This is the view from my front window, and it never looked better than when I took this photograph earlier this week. A lovely little Lutheran church. Though I am a minister, and though I live right across the street, this is not my church- seems odd, I know. However, because I have become friends with this pastor and congregation, I am invited from time to time to fill the pulpit when their minister must be away. Today was just such a day.
When I walk out of the door of a parish like this one, I am often left asking myself questions about vocation. Is chaplaincy (the mode of ministry I currently embrace) my future, or might I someday see myself as a parish pastor? I used to tell people “never”, and tell them quite unequivocally. But then I find that I am immersed in the beautiful mystery of the sacramental moment when I bend toward the worshipper at the communion rail, and I wonder. I touch the top of the head of a child who has come forward with her parent, a child eager for that instant of blessing- I am thanked with a smile, and I wonder. And as I walk from the narthex back to the study after the service, and I see a table set with donut parts and apple juice (a table that is set just this way everytime I am there, ready for grazing adults and children), I wonder, because I know that this is the stuff of which memory is made. Sacred memory, at the intersection where God and people meet. It is hard for a minister not to want to be in the midst of such a place.
