It is interesting how easily we avoid having spiritual conversations with our ordained colleagues. In attending to your own spirit, you might find it helpful to occasionally seek out a friend who would agree to enter into a spiritual conversation. At one point early in my career I was invited to join with a Catholic priest and a Methodist pastor to gather on a regular basis for an hour of prayer. We would gather for a brief lunch, listen to a half-hour tape on Centering Prayer by Basil Pennington, and then practice this silent form of prayer for about 45 minutes. As I look back on it, it was a tremendously nurturing time in my spiritual journey.
The first step is to think about who among your colleagues, not necessarily of your denomination, that you think might be responsive to an invitation to share in a period of regular spiritual conversations. Like my experience, it might be helpful to be guided by one of several CDs addressing an area of spirituality. However, it might also be rewarding to begin with just a personal time of sharing.
One possibility would be to agree to share your personal story of your sense of call. At your next meeting, you might want to continue by talking about ways in which your call has changed over the years and how that makes you feel.
A third conversation might focus on the pressures, compromises, and temptations that have affected your ability to respond to God’s call in your life. It might be helpful to recall that immediately following Jesus’ experience of God’s call at his baptism, the gospels recorded that he had to face the temptations of that call. This might take more than one conversation. How does meeting the expectations of ministry distort what you believe God has called you to do? How do the financial pressures on your life, family demands, desire to be seen successful, etc. threaten to distort your response.
This might be followed by sharing the ways that you have personally found to resist the temptations inherent in your call and exploring together what other practices might help. If the conversation has reached a level of honesty, some prayers of confession and assurance of forgiveness might be part of your conversation.
I would invite you to explore this possibility as a way of nurturing your own soul.
