Call
I’ve been beginning the process, through work, of a “call.” I work at a church sometimes, although now it is more than just sometimes (I call it “church work”). The pastor wants to “call” me to be a form of a “lay minister.” So I must meet with the Synod. The pastor coached me a bit. “Do not tell them you’re not very religious. And maybe use the word ‘theology’ instead of ‘religion’ when you’re talking about your academic interests. But be honest as well.” The meeting with someone from the Synod is scheduled for next Tuesday. Today is Friday. I have been stressed all week.
Part of this church work, for me, will be to teach people about interpretation of texts. The pastor is leading the study and wants my help. And I am reading a portion of Heidegger’s Being and Time as a way of figuring out how people have intepretted interpretation. Studying things like these be important. So Heidegger says, “Only because the Being of ‘there’ receives its Constitution through understanding and through the character of understanding as projection, only because it is what it becomes (or alternatively, does not become), can it say to itself ‘Become what you are,’ and say this with understanding.” I open my Instagram feed, seeing my more religious friends posting a Bible verse about the Holy Spirit. I have stopped, as of today, calling my job “church work.” I have begun, instead, to call it “work.”
We’re trying--me and the pastor--to rescue lesbians from Cameroon, as part of work. I’ve been finding organizations for the pastor to utilize, so that the lesbians he knows personally (and hopefully the rest of the rainbow alphabet living there too) can escape to a country where being gay is okay.