Another Day

Denise is slowly warming up to James. She allowed him to sleep in the bed with us last night--Denise was in her usual place between Betsy's ankles, James was just above our heads. Early in the morning Denise sulked downstairs while the kitten licked by nose and generally made himself adorable. Denise thinks kittens are obnoxious. When I came home from work, they were much closer. They even touch noses sometimes, but other times Denise still complains about the kitten. BTW, the kitten is easting at least twice as much Denise.

Contemplative Eucharist went well this morning. Then I've spent 2 1/2 hours returns calls and e-mails. Amazing how much of this job/vocation is spent communicating with people. There is some time spent making decisions, but mostly I just relate to people, share ideas, coordinate activities, etc.

Got a call today, for instance, from someone who wants to make us an Out of the Cold Program location. OOTC provides weekly meals for street people here in the GTA. A variety of churches and locations provide venues for the weekly meals. COTM was once such a place, but stopped because of low turnout and volunteer burnout. Apparently another church is being renovated and so they are looking for another place in our area to host the meals. I feel this may be a stretch for us--our facilities are already being used 6 nights a week! But I agreed to meet with the coordinator to see what's possible.

The other day I saw a ministry (not at COTM) that has been non-functional for at least four years. It started at an outreach ministry, but then the neighborhood changed and it became non-relevant. But the congregation can't let it die completely, so it continues to drain resources from the host church despite the fact that it is no longer serving many people. This is a classic situation in churches. We have a hard time cutting off dead limbs. "Pruning"--they call it in the Diocese. Sometimes I notice a lack in courage on behalf of congregational leaders to call a dead thing "dead." Sometimes we worry that the volunteers will feel bad if we dismantle the programs that they are barely managing to sustain--but my experience is that such volunteers are usually relieved to be relieved of ministries they know have become irrelevant, they just needed permission to let it go. But it takes skillful discernment to determine when people are sustaining ministries because they love them and when they are doing it because they think the priest/church wants it to continue. Luckily, I haven't encountered too much of that at COTM.

Lots of craziness at COTM today. I'm realizing that I need to be more sophisticated about managing my time now. There was a time when it was not very valuable, but now it's valuable not just to me, but to other people, as well. So I've got to manage my calendar with more care. At SMM I always felt that my primary value in ministry was celebrating the mass, and as long as I did that in a certain way, I was interchangeable with any other priest that agreed to conform to particular ritual rules. There was always a tension between the individualism and special skills that that people wanted to see from me and the conformity to a particular model of priesthood that was expected from other quarters. Now, I get to be myself and my own kind of priest, and that is truly mind-blowing. I'm growing more every week as a priest and as a christian now than I was in a year at SMM.

This is not saying anything negative about SMM. There are times and ministries where being faithful means waiting. God answers "Yes," God answers, "No," and sometimes God answers, "Wait." More than once at SMM I quoted the Milton poem that has that line, "They also serve, who only stand and wait." I was preaching not only about my own ministry, but that of the parish that was clearly waiting for it's new mission to emerge. It was beginning to emerge as I left. I saw glimpses of it in the Capital Campaign and other initiatives. But waiting is hard when you are 30!

So now I'm at my own place and the voices are saying, "now, now!" and so I'm starting to run late for things because I have other places to be, other fires to start. This is my ministry now, lighting the fires that I hope will burn bright on the hill.

-t