Wooing God

(This post was written for RevGalBlogPals weekly e-reader:)

In around 10 days time, I’ll be ordained as a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
It feels like the consummation of a love affair I have been caught up in for the last 6 years.
Finding myself without a church to call home, I visited the local Episcopal church with the intention of taking time to rest while I looked at the worshiping community options available in my new locality.
Four years later, I was discerning a call to transfer orders from the denomination in which I had been ordained for over 25 years.
It’s been a journey – a journey that has involved body, mind and soul.
A journey in which I have re-discovered a playful God who messes with all our senses – not just our heads.
I have become a liturgy geek, passionate about beautiful words that declare our faith and close the gap between heaven and earth and I’ve loved learning the history of the Scottish Episcopalians who always seemed to be at the forefront of championing the underdog and protesting against parliamentary high handedness and who wrote their prayer books steeped in independent notions that nonetheless captured ancient practices and scholarship.
As I left a pastoral charge 6 years ago, to accompany ministers and congregations through cultural change in a process of discernment and renewal, the last thing I imagined was my own journey of discernment or the renewal of a vocation.
And I am reminded that authenticity consists in practising what we preach or teach.
I look forward to new adventures with the God who calls each of us beloved and invites us to join in a rhythm that is both ancient and new every morning.

Wooing God, may we follow wherever you lead, knowing that every blind alley leads us to you and every open trail reveals more of you and your place and purpose for us and for all of creation.

Liz Crumlish

BIOG
Liz Crumlish is a (soon to be) priest in the Scottish, Episcopal Church and a practitioner and educator in Cross Professional Supervision.
She has just co-authored Pastoral Supervision: Creativity in Action with her colleague, Michael Paterson

She also contributed to There's a Woman in the Pulpit, with other RevGalBlogPals 
and blogs regularly, here at www.liz-vicarofdibley.blogspot.com

Beyond the storm

 Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

When the storm is stilled

and the seas are calm

What then?

When the disruption eases

and a new normal takes hold

What then?

In all the signs we witnessed

along the way

where we felt despair

or glimpsed hope

how have we been changed

by the journey?

Who will we be

when we leave the boat

and step into new territory

carrying the baggage 

of all that is unfinished 

with us to the other side?

For it is not the end of the journey

but a call to come ashore 

and meet the new challenges 

that await our attention

in the knowledge

that the Jesus who rebukes the wind

and calms the waves

alights with us

on the other side.

The gift of being seen

 “To be fully seen is a rare and transformative gift”

Mirabai Starr - Wild Mercy

When I can “get over myself”

enough to make room for you

When I can hollow out

a you- shaped space

into which you feel the warmth of invitation

When I can sit side by side with you

in the awareness

that nothing is lost

but that all is gained

in mutual encounter

That

Right there

Is a transformative gift.

And it may even be

that the work made possible

in that rare gift of

you-shaped space

is secondary 

to the gift of contemplative seeing

that looks in love

and looks again

To be fully seen

An aspirational

and inspirational 

gift without measure.