Ministry School: The Beginning

As some of you know, I have begun attending ministry school. Hopefully by this time next year I will be an ordained, inter-faith minister who is able to perform weddings, funerals, naming ceremonies, baptisms, and Worship Services. 


The most popular question I get asked when people find out that I am in school to become a minister is "What made you decide to do that?"


The answer is cheesy but honest: I am meant to. 


I guess I've always known what people mean when they say they are called to a life in service to a higher power. I have always felt that way too. I think I assumed everyone feels that but I suppose maybe that's not the case. 


I've never been one to truly question IF there is a God/Spiritual Force in the Universe. My questions have all centered around what form that spirit takes, how it moves through us, within us and around us in this life. 


I don't know the answers to those questions yet, and I don't believe that ministry school will provide them to me. What I do know, however, is that by choosing to put my feet on this path, I am walking towards the person I am meant to be - towards becoming the Tree that the Seed within me contained when I was born. 


What I guess I mean in simplified terms is: I am figuring out those answers on my own, and ministry school is a piece to that puzzle for me. 


We are all here acknowledge and embrace our own spiritual place in the universe. That is one of the quintessential purposes of every life. We each must decide what our personal vibration resonance is here and what other resonances we feel connected to. Each religion, each political party, heck, each restaurant, store, school or band even has a different vibrational essence that is being put out into the universe. We are drawn to those the things that match up with the essence of who we are, to those things that fit a piece of us inside. 


As we change, so do the things we are attracted to change to accommodate us. We cannot stick to something once we have outgrown it, it won't work anymore. Like that saying goes, you can't put a square peg into a round hole. It's true. You can't. Just like you can't force something to be there if it's not. That's okay though because where something ISN'T another thing IS. There are gifts to be had, and pieces to be matched, in all circumstances in life. 


And for me, one of the things I have always been attracted to is the ministry. I have always wanted to study and preach and share the true essence of spirituality with people. Whatever that means to me. And I want to share my resonance with people who resonate with it. I want to surround myself with spirituality, beauty, the belief in something greater. I want to step into the Knowing of it all and fully bathe myself in it. 


That is what ministry means to me. To learn, study, LIVE, embrace this unspoken but very much experienced side of life. Because to me, the Spirit IS life. It is the whole reason that we exist, it is the whole purpose behind it all. And I have always known that I am meant to give myself to that in one way or another. It's always been a driving force inside of me, and now it's time for me to begin to step up and acknowledge those little pulls on my heartstrings. 


I am so thrilled to be on this path, and so blessed that so many of you are interested in following it with me. 

Wordless Wednesday

i shake my fist at you, blogger!

I need to update for a moment and rant because blogger's formatting is SO infuriating that it almost makes me never, ever want to update again. 


Please understand that if you come here and there are large spaces between certain paragraphs that it was UNINTENTIONAL and that I spent an excessive amount of time getting angry while trying to fix the problem to no avail. 


I'll just have to write in html from now on but there are several scheduled posts that haven't been written in html and which I don't have the time to go fix. I shudder to imagine what they'll look like. I apologize for their grotesqueness in advance. 


Screw you, blogger and you're ridiculous formatting issues. 


And yes, I am being entitled about a free service. 

Rumi is amazing

I have a kind of one-sided (of course) mental love affair with Rumi poems. They just...well, they stir something within me.


Truth be told, if I could, I would obsessively read and study poetry many hours of many days. I love puzzles, I love enigmas, I love tricks and fancy plays of words. I love metaphors. I love lyrics and musicality.


I love poems. Even though they're "hard" to understand usually at first blush. That's what makes me really, really like them. They challenge me. 


Tonight I read the following Rumi poem. I opened the collection I have sitting on my desk to a random page and then leafed around until I found the poem that seemed to be speaking to me through the pages...and this is the one I landed on, and it is beautiful and I feel absolutely drawn to the process of transcribing it here on my blog so that's what I'm going to do:

"Put This Design in Your Carpet"

by Rumi

Spiritual experience is a modest woman

who looks lovingly at only one man, 

It's a great river where ducks

live happily, and crows drown. 

The visible bowl of form contains food

that is both nourishing and a source of heartburn. 

There is an unseen presence we honor

that gives the gifts. 

You're water. We're the millstone. 

You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes. 

You're spirit. We're the opening and closing 

of our hands. You're the clarity. 

We're this language that tries to say it. 

You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing. 

Any movement or sound is a profession of faith, 

as the millstone grinding is explaining how it believes

in the river! No metaphor can say this, 

but I can't stop pointing

to the beauty. 

Every moment and place says, 

"Put this design in your carpet!"

Like the shepherd in Book II, 

who wanted to pick the lice off God's robe, 

and stitch up God's shoes, I want to be

in such a passionate adoration 

that my tent gets pitched against the sky!

Let the beloved come

and sit like a guard dog

in front of the tent. 

When the ocean surges, 

don't let me just hear it. 

Let it splash inside my chest!