My senior year in high school the yearbook (or newspaper?) took a survey of the seniors – most likely to do this, most likely to be that. I was voted most likely to be president. I loved politics – mostly international affairs.
When I was in jr. high I had the paper route in my neighborhood. It was just right for a jr. high kid. I had to give it up when I entered high school because of marching band. I was a percussionist, later to become a saxophonist. Anyway, so I would read the newspaper as I went on my route. I would get home and watch the NBC and ABC nightly news shows, and finish it off with the McNeal Lehrer News Hour on PBS. I was in jr. high. I haven’t admitted that to anyone in a very long time.
It didn’t get much better in high school, although I didn’t have much time for news programs – too busy with other stuff. I became a Social Studies teacher.
Just to prove I wasn’t absolutely a total freak, I also was voted one of the most “watchable” guys in school my senior year. Yup, that was me, breaking young girl’s hearts all over the place. All wasted. Of course, I got picked on, too. I wasn’t the most “sportlick,” as they say in Germany.
I was also voted most likely to become a reverend.
I became a “reverend” – a priest to be exact (never refer to an Episcopal priest as “reverend”).
Well, I love politics and I’m a priest. So, politics in Church is, well, it gives me goose bumps.
As an academic exercise it is very interesting to watch the power plays and the scheming and the conniving and the spin and all that. In the Church. It is sad, isn’t it?
I am always brought back to the ‘cure of souls.’ That is what I need to be focusing on, not ecclesial brinkmanship. It is too easy to get lost in the battles and the accusations and the misrepresentations of the truth. It is too easy to forget the fact that the world sees all this and runs away. And, I don’t really blame them. I wish they could get past the news reports and blog entries.
The life situations of real people – rich or poor, white or black, male or female, straight or gay, this or that – continue on. Life is hard all the way around. It is particularly hard, almost impossible in fact, for the people of most of the rest of the world. And we watch and participate in the crass politics and power plays of this Church and Communion while the real world goes on and tries to get by – a world moving further away from God.
I have a vestry meeting to get to. We welcome the new members today. Life goes on…