Being 101

Sometimes I think it might be best not to think.  Or, maybe it might be best not to think so much, but then what is left to do once you become a worn out Methodist preacher and get sent out to pasture with a pension and a hope for a few more years.  Well, actually, it is not that bad, but it sounds good anyway.  One of the things being pondered in these recent days has taken me back to my seminary days.  Back in the early '70's people being trained for ministry were doing it in the midst of a time of radical social activism and the experience of the culture was reflected by what transpired in the classroom.  

As I recall there was a year long emphasis on supervised ministry.  One quarter fifteen or twenty of us sat around in a circle close enough to hold hands and shared a collective naval gazing experience.  I never liked it.  Another quarter I spent in a food distribution center in a poor minority neighborhood of Atlanta and then the last quarter I played cards and talked with men in a kind of halfway house for people going from some kind of institualized life to the community.  Certainly, it was all eye opening experiences for a young man from redneck land who regarded the big city as another country.   

I am sure it was all helpful at the time.  If I were planning a core curiculum now for young people considering ministry, I would focus less on the doing part of ministry for the sake of spending more time on the being part of it.  While both doing and being are important for wholeness and they might be regarded as left hand and right hand, it has always seemed harder to be than to do.  Doing is measurable.  It is visible.  Being is different.  It involves heart work which is seen only by God and the One doing the being.  In these years of being out here in the pasture, I have discovered an awareness of the value of stillness, silence, and holy presence that I wish I could have been more intentional about cultivating in the beginning.  My curiculum would have that course as Being 101.