St Martins-in-the-Field, London

In the previous post,  A Vocation Journey: meeting Br John-Francis I recalled how I had made contact with Br John-Francis, one of the members of the Society of St Francis’ vocations team. Br John-Francis had invited me to attend a Vocations Day held at St Martins-in-the-Field.

Despite  feelings of ambivalence there was stronger feeling of wanting to know more about Francis and these Franciscans I had begun to learn about. So, on the Saturday morning I headed off to St Martins to join with others who were inquiring about vocations to Franciscan religious life in the Anglican and Catholic Church - the day was jointly hosted by members of both Franciscan communities.

When I arrived I met John-Francis and the other members of the Anglican and Catholic vocations teams. We began, of course, with some time of prayer. Then the brothers and sisters shared with us stories about St Francis and their lives as Franciscans.

As I listened to them share their stories and watched a video about St Francis a particular image jogged my memory. I saw the image of a man with birds surrounding him and my mind immediately went back to my visit to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, AZ that my friend Wendy had taken me to. Suddenly shivers went up and down my spine. It was a very eerie feeling. Not long ago I didn’t really know about St Francis or Franciscans and suddenly with a few months I had meet St Francis one two occassions; once in Sedona and now in London.

Figurine of St Francis of Assisi, Sedona, AZ.

During the day we had opportunity to spend some time looking through St Martins. I discovered a bookshop in the lower part of the Church. They had a copy of Celebrating Common Prayer a version of the Society of St Francis’ Office Book. I had come from a Church background which did not use prayer books so I found navigating this one somewhat of a challenge. However, the directions and explanations of the various Offices in the book gave me enough information to be able to learn to navigate and use the book.

At the end of the day we finished with a service of prayer for discernment of vocations. As we were leaving a remember talking to one of the ladies that had come to inquire about being a sister. I’m not sure what happened to her or any of the others, or whether any of them joined the communities they were inquiring into. Indeed as we parted I still was left with feelings of ambivalence; a theme I want to take up in the next post - A Vocation Journey: feelings of ambivalence.

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I have to say I’m not the one to quickly jump on the band wagon of the latest fad to be introduced. And I’m certainly one who is more interested in structured approaches to things. I prefer to know the who, what how, where and when of things; not the whoever comes, whatever happens approach we heard about and experienced on out last formation weekend.

But I’m also one to acknowledge insight from things, regardless of how ‘gimmicky’ it can sound at the time. We had an opportunity to experience this style of meeting leadership. Where you basically ‘go with the flow’ and essentially what happens happens.

So there we were sitting around but finally conversations began to take off. Of course what happens on tour stays on tour but I’m happy to share some interesting observations I made from the session about the experiences I have been having with formation over the last year; which as some know has been the proverbial roller coaster ride.

The main insight for me was that when it comes to participating in the formation program I’m currently involved in I sometimes feel out of phase, kind of like trying to stand in two worlds at one time and not necessarily feeling anchored in either one. The consequence seems to be a tendency toward bucking at the feeling of being out of sync. What does that mean.

Well on the one hand I feel like I’ve already survived a formation process where my world for a while was turned upside down and all over the place. Landing in pieces I felt like I had to re-establish my world as a person taking on a life in religious vows. And for a while that seemed to be heading toward a calm sea. I could see direction and began to feel as though my sense of vocation have finally found some beginnings of stability.

Then when I commenced the ordained ministry formation program I felt jolted right back to the roller coaster again. I felt I was being asked to go back to the beginning of that whole process of being torn apart and being ‘formed’ again, but this time only to essentially return to do the things I was doing already. I also felt that while there was an abstact level of acknowledgement of my previous roller coaster ride of formation there was no sesne of a concrete acceptance of it.

On the weekend as I talked about how I was feeling about this, how I felt in some sense being pulled between two worlds I began to realise where part of the tension comes for me and how that tension gets expressed often in not so productive ways.

As I was driving down the freeway tonight, or should I say sitting in the Coronation Drv parking lot, I was thinking a little more about this. I was trying to get to College to join some other ordinands for evening prayer.

As I was waiting for a parking officer to come along and book me for being in a no standing zone, commonly called the express way, I realised another aspect of the tension. In some respects many ordinands have been told to give up their former lives of positions they had in the secular world to enter a new mode of vocation, hence the need for a period of transition and time of adjusting and learning, commonly called formation.

Yet here I was leaving behind my community who I would normally be with for evening prayer to be with another community for evening prayer, thinking that this is where it all feels a bit odd, and out of sync. That is while it is true of many, but certainly not all ordinands, formation is a period of leaving one mode of life and entering another; specifically, leaving a world of predominantly secular to predominantly religious, for myslelf and a few others, this is not such a clean distinction.

For those who have held secular professions and now moving toward a religious vocation that cut seem clean and necessary. But what of people who are in the process, for whom there is no leaving, no clean cut. That is, I am not being called out of religious life as a Franciscan to start a new religious vocation. I will continue to live the vows I have taken in the community I made my profession in; and God willing soon make this a life decision and make my life profession in vows. I am not being called to seperate from vocation but rather to continue to express that vocation, perhaps with an added dimension of ordained ministry.

When attend a Tuesday Mass or Friday evening prayer I think about how I leave my community that I am called to, to be a part of a group that I feel out of step with.

I hope reading this you don’t get the impression that I think I know it all and that the formation program I am presently a part of has no value. It does. I think that what I am saying is that I need to look at how being part of two expression of vocation, one of which I feel formed and in continual formation with, and the other which feels like it is sending me back to the beginnings of the life long journey of formation that I began over 5 years ago, feels to me like I’m out of sync and constantly having to adjust each time I move between the two.

I think this was the most significant part of my last weekend, and has given me some interesting things to think about.