I feel compelled to state that I do know the reason that I left a pastoral path. That was something that I talked through with my advisor there, and something that I had been struggling with for a while. What I don’t know, necessarily, is the reason that I left St John’s in the way that I did.
I left my MDiv behind because I do not do well in front of a crowd. Simple as that.
Put me in front of a person, and I can have a conversation with them1. Set me loose in a crowd and I am fine. If you set me down in the middle of the 13th Street Plaza in the middle of the dinner rush or in downtown Boise and watched, I suspect that you would see nothing out of the ordinary.
I don’t say this to brag. Rather the opposite, actually, The recognition that I do okay on the street in the middle of a crowd because, after a certain point, I cease being able to see the people around me as real people and the weight of their presence no longer weighs on me, and just how low a number that needs to be before I cannot keep up with individuals is embarrassing. Three people I can manage. Four is a stretch. Staff meetings are difficult.
Drop me on the altar in front of a congregation and expect me to connect not just with the congregation but also with God and I get lost before I can get started. If I were able to focus on just one of these things, if I were able to look out over the heads of the parishioners and see only cardboard cutouts of ears and snouts, moving in time with the liturgy, I would likely be able to do that — I gave my fair share of speeches. If I were able to participate wholly in the divine rite and wrap myself in the mystery of tradition, I would be more than happy — I have my fair share of rituals.
But that’s not what mass is. Mass is connecting the congregation to God, and that means being the conduit between the two of them, and that I cannot do.
I recognized this early on, before even applying for St John’s, and set my mind specifically on powering through this deficiency. I was able to learn so much, could I not learn how to provide communal spiritual interaction?
Alas, some things are intrinsic and immutable. I left because I recognized this fact. And so, it turns out, did my teachers.
I bring this up because work2 asked us all to provide presentations in our weekly staff meetings, something which the cynic in me explains away as “prove that you’re paying attention and doing your job to higher ups and call it a ‘brown-bag lunch’.”
Fine. Whatever. I can write a little speech. I rather liked the practice of writing speeches and homilies in school, and if the style in which I journal is anything to go by, I still very much do.
I don’t mind the writing, I just mind the thin sheen of bureaucracy that colors everything about dealing with my employer, sometimes.