Work

The other day our mortgage broker asked me "occupation?"
I wasn't sure what to tell her.
Unemployed Minister?
Home Maker?
Mother and Wife?
I went with Minister.
It turned up on my final application as "Unemployed."

Now I do believe that once you've been ordained into the ministry, you are a minister as long as you live. I believe there are as many kinds of ministrys as there are ministers. But now that my vacation has ended (and with it my paychecks) I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing when I get up in the morning.

I'm starting to realize how rushed I was in my minister-mom role back in Silicon Valley, because now when I take the time to cook food from scratch, keep the house tidy, drive my son to swim lessons or camp, and get everything in order for the purchase of our new home, that seems to fill up a day pretty well. But still, if I don't get a couple of hours of I-am-working-at-the-computer-on-important-things time in the morning, I start to question my reason for being. Sometimes I think that my work is applying-for-a-job, but you can only send out so many resumes each day. Finally I called up the Tompkins County Religious Task Force for a Living Wage to see what the local justice-loving clergy were up to. I met with them last week. They are very cool.

But more to the point, I remember once a man in my dream group shared a dream in which he lost his wallet. The group suggested that if it were our dream, it might be about how we often confuse our work with our identity. Losing the wallet was a reminder that "I am not my job. I am not my work." When I was in seminary I remember being introduced to the Buddhist concept of "being" rather than "doing". It all seemed so obvious then. Who would value doing over being? Who would confuse their work with their identity? Well, me, it turns out. Wouldn't it be ironic if that turned out to be my work right now?