could tell that what I said left him unimpressed. After our conversation, I called up Yale Divinity School to inform them I wasn't coming. "Not coming?" the woman asked. "But what is your reason?"

"I realize I don't know anything about real life. I've been in an ivory tower at college, and this summer I did work that I never knew existed except to disapprove of it. Furthermore, I have no idea what I would do after those three years at divinity school, and I've skipped all the appropriate ecclesiastical steps, and my priest hates me."

"Oh, you don't want to cancel," she said. "In cases like this, one simply defers."

"Defer? You mean, come later?"

"Of course," she said. "We hold your place. For up to two years."

"OK, put me down for that. But I can tell you right now, I'm definitely not coming."

"Very good, Dear," she said. "All the best, now."

A few weeks later, when the newsmagazine called and offered me a job, I accepted. It was my shot at the young urban professional lifestyle. I got a new car, adopted three cats and acquired a working woman's wardrobe. I was a grown-up.