THERE is a rodent in the prairies which runs so fast that its brain cannot keep up with its body. I have a lot in common with this rodent. For someone who moves faster and speaks louder than most people around me, the search for God’s “still small voice” as I discerned a call to ministry required a radically new way of seeking.
The discernment of a priestly vocation is the opposite of a secular career choice. You don’t simply decide to become a vicar, train for the position, and apply for a job. You discern a call from God, and then your bishop decides whether you should apply to train (I don’t know about the job part yet). The priestly vocation embodies vocatio proper: not self-selection, but divine summons; a voice that speaks through rather than from you. Yet, without dazzling supernatural signs, how does one distinguish between a passion that comes from the self, and a calling from on high?
I saw that the more fitting my credentials, the harder it was to differentiate between career progression and God’s call. How enviable, I thought, to be a burned-out solicitor or melancholy estate agent discerning a call to priesthood! How unlucky to already be a theologian and preacher! I finally understood why my friends from nice Christian homes often regarded my radical conversion with a kind of holy envy, viewing my testimony as somehow more authentic than their gentle amble along the National Trust footpath of faith. The elusive “call” seemed harder than ever to discern.
AS SOMEONE who finds clear shouts of lively encouragement easier to identify than the “still small voice of calm”, like the prairie rodent I scurried off to various members of the cloth to ask how they ascertained their calling. The most practical advice came from my vocations adviser, who quietly hinted that, if one starts saying “yes”, doors begin opening; and, if one does this prayerfully, God guides you through the right door.
This sounded rather more kinetic than waiting for whispers on the wind; so I began saying “yes”, and attended discernment groups and prayer retreats, and diligently read priestly manuals aimed at young men in the 1960s — all the while saying to God, “I have no idea how I can train to be a vicar while I home-school my little girls.”
I arrived early to a vocations group held in the airy, medieval rooms of a Cambridge college. Struggling to recline on the medieval sofa, I posed my question about calling, and the chaplain’s response (along with the sofa) made me sit bolt upright: “Ah, yes, your ‘call’ — your Gollum’s ring,” he said slowly, with a smile. From his apparent irreverence, I assumed (rightly, as it turned out) that he must be on to something terribly profound. Hold your call lightly, he suggested: see it more as light illuminating the path, not a precious and weighty burden to possess, which you will struggle daily to surrender. Take it lightly and trust the journey.
IN FACT, the levity of the clergy was striking. Like all laity, I presumed the clerical collar was intended to choke the wearer, but I kept meeting such light-hearted vicars that I began to wonder why I’d assumed holiness required heaviness.
I was seeking certainty and solemnity in my calling, yet everywhere I kept finding a type of biblical frivolity — priests who assumed that Christ meant what he said about his yoke being easy and his burden light. I had thought that I needed something definite and weighty, but discovered a type of spiritual gravity that flowed upwards.
I shadowed the chaplain at a local independent school. When barely anyone appeared for the midweek service, I felt mortified on her behalf, but she smiled broadly and explained with inner serenity that she trusted God had brought precisely whom he intended. A few days later, I interrogated the wise and reverent dean of a great cathedral on how he knew he had been called. “I’m not sure I have been,” he replied cheerfully; and his cassock swayed as he retreated down the nave, giving the distinct impression that he might have been skipping.
IN THE reams of paperwork that my diligent ADDO produced for the bishop, one phrase stood out in the record of our searching conversations: “We laughed a lot.” I felt that I had begun to understand G. K. Chesterton’s observation that “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” I stopped approaching my calling like academic research, and gave up consulting my CV as proof of my vocation. I worried less about personal prophecy and more about establishing daily rhythms of prayer.
Then, there landed in my inbox the world’s most brilliant articulation of female priesthood by Alison Milbank, describing how women bring something uniquely feminine to priesthood — mothering to the office itself — and I felt sudden peace that ordination might deepen, not dilute, my vocation as wife and mother.
With this new clarity, I faced the practical challenge of the formal process itself. Being prone to motion sickness, I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about taking part in the “carousel conversations”: six Zoom interviews comprising Stage One in the formal discernment process. Yet, I passed this stage with minimal nausea, and, in God’s infinite kindness, the feedback came in loud shouts of encouragement.
THE final stage is a residential conference with the bishop’s advisers, involving in-depth conversations and a group activity with other candidates. It plays out as a beautiful inversion of secular job interviews: rather than compete to outshine others, we were invited into a space of mutual flourishing, where our authentic selves could be truly seen and heard by the compassionate advisers. It felt fitting, in the closing service, to be instructed to take off my name badge and lay it on the altar. With one voice, the advisers sent us out with a prayer of commission, and at this symbolic climax, I dissolved into tears.
So, I have laid down my name on God’s altar, my rodent heart drumming its frantic rhythm as I write this sentence, mere hours before the bishop’s decision. Yet we worship a God who makes every grave a gateway; so I trust that, should this door shut, it will appear not as a closing but rather as a compass pointing towards that country where all paths converge, and where we are, at last, called by our true names.
Dr Josephine Gabelman is the author of A Theology of Nonsense (Wipf & Stock, 2016). In September, she will become part of the first cohort of Ridley Hall’s new, non-residential pathway, aimed at making ordination training more accessible to those juggling other responsibilities, such as employment or childcare.
