The last thing I wrote here was a poem about the Transfiguration. I have been living in the time after a transformative moment ever since.
In February, I became a postulant in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark after two years of discernment. Three weeks later, I was accepted into Bexley Seabury Seminary. Two weeks later, I was given a scholarship by Bexley that means I have a lot of pressure taken off myself and my diocese. Three weeks after that, I launched Everloving Pride, a toolkit for churches that want to practice genuine, sustained welcome for LGBTQIA+ people.
I’m tired. (laughs)
The reading list I had so carefully constructed last April has become firmly moot. I started reading in response to a call because I had no map yet. The territory of discernment was unknown. I am so pleased to report that the pilgrimage of last year did not fail its plan. It has outgrown it in ways I never saw coming. The world before me is coming into focus, although this new vista is filled with mystery and a lot of things I have to learn.
While I was reeling in my paralysis after Lent, I went into my conference with the Commission on Ministry so they might interview me, review my progress, and decide if they recommended me to the bishop for postulancy. I did not at all expect to experience such multidimensional support. I was challenged lovingly, given a chance to speak frankly, and held in real love at a time of truly treading air. It healed something in me I did not yet know how to name until after it had healed. The bishop’s support, when she made me a postulant formally, has made me feel genuinely part of the church in ways I did not know I was allowed to feel.
I carry a little shame that it took so long. I was assured many, many times that this was always the case, whether I was made a postulant or not. But old trauma feels like truth until it’s truly flouted by experience. So what do I do? Live in regret? Repentance means turning, not groveling. You face a different direction, towards God hopefully, and you move your body. Trauma takes what it takes. The arrival is not diminished by whatever long road I took.
I did the readings I could fit in the few slow times during all of this change. I finished Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. His fire is disciplined and brilliant and fiercely hot. bell hooks is a patron saint of this whole endeavor, and her company is ongoing. I have ordered a few more of her books. Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, and Fujimura are waiting for the work they belong to as I create the map for this coming year. This map is already being overlaid by liturgy, classes, and seminarian concerns, so none of it is wasted.
Year Two looks very different from Year One. I am writing each week in shorter, more immediate bursts. You’ll be hearing from me more, but not for such long stretches. I am pacing myself by what the early church actually did in each season — the embodied ancient logic of Advent, Lent, and Ordinary Time. I read in response to where I am being called, not to what I had scheduled. I carry no fixed list beyond books of the Bible, and I have my curation as my guide. I am still me, but I need to listen to the season, the work, and the community to which I am now accountable, and I have to practice showing up.
My pilgrimage year began at Easter, a couple of weeks ago now, but I am letting myself flow instead of berating myself over a deadline I thought up. The church year is now my river. I am in Eastertide — the season of recognition, of gathering at table, and of being sent. I walked down the mountain of Lent not knowing any of this was coming. I am alight and pressing on.
The Creative Pilgrimage continues. My destination is no longer self-authored, and that turns out to be the point.
Thank you for accompanying me on this first year’s journey. God bless you and keep you.
And I hope to see you as we leave the road and hit the river together.
