There, squirming in such a comfortable chair, made to feel prickly by the moment and its intensity and not the leather or the cushion, it is not my ass, but my brain that is jittery.
As a priest, interviews are a whole different beast.
This moment, as I recall was the most agonizing for what it did to my weak mind and strong heart. Crippled by conviction. Angered by intention. And my adversary doesn’t cut the imposing figure. I have nearly a foot on her and easily outweigh her by 100 pounds. But it is her logic, her sharpness, that carves me up and serves me in seconds.
She takes my resume, my writings, and she picks out words that clearly hint at my theological leanings. Words like “prophetic” and “transformation” reveal to her what container to place me in. And she swiftly dispatches with my protests, as she closes the lid, having so easily stuffed my body into so small a box.
My arguments are weak. I am unprepared. My need to defend my convictions atrophied from lack of use.
Then the humiliation turns, and I realize she isn’t intending to eviscerate me, but open me. Reveal me. Perhaps to her curious brain as a sort of dissection. Perhaps more so to the room itself, that the true me might by psychically revealed, disembodied, so that the two of us might examine my theology, my practice, my very faith.
I recall the sudden rush of joy as the truth of her new line of questioning becomes clear: I will leave here changed.
It seemed simple enough, a question about confirmation preparation, I think. She asks, not so much the specifics of what I do, but the character and expectation. I am riding high from the discerning process for confirmation in Western Michigan and was convinced that we needed more training and conviction around the sacrament.
Then she asks
“What about baptism?”
She pauses.
“If the Spirit brings someone in to be baptized, I say we baptize them on the spot.”
My heart rescued my poor brain, as she introduced a fidelity to the very nature of the sacraments lost to most of our teaching. An idea of Spirit-led discernment and consistency, that I didn’t recognize in my own sacramental theology. In turning from confirmation to baptism, she exposed my own flawed understanding and hypocrisy.
She injected me with a dangerous idea. And it spread through me.
What if we are less controlling of the sacraments and more spontaneous? What if our expectations for “preparation” matched our belief in the Holy Spirit? And what if we treated each of the sacraments (and sacramental rites) as if they were not human controlled, but Spirit-led?
What if we stopped being gatekeepers and started being gateopeners?
It is what my generous heart has longed for the whole time.
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