‘What a wacky job!’ (accompanied by eyes out on stalks) is thus far my favourite reaction to the news that I am training to be a vicar. This particular conversation was a while back now and I still don’t know whether to be amused or concerned that this came as such a shock! But ‘wacky’ or otherwise, it’s really as much a surprise to me as to others, that I find myself the proud new owner of a ’magic’ collar. And, as the folks at St Barnabas heard last week when I regaled them with excerpts from my old school reports, it's not what I would have anticipated when I was sitting in the careers office at school. ’Angela is painfully shy’ was the recurring theme of my school reports, along with observations about a lack of confidence associated with anything to do with public speaking. So how then does a person who would naturally choose to sit behind a pillar at church, end up in one of these conspicuous collars and standing up the front? Perhaps I should know better than to be surprised. After all, some of the the biggest hitters in the Bible are amongst the most unlikely candidates you could ever meet. Moses is crippled with angst, Jonah is riddled with self-doubt, Matthew makes his living from fiddling other people out of their taxes, and Peter, the ‘rock’ on whom the church is built, is indecisive to the point of fickle. And, yet, unlikely and ill-qualified as they may seem, God calls them to do a job and, surprise surprise, that’s what they end up doing — after a while, as readers, we can’t imagine them doing anything else. At various points along my own journey, I’ve been asked to describe my vocation, and even after an expensive theological education, I’m largely stumped to come up with the words. I explained the process to St B’s in terms of a potter and the clay (and even that explanation is half-inched from the prophet Isaiah!) But as people on life’s journey, none of us is a hard-fired pot. We’re not the finished article; we’re pliable, mouldable and, like the potter and his clay, we warm up in the hands of God. Its been a long journey for me, the moulding and warming up began when I was about 20, but I didn’t do anything about it until about five years ago. I’d had both my children, then my Mum died not long after our second was born, and I found myself at a kind of crossroads, wondering what to do, whether to go back to project management or to do ‘something else’. So I decided I would just let myself entertain the idea of being a vicar, sit with it for a bit, and see how I felt. There could be no harm in that, surely? A few coincidences later, I found myself sitting across a desk from the person in charge of rustling up new clergy in the Oxford diocese. I didn’t get the job he was interviewing me for, but I did get a phone call saying the panel were unanimously of the opinion that I should explore a vocation to ministry. And the rest, as they say, is history. This might resonate with you because the business of vocation and inner calling, isn’t just one for clergy and those in ‘vocational’ careers. We’ve become used to careers in medicine and education, therapy and social work, being described in terms of vocations — and how much more did we become aware of the extent to which this is is true, during lockdown, with medical staff moving out of home to continue their work? — but, there is a vocation, a calling, in each of us, sometimes buried deeply, but there nevertheless. And it's a calling to use the gifts and skills and talents that are uniquely ours, not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of those around us. I suppose in this sense, my job is ‘wacky’! But it’s one of many wacky jobs out there and the question: ‘What is your calling?’ is one for all of us. Exploring vocation isn’t without its risks, but speaking from experience I’d say its usually one which is worth taking! Rev Angela |
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