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liturgical fear factor

Another weekend of skool down. I got my first round of papers back, with generally good comments except one reflection paper, where the instructor pretty much called me on my bullshit. I hate that. Dammit, I should be able to just write something clever and surface-y and not have anyone notice that I haven't really gotten at anything real. It's always worked for me so far.

I can see that skool is going to have to be something that I'm constantly re-committing to. I mean, what isn't, but I keep finding myself having to move through the fear rather deliberately on this one in a way that I don't have to so much with my job or my marriage or other things.

The fear isn't about the coursework, which is time-consuming but not difficult. I'm sure I spend more time procrastinating and bitching about it than it takes to actually do it. It's more the bigger part, which is the formation, the part about turning me into a Deacon. The classes are really just an excuse to get their hands on us for three years. It won't matter if I can't remember who was at which fourth century church council (although I think the church history class is my favorite), but it will matter if I don't remember to conform my will to that of Christ and get that obedience thing down, or if I throw a random Alleluia in the dismissal during Advent. Ok, there are worse things than a seasonally inappropriate Alleluia, but there are a few practicalities of worship that I need to get my head around. And the singing. Not thinking about that one.

I haven't even begun to get the real fear about The Process yet, since I have wisely put that off a year. I can't even imagine what it would be like if I also had to defend my life to the Commission on Ministry right now. I need to get to a point where my first impulse isn't to talk people out of ordaining me.

And then there was the thing at lunch yesterday where my intended statement, that one could go to deacon skool and still remain a layperson, came out as: one could go to deacon skool and still get laid.
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