Reasons I'm Not Staying

This is, I suppose, a post a long time coming, and also a long time in the making.  So when better to put it up than on New Years day?

In telling a tale that manages to somehow be episodic, ongoing, and yet coming to a close, I have no clue how to go about doing this.  But I'll give it my all.  In honor of the time of year, I suppose an anniversary is the best place to begin.

It was just about a year ago, on January 3rd, that I had my now-seemingly-mythical meeting with my District Committee on Ordained Ministry (DCOM) in order to see if I was fit for continuing forward in the ordination process.  Had things gone well, I would have become a "certified candidate" well on my way to someday becoming a pastor in the United Methodist Church.  That was The Plan.  That was the way things were going to go.  Hell, as far as I was concerned, that was the way God intended things to go.  Needless to say, things didn't go well.  I see at least two reasons for this.

Reason 1 - The Psychological Profile

This particular DCOM meeting was, in effect, a kind of high-impact job interview crossed with a job performance meeting, except the entire thing was set in potential tenses and things that haven't happened yet.  So the process is based instead on what ministerial experience you do have (another problem since I was working as a ministry associate at BU's Marsh Chapel, which was amazing but apparently not adequate...), and of course, the psychological profile.  Someone such as myself who is, let's put it kindly, crap at networking has pretty much no contact ever with the people that form the DCOM, so this was my only chance to let them know who I am.

Herein lies the problem.  I took the actual profile tests during a Not Very Good semester about a year before, during a particularly stressful time.  Three words:  Pastoral Care & Counseling.  So everything bad was damn near magnified in the results.  I finally received them at a review session during the summer.  If I may, a few choice lines, just to show how crazy-intense the language choices were...

"The candidate is overwhelmed by anxiety, tension, and depression"
"[He believes] that life is hopeless and that few things will work out right"
"uncomfortable in relationships with women and insecure in male oriented [roles]"
"poor memory, concentration problems and an inability to make decisions"

That's just the first page.  Of three.  As far as the testing folks were concerned, ministry behind a pulpit was not for me, absolutely, completely, 100%.

So that's what I was going in with.

Reason 2 - The Crying Game

There's a thing about me that I'm still super-duper self-conscious about.  I cry at weird, inappropriate, and unhelpful times.  Saving Big Fish and a little bit during Frozen recently (Seven words:  Do you want to build a snowman?), I don't cry at movies.  I don't cry during songs or musicals.  I might get a tad choked up during sad ceremonies.

But I stress-cry sometimes.  It's especially bad in socially stressful situation.  Put me in a cramped room with between 1 and 15 people whom are in some way "up the ladder" from me, add a pinch or two of stress, and I'm liable to break down in tears.  It sucks, a lot.  When I got in a bad car accident a few years ago, I cried when I called dad to come help take care of things.  When I screwed up big time at my Busch Gardens job and they had to have a meeting with multiple people to sort things out, I cried in front of all of them.  When I had a meeting with Doctor Darr to discuss one of my first big bad grades in theology school, I cried right then and there in her office.

So you can imagine, to some degree, what was bound to happen when I had a super important meeting with nine people in lay and ministry positions who were to determine my future, and they had in their hands that absolutely atrocious psychological profile.  I held it together okay for a while, until we started talking about my passions in ministry.  And I started talking about how I really cared about those left behind by the church.  I told painful stories about people's responses to queerness and disability in the church, and I started to cry.
I try to be a 21st century progressive person about it.  I know it's not shameful, it's a purely biological response my body has decided on to deal with stress.  But shame knows no logic.  It happened to me a lot when I was a kid too, so I spent years getting really good at being stoic.  But everyone knows how well bottling up works.  So every time, I absolutely hate myself for these little break-downs.  Which means when it happens in situations like this, there's this lovely little shame spiral of tearing up, hating myself, tearing up more, hating myself more, rinse, repeat.

So.

I had already run one gauntlet of questions about my profile, and then we ran through another gauntlet after that little session, so I was particularly shaken by the end of it.  But I did my best to remain positive.  Every time someone asked about the meeting, I'd say "Yeah, not great, but I think it's gonna be okay" or something similar.  Again, I learned to be stoic.  Show no fear.  Grin and bear it.  Et cetera.

It took only two days for them to tell me that I had been dropped from the ordination process.  It took a few more days before I dropped the news on everyone else.  I had to process it myself first, I had to get myself in a headspace where I could share the information.  I had to prepare myself for the stares of confusion and disappointment, and perhaps the worst, the frustration of nothingness.  What else could you really say or do?  But as I said in my other post, I had more school and a graduation and an internship to think about.  I would deal with it in due time.

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That was all just lead-up.  Hopefully it wasn't a chore to read, because that's just the prologue.  Most of that is familiar information.  The purpose of this post is to finally have the courage to admit the rest of the story, such as it is, so far.

So up-front, I went through my period of disbelief, almost refusing to believe I could really be let go so easily.  Then, there was the time of hopefulness, where I knew I would get things figured out somehow.

The next big one was Doubt.

I'm not referring here to the doubt of my calling so much as the sudden realization that I was now free to believe anything at all.  I was tied to no dogma except that which my heart and mind found to be good and true.  And that was perhaps the most exciting, terrifying, earth-shattering part of this whole thing.  Even moreso just how quickly some things left me.

Jesus was the first to go.  I hesitate to put something so seemingly big in such a lighthearted manner, but I really think it does come down to just how much of a hipster I am.  Even in the most earnest and well-meaning settings, I became confounded and even frustrated with Christocentrism.  I hated prayers that were addressed solely to Jesus.  In many ways, I saw him as a celebrity that nobody would just shut up about, and I almost hated him for it.  I allowed myself, perhaps for the first time ever, to truly understand real doubt.  Not to merely humor an idea, but to believe it.  To believe that Jesus wasn't who he said he was.  I stopped taking Communion most days, except when I was leading Sunday mornings at Marsh Chapel.  I generally stayed silent during the Lord's Prayer.

Next, I suppose it was God who went.  Was God One?  Was God Only?  Was God anything at all?  Or was god a figment?  I repeat, these were not little philosophical games I played with myself.  I wasn't dipping my toe in the water, I was throwing caution to the wind.  Perhaps I was actually an agnostic.

The real shocker, true to form, was when the Holy Spirit went, or perhaps more aptly the concept of the spirit and soul at all.  I was burning it all down to the ground until nothing was left but ashes, from which I could build whatever I damn well felt like.

And while it was kind of exhillarating and freeing, I should reiterate that I was in my final semester at theology school and interning at Boston University's own chapel.  We talked of plans for future ministry and where God was in our lives and I was in not one but two different preaching courses.  Bearing the load of extreme doubt in the midst of all that was, ironically, turning me into the very person that my psych profile said I was.  Anyone paying attention during my This I Believe presentation, actually reading between the lines and seeing past the jokes will see just how scattered I was.

Summer only made it worse.  When I was at school, I was busy, even if it was with something I was no longer sure I even wanted or believed in.  Being home and jobless, it was just me and Netflix and XBox and sweltering heat and hanging out with the few people I care about.  Here it almost started to feel like nothing but questions and judgment.

"So how is the job hunt going?"
"Any churches biting?"
"You gonna get a church soon?"
"Not even youth ministry?"
"You're too qualified for youth ministry"
"Are you in the ordination process?"

There was a lot of lying and evading on my part those first few months.  Just filling out a job application or padding my resume gave me literal mini-panic attacks.  Sooner or later a church was going to want to hire me, then call up the district and find out what had happened and I'd lose another opportunity.

Things were getting bad.  I was in my home church, and I was out of the "BU Bubble" and being reminded of just how much I'd been pampered by the seminary lifestyle.  God was always He, always Lord, always a million things that I didn't believe in even when I did still believe.

Okay, reader, take a deep breath.  That was the low point.  Everything sucked and I hated my life.  Yes, there were some dark thoughts there, and it was around the time that certain more dangerous ideas entered my head that I knew I needed help.  There is a light at the end of this shitty tunnel of a year.

So I got help.

I saw a psychiatrist and got these nifty little white pills.  I'm seeing an amazing counselor who says the nicest things.  I have a job.  My brothers, some friends of ours, and I have a weekly tabletop game that is absolutely the highlight of my week.  I'm going to a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship where I know my doubts are welcomed with open arms.  I'm tearing up just writing this, and for the first time in a long time I'm not ashamed in the slightest of that fact.  I'm happy.  2013 can kiss my ass, and so help me, I'll kiss 2014's ass if it buys me a little good luck.  Speaking of superstitious beliefs (is ass-kissing superstition?), my thoughts aren't so dark anymore.  I don't know what I believe, but I'm feeling really comfy in the greys again.  I like the greys, that's where I live year-round.  I have a cottage with a stocked fridge.  You should come by.

Photo Courtesy:  Hyperbole and a Half

As for the title of this blog, it's my own little snarky jab at the Reconciling Ministries Network of the UMC and their #ReasonsIStay thing.  A lot of people are hanging around in the UMC despite our Discipline's harsh stance towards queer folk.  And bully for them.  The UMC's gonna need 'em.

I've basically decided at this point that I can't be that person.  I suppose I might say, in my own self-deprecating way, that I'm not strong enough.  Whatever you might call it, that's not my place.  I'm not a culture warrior, and I have pretty much zero interest at this point in changing hearts and minds.  And I refuse to try again in an ordination process that refuses to recognize what real grace looks like, or that doesn't know the first goddamn thing about psychology.  After all, look at me now.  Am I the picture of mental well-being yet?  Hell no, but I've only been at this, realistically, about three months.  Imagine what would have happened if they'd given me a year to get myself together.  They'd never have lost me.  I'd never have doubted.  But they forgot Wesleyan Tenet #1 - Grace.  They showed no grace whatsoever for a soul who was hurting.  I wasn't unfit for ministry, and I'll prove that some day.  But I'm not going to do it through a system that doesn't even respect me enough to think I could become a better person.  Which is weird, because I could have sworn that was the whole idea.

Funny.

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So there you have it.  That's been my year.  I'm basically going to work on ignoring most of it from about January through October or so.  Then I might actually be able to call 2013 a friend of mine.

In related news, I'm hoping to make this blog more of A Thing.  My sole resolution this year, except perhaps for the usual "Lose, Like, Five Goddamn Pounds, You Fat-Ass, Seriously, How Hard Is That?" is to blog once a month.  I think I can work with that.  We'll see how it goes, eh?

Happy Freakin' New Year.

PS - Yo, if anything here sounds like something you would be interested in talking about, just let me know.  Comment, send me a message, send me an e-mail, call me up, whatever.  I'm doing about a million times better and I really do want to hear from folks and do so when I'm not in a stupid head space.  Seriously, whether it's to catch up or to talk about how much depression sucks ass, I'm here.